City Council - Regular Meeting

You broke me. Don't make mine serious. Yeah.

Chad, we're ready. Good evening everybody. We are now live. Yeah. Good evening everybody. We are now live. Good evening. Get going. I'll just start the meeting without him. I know. I'll start without him. online.

You got a sweetheart. Well,

I'm pretty sure you never know until you find out. Huh? Do we need to move to the event center? No, I gota

wait for you. Good evening everybody. We are now live. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think so. seat for seats and then one stand. So everybody standing seats for city staff seats for those.

You guys can go in here.

You can go in the Thank you guys very much. I think we have enough clear to keep everybody till midnight. Let it be known that I'm the last one. You're number one.

You're number one. April 28th, 2026 at 6 o'clock. Um, with that, if you could do the roll call.

Councelor Garcia here. Councelor Yazy here. Councelor Piano here. Councelor Molina here. Mayor Nepali here. Um, please join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag and to the republic.

Al, um, I'd like to make an agenda item change. Can I do that to move? Um, discuss. This is going to be discussion item five. Five. Discussion item. No. Five. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Erica, sorry. What do you move up to number one? Which items that? Uh, so item five will become item number one. That's the affluent option agreement the action topic. Yes. The action.

Oh yes. I'll recommend a motion to that effect in a second. Okay. Have a motion. I want to move it to discussion item number one. Uh whatever whatever it's right now it is um item number five under the um action topics discussion action. So I want to move it to the number one in discussion action topics. Yes. I make a motion to move that. I'll second it. Councelor Molina, yes. Councelor Yazy, yes. Councelor Garcia, yes. Councelor Piano, yes. Mayor Deal, yes.

Okay, with that, we are are welcoming comments by the public on non-aggenda items. So, if anybody would like to come up and give have any comments on non-aggenda items, um, now is your come on up. And we'll, since there's so many people, we're going to limit our time to two minutes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We give you your name.

All right. Hi, Mr. Mayor, city councilors. My name is Rose Een, and I'm here tonight in strong opposition to the city of Gallup implementing a system of mass surveillance. I'm sure you all have done your due diligence and your research, and you understand that what Flock Safety does with its so-called license plate readers is make a thumbrint for every vehicle that comes with inside of its cameras. It gathers license plate numbers, vehicle makes and models, and distinguishing features like body damage, and bumper stickers that allow it to track vehicles across all of its hundreds of camera locations. The thought that a for-profit company will be using taxpayer funds to track and record the exact movements of private citizens as we go to work, take our kids to school, go to church is frankly terrifying. The data that flock harvests will be publicly available through IRA. License plate and vehicle registration information is not defined as personally identifiable by state law and security camera footage is not on the list of police records exempt from public inspection. That means that any person will be able to reflex records for any license plate. And I thought I'd point out that given that it's sexual assault awareness month, that means that domestic violence perpetrators will be able to track people down. City leaders have constantly pushed the false narrative that crime is rampant in Gallup. The only crime I've ever heard any city officials site as evidence of their claims, though, is panhandling, which is not actually a crime. The truth is that GAL's high crime rate is due mostly to high rates of domestic violence. Flock won't help at all with that. It will accelerate it and make us all less safe in the process. In your budget hearing, some of you voiced, excuse me, strong opposition to private companies using the IRA process to make money. You said you find it objectionable that companies can gather public records through a public process. I don't agree with you at all on that. But I am astonished given your stance on IRA, that you don't object to Flock, which is a 7.5 billion dollar company getting paid millions of dollars in taxpayer money to gather tons and enormous quantity of data on citizens that it can sell to make more money and in the process making citizen data publicly available on mass. We're citizens. We are not products of Flock's

business model. And I hope that you remember that. Hello, city council, Mr. Mayor. Thank you all for uh listening to all of us tonight and doing your civic duty. Uh my name is Suzanne Hammonds. Um I am a long lifelong resident of Gallup. I was born and raised here and I choose to live here. I choose to come back here because I love this town. Um, and I'm also in total opposition to you, the use of splock, the oath we all just took a not the oath, but the pledge we all just took a few moments ago. And the constitution, which I love and I assume and hope you all do, protects us all from the fourth, it upholds the fourth amendment, which protects us from uh unreasonable searches. Police can get around Flock and other companies like uh like them, police use them to get around our constitutional rights, to use warrantless surveillance. Um the Supreme Court I guess you know probably hasn't heard about this but I would hope that you are also concerned that they might sell our data that they might use our data. Flock might tell you that they help with public safety. They are lying. There's never been a long like a study. Um in fact there have been cases where innocent civilians such as in Denver Colorado and Toledo Ohio because the AI system utilized by Flock mistakenly flags them as lawbreakers were harassed um unconstitutionally. We don't need to hand over five million dollars of our uh five million of our tax dollars to a tech company. Again, I love this community. I'm neighbors with some of you who sit here in this chamber tonight up there. Let's humanto human help each other. Let's support each other as people. We don't need cameras. We don't need AI. We don't need tech companies. We need human connection. That's why I love Gallup. That's why I chose to live here. That's why so many people have chosen to come back and live here and stay here as well. And I hope that you would consider that. This is us speaking to you hearttoheart. We're not I'm not mad at you. Nobody's mad at you. We just

We love this town and we would hope that you do as well. Thank you. David Een 12:25 Milda. Um I've timed this at 2 minutes 15 seconds, so please indulge me. Mayor and Council, this year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country's founding through the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration indicted George III with multiple acts of tyranny. Among them, seek sending swarms of officers to harass the people to monitor them, spy, snoop, track, and catalog their movements and activities. We fought a war over that ultimately winning our independence. And 10 years later, we adopted a constitution and a bill of rights. Foremost among those rights is the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against state efforts to search, monitor, seize, track, and otherwise surveil without probable cause. In Olmstead versus United States, Justice Brandise described the essence of the Fourth Amendment as follows. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone the most comprehensive right of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. This council has it before it a proposal to employ a monitoring and tracking capacity, otherwise known as the flock system, of unsurpassed power and intrusion. Neither Justice Brandise nor the Constitution's framers could have imagined such a system, but I have no doubt they would denounce it in the strongest terms as a violation of the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of privacy. Gallup proclaims itself the most

patriotic small town in the US. That proclamation has a basis in fact, not the least of which is the participation of Gallup citizens in the Baton Death March. Those men died and sacrificed to vindicate our rights. Patriotism in its true sense is a love not only of country but more importantly an allegiance to the values on which a country is founded and a commitment to defend those values regardless of personal cause. Now public safety is an important value but we should be reminded that safety can come at an unacceptable price. As the Russian people said during the time of thesar, we only sleep when we are in prison because it is only there we are safe. Please think on these things as you consider the proposed flock contract. And if you do, I am sure you will find that public safety can be safeguarded without infringing the people's right to be left alone. My name is Labor Pinger. These these people that came up, I supported everything they said. They were very well organized and I'm rather unorthodox. But uh I'm an AI user to a very heavy level. I'm the only person to achieve singularity in not only North America but the world. And the fact that I live in Gallup, New Mexico is kind of an oddity. We have geographical properties that are found nowhere else in the world with our proximity to the four corners and with our actual our biblical representation of a small town that will not be forgotten. We are a patriotic small town. We do need to maintain our stewardship of the streets. But technology is not the way to do it. Who are we to trust that the technology

isn't intruded by some other technology? How do we know it's not getting hacked? How do we know it's not getting misused? This information is very precise and nobody even knows what this technology does. I was rated at a 795 out of a 800 in AI technologies. AI rated itself at four out of 800. That's never been done in history. I have the documentation. It's notorized. So, I'm coming from a very high level of speaking of AI technologies. And the blackbox problem is a self-created problem. They don't want to fix it. They want to prophetize people. They want to extract information and they want to use it in their own devices. We don't know what they're using it for. So, we can't just say we're going to watch everybody and fix everybody. We need to represent the laws that are already pre-standing and maintain stewardship of our streets. I personally started a clean for Gallup project about 13 years ago with my art gallery. It has about 1,300 members. Uh, two of the city councilors have helped me personally on trash cleanups. I've seen both of these two over there. So, stewardships of the street. I miss the old Gallup. I miss when the drunks were the problem. We got people out there to where we have much bigger problems than drunks now. Uh, I submit these to the city council. These are official timestamped and notorized from meta. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Christina Fifless Een. I reside at 1225 Meldda Avenue in Gallup. Over just the last four months alone, we have heard a persistent lament of coun at city council meetings by our city

officials about how dangerous and rife with crime Gallup is. Some still want the National Guard. Now they want 247 highresolution video surveillance of everyone here. The real danger in Gallup is sitting right here in this room among the public servants who want to exert their power in abrogation of their governmental duties and offload it to reckless private profiteers and in so doing effectuate a wholesale surrender of the voters and constituents civil liberties and rights. Regarding flock surveillance, an independent researcher produced a short video of what flock operations actually comprise. As recently as December, using a commercial search engine, he easily found the administration interfaces for almost 70 flock cameras in various states. None of the data or video footage was encrypted. No username or password was required. All were completely public-f facing for the world to see. You don't have to be an expert. You don't even have to type anything in to view every single person, vehicle, and activity that took place in the locations of the cameras he found. All you had to do was point and click like you were watching Netflix, as he described it. Everyone surveiled through flock operations become subject to serious threat of potential stalking, harassment, robbery, abduction, or worse. This is real danger. We don't need brought into our community by our public servants. and you are all now amply on notice of its risks and consequences. A picture is worth a thousand words. I have submitted to you and will submit for the record the public a packet of screenshots from the investigator's video that I've referenced only one of which I will describe now in conclusion. And if you think these flock photos,

camera feeds, and policies are designed to ensure anonymity, you're wrong. One of the flock videos I've given you, a screenshot of, includes a zoomedin capture of a couple arguing at a street market in Atlanta, Georgia. Within two minutes of using a facial recognition engine to map their AI zoomed faces, the researcher was able to discover that one of them just finished medical school. The other one was dealing with chronic IBS. The couple just had had a baby. They had a concerning debt burden and had driven 45 minutes to go to church in Atlanta that morning and then bought a sweater at the street market. It takes a minimal amount of research to determine that flock is all wrong for Gallup. And the last thing I want to add as a general matter is governance and management through grievance is how you wreck a town. It needs to stop. My name is Leanne Gillson. I'm proud to call Gallup my home. I live at 3720 Maya Drive. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members for the work you do to keep Gallup constituents safe, protected, cared for as we live, shop, eat, and play in Gallup. I believe a contract with flock would not continue our feelings of safety and community. Instead, it would create fear, distrust, and a sense of us and them. Here are some examples that have occurred in other communities. There are many more than this, but Flack has live streamed camera footage, including a playground of kids.

