good morning everyone
um welcome to the regularly scheduled
las cruces
economic recovery ad hoc board meeting
it is currently
10 a.m on september the 10th and
i'm going to go ahead and call this
meeting to order
with that being said can i please ask
now if there is any conflict of interest
that you please do raise your hand and
we will call on you and
deal with that matter at this time
awesome as i'm seeing no hands being
raised
we're going to go ahead and move on to
the acceptance of the agenda
the agenda was sent out i hope you all
had a chance to take a look at it
um i know that they're okay
mr chairman yes ma'am uh debbie moore
good luck christina for the record um
regarding item number the discussion
item with child
care um i do have ashley tavera on the
phone with voice
i'm on the call with boys and girls club
um but dr trujillo
is going to be late so i would ask that
maybe we switch numbers one and two and
see if she's on
um her call should be ending really soon
um but i want to make sure we have that
item where she can address that
okay perfect so i would make i would
move that motion to switch one and two
if i hope that's okay with ashley i've
got one speaker on and one speaker off
so
i don't know if we separate them or not
so mr chair we might ask
um ashley i see ashley on ashley is that
going to be okay with you ma'am
that's okay that's not a problem okay
perfect
okay so we do have a motion on the table
to under
um item the discussion switching
one child care which is going to be a
big one with
two city of las cruces business fees
schedule
um we have to have a second for that to
go through
mr pittsburgh this is sharon thomas
okay sharon if you can just make sure
that you do raise your hand um
for the chat box mr fitzherbert you had
your hand raised as well sir
i was going to second the motion rocket
sherbert for the
for the record okay thank you so much mr
fred server
okay so i have a motion on the floor
from miss debbie reynolds i do have a
second for miss sharon thomas
to switch one and two under discussion
um
do i have any discussion on that change
at this time
okay as i'm seeing none if i can please
get a roll call vote on the
motion at hand to change the discussion
items
this is from the motion to move agenda
item number two to the first place and
agenda item number one to the second
place
uh mr michael harris yes
mr george miller
mr george miller is absent
miss sharon thomas
yes miss brook montgomery
yes veronica
yes mr ron fitzherbert
yes mr doc cowan
yes ms susan greenwald yes
ms jolene martinez
ms jolene martinez mr absent
miss darlene lopez yes
motion passes you forgot me
oh my apologies true okay
i vote yes i apologize
yes perfect okay
motion does pass unanimously so we will
have those two discussion items
changed okay moving on to um the agenda
again
with the amended agenda
uh is there any other comments questions
or concerns before we do a roll call
vote on the amend agenda
agenda sorry
uh mr chair gaby moore for the record
point of clarification with staff
do we need to have another uh motion
to accept the minutes as amended
the agenda yes the new agenda
i believe so unless there's any other
changes so moved
okay we have a movement to accept the
amended agenda do i hear a second
this is michael harris i'll second that
perfect we have a motion
from miss w moore in a second from mr
harris
um any discussion on the amended agenda
as presented to us at this time
as i am seeing none can i please get a
roll call vote on the acceptance of the
agenda
as amended this is on
the acceptance on the agenda as amended
mr michael harris
yes mr george miller
it's absent ms sharon thomas
yes miss brook montgomery
yes
yes mr rumford server
yes mr doug cowan
yes mr sun greenville yes
ms jolene martinez
is absent miserly lopez yes
is david moore
yes mr chair
yes motion passes
okay so motion does pass we do have our
agenda as
presented um
we have minutes to uh approve as well
you all receive those minutes is there
any discussion on those minutes as
presented
i see no discussion being
heard uh no hands being raised okay
do we entertain emote i would entertain
a motion to accept the minute that's
presented from the last meeting
uh this is michael harris i'll motion to
approve the minutes
okay so i have a motion
from mr harris to accept the minutes as
presented to us so i hear a second
on that motion
this is doug calanow second
okay i have a second by mr cohen that we
approve the minutes as
presented is there any further
discussion on the minutes
as i'm seeing no hands raised and
nothing being said
can i please get a roll call vote on
accepting the minutes as presented from
the september 3rd meeting
this is on the approval of the minutes
as they were presented
mr michael harris yes mr george miller
is absent ms sharon thomas
yes ms brook montgomery
yes
yes mr rumford server abstain
mr duck cameron
this is not count
yes ms jolene martinez is absent
mr lee lopez yes
madame vice chair yes
mr chair yes
thank you okay so we have the approval
of our minutes and the agenda so moving
on we do have the amended
agenda so we will be looking at number
two under discussion first which is the
city of las cruces
business fee schedule um this is
something that i
kind of requested at the
last meeting as something that maybe we
can look at
to maybe uh make some changes or if
there's anything that we can maybe
suggest that will alleviate
any kind of burden
on businesses at that time something
that is an actual item that we can do
here and now
um so that's kind of why i put this on
the agenda
uh francisco i do see your hand raised
go ahead sir mr chair uh i
invited mr tim pitts deputy director of
community development
for the meeting he is in charge of the
one-stop shop for businesses and permits
in the city of las cruces
and he is well versed into the fees as
well as
into the registration requirements
so here's part of the discussion here
wonderful
that would be great um did we by any
chance get that fee
uh scheduled through the policy through
the website
um to the rest of the board if not can
we do that really quick so they can take
a look at it in the meantime
um mr chair i sent it as a link
i can send those links to to everyone
else in in in the meantime
perfect that way they can kind of take a
look at it while we're uh
having a discussion uh miss debbie moore
not miss w reynolds but missed anymore
thank you mr chair debbie moore for the
record and i'd love to have
debbie reynolds money but but thank you
for the compliment uh mr chair
i do have an idea a thought of
that a suggestion we could move forward
is that
it is my understanding and certainly mr
pitts can correct me if i'm wrong
the one fee that impacts
every business every business would be
the business registration uh fee
that is currently at forty five dollars
uh my recommendation that is not a
motion at the present time it is simply
an idea i'm throwing after for
discussion
it would be for this board to recommend
to the city council that that fee be
waived
for one solid year whenever they would
begin and start
start that year it would just have to be
one year to be impactful
while the dollars are not potentially
that great to a business it certainly
would show good faith
as a as a whole from the from this board
and the city council
to it is one one yet one again the 12 in
the total box
um to waive that fee uh for a year so i
just laid that out there on the table
for discussion anything else i believe
mr pitts could address this
and he might review some of the general
ones uh would be
of impacting industry sectors and
that would probably raise flags for the
anti-donation thank you mr chair
thank you um and with that being said as
well i think that's exactly
what this kind of discussion is is one
of those good faith
discussions where they're very nominal
fees if you go through the website which
is the city of las cruces it's
library.municipal unicode.com nm slash
last cruises which you'll get forwarded
right now
but there's a lot of fees in here that
do pertain to even small business owners
um there's one for
uh flea markets food vendors um
pawn brokers christmas tree sales things
like that
very small business very local that we
can kind of look at and
think yeah this is a good faith effort
that the city of las cruces waves its
fee for a year
for small business medium-sized business
owners that can make a difference
um with that being said we do oh here's
miss trujillo
uh dr trujillo let's get her in here um
with that being said we do
have good morning dr trujillo how are
you
um with that being said we do have a
couple hands raised
mr harris let's go ahead with you first
and then we are gonna
um talk about everything else that uh we
need to get going on that
okay um sure so um
this is michael harris for the record um
i i agree that the you know waiving
these fees is probably a nominal
impact to business um because it's 45
bucks
but it is would show a lot of faith from
the city
um but and it would also be a
significant probably for the city
and so i guess my question is could some
of the cares act
grants um be used to subsidize
that fee being waived um in a similar
way to like how the
the buses are going fare free and
they're able to use some federal money
to cover the to cover that expense
okay i think that's a good question um
also
you said it's a nominal fee for the
business owners but
45 to the city of las cruces is probably
a lot less than
to the business owner so i think that's
definitely something that we can look at
um mr cohen had his hand up ben griselda
and then mr harris just re-raised his
hand i see oh just doug cohen mr cohen
go ahead
thank you doug cowan uh here i have a
question and maybe
mr chair you can answer this one with
regards to some of these fees
i know that the city has a special
permitting
for the new patio the outside dining
scenario um and so um
are there fees associated with getting
that
permitted and approved for the outside
dining and
expanding that for the restaurants here
in town is there a cost associated with
that to those businesses
i am not the person to ask i was not
affected by that but i think mr pitts
would definitely
have that answer mr pitts do you want to
go ahead and hop on and answer that
question sir
thank you mr chair yes uh tim pitts uh
deputy director of community development
uh just to clarify the the business
registration fee is 35
a year and i believe it's set by state
statute
and we have just uh uh we've just re
adopted that within our own code i'm not
positive that we can
uh uh we can waive that i'll have to
look at the statute and see how that
works but uh getting back to this
question of the
uh outdoor dining for the uh for the
emergency
uh situation uh we have adopted a
zero fee uh review and inspection of the
of the dining outdoor dining and we
usually go in and
make some recommendations on making it
safer making sure that the people are
safe when they're
dining outside they have bathroom
facilities and so on that's really what
we're looking for
perfect okay so it looks like
doing that quick outdoor patio
for restaurants and small businesses is
a fee
free service that we're doing right now
which is great um
is there anyone else that has taken a
look at those fees and can see anything
uh
that maybe says maybe we can
do something with that i think like um
food vendors is one i know that there's
fees associated with
like a food truck right now when they
set up um
special events we're not really doing
special events right now temporary stand
seasonal merchandise non-seasonal
merchandise
uh maybe we can even look at getting
with
um the
outdoor market uh the last christmas
outdoor market on saturdays and
wednesdays and see if there's some kind
of feed that we can work out with them
for a reduced fee for those uh small
business owners or
one-time business owners that are trying
to sell their goods at
the market i think that's something that
we can definitely be looking at
um mr harris and then we'll go to
miss montgomery i see above your hands
raised
um i was just gonna say i haven't seen a
link yet
um so if you have a url maybe you can
repeat it a little slower so that um we
can get it in
or i don't know if uh if someone was
gonna email that
okay cool uh actually adrian do you
think you can actually just open up the
chat box to send that link out really
quick so we can all get that
immediately and then we can close the
chat again
let me see one time okay
you know what since we've disabled chat
all together it doesn't even give the
option
okay yeah doesn't even let me
allow chat at this point okay cool
uh francisco can you go ahead and just
forward that out to them
i know i have it from our previous
conversation
[Music]
mr chair i just wanted to double check
this francisco perez for the record that
we're looking at the same stuff is this
from the from the links that i send you
uh via email
for the app it is it is the municipal
code fees
excellent i'll i'll i'll forward that
and to everyone and and that email
should be coming and on its way
okay perfect i appreciate that francisco
um we're going to go to brooke and then
i see that we have
miss martinez on so go ahead uh brooke
um i went to the feed page real quick
for
home-based businesses um
and i think that's a pardon did you say
state page or the city page
i'm on the city page okay cool um
and i don't know i was listening to
i would i wasn't fully clear if we have
the ability to waive the fees but
um and michael harris you had brought up
that
maybe the grant can cover them but i do
see that there's an
annual um renewal fee
for home-based businesses i'm on the
home-based business one so and then
like you said the food vending wagons
and trucks 40 per vehicle
but there's also a fee for non-profits
that are based at home
um which during this time there may be
more non-profits arising to help
the economy and food security so
if we're going to be able to maybe cover
some of these the reoccurring
fee um and the non-profit fee might
might be good ones to look at
i think you're muted
okay so the at home in the nonprofit is
what you're looking at at home
at home nonprofit it says that there's
and so i'm just on this page but there's
a 25 dollar fee for non-profits for the
city
not the safeties um and then there's a
late fee of ten dollars
if they don't do it in time so
anyway so those what i thought you know
there are people discussing different
non-profits arising
and why impede them anyway
got it okay um i think those are good
zelda go ahead really quick you did have
your hand raised ma'am
mr chair griselda martinez for the
record um
so just a couple of items for
clarification the first one is
uh um mr harris on the question related
to
caresect so how the cares act
work for the city of las cruces because
of our
size the funding that came from the
federal government went to the state and
then the state
uh opened up an rfp process for
disbursements
of those funds so the city actually had
to apply for those funds
so um it's a two-fold um approach on the
care sect
with this with this different um
consideration bigger cities 500 000 and
above
uh received the funding directly uh we
didn't
and so what we did was the first item
is reimbursement of cost associated to
covet and what the city did was a
compilation of of costs associated and
that's where the bus
rides it's included and then the second
element
is related to the small business
continuity grant
that will be a program that will be
grant
for businesses small businesses within
the city and then there will be another
a separate program administered by the
county and the greater chamber for the
county businesses
and that that's um that would be
cash for businesses who apply and so
i wanted to clarify those those items
related to cares act
and then on the farmers market
all farmers market businesses or
register
as as regular businesses and that's one
of the requirements that we have
for the farmers market to ensure that
they help us
with that to ensure compliance
with the farmer's market though it's
handled by a third-party entity correct
that collect
fees is there any way we can start
looking at working with them to see if
we can do like uh
waiving fees until the first of the year
for new business owners that are going
in that are doing
at home projects or something like that
to make ends meet
mr chair um so the in
and i will ask dr pitts to to
chime in here my understanding is their
registration the businesses in the
farmers market
it are registered as a regular business
and
there may be some additional fees that
are worked between
the vendors and the actual farmers
market for which we don't have any
control over
so for the for the registration
as a business that would fall under the
regular business registration that was
discussed before
okay perfect dr pitts do you have um
is that an accurate statement
uh thank you um dr martinez and uh mr
chair
uh tim pitts uh with community
development uh
yeah it is and i want to make just a
couple of comments one is
uh non-profits are explicitly exempted
from paying
business registration fees we do ask
that they be
that they give us we call that a
notification of
of their location and uh because we have
the same
concerns about uh safety of occupants
and employees as we do for any other
business
but there is no business registration
fee for a non-profit even if they're
home based and i'd be interested in
knowing
where um where it references that
because under
uh section 16 128
of the uh land of the las cruces
municipal code
it explicitly exempts uh a non-profit
uh but on the on the um part of what
we're doing
for instance with the with the uh
with the farmers market businesses
is that the the state part of our
business registration process
is ensuring that the state they are
following state
statutes on uh
tax paying their taxes recording their
locations making sure that they're
paying their taxes to the right
locations that's mostly grts but also
property taxes
uh and and so on so it's a it's a it's a
compliance
uh method i and again i would have to
look in to see what what
fees would be possible to
waive and what would not but uh but but
all of it would have to be done by
ordinance or or or would have to be paid
from another source
on things that are not explicitly uh
if they if they have a fee in the
schedule okay
perfect so we can definitely look at
that more in depth on our
end um i think
susan greenwald go ahead and then we'll
go to brook and then michael
mr chair susan greenwald for the record
um
not to be the wet blanket of this
conversation
um but i kind of am uh
so if we are asking i don't know how
many businesses are in the city
even if we say there's a thousand
businesses which i'm assuming there's at
least
two or three times that many um we're
asking for
35 000 of fees that don't go to the city
um but we're then going to ask
for other programs like help with child
care um
the scholarship program um if it's a
nominal fee for the business
like is it worth um asking the city
not to ex expect that revenue
um to come to them if we're going to be
asking for other
assistants does that make sense
i i'll speak to that as a small business
owner um
i think a nominal fee for me is
definitely different than a nominal fee
for the city of las cruces
uh and with that being said i think 35
out of my pocket or you know there's a
lot bigger fees on there as well for
small business i mean we're just looking
at the business registration fee that
miss debbie moore put forward but
there's also
40 per set up of your food truck or
there's also fees like that
30 to 45 for an individual business
owner probably doesn't seem like a lot
um but it can be i mean that's going to
the grocery store and buying groceries
for your week
um especially in this time but also the
city of las cruces does have a lot of
fees that
are a lot of money set aside to help
small business in the economy and that's
why we're all here today
uh so i understand where that comes from
but also i think it's really
[Music]
kind of shallow in a way for us to say
what is nominal to small business
and what's nominal to the city of las
cruces
in my personal opinion i'm sorry i know
that sounds pretty bad but
times are tough i don't think my comment
was shallow i want to
clarify that like i don't i don't think
it was a shallow concern nominal was the
word that was used
by you for the city of las cruces
correct
right yeah so i mean i'm
i'm not i'm not saying that it's not an
issue
i would say that maybe waiving that fee
for everyone
maybe isn't i mean one i agree that it's
a compliance issue
for businesses to make sure that they
are paying their taxes and all of those
kind of things
um maybe setting aside a fund for
like an emergency kind of grant program
saying you know here's
five thousand dollars that the city's
gonna set aside
um for for fees for businesses who are
struggling during this time
right i think there's some other ways to
approach it that's my
my comment no definitely thank you for
that i appreciate it i appreciate the
comment
um next is miss brooke montgomery and
then we'll go to mr harris
um brooklyn montgomery for the record um
i agree it does seem
that some of the fees are
less than others when i'm looking at
this new page um by the way the
non-profit fee was listed on
business registration application
that is the print out one um
and it's under the last page it's listed
on the top for
registering a business and then it's
listed on the bottom
with an annual renewal fee of 25
so i don't know if it's accurate but
it's on the um
on the on the page for registering a
business when i googled it
under the document center
blockchairs.org but anyways um
so i just wanted to point that out if
it's not accurate it's on there
um the fees i would agree
um because i help students register
well you know go through the process of
starting and growing their businesses
and they add up for the students so
sometimes we have to reunite because
they have
the state fee for 50 and then they're
um getting their taxes and their state
tax you know
their ein and then they have to do their
um their las cruces fees and
i think for the students it is um you
know you add the 50 plus
the 35 and then they need 85
and they're already kind of like you
know in school may or may not be working
full-time
so they come back a couple weeks later
when they have some money or a month
later
um not all students are like that but i
would say it's pretty common
for what i see that the fees um could be
a barrier
they often do home-based businesses and
i do see child care and babysitting
listed
and if we're talking soon about child
care we want to we may want to revisit
that because
then they have to pay the 50 fee to
register with the date and the 35
and on the one that i think chris you're
referring to
there's some there's some pretty high
fees for like special seasonal
i mean to do christmas stands to pay 50
for 90 days every 90 days um
and then 150 for special events it does
say flea market
is 50 per event and i guess that doesn't
count
the um you know i don't know what that
counts but maybe we should look into
that because that adds up
per event to go to a flea market um
[Music]
and so as a community um and talking
about economic development
you know somebody might say i'm just not
gonna register
and i'm just gonna go sell things to my
friends or um
they might not they might have to wait
and miss out on an opportunity to sell
seasonal items that and we're coming
into holiday season
and this may be an avenue for people to
make money so i i do think it adds up
awesome thank you miss montgomery and
with that too with the holiday season
coming around and
you know we always are doing those
events that are we're at the convention
center as we're not doing big events but
being able to sell those holiday
trinkets you have to get your business
license i mean that's a
it can it can add up after a time uh mr
harrison we'll go to mr pitts who's
probably gonna answer all of our