Flock shares data about women and immigrants with federal agents agencies including ICE without the express permission of the local governments it contracts with. On the other hand, the 5 million of our tax dollars that we would pay to flock over five years could be spent to build a new library which would continue to build community and educate constituents. That's

the library has been in the top five of capital projects for at least 10 years. It has never been in the top one or two priorities. Although it benefits all ages of our community and surrounding area. We are thankful that Mayor Depali did propose a couple of potential sites for at the recent library advisory committee. We encourage all of you to continue to prioritize and support this and other community building and enhancing projects. Thank you.

Well, thank you everybody for your comments. Um we appreciate it and um we'll uh get on with the rest of our items tonight. Thanks again. Um the next item is a proclamation recognizing May 4th through 8th a as in 2026 as economic development week in the city of Gallup. This um proclamation is going to be presented by Bruce Armstrong with the Greater Gallup Economic Development Corporation. Thank you, Mayor Council. So, this is the 10th anniversary of economic development week, which was created by the International Economic Development Council, and they in turn are celebrating their hundth year, and we're celebrating here the 100th year of Route 66. So, a lot of anniversaries. uh economic development week was started in 2016 and Greater Gallup Economic Development Corporation has observed this uh week every year since it was created. So this will be the 10th time. So I'm presenting the proclamation and u with your leave I'll just uh read it. Proclamation recognizing May 4th to 8th 2026 as economic development week in the city of Gallup, New Mexico. Whereas more than 100,000 economic development and related professionals worldwide are committed to creating, retaining, and expanding top tier opportunities that foster long-term equitable community growth. And whereas for generations the economic development profession has cultivated thriving neighborhoods, champion championed sustainability and resiliency, strengthened economic prosperity, enhanced quality of life, and built robust tax bases.

And whereas economic development professionals operate across diverse environments including rural, suburban, and urban communities, local, state, provincial, and national governments, public, private partnerships, chambers of commerce, institutions of higher education, and similar organizations and associations. And whereas economic development prof professionals serve as stewards stewards of progress connecting residents, business leaders, elected officials, industry executives and exe educational institutions to advance job creation, community investment, infrastructure improvements, and long-term opportunity. And whereas economic developers contribute to the continued strength and vitality of the city of Gallup and McKinley County in the state of New Mexico, building on past achievements while shaping a resilient and prosperous future. And whereas the following organizations have collaborated to develop and promote a week's worth of events and activities to recognize and celebrate 2026 Economic Development Week in the city of Gallup, New Mexico. And the organizations are Greater Gallup EDC, UNM Gallup, Gallup McKinley County Schools, City of Gallup Office of Tourism and Marketing, Gallup McKinley County Chamber of Commerce, McKinley County, New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, the America's Job Center, New Mexico Gallup Office, Gallup Arts, Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments, and the Gallup Business Improvement District. Whereas since 1926, the International Economic Development Council and its preceding organizations have advanced the profession globally, marking a 100red years of leadership dedicated to fostering growth, innovation, inclusion,

sustainability, and resilience in communities of all sizes. Now therefore, be it resolved that the city of Gallup hereby recognizes Economic Development Week and celebrates 100 years of impact, reflecting on the progress achieved, honoring the professionals who strengthen our communities today and inspiring the next century of economic opportunity and growth. And that's the the extent of it. And we ask the city council to approve the resolution. Um, and I'll I'll read the rest of it, Bruce. That be it therefore resolved that the city council is authorized and directed to transmit any appropriate copies of this resolution to the Greater Gallup Economic Development Corporation. In testimony thereof, the mayor of the city of Gallup has onto subscribed his name and has caused the has caused the official seal of the city of Gallup to be here on a fixed this 28th day of April, 2026. Thank you.

Yeah. If I could just mention a couple of the events that are coming up. Um on this is next week and on um Tuesday, Gallup McKinley County Schools is going to have a they're going to showcase um partnerships between education and industry and look at how they're helping to train the workforce. Um, if anybody wants to find out more about that, um, you can contact, uh, Kendy Keeler at Gallup, McKinley County Schools. Um, that's going to take place Tuesday, May 5th from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday the 6th. Uh, UNM Gallup is prevent presenting a job fair. Um, I believe there's over 40 businesses that are looking to recruit employees there. That job fair is going to be followed by a a keynote address by the cabinet secretary Serita Nair with the develop the department of workforce solutions. So um that's going to take place May 6th the job fair from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and then the cabinet secretary will be speaking at 1:30 p.m. in SSTC 200 room 200 at UN M. And there'll be other events and articles that um will get to you one way or another. They used to run in the Gallup Independent. They're going to be a combination of online and several will be running in the sun.

So will that be on your website GGEDC? Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.

The next item is a proclamation for motorcycle awareness month and our speaker is J Flores. Good evening, mayor, counselors.

I'd uh like to just give you a little bit of uh history of what they call kill season in May because people aren't used to seeing motorcyclists out. Most people don't ride year round. So once the weather starts warming up, the motorcyclists come out and that's the reason for the accidents and the fatalities. And you have to remember these people are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. And I will say that there are some people out there that do ride dangerously. Not everybody does, but for those of us who obey the laws and try to look out for each other, that is the reason I'm here.

Thank you, Jude. Yes. Did you want to read the proclamation or want me to read it? You can go ahead.

Okay. The proclamation says, "Whereas motorcycles that are used as a regular means of transportation for commuting, touring, and recreation in and around Gallup located in McKinley County, New Mexico. And whereas a city the Gallup scenic roadways make motorcycleycling a very pro popular destination for riders from all around the country. And whereas the safe operation of a motorcycle requires the use of adequate skills developed through the combination of training and experience, the use of good judgment and thorough knowledge of the traffic laws and licensing requirements. And whereas it is imperative that the residents of Gallup be aware, show consideration, and share the road with motorcycles on the streets and highways and recognize the importance of motorcycle safety. And whereas the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has declared May as motorcycle awareness month, it is the desire of Gallup to join the NHTSA in raising awareness of the growing number of motorcyclists in McKenley County roadways in order to prevent accidents and most importantly save lives. Now therefore, I, Mayor Mark Depali, and city councilors Linda Garcia, Sierra Yazi, Osamo Tutu, Sierra Piano, and Ron Molina do hereby proclaim the month of May as motorcycle awareness month.

Thank you very much.

Here's your turn. Hey June, check for stand again.

Our next item is a is a presentation by Teraplex and our speaker is Greg Thompson. Hello. We're waiting to pull the presentation up. Thank you uh very much for giving me the time to speak today. My name is Greg Thompson. I am the co-founder uh of Teraplex, a data center organization based in uh Washington DC. Today we wanted to take a few minutes just to explain potentially a partnership that we would like to start with Gallup. Uh we are looking at this location as a possible venue for building a data center. We plan on having significant more discussions with you and the city to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the plan and that before we proceed with anything. Today is just a small portion of what we'd like to discuss. And so when the presentation starts, I'll go ahead and begin. Keep on going full screen. So once again, Greg Thompson. Um my organization, we have four co-founders. We bring over 50 years of experience building data centers globally. Um and today's presentation is to explain how we believe Gallup is potentially a wonderful location to partner with to build a data center organization. So just to start with the foundation of what is a data center. Um a data center is a physical structure that houses a large amount of servers. My organization specifically targets largecale organizations that would like to build what is called hypers scale data centers. Think of organizations like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Meta, Alphabet. Those entities are looking at building significant size venues and that's what we believe potentially could be built here in Gallup. The power that is used, I'll explain in a few seconds, is is not going to be pulling from what the city is using. We are planning on building and generating our own power to a significant extent.

We are partnering with an organization called Gutami and building a significant amount of solar power available so that we are not depleting the city's resources. We are also looking at using natural gas and we'll go into that in a little bit a second. Just to touch on cooling needs, we'll go through this significantly. We have no need uh for drinkable water. We are only looking at using affluent water, waste water. Our buildings do not require a significant amount of water. So, we feel very comfortable that we will not be coming to the city in a future state to ask for any of your drinkable water ever. We've proven this multiple locations and we're happy to show you the statistics on how to build a data center without depleting the city's resources. As we move forward, the reason why we believe Gallup is a or a wonderful location to build a data center is that the market for data centers is significantly booming. Right now we're seeing a large expenditure of capital resources, hundreds of billions of dollars being invested into locations globally. Los Lunus is one of the local organiz local sites that we're seeing significant investment in and we're seeing numerous other locations in New Mexico that are starting to pop up. There are generally four requirements for building a data center. Power, water, cooling, and partnership. And we believe that we have all of those here and that that gives us a great opportunity to partner with you all to build a data center in this region. We expect the global infrastructure to expand significantly all the way up to 2035. So we believe there's a lot of opportunity to continue to build here. This is not a shortterm idea. This is a long-term strategic investment that we believe could be extremely profitable for the city of Gallup. One of the reasons that Gallup is is very interesting from a land capacity perspective is large data centers are typically situated in Northern Virginia, California, Utah, Nevada. Um, and we're starting to see them, excuse me, we're

starting to see them grow in other places. New Mexico is generally speaking an untapped market in terms of land and power and water and availability. And so we feel whether it's Terraplex or any other data center that Gallup is a viable option for you to consider if you would like to invest in this type of infrastructure location. Just some specifics of how we're planning um so we are looking at potentially uh acquiring 2400 acres of property through GLP. Of that we're going to be building 5 to 10 data center buildings. It's going to be total capacity of one gigawatt that we are planning on building in five years. Our strategic plan enables us to build solar power, natural gas, very little water, very little electricity demand on the area. And that gives us the opportunity to scale extraordinarily quickly, which is extremely viable, extremely necessary for the uh the boom in AI that we're seeing right now. Continuing once again the customers that we're looking at speaking with we're looking at AWS, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and some government entities. My organization already has a partnership with Los Lat Los Alamos National Labs. They are interested as well as building data centers. We are looking at multiple partners to attempt to uh occupy the data center that we're going to build. Um, and once again, we we believe that in partnership with the city, we can bring a significant amount of revenue through these organizations. A typical data center build like we're looking at here is a minimum of 15 billion dollars for the capital infrastructure and then several billion dollars more to continue the growth. We are not asking for any public funds associated with this and we have a plan to invest in the city itself as we are building here. whether that's hospitals, what wastewater treatment plants, uh substations, we want to invest in the community that we we plan