questions that we just did
uh yeah this is michael harris for the
record um
i guess i'll open with a question um for
mr pitts which
is uh how much of
community development's budget um comes
from these fees
um and you know what what percentage are
we looking at
and and then i guess i'll also express
my skepticism
that this is
i mean i'm looking at this fee table and
as a business owner i don't see that
eliminating any of these fees would have
any meaningful impact on
on a business really i mean 85 bucks
to register your business as a student
okay
i can see how that might prevent you
from registering your
sole proprietorship as a student but
i mean there's 3 000 businesses roughly
in the city i think from previous
presentations
um just in the business renewal fee
you know 35 bucks is nothing to
to any business in town um that that
would keep you operating for
an hour or two maybe um
but to the city you know over three
thousand businesses that's a hundred
grand
so that's three people's salaries um
so you know if this is meaningful
meaningfully impacting the city budget i
guess my concern is
are we going to make a good faith effort
to you know
help businesses save 35 bucks and then
lay three people off at the city
or two or three people um that doesn't
seem like a very good trade
and so anyway i i'm interested to know
you know how much
how much money out of the city budget
are we really talking um
that's why i was i brought up the point
about you know
can if we were to recommend the city do
this
do they have a way to get reimbursed for
these
these funds um somehow and and
it seems that existing cares act money
is already
uh spoken for and that that already
would have had to
have been applied for um
so anyway that's my concern is that yeah
35 bucks means nothing to the city but
35 bucks
three times businesses means a lot um
so it adds up even faster to to the city
so
um with that i'll hand it over to mr
pitts we'll probably answer all those
questions
thanks actually before we go to mr pitts
can we
uh let's just hit miss debbie moore i
know that she has her hand raised and
then mr pitts can take over and just
tell us everything
thank you mr chair debbie moore for the
record i would like clarification
there several fees have been mentioned i
obviously just mentioned one
but i would certainly like point of
careful legal clarification
on how the anti-donation clause
would fit into any of our
recommendations
of this to mr cowan's uh point while ago
regarding
the tense obviously that impacted just a
few people
so i would like legal clarification
before we proceed with any right
full recommendations on how that
anti-donation
would fit in the equation thank you mr
chair
thank you mr pitts you're up sir
thank you very much mr chair uh just i
i'll answer i got a bunch of things
written down so i'll
i'll try and answer them if i miss
something please uh please remind me
uh but to the uh the budget um the
community development revenues or at
least i'm sorry building safety revenues
which includes the business registration
uh portion of our of our business
uh brings in about 1.2 million dollars
in revenues in a year or we did in 2019
and business registrations accounted for
a hundred and seventy six thousand seven
hundred and ninety eight dollars
i don't know where the 53 cents came
from it's somewhere
uh but anyway and 53 cents uh
about half of that is from business
registrations
as uh the thirty five dollar uh so mr
harris's estimates about right that that
probably
somewhere between between eighty and a
hundred thousand is is from that thirty
five dollars and then the rest
the bulk of it comes from
liquor licenses there's a lot of work we
do associated with liquor licenses
there's a lot of work we do
and they they have much higher fees and
uh and
and generally paid by
probably not the businesses you're
necessarily thinking of
you know that's usually walmart and and
and those sorts of
uh places but maybe some restaurants
that
it's a pretty big it's a pretty big
amount he's 250
for uh i'm not seeing it in in short
order it's somewhere in this uh
in the code uh about half of the
businesses that we register are home
based
um so uh you know somewhere between
uh a thousand and fifteen hundred
home-based businesses
and uh it's always in flux we have
businesses that
that don't renew but are still open we
have businesses that
renew and then close in two months and
so on so it's difficult to get an
actual count at any one time of how many
businesses are there but i think
2500 is a good estimate uh in terms of
anti-donation
uh uh it's my understanding that as long
as the program
is across the board and adopted
available to everybody
equally that anti-donation does not
apply
so i think that we can get around that
we obviously would need legal to
to weigh in on that to make sure
anything that was done
uh would
cover that and then the other thing i
had written down was on the
the non-profits again
that printout that that you have is is
an old one and i'm going to have to go
find where it is and get it updated with
the correct
the correct information if you actually
came in and registered a non-profit
we would not charge you a fee uh but
that was changed in the code
about i want to say maybe 10 years ago
so that's an old old piece of paper and
it doesn't surprise me we have that
somewhere up on the website
it's very difficult to find all the
documents we have and and get them up to
date so
but i will definitely go and look for
that one and
get that information corrected
okay perfect thank you uh miss
montgomery
thank you mr piss um i can email it to
you
also um
i guess clarification so about half of
176 000 goes to business registration
for
or this is kind of guessing because the
clothes they may open and close um but
for home-based businesses
do you think that
they're more likely to register their
business if we weigh the fees
temporarily and then pay taxes
or are we risking that they pay they
work and not register
and just sell things for seasonal
money or money during this time um
because if they decide to just not pay
taxes which
i mean hopefully they're not doing do we
bring in more money by
using the way for them to become a
home-based business
and i know it's um only three five
dollars so i don't know if it is if we
decide that it's a pressing issue
um but if we waive it and they start
making money maybe they'll pay taxes
go ahead mr pets thank you thank you mr
chair uh
yes uh i i you know that's a it's an
interesting questions when we wrestle
with every day
uh we are pretty sure that uh in this uh
in the current crisis that we are about
20 to 30 percent down on people actually
pulling permits
for construction work and the question
is how much are we going to
enforce that as part of our role
is to ensure that the state is getting
its grt revenue
um and that's part of why we do this um
you know it's it's a compliance issue
and and i i
i have a hard time getting a good
estimate of of that
uh home-based businesses are are very
difficult to monitor
we don't we don't want to go into
someone's home and tell them that
something's unsafe it's their home and
it's not really
but it's also their place of business
and there are rules and there's
uh there's so it's it's just that's been
a very difficult part
for us to deal with as as an enforcement
agency
um is those home-based businesses so we
we generally look for voluntary
compliance in that regard
if they're doing something that is
disturbing to their neighbors that's
when we will
um uh right there and as as
uh dr martinez mentioned
we do uh when they're operating at the
at the farmers market and and other
places like that out in the public we do
ask them to
to have their registrations properly
it's a good question and i think you
guys might be better suited to answer
whether we
are uh we would get better compliance if
we
just got people registered uh with with
the paying grt and other forms of taxes
i i can't i'm have a difficult time
telling myself
okay um thank you for that i think
that's a good question to be asking
actually
miss w moore yes mr chair thank you
debbie moore for the record
a quick just a clarification
mr pitts on regarding the
enforcement of the grt is that a task
that this
the city has or would that be more on a
statewide uh and then again um
i i just really think that the
clarification
from legal i would like a legal opinion
i understand the anti-donation i
understand being equal across
the board but i just think i would like
to personally see
a statement from the city attorney
regarding this because as we move
forward with some recommendation
that could tap into the city budget and
potentially could have
impacted several industries um i
i know that i would just personally like
to see a statement from the city
attorney on it
thank you mr chair thank you um with
that being said
i think that's actually a really good
idea um i think we need to get some
answers as far as
anti-donation clause and what that means
for the city of las cruces
and to what this board can actually
suggest to the county
or to the city council um
so what i'm going to recommend and it
would take a motion
is that we postpone this for a week and
in that week time frame we get an answer
from the city attorney which should be
pretty quickly because i'm sure
they get these questions a lot and then
second i think in that motion it should
also
ask that we get um
some kind of letter of feasibility
whether it's from the city manager or
from the economic development department
or
whoever wants to tell us that this is
feasible or not for us to be talking
about today
because i know it's a lot of money
overall but i also know that our job is
to suggest something to the city council
to alleviate the burden to reopen the
economy
and this is something that does that you
have to spend money to make money and
all that great stuff
um so i think we're at that point and i
do see that we have dr karen trujillo on
and we do have that child
care discussion here in a few seconds so
i see miss debbie moore's hand raised
miss debbie moore i'm thinking he might
have a motion for us
i do have a motion but just prior to
that i would also like clarification
uh next week on the usage of carex i
know
as dr martinez just mentioned we will be
giving grants
if there's any other dollars uh impacted
or available
for that with that said uh mr chair i
move
that this item of discussion regarding
the fee schedule
i'll be tabled at the present time and
brought up again at the next
meeting uh with clarification numbers uh
clarification information regarding
legal anti-donation and other
uh information as requested by this
board
thank you great motion uh miss
montgomery
brooke montgomery for the record i
second the motion
okay so i have a motion by miss w moore
and a second by miss montgomery to table
this until we get further information
from the next meeting of which we're
requiring from the city
can i please get a roll call vote on the
motion at hand oh any further discussion
i apologize
no further discussion can i please get a
roll call though
this is on the motion to table item
number one on the amendment agenda
mr michael carys yes
mr george miller yes
ms sharon thomas yes
miss brook montgomery
yes
yes did you run on fitzgerber
yes mr little count
mr.cowan
mr cameron seems to be absent
mrs and greenville yes
visually martinez
martinez is absent mr darlene lopez
yes ma'am by his chair
yes mr chair yes
thank you for that motion does pass okay
moving on
um since we did switch the discussion
items um
for child care in the city of las cruces
business fee schedule
we do have um
our two presenters here for child care
from the lcps we have dr
karen trujillo from boys and girls club
we do have ashley
echevarria um so we're gonna go ahead
and talk about that i know miss debbie
moore
you helped us get these two on this call
today so i don't know if you want to
give a little introduction in a little
brief of what we're going to