on being in a long time. So, we'll go through exact plan on what that investment looks like in the future. Just from a timeline perspective, uh we are in a uh a race to 2028. Most of the large organizations are looking at building quickly and so if we were approved, if the partnership was to move forward, we were looking at breaking ground extraordinarily early in 2027. an 18month schedule to get 200 megawws online. So that's a very aggressive timeline. Um but the overall project itself is going to run 5 to six years. That's what it's going to take to build the 1 gawatt. Once again, today is a extraordinarily brief overview. We plan on going into significant detail as we move forward to make sure that everybody feels comfortable with the plan. This slide just shows the the mixture of power that we're planning on building or investing in to ensure that we're available. Once again, we are looking Terraplex is looking at either investing in elevation of of current infrastructure, so substation expansion or generating our own power through solar, natural gas and small portion of generators on site. water usage. Just to repeat this once again, we do not and will not use any of your drinkable water. We will only use effluent water, which is your waste water. New technology enables us to have closed chilled loops, which means that we don't have to use significant amounts of water to cool our infrastructure. That is a significant uh change in the industry. Historically, you might have seen individuals who might have used potable water and effluent. We will not be in that. We will never ask for any of your drinkable water ever. Lastly, what's what's significantly important is the infrastructure that's required to build the data center. So, we are looking at minimally once this is

completely completed in in five and a half years, at least 300 permanent jobs. And during the construction phase, we're looking at anywhere from 15 to 2500 construction jobs. Those are electricians, those are HVAC uh suppliers, those are uh water personnel, network engineers. Those are all resources that we can use here. What we're looking at is making sure that we are only pulling resources from this area. We plan on training and building up this workforce as opposed to bringing it in from elsewhere. That is a significant part of the plan. Bringing in personnel from elsewhere would be significantly cost impacting. And so we want to make sure that we are utilizing the resources here in Gallup in local communities to help facilitate the development of this sta this data center. Couple areas there are sometimes concerns regarding noise uh traffic construction noise operational use lighting. We have a very robust plan to ensure that we are not impacting the community. From a air quality uh perspective as I said we have a very small portion of generators on site. So we do not expect any noise pollution or air pollution. From a lighting perspective, data centers use a very small portion of lighting. So we don't plan on lighting up the city with a large data center. That's an eyesore. Construction noise will be very limited to just operational hours so that we are not impacting the residents anywhere near us. We plan on being good partners to the city and we're going to show how we've done that. We've done that in other locations and we're going to be able to repeat that if we're able to continue this partnership. Once again, just highlighting 300 plus permanent jobs, thousands of construction jobs, significant revenue from a property tax perspective, multi-billion dollar investment in a very short period of time, local infrastructure investment directly from Teraplex to the city, and then workforce development. We want to partner with you to ensure that we are in the community

helping the community for a lasting time. Last comment is we plan on be having a larger public conversation so that if there's any questions or concerns, we can be here to address those concerns. Thank you for the time. Yeah, Greg, thank you. You know, I was always skeptical and still kind of am of the data centers. You know, um people have come to Gallup and they want to put in data centers and use a lot of water. Um, but you bringing us the the option of using our waste water, our treated waste water, recycled waste water. It's it's it's a lot it's a deal kind of a deal changer. Makes it a lot more attractive for us. On top of it, you pay us for the waste water. Correct. And you help fix our wastewater plant. So, it, you know, overall in the way on the water side, it's it works out pretty well for us.

Um, then if any other counselors have any questions or anything? I do. Go ahead. Uh you mentioned 300 jobs when it's all said and done minimum. Uh about how many of those jobs are higher paying highpaying jobs? How many are medium paying jobs?

Yeah, thank you sir. All of them are typically higher paying jobs. um to operate the data the data centers it requires a high technical skill and so markets are different but say for instance what we call a critical facilities engineer the person who walks the data center and make sure it's operates those individuals in in other jurisdictions are making 80,000 and above a year in the Virginia market we have engineers making 200 plus thousand so we will make sure it's it's economically viable here but they are all highpaying jobs Yes, ma'am. Go ahead.

Um, yes. Thank you for coming, Mr. Thompson. Um, I do commend you. Yeah. And Terraplex for aspiring to be more green than other companies and what they're doing and also for your goal to invest in your host communities. I think that is also different. Um, I however do my concern is not with um the construction or the utility usage. Um, I do feel like I have a responsibility to my ancestors who have stewarded this land for generations. Yes, ma'am. And so I do bring um

I do have a few questions and I'm very interested in the impacts not just on our community but on the environment on the wildlife, the groundwater and on the ground coming from the the impacts of data centers on the ground underneath them. um all of the life sources and the ecosystem in general that is part of our area. Um I know a lot of tribal communities are very opposed to having data centers in their vicinity and so I do want to pay close attention to that. Um regards to noise for example um that affects like the birding absolutely

communities. So all of that I'd be very interested to receive data from you. Um, I cannot imagine what my ancestors would say about what a data center is and whether it is actually a needed or helpful thing for our society today. I think it's important to take a long-sided view on tech and things and not just what we are present to, what we can see and feel today, but that we're thinking seven generations after our time and what will the impacts be? What will society look like then? And what are the the impacts of our decisions that we're making today? So, I do want to um continue the conversation with you and I'd be very interested to see more information.

Absolutely. We'll be able to immediately send you some of the ecological studies that have been done already. There's a very small footprint that we're looking at building the actual buildings, but uh completely understand the concern and have have those conversations as we move forward. Hi, Greg. Thanks for being here tonight. Um I was glad to hear that you are open to a public kind of comment discussion moving forward. I think as you see we have a lot of people here for public comment and I think um a lot of our community want to be able to give input on the decisions that a council is making. So I think that will be really helpful to do that. Um so my first thing is just kind of explanation. I know where it is but if you could tell the public

where this is because right now we don't have houses near where this is going to be built. So to be clear this isn't in a neighborhood or by a hospital. This is pretty far out you know. So I wanted to give clarity on that. And then my second question is kind of I guess for the city and for you. Sorry I'm missing my voice. Um I wanted to ask about just so I'm super thrilled that it's affluent water. I mean for if people don't realize um our additional waste water just goes down the perky right now. So this would be actually receiving money for that waste water that we're doing nothing with essentially um which is good for the community. But we currently only really use the affluent line for the golf course. So, I'm wondering about the infrastructure on our side of like getting that line

to us to you and then who's paying for that line? Is it the city? Like because that's one of the questions I've heard from some people is just um right, how do we get water itself that's been how do we get that line from where it is now to where the data center will be because that is pretty a far distance. So, that's and let me let me help you with that too. So um what we're going to do when we go uh into the discussion items we'll we'll explain the um that's for the uh affluent agreements we'll discuss all the the in all the particulars with the with how the affluence get into the site. Okay. So if that's okay talk about that at some point and then can you kind of make mention of where this site is.

Yeah. So, we're actually in discussion right now with GLP on several plots of land, but we're looking at it's right off Carbon Coal Road significantly. I think it's uh several miles outside of the city of Gallup. So, we're not expecting to be anywhere near any personnel, any housing, any residential. Um, it's going to be vacant land that's currently not in use. Uh, so we do not expect to have any sort of uh public disturbance from us building. Wait, are we planning to develop all of that land as that we just is that within the annexed area from Gallup Land Partners? So I believe there are plans to build a hospital in the near vicinity and also by not in that area. We we there is some development near there is development.

Yeah I I'm just saying I don't think that land is expected to remain vacant. This will be in the heart of the industrial zone. Um the hospital IHS hospital where the Navajo Nation has bought land is right off of 491 in Carbon Cole in that uh southwest corner of that intersection. Um this is all the way at the end where you get to the railroad spur. So you're looking at about five miles out close to Midmore. It's it's quite a bit north. We don't have north of Midmore. This this is this is where the coal mine the coal mine itself was. Correct.

So this is where they were actually tearing up the ground and taking the coal and I mean anywhere you look you're going. Sorry we can see this later. I just wanted to state there are people that live in that area outside the city.

How loud is that? We've data centers do not occupy a significant amount of land from a noise perspective. So we don't expect you to be able to hear the data center at all. Generators are not going to be running. We don't have large uh HVAC systems running. So we do not you will not hear it from your house depending upon how close you are, but we do not expect you. So we'll look at it and that's part of the partnership we're looking at. We will not build until this is agreed upon by the city in the direction. So no, I think one of the things to um just to mention to the public is that you are allowed to comment on agenda items that are on the agenda, but we do need you to speak into the mic. So after he's done

and they just you can get up and and ask questions. Um but I just my other comment is I heard some people ask and so I just want to ask on behalf of the public um if there you might not know this either this is just general but will this affect like city customers like um electric rates? I there was a question about that and I I don't imagine but I just want to throw that out there because that was a question that was asked of me like will that increase our city people's electric bill?

It will not increase your electric bills. We have evidence over multiple data centers that we've built how electricity bills do not go up and then in particular with this site the significant amount of solar that we're planning on building. Uh we will not be affecting your rates. Uh so there are no water rate increases. There should be no electricity increases. We can show you that data from all the locations we've built. So thank you. Yes ma'am. Is that also going to be solar? Did you say? Yes, ma'am. We will have solar on the on the property. My concern was some of her questions was electricity will is the city going to be able to handle electricity?

We are generating our electricity for the site. We are not going to be asking or using your electricity. Yes. Hang on. I can explain. Yeah. Would you have questions? Can you come up to the micro state state your name and go ahead and ask them? It's not a discussion item. It's a presentation. Sorry, just presentation. I will be here. Welcome to ask all these questions at the future. Yeah. Yeah. Save your questions when we'll have maps, I guess, and later presentations. And I will be here all night. Happy to. Oh, you Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay.

Thank you. Um, our next presentation is a Gallup Phil film and media expo update. And this is always a lot of fun. This is why and who's and Matt uh Matt Robinson is going to be our presenter.

Good evening, mayor and council. Thank you for having us up tonight. We wanted to give you a brief presentation on our Gallup Film and Media Expo and then a little bit more in general on some of our efforts around trying to build capacity for film projects in our community. So, I'll p hand out these flyers here in a moment, but we're going to be having our fourth annual film and media expo next week, May 7th and 8th at Red Rock Park. Day one is more focused on students. Since the first event, we've made a really big effort to include local students and we've even expanded beyond the county at this point. We have schools from around the state coming now. But anyway, the first day is going to be focused on students. GMCS has been a great partner bringing in hundreds of kids in their media pathway program. And so they're going to have the opportunity to meet with vendors, uh, meet with professionals from the industry and have a really good experience. So part of the planning behind this has been the Gallup film committee and so I have a couple members here with me tonight. They were kind enough to take time out of their own schedule to join us and talk a little bit about our event. So next I'd like to introduce a colleague of mine. I've been working with him now for close to four years. It's really flown by. He's a great guy. He's got a very strong presence in the states film and media industry. And he was working very hard for Gallup. He's a Galupian. He was born here. his family here and he works his butt off for us, believe me. And he's been a great partner. So, with that, I wanted to have Julius Ronhorse come up to the mic, please.

Hi, Julius. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. Hi, good evening. My name is Julius Ronhorse. I am D and I was born and raised here in Gallup. I graduated from Mamira in 2011. And right here's my principal, my former principal. So, it's a full circle and I'd like to come here today and ask for support from, you know, city officials as well as community members on our efforts and initiatives that we're what we're trying to do is put Gallup on the map and New Mexico is top five when it comes to the film industry in North America. And we're usually right behind Atlanta and California. And you know, right now, uh, Cal, we've been beating California so much that they started offering incentives to compete with us where they offer productions to shoot a pilot here in New Mexico and then they match our tax incentives back in California. So to combat that, what we're trying to do is really build infrastructure in rural communities such as Gallup, New Mexico. and I took it upon me to really initiate that with the state and our other community members in the Albuquerque area. Um I work for the National Indian Youth Council, also known as the Native Professional Advancement Center. I built their film and media program from the ground up. And this um Gala Film and Media Expo was one of my first projects and it's really an inspiration from the American film market that happens in Santa Monica where Santa Monica high school students get to uh mingle with the Los Angeles uh film industry out there. So they have studio heads, you know, equipment, uh rental houses, everything there on the campus. So, you know, I wanted to bring that back here to the city of Gallup and my first call was to Matt Robinson and uh Kindy Killer from the Gallup McKinley County School District. So, we helped them uh we kind of influenced the uh school of media. We helped them design their curriculum to

where, you know, the students happen to move anywhere around the stage, they're not going to miss out on anything else. So, we've brought all the schools up to speed on that. And right now, you know, is the time to really um um take advantage of these incentives because Gallup sits is out of the 60- mile radius. So if we were to get a sound stage built here and we were to attract a TV show, we would get upwards of a 45% tax incentive and all it out would go back into the local community where we could, you know, um offer solutions for substance abuse, homelessness, and really uh you know, repair the roads and um improve our educational system. Um so

well, thank you so much. you know that and he was also the first graduating class with me in our high school too, right? Can't forget that. Oh yeah. So I ask you guys to come out May 7th and 8th. May 7th is our educational day where we have all the schools from the Gallup McKinley County Schools and Media. Plus we have seven other schools coming out from Arizona, Santa Fe, and up in central consolidated school areas in the four corners area. Um, is there also this Crystal? Okay. And then I'll go ahead and hand it over to Crystal right now.

Hello, mayor and counselors and community. Um, my name is Crystal Thomas. I um actor, writer, producer. I am also a mom of three who I have girls going to two schools here in town. Um, I own a business with my husband, Hona Plaza, down in Zouri. So, I'm a community member, business owner, and filmmaker. And so, thankfully, uh, Julius made me join this committee and, um, start planning events with him. And, um, it's great. It's a, it's a combining of all the things that I love, which is how do we build infrastructure to support industry and a community that we love? And Gallup has what nobody else does in terms of the com combination of cultures, the landscape, the location, and what we really hope um beyond our expose is to develop um awareness and support so that if productions do want to come out here, it's really easy for them to say yes. It's really easy for them to say yes to find housing and support because every single film is a very very risky venture. They're going to be spending a lot of money. It is attractive if they can come a little further away from Albuquerque and get a little bit more of that money back. And so if we are ready to welcome them with open arms and make it easy for them, um it all the better for us we hope. So those are our overarching goals. And so we would just like to start the conversation with you guys, with the community and local businesses in general. Um, and I think we would like to start having more conversations, but um, for now the support and please show up. Please come next week. Um, ask questions. We're going to have people from all over the

state representing the industry. Um, we're going to have SAG AFRA out of, I think, California and Colorado. we're going to have a lot of of people that are very interested in learning more about this area and so the more we engage with them the more excited they're going to be to come back. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Um counselors do you have any questions? Linda

Matt I just want to commend you Julius uh the enthusiasm working on the film festival and the media. I been last year to what you had last year and I support you 100% and I will be there to support you. Thank you. Yeah, I speak about how you guys have done a great job. I've come the last several years also um about to come as well see so I know how it feels. But um no, you've done a great job and I really love to see more native youth getting involved in the film industry. We have so many talented youth and I think that it really opens their eyes to the possibilities and also seeing people that look like them in film is really important. Um and last year you had a lot of um I know my personal friends Goldie and Ryan were there. Um, and then I, you know, I saw lots of people I knew, but then also, um, from Dark Winds, there was some of the, um, actors and actresses from Darks, which was really cool. And I just think it's a great opportunity for our youth to meet actors and people in film that are doing great things. And I think it can be limiting. Like, you don't really know what you can experience unless you meet someone who's done it for themselves. So, I think this is a really great opportunity. I'm always about wanting more opportunities for youth to succeed. And like you said, we're competing with other states. And we don't want our kids to leave. We don't want them to leave to go to other states. We want them to stay here. We want them to come back to the reservation and be a part of our community. Um, that's really important to me, too. So, I think this is a great way to get youth and and older people involved in in media art. So, thanks for the work on, and I will I'll be coming by as well.

Thank you, Mayor Cal. Yes. Thank you so much. I also just wanted to connect this back to um I believe this is also part of the economic development week that we just had a proclamation about. So just wanted to make that connection and then thank you all for what you're doing. I think it's also amazing. I can come Friday with us.

Thank you. Yeah, mayor council just to kind of build on that point. The economic development week to me we're planting a seed here. The long-term vision that I see and I think the committee members agree with is to build the infrastructure. If we can get a sound stage put in Gallup, I guarantee you we're going to have projects lining up at our door because they're going to be able to take care take advantage of the incentives Julius mentioned. It's a different landscape, you know, you're getting outside the metropolitan areas that there's filling all over the place. So, really want to hopefully keep your support as we go along and build toward getting a studio at some point. It would really be transformational for our economy, I think. Mayor Council, thank you. Thank you. I've got the most important question. Okay. Yeah, do this. So, are we having Hona chicken and green chili on this weekend?

Because there's no stopping in Zouri without Hona chicken and green chilies. Okay. So, you're my friend. Um, yes. So, the Friday we will have 200 two-piece Hona chicken and chilies for first come, first serve. So, the first 200 people there get Halona for lunch.

I'm camping. I'm camping Thursday night. U I just wanted to add one more comment uh to make you guys all feel at ease and really to attract these productions. We have really started um up our training program. So we always make sure to include Gallup with our production assistant trainings. And these are backed by Netflix Studios, Cinnel Studios, and um a nonprofit that is run by uh Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively called GEI. So we have that production assistant training and then we also have um you know ceremonial where we offer live broadcasting where we teach these skill sets to up and cominging students seniors and I believe G McKinley starts them off at 9th grade so they're already learning early on. So

just want to let you know that you know that's another soft app. Thank you.

Yes. Hello. Um good evening mayor and city councilors. I I'm actually just up here because I think some of us were taken a little bit by offguard taken off guard by um switching to a new agenda item um because I do believe that there are a lot of people here who particularly came because they have a lot of concerns about a data center being built here and so I I wanted to just ask is is there a plan to come back to that for discussion tonight? So the uh the effluent option agreement is actually the terraplex. We moved it up. That's what we moved up as a Terraplex agreement. So we'll get it done first.

And the next agenda item on the first item it was a presentation which is so by a charter we're not allowed to have public comment on the presentation. I know but the next item on the agenda is going to be an action item. So you guys can speak on the action item. Okay. Thank you. I just I saw somebody already leave that I think wanted to speak on it. So Dave, if that's what you're here for. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. The the next item is the consent agenda. These items are placed on the consent agenda so the city council can designate by unanimous consent those routine items they wish to be approved or acknowledged by one motion. If any one item does not meet the approval of all council members or if a citizen so request, it will be heard as a separate item. Uh with that, is there any items in here that we'd like to pull and discuss separately? Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I was forgot about that.

Consent agenda item number one, approval of minutes of the regular meeting of February 24, 2026. Consent agenda item number two, budget adjustment from fund balance. Consent agenda item number three, budget adjustment for brush hog attachment. Consent agenda item number four, budget adjustment for subgrant agreement for the McKinley County DWI task force naming the Gallup Police Department as a subgrantee in the amount of $24,000. Consent agenda item number five, Memorial Day and Veterans Day permit. Consent agenda item number six, approval of budget adjustment for use of op opioid settlement funding and authorization for city manager to execute contracts. Consent agenda item number seven, approval of intergovernmental services agreement and budget adjustment for youth shelter and family services. And consent agenda item number eight, approve intergovernmental services agreement and budget adjustment for municipal Okay, with that

I'd like to pull number six.

Okay, is that gives us the u any others? Good to go. Um that'll we'll have approval of number one, two, three, four, five, seven, and eight. Motion. Yeah, the motion. Motion to approve consent agenda items number one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight. Second, councelor piano. Yes. Councelor Garcia. Yes. Councelor Yazy. Yes. Councelor Molina. Yes. Mayor DeFoly. Yes. Okay. With that, if we can have

I I'll make this really fast. Um I just more had a question. Okay. It looks like the funding from our original grant isn't coming. It's coming late, right? So then we're just using the other grant to cover the cost. So all I wanted to know was if there was any will we have to substitute services from that second grant or is it does it overlap? I'm just confused on if we're using the second grant how that does it affect like do we how does that affect programming basically? Mayor Council Deborah Martinez, City of Gallup behavioral health. This is stop gap funding so we can continue service as is and then as soon as we get the new money we'll we'll add that into the contracts and continue services as is.

Okay. So it won't it won't affect any of the the programming we're doing currently? No, this is to help sustain it while we have that that gap in in funding. Okay, perfect. And then how long before we how long is the stop gap funding? We're hoping mid May she said early to midmay. Um, we should get it. It has to go through um the Doge approvals and the additional oversight which was the same as last year. Okay. So, pretty soon then. Yeah, we have two more years of that funding. We do the reapplication and then we continue the funding. Okay, great. I know you guys are doing great things with the programs. I just wanted to kind of get clarification making sure we're not

um on the on the stop on the I got to get down on the stop gap funding that you're using from the second grant that that doesn't affect the programming that the second grant is funding. So the so as soon as we get the park we'll start using that funding and assist using the opioid funds. Okay. So it's to keep the salary of the employee so we don't have to cut, you know. Yeah. And then stop services at detox. It'll just make it a full. Okay. And then as soon as we get that hopefully the first meeting in in May,

okay, but if not, we'll cover it for the month. I have a motion to approve item number six of the consent agenda. Question. Okay. Motion to approve budget adjustment for use of opioid settlement funding and authorization for city manage. Oh, that's not even Yeah. to execute contracts. I'll second. Councelor Piano. Yes. Councelor Yazy. Yes. Councelor Molina. Yes. Councelor Garcia. Yes. Def. Yes.

Thank you, Deborah. Um, our next items are the discussion action topics. And at the beginning of the meeting, we moved the item um the uh item number five option agreement with Terraplex Data Center LLC up to the item number one. And if we could the uh uh the speaker is going to be Eric Fist.