be talking about today mr chair there'll
be more for the record of course i'd be
delighted to do so
i have been working side by side with dr
trujill
and mr tavera for about two months now
in this regard and uh they do have an
update i know there's been some
uh changes some things that i think this
would be good for this board too here so
at first i'm going to introduce dr karen
trio
good morning everybody sorry i was a
little bit late we were on a different
call
i'm frantically uh sending sending
debbie messages so i appreciate the the
accommodation
um ashley
uh has been part of our re-entry plan
as as well as debbie moore when we
started talking at the very beginning
of the summer of what you know what is
school going to look like when we come
back in the fall and it's just an
ever-changing target that uh public
schools
are held to a standard and then the
standard shifts and changes and
i think a lot of people think that we
uh have the power to make those
decisions at the local level and in some
cases we do
but it's almost as if um you can make
those decisions at the local level but
you have to meet these 1700
requirements in order to open um
the newest one is now like increasing
our filtration systems
and that came out late last week
so so now everybody's scrambling across
the state to do that so we've had
districts that opened and then closed
had kids in the buildings and then did
not have anybody
the next day so that's really more than
anything what we're trying to avoid is
that
open close open close scenario
the other thing that we were told at the
end of last week is not to do
any timelines or plans for middle school
and high school
so to us rather than um
you know putting out that false hope uh
at this time we're not doing any
timelines or plans for middle school and
high school re-entry
um our school board will be voting on
tuesday
on a plan for for
whether or not we choose to try to go
hybrid
or just remain fully remote to the end
of the first
semester that is the recommendation
or part of the recommendations that we
will present to the board for them to
consider
is really looking at um
you know remaining in a remote
environment
uh bringing in small groups of students
that that need that extra support
uh in terms of the daycare or
great work we like to call it now the
child supervision and i'm gonna turn it
over to ashley
but uh probably i think
like debbie said about two months ago
we got together you know the groups of
daycare providers and child supervision
providers that are working with our
students locally
we started meeting on a bi-weekly basis
so at this point we've had three
different meetings
our group has kind of grown so it
includes you know boys and girls club
all of the standard daycares gym magic
the city of las cruces
um all of those agencies that are
providing those services
part of the biggest issue that we've
found is
trying to coordinate training for those
child care providers so all of our our
students are using canvas
so we've offered that training to those
day care providers to learn canvas to
try and figure out how to help their
students that are on various different
schedules
at the last meeting you know really
trying to say all right
give us the names of the students what
schools and teachers they have and we'll
put those teachers together to also
further help coordinate
those efforts for for the students
at the facilities as we look at
re-opening
um part of the issue is we are required
to have students in very strict cohorts
but then if you have
a child supervision and daycare
providers that have students from seven
or eight different schools
at different grade levels then it makes
it very difficult for us to
do cohorting um
so so those are parts of the discussions
that we're having
it was very interesting to see in the
the paper
this past weekend about daycare
providers really being at a very limited
registration capacity and
uh you know we we think that that demand
is there
but then the the numbers don't
necessarily reflect that
as we pull our parents uh just you know
over and over again
in terms of um do you want to stay fully
remote
or go hybrid really when
when parents are voting or when there's
that need they need that all day
every day option and i think
like once everybody starts to realize
that even in a hybrid model it's only
two days a week
at the building and then three days
remote uh
that makes it very difficult so uh
i know that there are private schools um
that have
been able to reopen and that's awesome
kudos to them
but they're held to a very different
standard in terms of what they're able
to do they can operate as a small
business so they're operating under the
very same
restrictions that you're operating under
and
us as a public school have to mean
the the requirements every day honestly
if you had to sit in on any of our calls
every single day
they change one of the good things that
i would say
and after this comment i'll turn it over
to ashley is that every call that we are
on
either with the early childhood
education department or the ped
they consistently point out the
collaboration that they're seeing here
in las cruces
between our child supervision providers
in the public schools
that's not necessarily a conversation
that's happening in other communities
and we've been able to make some really
great connections and putting people
together
to share licenses to internet all of
these
other things that you know we find
ourselves in this
collaborative problem-solving mode um
rather than
a competitive you know uh
non-communicative mode which i think is
happening in other places
so with that i'll turn it over to ashley
and then we're happy to take any
questions
good good morning everybody thank you
for having me um
as dr trujillo said i've been working i
feel like i've been seeing dr trujillo
on a zoom
at least what like every other day at
this point between all the meetings
but um we you know
at the boys and girls club it's we're
kind of in an interesting situation
because we're not necessarily licensed
child care
we're an out of school time provider and
so that kind of changes the dynamic as
far as
what's allowed for us what isn't allowed
for us
and as dr trujillo said
you know something about us that i feel
is pretty unique compared to
most licensed child care is we don't
stop
serving kids when they turn 10 11 12.
we we serve kids from kindergarten all
the way till they're seniors in high
schools and so
when we start talking about cohorting
kids and whatnot
different schools and i look at our
operational model
typically during non-coveted times we're
serving kids from just about every
school in las cruces elementary middle
and high school
and so it is a little
scary whenever you start thinking about
a hybrid model and
and you know the schools wanting to keep
kids in specific cohorts
and then we're bringing kids to one
building from all over town
and so um it's it's interesting when the
schools closed
back in march i definitely struggled
with the decision of
um you know what do we do do we stay
open
because that's our calling to be here to
serve kids and families
but if it's not safe for them to be in
schools how
how is it safe for them to be with us
and so um we did close
um now as this has gone on
for um quite a while now we decided
in the summer in july to just kind of
dip our feet in the water
and see what it would be like to serve
kids during these times
under the governor's orders back then we
were limited to
a one to five ratio so one staff member
to five kids cohorts of five
um because of the way our building is
designed while our building space is
always a challenge even during normal
times but even more so
with this this allowed us to only serve
25 kids
just like dr trujillo said i expected
25 kids i expected us just to have this
huge demand
and you know i was i we were going to do
a lottery i was thinking we're going to
have to turn away
tons of kids and i think we ended up
with a right around 30 kids registered
so we wait waitlisted
five i can tell you those first couple
days
enough kids didn't show up so we ended
up calling back the waitlisted kids
um so it's really interesting because
you hear a lot about i mean i think when
you're looking at it from
the economic development standpoint
you're really looking at it because
all of these businesses and employers
are saying well you know my employees
need child
care but then when you look at it from
our perspective
the demand it's just really interesting
doesn't seem to be there
um so my only thing for summer was we
did a four week program so i thought you
know maybe our numbers are low
one because parents have kind of already
figured out what they're doing for
summer we didn't open until the middle
of july
i thought the other thing was i thought
we only did a half day so we were open
from 12 30 to 5 30. i thought well maybe
that wasn't convenient
for parents and so um when we looked at
what we were going to do for the school
year
we we started calling our parents our
regular parents who who send their kids
pretty regularly
um we tried to survey monkey way back
when and of course nobody responds to
those so we ended up picking up the
phone and calling parents
and most of the parents that we talked
to that said they'd be willing
or in need of sending their kids to us
said
only if we can do a full day full day
program
and so i think we ended up having like
33 parents that said yes
full day so we were getting ready to
reopen
under the notion again that we could
only serve 25 kids
we closed registration on
a wednesday with 38 kids registered
so i was prepared to have to turn 13
kids away
on thursday the governor did her press
conference
and uh changed the public health order
and we received word from um our
lobbyists we have a lobbyist for boys
and girls clubs that we were able to
increase our ratios
to one to ten so that would mean we
could
safely serve 50 kids in our building
we so i was like great news we don't
have to turn anybody away so we called
everybody back all 38 kids
and i can tell you when we open on
september 1st
we had 29 kids that day
our our most well-attended day was
actually yesterday
with 31 kids so it's really interesting
just you know the dynamics because i do
you know when we're talking to
traditional child care providers we're
we're also hearing that most of them are
only operating at about 60
of what they're allowed to do um
for us what i've noticed is i would say
we probably have about 50 percent of the
kids that are coming
are our regular club members that we're
used to seeing
um every day and then the other half
maybe even a little less than half are
new new kids that are you know really in
need so that's kind of been interesting
too
but you know we're open we've been open
um we started last week september 1st
we're open
7 30 to 5 30. every day um the kids
are getting uh a breakfast
and a lunch thanks to the public schools
and then we're also serving them
supper at the end of the day because we
also do curbside suppers for the
community
and we're providing um as much support
uh with their with their virtual
schooling as we possibly can we do have
wi-fi in the building
um it's definitely been a little bit of
a challenge just managing all of the
different schedules especially for the
younger kids
the the we have one group of kids that's
all first graders
and that's a lot of fun but but we're
managing
um and and doing the best we can and so
just you know in addition to helping
them with their virtual schooling
we also sprinkle in our regular programs
so we do everything from stem to arts
and crafts physical fitness
recreation etc um you know of course
following all of the safety
um the safe cove practices um
but it is it's interesting as i've told
dr
trujillo before you know i do see that
the longer the schools are closed
the more high of a demand there's
there's probably going to be i think a
lot of parents are just waiting
for the schools to make a decision so
that they can figure out a long-term
plan
but um
at the same time i'm not sure i don't
know what to expect from day to day as
far as registration goes you know we
were very fortunate to receive some
funding from the city
i think it was last week the city passed
a resolution to
to help support several non-profits in
town
with with their coveted 19 efforts and
we were fortunate to receive some
additional funding um to help support
this effort because obviously going from
a half day to a full day it's pretty
expensive on us
especially as far as staffing is
concerned
and and operating at such low ratios and
then we had also
talked about the need for possibly
expanding into another building either
you know a city building we talked about
the school building we talked
um we talked about that but as
of today we don't really have that need
um i don't know what that's gonna look
like after next week's school board
meeting
that that may be different but you know
we
are here you know i've prepared my my
kind of my leadership team to
to say you know be ready because if we
do expand you know
we we would even be open to helping out
you know
i think about some of the bigger
businesses like hospitals
and well the public school systems
and nmsu who have
parents who who are working and i've
thought you know well even if we
approach individual businesses and said
hey if you'll give us
a couple rooms um we will send staff out
to to assist and and to do programming
with but
at this point the the need hasn't really
been
been there so that's kind of where we're
at
um i'm actually looking out my office
window right now watching
a bunch of kids um sitting on there
sitting on different devices spread six
feet apart and getting their schoolwork
done and so
it's been interesting we're here we're
happy to help um
but um i i'm unclear on
you know 25 000 students and in the lcps
school system dr trio is that right
25 000 students in the school system
24 500 yeah yeah and so you take all
those kids and
we're only seeing about 30 so
it's kind of it's interesting but i
will stand for any questions
sorry dr trujillo well no i was just
saying that's across the board like you
said with all of the other
child supervision providers of
school-aged children that they're
you know it's 20 here 30 here i i would
say probably being
served at all of the child care
providers
city-wide on a full-day basis it's less
than 200.
i mean i think that's even aiming high
yeah
okay so thank you so much for i mean you
answered so many questions that we've
had over the last two weeks
i'm not gonna lie um but we do have a
couple
well we have one hand being raised miss
montgomery take it away
thank you guys uh brookmont nobody for
record thank you that did
clarify we'd we've been discussing this
a lot
um so questions came up and then as they
came up sometimes we
answered them actually so i was trying
to cross them off
um i guess just clarifying
um
putting aside the school board vote
because we don't know the outcome of
that
if parents do you think
if parents thought the schools are not
going to reopen
like if it was there was like a timeline
and they said elementary we'll focus on
elementary because if they care
more but i mean you may be seeing middle
school and maybe that's something we
need to know too because they are
pretty young to stay home all day alone
if parents work
um so let's say uh middle school and
elementary aren't going back
do you think there would be an increase
in interest from the parents if they
were just
if there was just a decision made that
for the rest of the semester or
for the rest of the school year i don't
know if that's way too long to say but
something
of that nature we just know that the
kids are not going back
from certain grades and that they may
say okay now that we know that
we need to go to like do this model
of virtual learning centers um because
maybe they're sticking on
like and i think you may have said that
and miss um and karen also
said that holding on to like our kids
may go back so
that's that was my number one question
and then number two was
are they um getting assistance with
paying through
what the city resolution was and or
through child care assistance and are
there some people that don't qualify
and can't get assistance paying if
they're working would that also be a
barrier
i mean i don't know if that's already
kind of something that's been addressed
so
the cost for parents um
especially so yeah so regarding that
we so it's kind of interesting because
we're not licensed child care so the
licensed child care facilities
while they are a lot more expensive than
what we
charge they parents can apply for
assistance through cyfd
for that um the difference with our
program is
we do charge a weekly rate um
it's probably geez it's a lot less than
what child i think child care is
probably like what 300 a week
right now we're charging our regular fee
uh for a full day we're charging 75
dollars a week
i can tell you that 60 of the kids that
are coming right now
aren't paying 75 a week they're paying
much less so
that the funding that we get from the
city even outside of that resolution we
typically get funding from the city to
help us
offset some of our expense so that we
never turn a kid away for the inability
to pay
we try to work with the families um and
do some type of a sliding scale fee
and then you know there are some
extenuating circumstances
you know where grandma's on a fixed
income and raising four kids and
you know we you know some some parents
are paying
five bucks a week maybe you know 10
bucks a week so
we really try to practice um not turning
anybody away for the inability to pay
um when we do our advertising i do
always include you know there are
scholarships available
um but it may it may turn some people
away
to you know to to just see the fee and
get discouraged
um i'm i'm not sure and then regarding
your other question
i think at least from my perspective um
if if parents do hear that schools you
know aren't
going to open through the rest of the
semester through the rest of the school
year i do think there will be a higher
need
um just from what we've seen it seems
like
every day we're getting more phone calls
about enrollment
and so um that's that's what i think i
don't know what you think dr trujillo
um i think you're probably right
but uh i i will tell this group and
again this is not like decision has not
been made it will be made on
on tuesday but our proposal is
that um that we do
just remain closed for the remainder of
the semester and that we serve our
special education students which by law
we have to
and then work with very small groups of
students like in that five to one
ratio um for the remainder of the
semester at every grade level
so that that is the recommendation that
we are making to the board
um you know the fact that dona ana
county again who knows at four o'clock
this afternoon that might change
but right now we're at a uh
in that orange phase which technically
is not between
everybody gets kind of confused it's
like oh is that between
red and yellow and it's like no they
should have picked a different color
they really should have picked a
different color because it gives that
confusion but uh
yeah i mean that's the recommendation
we're making because logistically
think if we're thinking about cohorting
we're thinking about school buses
now they're saying like oh all your our
filtration systems need to be replaced
like
all of that stuff uh and honestly it
changes
daily uh it changed this morning so
so our recommendation is going to be
that that fine give us until
january let's make the online
environment as robust as we can and
provide the support in that
area as best as we can i would
appreciate it that you do
not necessarily talk about that because
again it is a board decision
but that's the that's that's where i
think we're leaning
um in terms of a recommendation
but what i don't want is the board to
say oh great now the city of las cruces
and all the people that were on that
meeting on thursday said
that the superintendent said that this
is what we're gonna do and that's not
what i'm saying
at all i'm just saying that's the
recommendation
based on the constraints that we're
we're under and that's not any different
than the other
regional districts you know gadsden's in
the same
boat uh they voted last week to
basically kind of wait and see
um hatches in the same boat they had
their school board meeting last night
and you know with all of the unknowns
we're just kind of put
in that position
awesome thank you for that um i think we
had mr harris
miss sharon thomas and then mr miller um
and guys i do want to just remind you
all that it is 11 13
um and we do try to wind up by 11 30 and
i know that this is a hot topic
so i understand that but i just wanted
to throw that out there before i get
my warning sign
um all right thanks uh this is michael
harris for the record
um yeah thanks for all that information
that was that was really good
um i have a question
and then um a comment that i was asked
to pass along
um the i guess i'll echo
the comments first um i'll echo the the
need for consistency
from the people i've talked to employees
um
friends family consistency and knowing
well one you know knowing what's going
to happen obviously everyone
everyone's waiting and seeing um and
that's that's causing a lot of stress
um for the people i know for sure and um
then also something that was brought up
and
is uh the training of teachers
on canvas and and how they're doing the
remote learning
um and kind of the consistency and
expectations because they're
they're saying as parents that um
you know even within like the classroom
they're they're not
certain like how certain things are
going to affect their child's grades
or you know stuff like that going
forward
um so that was a comment i was asked to
pass along
um and then i guess my my question is
one way or the other remote learning is
going to be you know a pretty big
part of what goes on are you seeing
a are you seeing barriers to that
in terms of internet access from
local families or people who are
slightly outside the city who still come
to las cruces schools
and you know maybe something we could
recommend as
you know ways for the city to help
improve internet access for
families thank you so much for
for both your question and your comment
um
i agree like that piece of the
consistency
uh like any like anything right you have
those that are like oh this is awesome
i'm gonna do
and look at my beautiful campus home
page and i mean it's just
this great thing right and then others
that are just
like how do i turn on my computer and
really trying to figure out how to what
are your minimum standard expectations
for
for teachers and how do we support them
so we have that those structures
in place with those minimum expectations
i think um
something that we did as a district that
really didn't
happen in other places two things
a lot of other districts just bought
you know okay we're just gonna do access
which is like pre-packaged curriculum
that there's not really any kind of
direct instruction or interaction
with um with students from an actual
teacher
and that that's what they're depending
on um we did not do that
uh we did decide that we were gonna go
with canvas and we understand like that
learning curve for some
uh is i mean it was steep
i'm not gonna you know there's no way to
get around that
the thing that we've seen now is that we
provided professional development
throughout the summer
those people who took advantage of that
paid professional development throughout
the summer
are obviously further along right than
others
one two um we as a district created
basically like canvas course shells that
had
assignments the instructional guides
like all of the
the the baseline must have
things for every class from kindergarten
through 12th grade
all the ap classes physics chemistry
algebra
whatever with recommended assignments