All right. Thank you, council. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, citizens. How lucky am I to be up here on the deis with my first time talking about an effluent agreement. So just to provide just to provide some history and context um the original agreement was approved back in 2023 with Kohl's Gay LLC. That was for folks who will recall a um an option agreement which is a right of first priority to purchase a certain amount of effluent. you have to exercise that right by July 25th of 2026. So here in a few months. Um the council subsequently amended that agreement twice to extend a few of the other provisions regarding the city's right to terminate mostly acquiring the property and also commencing construction. So subsequent to those two amendments with Kohl's Gray, Kohl's Gray has since assigned all its rights and interests in that affluent agreement to Teraplex, which is why Terraplex is here before you today with the third amendment. So the third amendment to this agreement would retain that option exercise date of July 25th, 2026, but it would extend the date to acquire the property to 2027 and to commence construction in 2029 and it extends out um also the um what am I trying to say?

Complete the per takeer pay seven years

and then the taker pay. Thank you. And then the taker pay um obligation kicks in 7 years after the effective date. So if I'm doing my math correctly, 2023 + 7 is 2030. Um it also amends the purchase price to be the FY26 purchase price instead of the FY23 purchase price which bumps it up about $120 per thousand gallons of water. So that is what is before you is the third amendment. If you approve the third amendment, what it does, it extends those dates out as I've described and as is laid out in detail in the agenda item. If you do not, the terms of the amendment as or the terms of the agreement as amended um remain and the option exercise date of July 25th, 2026 is the first thing to come. Terlex would have to acquire the property within a year um and commence construction as well.

Erica, thank you so much. Um, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into these. Uh, Dave East, our previous city attorney, spent a lot of time. Um, I I want to make sure everybody understands the city of Gallup's position with the effluent and what the city has done over the last 50 years. In 1962, the city of Gallup first utilized reuse or effluent from the wastewater plant. They built a sevenmi pipeline to the golf course. They built ponds and the golf course was always irrigated with effluent. The next thing that came along was the carbon coal re um reclamation. So carbon coal where they're planning building the teraplex was a coal mine and that coal mine they needed water. So the owners at the time, the actual GMCO and associates and the and the the people work running the mine built pumps and a pipeline almost three and a half miles from the city's wastewater plant nearly directly north to uh to the carbon coal mine where they use the water for reclamation. Um and of course that was for reeding and to get things to grow. Um after that the city of Gallup built a sports complex and a lot of you probably remember that it was irrigated with effluent. um that that lasted for about 20 years and then we the city actually built golf um soccer fields with effluents. Those soccer fields were overran with um prairie dogs and it didn't it wasn't real economical to try to use them. Um and the other thing is that the uh then that the effluent became a little bit harder to use and clean up. So they they converted all the sports complex fields to artificial turf and then of course when that that's what soccer is played today um with that. So the city has a long long history of effluent and this this agreement is a lot better than any ones we've ever had. It makes the city money. It has a termination clause that if nothing gets

done that the uh the the the agreement terminates unlike other agreements we have. Um um sorry and uh thanks to Dave, we got a we had a determination there. Um and it makes makes sure that within the se next seven years if if uh Terraplex doesn't use it um you know we we we have effluent that we want to sell to people and what we'd like to do in the city is go to zero discharge where we don't have to discharge and get all the per discharge permits. So it helps the city um as much as it does the PE whoever is going to be out there using it and preferably right now it'd be Terraplex to use it for their cooling because like I said we've had people come to the city and when they give us our water deam demand numbers they have to go back because we don't have that kind of water but we do have the effluent

and mayor I I forgot something that came up earlier that I wanted to note because I think we had discussed the um original the terms of the original effluent agreement have remained in full force in effect except for how it's been amended which again are those purchase of property, construction of complex and the system and the take or pay which triggers either they take that or they pay they take a third or they pay for a third. Um the delivery system in terms of construction and management of building the way to get the city's affluent to the site lies solely with the developer. It is not at the city's expense.

Yeah. No, it's it's a wonderful agreement. I mean there's no jeopardy for the city. We we're making money on the effluent and reducing uh and our impact on the on the release of water down the PCO river. Um with that, if any other counselors would like go ahead Sierra. Oh, so in here the guaranteed amount being 109.5 million gallons per year. Can we get a explanation of how that compares to what's currently available? Like is that Sure. Um is that more than we currently have just

Yeah. So, right. So right now um these numbers are a little bit difficult to uh we treat about 2,000 we'll just use a round number of about 2,000 acre feet a year. So what that what this agreement consists of is 330 acre feet. That's a 1 acre of land with one foot of water on it. No, I'm looking at this the gallons the second. Yeah, the number of gallons. I Yeah, I can't convert that that fast. I found a calculator but I can use acre feet. Um but so the number of gallons um uh you know right now the treatment plant treats about 2.3 million gallons a day. Okay. A day. Every day.

Every day. 2.3. of that 2.3 million gallons. We have an agreement right now with Gallup Land Partners, which was actually a G Merco agreement to they can purchase a million gallons a day out of that. Um the golf course right now gets an average of about 500,000 gallons a day. So there's there's a million that's in an agreement, 500,000 to the golf course, a 100,000 to a teraplex. So there is a surplus left over. Terrapex is a minuscule amount.

Yeah, it's one it's a it's a 100 million out of uh the uh I'm sorry, that would be 100 million divided by 365 for a comparison. All right. So, let me do that. 109 million. Yeah. 10 109 million divided by 365. I' I've never done math in a council meeting before, but um if uh Dave, you have a I mean, so where's Patty? So, essentially there's no basically there,00 they're going to use about half a day's worth of water in a Yeah. 12 month period of time. Yeah. So, 300,000 gallons a day we're using is a half a day amount of ethylene. No, the 12 month it's only about uh

2.3 million versus mayor. Mayor, it's about 2,000. If I can also state um we are working we are working on our water quality.

Um we have the Thank you. We have a $24 million uh loan with uh New Mexico Environmental Department. Water Trust Board just approved a $16 million um grant Sloan loan 9010 um for us. So that'll give us the $40 million that we have a designed uh new headworks plant um ready to go in ready to start construction. So, as soon as this last 16 million is awarded or giving us the grant agreement, um NMED is looking at our uh bid documents at this time. Soon as they release those bid documents, we will be going to construction to upgrade whole new designed uh sewer treatment plant that will be able to treat double. And then our goal is there is we are talking with our um national um group congressmen um to where we're then asking to actually treat our reuse to to even treat it to to get closer to even almost actual drinking water

standards. Yes. Standards. Um whether people can get past the stigma drinking it or not is a different thing, but we want to get it to that level. So, has has the city had trouble with it? Yes, we will admit it. Are we addressing it? Yes, we've been fighting for every dime penny um that is out there and I'm happy to say they've now been awarded and and we will be going to construction.

Thank you, Frank. Yes. Um any Sarah or did you have any more questions? Oh, so yeah, I I understand the appeal of uh using our effluent water and having a positive agreement, something that benefits city for use of that for industrial purposes. I think that's not the problem. Um what I'm concerned about is what does this open the door to and do we want that for our community or not? So I'll leave it there and I know people are going to have comments to the I just had a clarification that was not rel to any of that but so to clarify we don't have any new infrastructure right that the pipe is already going to the toll line

yeah the p and it's own and if there is any repairs or any modifications that will be done by the developer

any other questions Yeah. And if um at this point we can uh anybody from the the audience who wants to comment uh feel free come up and give your name and you have two minutes.

Hi, here I am again. Um, and maybe I'm the only one who wants a comment. I don't know. I'm Jean Phillips. Uh, thanks all for listening to us. Um, I will say I just learned about this whole issue and so I feel like I have a lot to learn and I want to keep an open mind. I will also say that in in my experience and from the reading that I've done about data centers uh the folks who propose data data centers make a lot of promises. They promise a lot of jobs. They promise low impacts and the reality turns out to be different. Um and that is something that really concerns me. It really concerns me that the idea of such a big undertaking that if it turns out differently than what we're being promised, and that's what I expect, um we're stuck with it. We're stuck with um the drain on our utilities. we're stuck with the um use of effluent for something that I don't think is a benefit to to our society in general um when we could be using effluent for something better. We're stuck with the noise. We're stuck with the light and we're not getting very many jobs in exchange for it. Um these are things that impact wildlife. Some of us really care about that. They're things that impact neighborhoods. Um, and and so I hope that we will all take this very slowly. And when you talk about public conversations, you're not just talking, and I don't think you are. We're not just talking about presentations. We're talking about real dialogue and really listening to the folks that'll be impacted by this. Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, good evening everyone. Um, my name is Larry Wyn. I uh put together a town hall on Gallop's water 23 years ago. Uh and after that a water board was formed which I chaired for nine years and uh I learned a lot and I've maintained that interest over the years. Um, one of my concerns is that it's amazing how it is that data centers have a national reputation now of being perhaps the biggest single problem there is. And somehow tonight data centers have gone from being the biggest problem there is to being perfection. Perfection. Everything about this is every town's dream. And it's amazing to me that such a thing could be taken at face value. It may be true, Mark. I hope it's true, you know. I re you know I mean we all hope that great things occur you know but I don't understand uh why anybody would take that at face value when nationally anybody can tell from just cruising the internet that not only is this a massive problem nationally but it is growing in importance weekly much more so than it was even two or three months ago. Um

what I think is that Mr. Thompson told uh Peter Proopio and I before the meeting that you know they're going to bring people in and work with the community etc etc. Uh that's good. That's matter of fact, it's wonderful. But that should happen before a signature, not not after a signature. And um also um on October the 1st, as you well know, Mr. Mayor, uh, there are no rules for how the Colorado Compact would be run. None. One thing that says is that who knows what can happen. Arizona as currently uh as many videos that are coming out of the Phoenix area uh attest they are expecting a worst case scenario of a 51% decrease in their Colorado River water. One thing that does, if anything even remotely similar to that happens, and something similar will happen, is that there is now a flood of people trying to buy water rights all over the seven states. Gallup has an unclear future concerning water rights. People will say otherwise. Uh that doesn't mean that they are right.

Let's imagine that Gallup is bidding against Phoenix for water rights. Let's say we're bidding against uh uh Washington County, Utah. Let's say that we are bidding against Los Angeles. You know how that's going to turn out. We can't meet that price. This is a major issue. Um, without going on too long about this, the upshot for me and I think for many people is what's the rush? These people have put off doing anything. Kohl's Creek has put off doing anything for what, three years now. And uh so bottom line is now all of a sudden they want your signature tonight.

No sunsh.

And and whether there are and if there are good explanations for the fears that these people have and we know there are good reasons for the fears. But if there are reasons that can be dealt with and then and and we could somehow agree to do this, this is not something that the citizens are going to feel good about just because y'all decide to vote on it tonight. What we want to do is we want to see these issues addressed adequately. And that means that not just you all consider that discussion adequate, but that the citizens of this community consider that discussion to be adequate.