all of the different pieces
so thank god you know that the teachers
didn't have to start from scratch
right they didn't have to start from
zero well
in the conversations that we've had with
our professional development people
is that you know the first couple of
weeks it was very
um technology-based questions or
how do i put an assignment i mean it was
those very
basic canvas operating system kinds of
questions
now when they're asking questions like
how do i embed this video
and put a quiz in it for my students to
do
so like now they're getting into the
instructional
questions does that make sense so it's
kind of like they're not learning
that the the primary pieces anymore now
it's very much
instructional and learning questions so
for us that's very encouraging because
it's kind of like everybody kind of got
over that
initial hum and now um it's really more
focused on student engagement and
student learning so that's great
um the second piece is
uh the internet access that you asked
about the city of las cruces
very initially and their first
allocation of funds allocated 150 000
for the public school system for exactly
that for internet access so we did do
the partnership with comcast and we have
the comcast
cares um uh
funding that as a district we're paying
for so
we have we've been given whatever three
a couple
thousand codes that we give to families
and then
uh they sign up for the comcast cares
and we pay for it as a district but
we're using city funds to do that
so that's huge um unfortunately there
are
you know we worked with comcast to say
like hey take don't require them to put
in a social security number don't
require them to do
you know they were asking for like all
of these pieces of information that we
just have residents that they're like
i'm not answering that
you know i'm in a mixed status family
and i'm not putting that down because
then
you know there's that fear factor um so
we've really tried to work with them to
say
look we're paying for it just let us you
know
don't let's not make it a burden or a
barrier for families
so we've had um i think it's closer to
families that have signed up for that so
that's a good thing
one two we do have people that are
outside of that comcast service area
so we are working with cahoots which is
the
um it's a filtered uh
hot spot that we've i mean we've
distributed over 300
hot spots i mean and that's at a cost of
over a million
probably 1.5 million dollars for the
district
so what we really need uh so so we're
trying to
at the teacher level working with a kid
and saying do you have internet at home
and if that answer is no
then it's like okay then you all need to
call bridget at central office
she'll get you figured out if you're in
a comcast area she'll walk you through
that process if you're not
we'll get you a hot spot we have
families that have five kids in an
outlying area
and one hot spot isn't enough so we even
have some families that have two
because they can't you know it's not
functional for them to just have one
um so we've really tried our very best
to to meet those needs i mean if there
are families that still
don't have that um have them call their
teacher and their principal i mean
there's
no shame or embarrassment or any you
know like we really truly are
trying to to figure that out um
the city of las cruces and we robert
nunes yesterday in our meeting
was saying that you know six weeks ago
in our first meeting he's like we can't
help kids with classes because our city
facilities don't have internet
we don't have wi-fi and since then so in
the last six weeks
now they have you know five designated
areas that now they have wi-fi
where they say like okay now we can
bring in kids to do tutoring and to help
them with those pieces
so i think more than anything it's
getting those city facilities
um situated so that uh
that wi-fi is enabled and ready for
for um access not even if it's not for a
daycare
or child supervision all day every day
but just to
hey come and sit in our building in our
lobby
if your internet's not working and you
can do your stuff here
so hopefully those answered your
questions
thank you for that um i think that's
actually some really good information
especially about the wi-fi and how to
get connected
for anyone that's not um we do have ms
sharon thomas and mr george miller and
i do want to remind you guys that it is
11 21 and i know it's really amazing to
have these two
amazing individuals on with us today um
but some of us do have jobs to get back
to too
so um ms sharon thomas go ahead and then
we'll go to mr miller
okay i'll keep it very short so
i'm really impressed by what the las
cruces schools are doing and i'm happy
to see you
working with the city it's it's really
amazing
and the fact that we that we have people
that are willing to
collaborate and coordinate their work
that's fantastic
um my only my question is so if uh the
the school board decides that you're
gonna be
totally remote for the rest of the
semester and
the parents then are gonna start looking
for you know daycare care
child what's it called child supervision
supervision um is there a way to get
that information
out to everybody so what kind of access
do you have to
communicate with all the families you
know would help to
have uh chamber of commerce and the city
and you know other entities
get information out to people so they
know who to call and where to go and
what to do
to get child supervision great question
um so we actually do have i mean for
example
robert nunez again from the city they're
expanding their tutoring services
um we put it on our website on our
twitter on our facebook but we also have
access
to send that information directly to
um parents and students so if
our next meeting in two weeks um with
our
our child supervision providers it's
like hey have your
flyers ready what you're able to do how
many spots you have available and we'll
get that information out directly to our
families
thank you so there are a number of uh
list serves and all the counselors have
lists for their
districts and so you know there are
other ways we could
maybe help get information out that'd be
great
yeah because not everybody reads the
paper and not everybody's online
what true thank you for that um mr
miller
yes mr miller for the record i'll
withdraw my question i think i had the
same ideas about what sharon thomas had
and so
those were just answered very well about
the communication of what's available to
the parents and
and to the students thank you
thank you mr miller okay with that being
said i think
we have some really good information
that was presented today
especially about i think the biggest
thing that's going to be the biggest
question on everyone's minds right now
is going to be those virtual learning
centers depending on what happens at the
next meeting
i think there's going to be a lot of
questions coming forward
but i think we do know a lot of things
that are able to alleviate
you know the burden on families and
that's you know wi-fi
you know i live in a rural area and we
don't have high-speed internet
so you know i'm fortunate that i can pay
for that but there's a lot of people
that can't now we know
as a board how we can get that to those
individuals
that come in and talk to us you know
we're all involved in the community
that's why we're here so that's really
good information um
one question that i have before we do
kind of move on
um with the meetings going on in hatch
and gadsden with cruces being
one of the biggest school districts in
the state
are we kind of leading the charge or are
we collabing with
those entities that are close to us and
making decisions for the future
do you know like what that looks like i
know that we're leaders here in las
cruces but i know that also there's a
lot of people that are
coming in from out of county and all
that great stuff so i just wanted to
know like what that looks like for us
great question um so no i mean i talked
to mike
and travis all the time and even arsenio
and deming and jarrett perry and
alamogordo
so we even have our own little text
string like okay what are you doing what
are you what are your plans looking like
what's your calendar
so we definitely collaborate with them
um i think in terms of the coordination
with
child supervision and child care
providers we're probably
if not the only one of the few
communities that are
are really doing that to the level where
we're doing it
um i'm thankful that you know we
actually started this collaboration
uh before covid so even since last
january we were meeting with uh after
school providers and trying to
coordinate and say
okay you know there's multiple providers
that are serving
uh central elementary for example had
like four different agencies that were
at central
but then down the street at valley view
didn't have any so we were trying to
figure out like okay if you're serving
this school what other agency can pick
up this school so we were trying to
figure out how we could have
universal coverage for all of our
schools so
that's which again goes to that we have
to collaborate with each other right
that kind of attitude of working
together um so we already knew each
other you know we were already
meeting on a regular basis so when we
set up these meetings we didn't have to
go out and find names we said hey you
want to pull that list
send it to them and i mean so to me that
kind of gives me chills in
in thinking that you know las cruces is
just a very unique community that way
i think we just um you know we
there's no way we can make everybody
happy we know that but
our goal is to make everybody safe as
much as possible
and and really try to work together to
figure out what those solutions are
moving forward
so we'll continue to do that and if you
all have anything to add
please please please feel free to reach
out i'm very accessible
you know chris you know that debbie you
know that so
uh please honestly though cause you know
we come up with ideas and things
um it's much more powerful if you have
great minds working together on the same
problem rather than just
relying on a small group of people to
figure it out
so definitely cool
thank you guys thank you and thank you
both for your amazing leadership during
this time we really do appreciate
everything that you're doing um
it's great to see everything happening
have a wonderful rest of your week
have a good day thank you all bye ladies
okay so they just hopped off that was
great to have them both here today i
know that their schedules have to be
insane right now with everything going
on so hopefully
um that answered a lot of the questions
that we had and hopefully
us is a board can help distribute the
information that we learned today
and get that out to people that maybe
don't know of what's going on
but once again it is a day-to-day type
thing
so i'm hoping that we got some questions
answered and i'm sure there's going to
be more
um do we have any other comments
questions or concerns on child care
i know that this is going to be an
ongoing discussion topic i'm sure so
that's probably something that we need
to maybe
brainstorm a little bit more on and see
what the what we can
offer to the city to help us do with
that any other comments questions or
concerns before we move on for the day
okay as i'm seeing none um ms darlene
lopez
uh we are going to do hopefully a brief
update on what the workforce connection
scholarship update looks like
take it away miss lopez okay
let me get my
screen up here
wait oh yes i can share okay
um okay can you guys see
yes you're good to go all right darlene
lopez for the record hello everyone
um i just you know uh there's
there's still a lot of elements that
we're trying to work out on this so i
just want to
first and foremost lay that out but this
is just kind of
the direction that we're going and what
we're
proposing um and we're still trying to
work through some of the things that
we're not even sure you know
some things may not be possible um and
so those are the things that we're
working through but overall
um we we have this
this i guess mission um
if you will of of creating an additional
resource for financial support for
individuals who may not
meet the requirements for other types of
aid and are seeking training
and credentials to help them earn a
living wage
so these numbers right here are numbers
that
are estimates i'm working on getting
some really
some more solid numbers about
how much how many students per term and
i mean
spring fall summer
and how much we're spending in
supportive services meaning everything
outside of tuition like um
you know maybe they need help with child
care maybe they need transportation
maybe they need you to you know us to
help them pay for some eyeglasses
whatever it is that
may be a barrier to them getting
attaining their goals
you know we we try to help them with and
then
um per term for the tuition assistance
itself
and so i'm working to get some some more
concrete numbers it's a little more
challenging because
for our program um you know the the
numbers
the the numbers that we can get at a
glance are more of a holistic number
what we've spent per per um individual
per term and that's a number that
includes all of that so if this person
was in an rn program and they needed to
pay for the nclex so they could become
registered
that's going to be included if you know
if they had that supportive cert any
form of supportive service that's going
to be included so
you know we're seeing an average you
know of about four grand
per person in total so it just varies
you know some of these people they're
going for technical trades
where the equipment that they need is
expensive so the tuition itself isn't
very expensive but then they need
uh let's let's say like for welding you
know they need protective gear
they need steel toe boots they need
whatever so
you know all that stuff is included so
that's what we're trying to kind of pull
apart so that we can get a really good
accurate estimate to propose to counsel
um over what kind of money we should be
setting aside for this
the the workforce with wyo dollars has
been able to fill in gaps where fafsa
another student aid was unable to
although the act is engineered to help
those
disadvantaged groups there are still
limitations to who we can serve
that is where the training award program
would come in to serve those
we um to serve those
we could serve even if it's just for one
term
so that's kind of the thing is that we
may they may not live
on this award program so they come to us
this term
for some extenuating circumstance then
maybe next term they go back to
title one or to wioa and we can fund
them that term so
it's kind of just a a safety net really
um so the groups that we're currently
being that are being
underserved non-citizen customers
customers who hit their lifetime limit
with fafsa and grants and scholarships
customers who are above the income
guidelines but are being considered with
income not their own
example a spouse a partner a roommate
parent or other family member's income
customers who miss the deadline to apply
for fafsa or wyo
so if they come to us the day classes
start that's too late we can't fund them
that term so then we could say okay
let's roll over to the
to the award program and see if we can
get you funding that way for this term
uh customers who are enrolled in a leap
or alternative licensure program
at a school that's already receiving
receiving federal dollars which
prohibits other federal funding
so as you guys have probably heard we
are partnering with the public schools
not only in las cruces but in other
parts of the region
to get more teachers and we're hoping to
help individuals who may already have
some credits under
their belt go ahead and get over that
hump and get to to their level
what is it the level one licensing or
whatever i'm not exactly sure the terms
i don't want to misuse them
but um you know that program has its
limitations because of course
some schools have federal um the same
type of federal funding that we use
to put people through these um programs
and so that's like kind of
you know some firewall breaching there
to
to use both types of funding in the same
school
so some schools are cool they can do it
some schools can't so
we are working to um
to fix that issue but as you know those
are things that take
acts of congress and it takes time so
this could be something that this
program could help
fill the gap in the meantime any other
extenuating circumstances that should be
determined using a set of objective
evaluation criteria on a case-by-case
basis
those seeking training in a field that
is not in that is not
in demand by governing agencies
definition training will be specific to
entrepreneurial development and will
be determined using objective evaluation
criteria so basically those folks that
are wanting
to start a business and maybe just need
support need training
need some kind of credential maybe they
need accounting managerial accounting
they know their craft they've got their
craft down but they don't know the
business side they don't know the man
the accounting side and they need that
training
so then the concept is that they the
step one is that they apply for fafsa
um step two they apply for wioa with us
through the workforce
and then step three is to apply for the
training
award program which is the one we're
we're working with the city on
um and then ultimately you know that
documentation kind of serves as the
proof that hey i went through all the
channels that i needed to
to make sure that i exhausted everything
else and then came
here last applications are submitted
each term and include documentation from
the fafsa in wyoming with determinations
and the payout process is being
determined you know some of the things
that we're discussing is
you know maybe just doing um uh a
request for payment
on behalf of the student or maybe you
know we
figure out some kind of a mechanism
where you know we're
we're working um through the student or
either directly
agency to agency we're working with
of course the city's legal entity as
well as our
administrative entity to make sure that
we
do everything within compliance
so that that information to come the
ultimate goal is to create a system that
is working towards a point where no one
in las cruces who wishes to work towards
a self-sustaining and livable wage
through training has to be turned away
now we know that that's going to take
time to get to that point but we want to
be working towards it
what's next the workforce it will work
with the city to develop training and
guidelines and policies for the program
and we'll be putting all information
before our legal entities for review
we anticipate changes to the plan as it
gets finalized and we will be updating
the board regularly
should this program be approved by all
entities involved this would be
submitted
as a recommendation by the board to city
council
so we'll you know basically at that
point we'll be bringing it back to you
all
um to have you make a recommendation
officially to
to the city council um and i'll stand
for questions
you're on mute mr chair
thank you so much i appreciate that on
both notes i appreciate this amazing
presentation that you gave us it was
very very well done and very informative
um it answered a lot of the questions
that we've had over the last couple
weeks
um so with that being said it looks like
ms sharon thomas you do have a question
i will remind everyone really quick it
is 11 38
um so hopefully we can wrap up in the
next like six to eight minutes so mr and
thomas
yeah just a quick question um darling
you said
you've been working with city legal so
that they're okay with this we don't
have any anti-donation
issues over this kind of a program um as
of this point
um because we're going to be making an
mou between ourselves the workforce so
i've been you know steve's been working
with us too
sharon and so because we're going to be
formulating an mou
that's going to resolve that issue of
the anti-donation cause
but we are definitely not in a position
to say that everything that i have
presented today is a hundred percent
good to go because
like i said once they have fully
evaluated this concept this concept
really got a hard a hard framework
yesterday you know we've had a concept
for a while now but this is
yesterday was the first work session
where we really came out with
okay this is how we see this working um
and and these are the the details of how
this is going to flow
so now that we have that that's what we
need to have
set before the workforce development
board um and then also
set before the legal on the city side to
get approval on both ends
so the um and was legal part of
any of these discussions right um
i will have to to turn to uh francisco
on that one
hello can you hear me yes sir yes
excellent
thank you mr chair thank you um board
member sharon thomas
the as as workforce connections is say
a government entity uh usually
the the way in which we can work with
government entities would be through an
mou and one of understanding um
this is of course still pending that we
draft the entire
proposal and we submitted through our
entire process
still so this is this is not yet in the
form or in the shape to be presented
completely because we need to still
draft some some extra changes
but at this stage this is where it is at
uh so this would need to be
drafted in a way in which it would go to
legal and then with legal we would be
able to discuss what is the best route
to it
nevertheless workforce connections is a
government entity so since it's a
government
the the approach is a bit different so
nevertheless
we are still going to to have that
meeting it will submit that that that
proposal as when once we draft it and we
have it kind of ready
uh but that is that is a stage that that
we still have to follow so there's still
more work to be done
this is this is a this is a big project
still uh nevertheless it is it is
something that we have to get our
crosshair our teeth and and dot our eyes
correctly so that we know that
everything is
is is right does that answer your
question
um well i know that it's often different
when you're working
government entity government entity and
i sit on the workforce board too
so um i i guess i just need some
assurance from legal that
what you said government to government
is different
and in that right it's highly likely
that
mou will be the way to go and that we
don't have to worry about
anti-donation but i you know i hate to
see darlene
go too far before we have at least some
assurance from legal that
government to government is different
right and usually the process
how it follows is that we we have an
actual proposal drafted right
the actual proposal drafted us how we
think and we start having the
conversations
with legal at that stage uh nevertheless
we have worked with other government
entities in a similar fashion
so that is a possibility that that that
is that has been explored
uh just to put it like that so uh this
is the next stages would be to go to
actually drafting this in in an overall
uh proposal
putting it to legal and then getting the
information from there
but i i think that this stage this is
where we are at so this is still
pending that's that's what i want to be
very clear this is still pending
uh but it is a it is it is a i think
it's a great proposal so we'll see where
it takes us
i i think legal can quickly answer the
general question about government to
government and so
i guess i'd like to have that
information as soon as possible
right and and this is for the record uh
will it legal uh we'll contact legal and
and see what
what they respond i couldn't speak for
them so so that's
uh that's something that they they would
have to respond so
okay thank you i mean having been on the
council for many years i'm very aware of
the
anti-donation issues and i just need
some assurance from legal that we're
heading