Larry, we're going to have to kind of Yeah, I know. I need to shut up. Right. Well, you know, and we appreciate your concerns. you know, you know, let me let me just say one thing. You you know, we know each other. Yes. Uh I voted for you and I was happy to do so. And why I'll tell you why I voted for you. Because I know that you know more about our water situation locally than anyone else in the world. I know that. And I said water is going to be the most important issue for Gallup going forward. I want to have the guy in there that knows the most. And that guy is in there. He's you.

Yes. Thank you. And I And I want to trust y'all's process. Yeah. But remember trust but verify. Remember that little statement in the news. That's you got about seven people behind you that want to talk. Okay, I'll be quiet. Thank you. But uh anyway, that's that's my opinion. Thank you so much.

Uh Patricia Sheileely, I live in Mintmore, uh Ron Molina's district. Uh I don't have a prepared statement, but I felt I needed to come up here and say something. This sounds like a wonderful project. He He only wants a little bit of water and it's effluent water that we're throwing away. He's going to give us lots of jobs. Those are promises. Like the previous speaker said, we need more facts. We want more facts. We have to have more facts. And maybe he wants just a little bit of affluent water now. But my understanding of data centers is they need a lot of water. So what happens when he when he needs more water? What are we going to do? Where are what are we committing ourselves to? And I have a feeling that we're going to need our affluent water and we're going to need to drink it because we're running out of water. Our aquafer is going down. It's not being replenished now because we don't get snow. It takes something like five years for that water to come down even if if we have snow. So, we need to we need to look further ahead. We really do or Gallup's going to disappear because we don't have water. Thank you. Dr. Lou um OBGYn. Um this whole conversation calls to mind a number of patients that I see who come from Sanders, Arizona and from the

Redwater Pond community. 40 years ago, mining companies came and they built these, you know, mines and then stored all that waste in a pond that nobody could see. But I can guarantee you that when that dam burst and that polluted water with arsenic, magnesium, uranium, polluted the Puerto River, those patients 40 years later that I still see now definitely understand what that impact was. And that's what I really worry about with this project. I think it's not just the use of water and the use of electricity, which I don't think that it is possible to have a carbon neutral or an environmentally friendly data center. I'm worried about the unknown effects. I'm worried about what the heat is going to do to our community. I'm worried about the fact that there is going to be noise and even if there's nobody living around there, there's wildlife there and it affects our ecosystem. I really hope that when you look at this project, you will take into consultation the biologists from Navajo Nation, the people who work here and are land protectors, people who are water protectors. I hope you were going to talk to the people who are thinking seven generations down the line and who really understand the science. I think about this little plot of land that is on near close to me down by Filipina. You've probably know, you all know that that land has been completely raised. What I don't think people understand is that that used to be the habitat for the pinon j. It's a vulnerable species that nobody probably saw, you know, but it's a species that doesn't have many places to live and that was a thriving community of the pinon j. So the fact that that land has been raised probably doesn't matter to a whole lot of people but I guarantee you it mattered a lot to the pinon jing

everybody. Uh hello y buenos noes. I hope I said that okay. Um, I I am a uh longtime resident of Gallup, 26 years. I live up the hill from the Holiday Nursery and I raised a young daughter, Katherine Morse, and um I am also um uh ancestrally from north of here. I'm uh Yay Ditney and Haltsy is my uh maternal grandfather on my dad's side. He's also from New Mexico of uh Ojiway and um and Sue background. Um I I'm very concerned about the data center for a number of reasons. And you know, I'd also like to echo what Dr. Lou had said about the continued effects of past uranium mining on the patients that I serve. We see it all the time. Also, you know, ancestrally, I as well have those connections. Um the uh and I'm getting up there in my years, but there's folks older than me that remember that routinely up in the mountains where my family's from, the snow would get to be 3 feet deep or more. And in the 26 years I've lived here, the the snow has never got that deep up there. And then in this past winter, my brother who lives up there now said maybe about three storm snow storms with just a inch or two of snow. Um, and predictions related to climate change are are saying that we're going to be in for a mega drought. data centers of course use a lot of water and yes right now that they're talking about using effluent but it said

right there in the presentation that at some point that need is going to greatly increase and they're looking at the Navajo Gallup water project for additional water. Okay. Then the other part is yes there's going to be solar but solar is while the sun's shining. how how are they going to get the the power to operate during nights or when there's, you know, when there's a lot of clouds? And that it also said that they were going to be hooked up to the grid. What is that going to do to our community in terms of our utility bills? Okay. And how much water are they really going to need? And then uh it was also pointed out that we have other uses, potential uses for our effluent. What's going to happen once that effluent runs through their system? What is going to happen with that water? Is it going to be put in where it might eventually recharge our um our aquifers? Um what kind of shape is that water going to be in? Is it going to be too hot that it would uh it would affect the um the environment, the wildlife? Um and and so for all these reasons, I have a lot of concerns about um locating a uh a a waterhungry data center in the high desert area uh in our current climate with predictions of more drought. And um with that, I will I thank you very much for your attention. We I ask you to think about the health the health of the people in our community, those seven generations that long term and and what's going to happen to our environment as a result of this.

Thank you. Next.

Good evening everyone. Good evening, mayor, city council, and our community. My name is Brandy Laughter. If you've never met me, um I'm a mother of six. I've been married for 25 years, and I've lived on the west side of Gallup for 20 plus years. Um and what I have to say is really short and sweet. I don't like to mix a lot of words, but when a big corporation comes into our community and they want to place a data center in my area in the west side of Gallup, who's representative by Miss Lundstrom of the Greater Gallup Economic Group? Um, I say, who are the people that are you going to be affecting? What is the area that you're going to be putting your data center in? And I'm wondering I'm as I would ask your company Do you know the people that you're going to be affecting when you place a data center? Do you know the tribal people that live around that area? Can you even say the names of the chapters of the people that live in that area on the west side of Gallup in Mintmore where I live, where my people are right now on the west side of Gallup where you are proposing to put your data center and strip our land.

Where you're proposing where the council is proposing to strip the land. We're talking about Chelata, Manolito, Rock Springs, Bread Springs, Seyato, all the way to Fort Defiance. This is the Navajo area that will be affected by this new data center. Now, if you look out here, city council, what would you say about the majority of the people who are here? They're they're not da right now. I'm wondering how many of our city council people have gone out into our chapters that I just named and asked the native elders how they felt about this data center being put in their land. Right? This is Native American country. This is historically Native American country. This whole area. And so when we're thinking about putting in data centers, we really need to not only look at the wildlife like Dr. Woo had said, but we need to look at the people that inhabit that land and then the future generations. So I'm saying that from myself and my family and my children, we say no, a hard no to data centers. Have a wonderful evening. My name's Labor Persinger. Hello, city council. I didn't tell you guys hello. Hello, citizens of Gallup. Everybody's coming down hard on the uh center here. And I think it's about transparency. We need to know, are you going to do what you say you're going to do because you're selling this this cream puff? This sounds great. Now, are you going to do it? To quote a Led Zeppelin song, only fools rush in. So, let's let's not rush into this and let's let's make sure

we're acting with the citizens best interest in mind. Uh, can we get some hardcore commitments of what they're going to actually do instead of just this plethora of expression? Because it's many times corporations promise communities, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, and then they loophole their way out of it and it doesn't fall within the parameters of what expectations are. Since I am heavily invested into AI technologies, I have a political financial interest in AI technologies working and we need there's only 22 operational data centers in New Mexico and there's 35 being built. It's not so much what he's promising, it's what is going to be done for the city in reality on paper. What's the numbers? I was so happy when an engineer became mayor because mayors like numbers and computer programmers like numbers and I got facts and figures and paperworks. I got binders. I got 20,000 pages of stuff that I've created. And I'm realizing I'm telling you guys we've reached singularity. You guys might not even know what that is. It's supposed to be when AI gets smarter than humans. But if I'm testing out at 795 and they're testing themselves out at 400, that's not happening right now. The mathematics is what makes equivalence in AI. And they say that dyslexic people and people with ADHD do good in those technologies. That's what I have. I also come from an electrical background. I was married. My first wife's husband I mean her her dad was a electrician and and I learned how to wire houses. So I know what energy uses is. I know how much current they can use. But I think we need to be fair, but we want to see the deal. Let's not agree just because it sounds great. Yeah, it sound I'm sure

the coal mining deal, the uranium plants, it all sounded great when it was happening, but what are the repercussions long term to the citizens? What are the environmental impacts? What is it going to do to wildlife citizens? The robots are coming. We're not getting away from this AI technology. Where I come from in Virginia, they have 639 operational plants. They have 556 being constructed. So we are with only having less than 70 in the whole state of New Mexico. I mean, there's opportunity here. I'd like to know a guy like this. You know, he'd like to know a guy like me because we're into numbers. So I'm instead of just shutting the door and saying this is no good, maybe it's no good. Maybe we don't know enough. You know, I'd like to know some technical information like from an engineer's point of view. Where are the numbers at? Can we see the numbers? What are they actually because everything you put up on the screen? I'm sorry, but that was flattering for your company. That wasn't what my research on AI has told me far different unless you've really invented technologies, which is quite possible. So, let's just take a reasonable look at it. Uh, next. Anybody else? Yeah, it's a sha arena. Um, I'm a mother of four and I'm also a birth worker and advocate in the mun community. I work with the unhoused. Um I had just thought of um the conversation and the presentation discussion and considering um the art that's in this room. So I wrote something. We often speak of our community through the lens of its history. What I like to call the art of

the chandeliers. This represents more than just a style. It symbolizes the intricate handcrafted legacy and the delicate aesthetic balance we have maintained for generations. Our environment is not a blank slate for industrial expansion. It is a curated space of heritage and quietude that defines who we are. The introduction of a massive data center into this ecosystem threatens to disrupt that balance. Fundamentally, we are fundamentally we are told these facilities are green because they utilize effluent water or tap into solar power. However, we must look deeper than the marketing. While they perceive their operations as efficient, the reality is often one of exploitation and extraction. Using effluent water does not mean water isn't being consumed at an industrial scale. It simply means we are rerouting ass shared resource to serve a private enterprise. Relying on solar power does not erase the massive physical footprint, the heat generation, and the loss of biodiversity required to house these digital clouds. Our concerns are rooted in the long-term environmental impact. A data center is a permanent monolithic intervention. It extracts the quiet of our nights with lowfrequency hums and exploits our local infrastructure, often providing very little in return to the people who actually live here. We cannot allow the art of the chandeliers, the bright intentional beauty of our community to be dimmed by the shadow of a data center. We must prioritize the preservation of our natural and historical environmental over the extractive needs of glob global data processing. And I also speak to the fact that what has been mentioned before by Dr. Louu and other community members, the impacts of um the extraction and exploitation of the