in the right direction
awesome thank you francisco for clearing
that up and sharing
absolutely well you know as
we are getting more information and
feedback um
we will be updating the board and that's
going to be that's
a very top item priority so uh making
sure that that we're heading in the
right direction is definitely there
unfortunately yeah
we got to kind of build this thing to
get them to answer us usually
because they say well what if we don't
know what you're asking us we need to
know the full picture before we can
answer your question
so unfortunately that's usually the way
it has to go
but um i believe that um we can maybe
um get some general guidance
um on the onset so that we can bring
that back to the board and
give that reassurance you're looking for
thank you
thank you darlene i really appreciate it
um grizzly you had your hand raised but
you took it down are you good
mr chair um i just i just wanted to
summarize what uh darlene and francisco
mentioned
um as darlene mentioned uh the review of
this proposal
um really targeting the gaps
that workforce connections
sees i think that was the the biggest um
gap of information that darlene had to
really
go dig into what those areas were
and so the next step is for us to
evaluate
with our legal team and and that would
be
uh the go or no go um
the government to government uh
agreement
it would be if this project um
as is it's a viable pri project
uh from the legal perspective with the
recommended
audiences served in the award program so
just wanted to summarize um to make sure
that
that was clear okay awesome thank you
for that clarification i do appreciate
that
um with that being said darlene if you
can stop sharing your screen and we are
going to
continue on a little bit since i don't
see any more hands raised
thank you ma'am okay with that being
said we have had our three discussion
items for the day
any other questions for darlene before
we move on
i am seeing none it is currently 11 45
so let's wrap this
up um
with that being said uh future
discussion items um
one of the future discussion items for
sure will be the city of las cruces
business
fee schedule um we are going to be
looking at that in detail
next week after we get a couple um
questions answered which i'm going to
work with city staff on and we're going
to
get those questions figured out
with that being said i'm going to open
it up uh to any other
discussion items that anyone might want
to have darlene i don't know if you
think we need to discuss this again next
week in detail or if you think it's just
going to be
week by week play what are your thoughts
on this
um i think moving forward i don't really
need
i mean i'm not at this point not at this
stage i don't think i really need like a
slot
i think i could just do a quick update
if there were any updates
to give then i can just pipe up during
the
open comments and and give that
information
okay perfect good with me uh mr miller i
saw you henry's next sir
yes george miller for the record this
one came from the briefing from the
transportation folks at the bus service
i was going through my notes and i saw
there was some discussion about um the
city has
waived the fees now for transport for
transportation
um one actionable item could be to
continue that make that a permanent
uh fixture i think the transportation
folks said it wasn't that big of
income for them anyway so it might be
something that for incentivizes
workers and to be able to get to their
workplaces and and things like that so
that's one okay um sharon miss
sharon thomas do you know if there was a
date put on the fee structure for
um public transportation yeah no i don't
because i work more with the
um county transportation than the city
um but you're right you know the fair is
very little part of the
budget and the lots and lots of cities
have free
transit service and and we're going to
be looking into
doing more transit in the county transit
anyway but possibly a
a fast bus that goes from las cruces to
santa teresa to the jobs
down there we're going to be talking
about that next friday and so
um you know there's lots and lots of
jobs down there they have a 50
turnover and so we need to find ways to
get people there and
workforce darling will be there too
workforce connection
needs to talk about just what kinds of
skills they need so that we actually
have workers they can keep and work with
rather than the high turnovers so there
are
over a thousand jobs down there and so
as
people coming out of this cova thing and
needing a new job
that's a place we need to work on pretty
pretty uh directly
and that's with the county
transportation correct
and that's what the county
transportation services yeah
yes we're looking at doing a bus
that will take people to those jobs but
it also needs to be people who are
trained
correctly for what those jobs are trying
to figure find out what it is they need
in terms of
training so you know darlene will be
working on that part
right sounds like we're going to need
that to the workforce connection
scholarship
sooner than later okay perfect so i
think that's actually good mr miller i
think we're going to go ahead and do
that because it seems like a very simple
conversation to have with a very quick
actionable item which i
love right now so so far we have the las
cruces fee schedule
and looking at that and then the city
transit fees
and maybe even talking with sharon about
the county transit fees and see if we
can get something going on that make
some recommendations that
we uh push those out maybe throughout
maybe spring or maybe the next couple
years who knows
miss greenwald do you have your henry's
next
mr chair thank you susan greenwald for
the record
um i know that the city is working with
arrowhead to do the biz sprint program
um which is a really great program for
accelerating businesses and
and even helping people pivot um into
more kind of
new normal strategies postcoded
but it's my understanding that the the
registration the numbers are really low
for that um even though it's free
um so i was wondering if we maybe we
could get a presentation
on the different um technical assistance
programs that the city is offering
um and maybe make some recommendations
like a real a quick
actionable item about um promoting those
or
maybe eliminating some of the barriers
for people to participate in them
okay um miss montgomery is going to talk
on this but really quick um
the screenwall i we that was actually
like our first or second
day presentation and i think you're on
the right track and i really did
want to do funding for bisprint because
miss montgomery correct me if i'm wrong
but i think registration was very high
it's just that the city of las cruces
didn't find enough
spaces um and then i know that there was
an eight-week crash course with
the e-commerce side which i was
absolutely in love with
um miss montgomery correct me if i'm
wrong but i think it was all to do with
funding is that correct
uh brooke montgomery for the record um
so if griselda mentioned something about
it i was told that we did have
um enough we had applicants that were
over the amount that was funded
i can double check and let you know next
meeting um how many applicants
and the funding for mou with the city
was for 10 um businesses
each cohort and for this cohort um the
next one i believe will be
next month yes so um but
i will double check how many applied if
i'm remembering um
griselda i had said i have the
information
sorry i was like looking for you on the
screen i'm like yeah i have that
information
if i if i can so of course
yeah mr chair uh members of the uh
committee
the the best print that arrowhead
ran in at the
at the beginning of this pandemic it was
statewide
and for that they had 240 people
or businesses apply for it out of which
were city of las cruces pacific um
because of capacity limitations on
that cohort they were only able to
accept three businesses within city
limits
and because of that gap we saw the
opportunity
for us to fund um and
through a partnership with with nmsu uh
a specific uh program for las cruces
which is the best print
and that is 15
businesses per cohort it is currently
uh midway the first one uh the second
one
will be opening up applications in the
next week
for it to start beginning of october
um we could send that information
to you all and for you to help us
promote that
for the first cohort we had 19
applicants
and so we did have a lower number
compared to the
first cohort that our head
did but at the same time as we all know
businesses were in a very different
position
at the beginning of the pandemic versus
everything else
happening and and having to figure out
other ways
and so we are um actually we
have implemented recurring meetings with
business support agencies within
the um within our community
and we are making sure that we're
cross-referencing
all this information and that we're
really pushing out these items to
promote and bring awareness
and make sure that businesses know is
for free it's to
pivot to find new markets to to get them
going on the online presence if they
don't have any
and then um making sure that we
do a much bigger emphasis on
social media than in the previous cohort
so we're working on that to make sure
that
that we have a larger um cohort of
applicants and
and determine if we need to expand that
or this is this is um similar to what
uh we heard from big um big
big boys big uh girls what i'm sorry i
got that
name wrong but uh it's it's a lot of
things are moving really fast and i
think business owners
are having to choose where to utilize
their time
so one big item is that is going to be
emphasized is that we're going to
be highlighting the flexibility of
schedule for this
for this um program
instead of having to be at certain hours
uh while they have to pair with
business operations and other
responsibilities at home so
we're on it thank you miss greenwald for
the for the highlight of that and
and reminding us that that this is
coming up and we need to
all of us need to help us promote uh and
ensure that these resources get to the
right hands
awesome thank you great suggestion glad
we had that little
steal because it was something that was
really cool to me and i
talked about it forever that one meeting
but i'm glad that we were able to bring
that up again
um does anyone else have any future
discussion topics because it sounds like
that one's kind of
check boxed off until they see what kind
of applicants they get
okay so so far we're going to be having
a conversation next meeting about
the fee schedule and about city
transportation
and usage or city transportation and
possibly county transportation
and their fee structure um
so in the meantime everyone you did get
an email
with the fee structure please do take a
look at that see what is
you know in your mind something that we
can do to alleviate
anything with that um and then also we
will talk about the city fees
and then come up with some really
creative out of the box things that we
can talk about
for future discussions next time um i
know i challenged
you all the last couple meetings to come
out come up with some ideas that we can
talk about i'm going to do that again
thank you mr miller for your idea on the
city transportation fees that's
transportation definitely boosts
economies because
it helps people connect with work so
that's great um
so i think we're on the right track with
that being said do we have any general
announcements
okay as i'm seeing no general
announcements being raised
if we can entertain a motion to adjourn
the meeting we need a motion in a second
um this is michael harris all motion to
adjourn me
we have a motion for mr harris to
adjourn let's just run for sherbet i'll
second
and we have a second from mr ron
fitzserber so we have a motion in the
secondary during the meeting which means
we're out of here everyone have a great
afternoon and we will see you next week
at
the economic recovery board meeting have
a great day
you