environment is my family deals with autoimmune diseases and also cancer. So those are real things and that lives among our community. Thank you. Littlefield. Hello everyone. My name is Abigail Littlefield. I've lived in Gallup for all of my life. I am sorry if my voice is shaky. I'm a bit angry right now. So, we've already heard all of the issues with the water usage, and I understand that effluent water is not something that you consider water, especially with like the label on it. What I'm having a hard time understanding is that earlier in this meeting, I heard that we already got funding for the wastewater treatment to be to be upgraded. And a statement I heard was that it was going to be treated to the point where it's almost drinkable. So I'm already having issue with effluent water that we're doing. And we've already got this water uh wastewater treatment system being upgraded and that water is already getting better almost to the point where we can drink it. So that being transferred to the data center at millions of go millions of gallons of water a day is not sustainable. And I want to emphasize sustainability and how you understand it and how I understand it as seven generations ahead and behind. Indigenous values is what makes this city profit. indigenous people is what

makes this city profit. This is labeled as the Indian capital of the world. So if we aren't going to understand indigenous values and allow this data to come through data center to come through and it's not just base value it's always something deeper again project Jupiter initially that's in dona county I've done a lot of research on that I've done acquisition comments I've done all of that stuff initially they're saying they're only going to use a little bit of water already. Not even two weeks ago, they're talking about having to up their water usage. It is example after example after example of data centers being a threat to the environment, to the people, everything around here. And that is where my anger is coming from. I am 24 years old. I am the generation that's being told we're going to grow up without water. I'm being the I'm part of the generation that's told we're giving a sick mother earth. Environmental values are being replaced with corporation values. You guys put a dollar on everything that I value. Stuff that has survived boarding schools, that has survived genocide, everything. And I am here to make sure you know that dollar value. It's not automatically assigned with those indigenous values. The rugs, the baskets, the language, the traditional medicines, all of it. That has survived so long. This data center is just another step towards breaking that down. Okay. None. Thank you.

Thank you, Abigail. Um, my name is Rachel Brown. Let me pull up my notes here. So, I moved to Gallup four years ago with my husband from Oklahoma. And I may be new to this community, but I am not new to corporations wanting to use resources for their own profit and benefit and leaving the mess for communities to clean up. We've we have a long history of giving our resources away to oil companies in Oklahoma as well as mining. If you've never heard of Pitcher Oklahoma, I would encourage you to look it up. So my main concern with the data center is how shortsighted that presentation was and how shortsighted it is to agree to have a data center here in Gallup. We're talking about um the AI that AI is booming right now, right? Well, it's booming right now. We've been there's been talk of an AI bubble of a tech bubble for a few years now. I think we've all heard that. What actual physical good do we get from storing AI technology here in Gallup? What is the long-term benefit of storing data, especially for programs like we're seeing with Flock? So, is that the kind of data? Are we storing data that is essentially turning us into a a surveillance state? I'm an American and I did not s sign up to live in a surveillance state. I value my freedom. I value the freedom and civil liberties of my neighbors and of my fellow citizens and I encourage you guys to do

so too. So what I was saying with it being shortsighted, yes, there's promises about just using affluent water. I don't think it is a wasted resource as much as it's being uh presented to us as I think it's a shiny sales pitch. And that's exactly what it was was a sales pitch for yes us to use the land here, the resources we have here for a private company to monetize our community and the resources that we have here that make our lives good. We've heard a lot of talk about numbers and that um data and numbers are what we need to run things. Not for living things. We're a living community. We live in a living ecosystem. And as much as you want to quantify how this is going to affect things, you cannot look forward and see how life is going to react to some of these things. And my question for the data center too is once we build infrastructure, once we have these buildings built, what happens when the boom cycle goes bust? We're stuck with a lot of this. We're stuck with the infrastructure. We're stuck with the pipelines. And I don't think it's a good decision for the community. I think it makes the community unlivable. And having moved four years ago, I really don't want to have to move again. That's Hello. Um, not very good at public speaking.

I may have to do this crying. Um, My name is Felicia. Um, I'm here for the younger generation. I think that's what makes me so emotional. Um, I am here for my children. I am here for future generations if we have. Um, there should be no deal. My concern first and foremost is the water. But as you had said that the water is treatable and we we talked a little bit about how it's almost treatable to where we can drink it. I guess your next concern concern should be as global warming continues to take control of our planet, we must be aware of the heat that these data centers produce around and in in our planet and into our planet. Um there was a recent news article. It says scientists have found that an alarming environmental impact of these vast data centers. Something that I highlighted here is that they are creating heat islands, warming the land around them by up to 16° F and making life hotter and more for more than 340 million people. So, you guys all took science class, right? What happens when you heat water? It evaporates. Where does it go? And scientists are right now studying that we will no longer have clouds. Where are we going to get our water? There was no snow. There was hardly any snow here in Gallup, New Mexico. That should be a huge concern to you all.

Where are we going to get our water? You guys all need to do your thorough research. Research the Colorado River and what is happening there. This should fear. This should put the fear in you. Like our past president had said, older men in this world are destroying our planet and you guys need to be aware and be let that sink in that you guys are the older generation and you guys are making these decisions. put when you're thinking about these things, think about your your your nieces, your grandchildren. Don't think about the quick fix and the quick jobs, right, that'll be here just for a certain time. Think about the environmental impacts. Thank you. Would you like me to recount what is before council?

Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So, be before you is again the third amendment to the affluent option agreement which if approved, you would also need to set a date for the payment of the $5,000. If you do not approve it, the terms of the second amendment remain in full force in effect.

Yeah. And um so you know understand I'm skeptical as anybody else about data centers. Um but this is a this is just an effluent agreement for them to use water out of our wastewater plant that we've always planned for industrial uses for wastewater. It would be this or something else. Um the next step this is not approving a data center. This is just approving a water agreement that was already in place with a previous company that was going to melt steel. So it's it's not approving the data center at all. It's just the approving the agreement to give them 13% of the effluent that's produced at the wastewater plants. No.

Anyway, uh somebody else go ahead. Yeah, I would like council to note the uh immense public response to this first step. Even that something that we might consider small, something that we might consider insignificant, look at the response from our community. We represent these people. we don't represent.

I would also like to point out um what I have here is a current lawsuit against Project Jupiter in New Mexico in Donana County from the New Mexico Environmental Law Center because of their lack of due diligence before moving forward on what they thought was going to be very beneficial for their community. We don't want to end up in that position. We don't want to invite any sort of litigation against the city for not doing our due diligence on the environmental impacts as many of these constituents have brought to us tonight. And I would urge us to table this item until we have more information. Um, anything else

you would? No, I have nothing to add. Okay. Um, I don't any question. Um, she I got a question. Uh what are the ramifications of not signing this uh agreement tonight as far as the thing that calls gray at the end uh what was it the end of June

the the terms of the agreement pursuant to the second amendment remain which is the um let me get these dates right which is they must exercise their option by July 25th 2026 or if the developer does not take v title to the property by July 25th 2026 the city may exercise its right to terminate or if the developer does not commence construction by July 25, 2027, city may exercise its right to terminate and the take or pay obligation would commence on July 25th, 2029, which would mean they would have to take our pay by that date unless the city otherwise early terminates. So it'll expire essentially the agreement with

just expires that we explained initially is it's going to be expiring and that doesn't prevent us from forming a new agreement down the road with Terraplex if we can you explain that like I'm a third grader just a few days please I'm so sorry but just to make sure because I want to understand fully I I just want to make sure please I'm so sorry. Sure I'll repeat that again. No it's not that it's it's so nothing has to be decided tonight. We have We have some there is

the second amendment is currently in full force in effect. This would amend it to push those dates back which would push back the city's right to terminate the option agreement to one year later. There's currently dates in effect that the city could exercise its right to terminate earlier under the second amendment company these guys they are but Koh's grey assigned all those rights and interest to teraflex but we but they haven't signed any paperwork that says that they are so they have so then sir you need to come to the mic because we have to record everything please

I'm sorry uh Barry Brown um again I'm I'm I'm just trying to understand this that It's it's a lot of dates, a lot of numbers in the air right now. And I I'm sorry. I'm just a humble mechanic, so I'm just trying to understand this. And with apparently since I'm I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude or anything. So, Terraplex hasn't signed anything. They're just they just have the agreement with the old company. They're buying they're taking their rights, correct?

Yes. So with Terraplex, we have no obligation per se that we could take this and actually do our due diligence on our side before we commit to them because we have nothing with them. Correct. And I know it's No. So essentially Terraplex has stepped into the shoes of Kohl's Gray. Okay. So the most current and in effect agreement that the city has with Koh's gay, the city has with Teraplex. That's the second amendment. So, but we do have until a year from July 23rd the 20 to the of 27, correct? To make any kind of hard decisions.

If the developer does not take title to the property by July 25 of 2026, the the city may exercise its right to so we have until end of July to have any kind of

or if the developer does not commence construction until July 25th, 2027, the city may also terminate. There's different termination provisions based on what's happening. But we do have a little bit of of of of time that we don't have to make hard dec I just with everyone here making this much racket about this. I would just like to I I know it's just signing agreements and just water rights and things like that, but man, if you've got this many people that are this upset about this and this is just a small room with 72 people, I think is what the what the fire capacity was. You guys have some folks that are really have a lot of emotional attachment to this and a lot of, you know, emotion invest in this. I think before we make a a large commitment because I think even on one of the gentleman's slides, I think the fourth one down was right now it's just the the non-potable water from the the treatment plant, but it left it kind of open-ended that hey, they might need more water later on. So, I think that

hitting these slides, man, he was going through them pretty quick that and it did look like a cream puff deal that man, I think there are some some questions that obviously a lot of folks have and that if we have some time to really do some studies on this that man, again, we're in a water poor area with a lot of heat, a lot a lot a little bit of water and now these folks are wanting to come in and I know it's non-polable water, but non-polable right now that if we need this discharge to actually get the water tables back up that we may need this. So, I just would like to have a little more time to really do our diligence on this, y'all. Please. Thank you. I appreciate

I appreciate each and every one of you coming out tonight and for your concerns. and I have the same concerns as you all cuz we all, like you said, we all live here and we all want what's best for the residents in the city of Gallup. So, I want to take into consideration, not saying I'm against it, not saying I'm for it, but I also would like to table it to get some more information. You know, a couple of people hit the nail right on the head. Sarah, thank you. We are here to represent you. And if you've ever listened to my comments, I've told everybody that we don't run the city. The people of Gallup run the city. Having said that, now keep in mind every coin has two sides. One thing that I'm I've also been adamant about is telling everybody about the industry that we've lost in Gallup. I've moved here for that. I'm being redundant because I've said it several times. I moved to Gallup 42 years ago. Since I moved here, we've lost two refineries. We lost the railroad. We've lost uh the two coal companies and that's just five a handful of things. We've lost lots more of that. Uh my agenda for running this last term was to bring business in. There's also some more to my agenda and that includes before bringing business in is to take care of our drug problems. And I'm there to listen to you guys. But like I said, there's two sides to every coin. I agree with everybody. We probably need to get some more information before we make a decision. I'm all for that. But don't lose fact. Don't lose sight of the fact

that we need to bring industry into Gallup. Gallup is a dying community and uh yeah, definitely don't lose fact that side of that coin. Thank you. Yeah. No personal attacks. What happened? Sar. Yeah, I'll make a motion to um defer any action on discussion action item number five, the affluent option agreement with Teraplex Data Centers LLC.

I second the motion to table. If you want to table it, you want to defer it to another time defer action. Yeah. If you table, I think that means we're gonna we're not it's like voting. No. Set a date. You need a date. We have to do before July date. What's your date? Your termination date. They have to exercise their option by July 25th, 2026. So, if you want to defer action until then or Well, we can defer till we get some more information. It's a 20 It's a It is a 20-year agreement, though. There's just for the city to get more. We might ought to

maybe don't put a date. Well, it was saying to defer indefinitely. But then we can like because if I thought if we table it, we have to set a date that we bring it back and then you can defer. So the motion is to defer action and then we will follow up with getting more information from Teraflex and other researchers. Okay. And the public. Yeah. So she said second. We already councelor Yazy. Yes. Councelor Garcia. Yes. Councelor Piano. Yes. Councelor Molina. Yes. Mayor Dealy.

No. Well, with that, we'll uh go on to the everybody. Thank you for all of your comments. Oh, audit is next. If you guys want to speak for the exciting stuff, yes, we'll take a um uh let's take a 10-minute five minute uh Okay. Five minute.

Five minute break. You knowless we have I like to know more. sandwich. different.

I am very open to rationality things to work out. Mark, we need a we need an issue. We need a plan that's I know right needs to be bigger than but I was about to say that they were going to just confuse everybody

you know always respect always and I think this is going to work out no this is perfect I love this is all I think she's misunderstanding and this is never meant to be specific. a load and we would love to pop that out exactly which there's eight sites globally. Um so

Get Let's get started.

Oh, great. Just what I wanted. We have a good audit. Yeah, we did. We're go through this fast. Yeah, we're good. It is fun, isn't it? Being resumed. And our next item is going to be resolution number 2026 14 accepting the FY 2025 audit. And our speaker today is gonna be Patty Holland.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. We have finally got our audit back from the OSA. Everything's approved. Everything's good. It's a good story. I'm going to introduce Chris Gardner. He's online. He is the managing partner that managed our audit this year. He's going to go through all the basics and explain the results of our audit and any discussions or concerns or questions you have at the end, we'll be happy to answer those. Chris, can you hear us? I can. Can you hear me? Yes, sir.

Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Patty. Thank you, mayor and counselors. What I have here is actually um some highlights from the exit conference that we had back in January. This audit this year was delayed because the federal government when it comes to auditing federal funds had a delay with some some is and they had some issues and so we were not able to complete the audit until it was due uh January 20th when it's normally due December 15th. So there was just some complications this year that kind of delayed things. So again, what I have here is required communication from auditing standards because there's lots of confusion on what an audit is. This first slide goes over auditing standards, which are the top two boxes, and then the bottom two boxes are government auditing standards or more commonly referred to as yellowbook standards. In the state of New Mexico, every audit has to follow not only auditing standards, but we have to follow those yellowbook standards. And in a moment, I'll explain why. So under the top two boxes under regular auditing standards, what we were hired to do is express an opinion over your financial statements to ensure that they are what we call materially correct. Well, what does that mean? If you look at the top red, the top right box, we give what's called reasonable assurance because there's no way we could look at every transaction. So we pick statistical samples, we look at internal controls, but we definitely can't test every transaction. So what are there could be errors in the financial statements but those errors are not going to be big enough to change the opinion of the readers of the financial statements. So example I always give is if you were to give that audit to a banker those errors are not going to be big enough to change the banker's opinion on the financial status of the city. So under those top two boxes when it comes to testing internal controls technically we just have to test one

transaction from each significant cycle. So a significant cycle is things like cash receipts, cash dispersements, payroll. So the reason the state auditor requires us to do a yellowbook audit is they want us testing those internal controls over those significant cycles. So we pick samples to to uh complete that yellowbook audit. And as you can see on the bottom left, we are testing those internal controls, but we're not testing enough to give an opinion on those internal controls. All that report does is spell out how we're testing internal controls above auditing standards. And then the audit rule, the state audit rule also changes this. So in audit rule, they have 20 items that really relate with uh state compliance. So things like are you complying with state laws on travel and pdeium um procurement. So there's expanded testing that we have to do in the state of New Mexico. And then what we do is we go through our test internal controls and then we have to communicate you'll see at the bottom right any significant matters. Well, state audit rule changes that one too. They don't want us just um you know having findings over those significant items. But in New Mexico state auditor wants us disclosing everything. And the whole reason for that is is so that councils can know when you have issues even if it's not significant so that you can monitor and track how your management team is dealing with those issues. So those are the two standards we followed under the next audit or the next slide is the results of the audit. We issued an unmodified opinion and as I put in brackets there a clean opinion exactly the type of report that the city wants to receive. So this is a good thing. This is in essence the highest level of assurance that auditors can give. So again, this is a good report. The other reports in your audit that are ours, we have that yellowbook report um on the left that where we do have a finding

that we'll talk about at the very end. And then that report on the right is that audit we had to do over your federal grant compliance. And we issued an unmodified on that one also. So both reports that we issued are unmodified opinions exactly what the city wants to receive. This next slide is to let the council know how are your financial records being maintained. If we as auditors have a hard time in completing the audit, we are supposed to notify you and as you can see here, we did not. So the takeaway here for the council is that your financial records are being wellmaintained so that when we performed our audit procedures we had no difficulties in getting supporting documentation um having the approval processes happen in the right order and we did not have any difficulties in performing the audit. The next one is very important also because if we as auditors are coming in and making lots of adjustments you know the council might need to be concerned with your financial records. Well, as you can see here, we only had adjustments to get us from the cash basis of accounting to acrruel. And really, this is as a result of the state of New Mexico, how they require you to maintain your records. They require you to maintain your budget and your records that you report to the state on a cash basis accounting. So, we as auditors come in and your team has to provide us. We have to go from that cash basis because that's not a part of generally accepted accounting principles and they have to get adjusted so that we can give you a clean opinion. Takeaway from here is how you are responsible for overseeing your budget and your financial records throughout the year. We as auditors did not have a single adjustment and that the council should feel confident with your financial numbers as you make decisions throughout the year. The next slide is if we had disagreements with management we'd have to let you know and I'm happy to say that we didn't. If management consulted with other auditors, we would have to notify you. And again, that did not happen. The audit went smooth. So, there was really nothing

that would cause this to happen. Last year, you had two findings. One of them was repeated. Um there were some amounts that were paid for uh individuals in which health insurance benefits and life insurance benefits were being paid but the people were already terminated when those policies or when those uh premiums were being paid. This is an improvement from the prior year. This year there was about $5,500 of those type of payments. Last year it was very you know a lot more significant. So the the city has made progress and I'm hoping this year this particular finding will go away but progress was made during the current year. Last year I said there was two findings. The second one related to pledge collateral and that finding has been resolved so it has been removed from your audit report. With that I'll open up to any questions.

Mayor I have a question. Um, so I I assume the finding on the insurance and we fixed it. So for this next fiscal year, we should we shouldn't be paying off insurance anyway. So I think we fixed it through the HR department, right? So So when they come back and audit the current year we're in, they they'll see that it's resolved. We're also having to give that same response to the OSA with this um resolution that's being passed tonight. And they'll they'll have the update information as well. And then it's just an ongoing process to to stay in compliance. Question Sarah. No, I don't believe I do.

Um, can I just a couple questions just to make sure we're on the the money get that gets reimbursed for the grants. Um, and then we get re it's paid to the grant. Let's say the contractor whoever it is and then we get reimbured for the grants. Where does that show up in the audit? It does not. Um, it would be on the Actually, it will. So, so when we do um when we have a grant that we've got a a reimbursement pending, it's going to we transfer money down there as a loan. So, on the balance sheet, it will show as a due to from the the fund that owes that money back and a due from as an AR account on the general fund. And um you know we we do that because that individual fund that has that grant would be a negative cash basis or cash position if we didn't give them a temporary loan. And those are also part of the quarterly approvals when I bring them forward. And I detail out which funds and how much we have on loan as of the end of each quarter. So they will be on here on the balance sheet but they don't affect the financial statement.

Okay. So on the balance sheet and I'm sorry you showed up the temporary loan. Is that what they said? Yeah, it'll it'll be due to do from on on on our books on our records and then it'll be an AR and an AP within the the financial statement for and the particular grant is is then listed. It's not listed by grant, it's just listed by fund. Okay. Now, on our side, we can detail out which grants have outstanding um that's all the questions I had. What? I

I just have a comment. Uh this is since I've been on council, Patty, you've done an amazing job here. I think most will agree with me. I appreciate the clean books. Uh, I appreciate you being on top of it and I know it's easy for you because you like numbers. Thank you for what you do. I appreciate it. You and your group. I have a great team and we have a lot of lot of departments that work with us really well. It's a huge team effort. Good. If we could have a motion. Motion to approve resolution number R202614 accepting the fiscal year 2025 audit. I second. Yes. Councelor Molina.

Yes. Yes. Councelor Garcia. Yes. Yes. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you Chris. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah Chris. Thank you. We will circulate the or the city clerk will circulate the resolution for you to sign once I fix my mayor since I decided I didn't have a new mayor yet. Oh, wonderful. I apologize for that.

Thank you, Patty. Our next item is resolution number 2026-13, third quarter financial FY20, excuse me, Fiscal year 2026 budget adjustment and report of actuals. And again, this is Patty's speaker.

Okay. So, we're in in the home stretch now for a year. You have a morat of I can't even say the word. I'm tired. You have a whole slew of the statements. These are all what the DFA requires. These are out of their system. We take all of our numbers. We map them out. We have this huge file and um Lynette and I put everything in the system. We do one side that shows budget. They take our beginning of the year cash. They project it out based on our numbers. make sure that we don't show negative cash anywhere. They also take our actuals and make sure the same thing. And one thing to note as as he he pointed out that we have to report to the state on a cash basis. So when you're looking at this particular statement that says report recap and you see a column that says adjustments and it's got millions of dollars in there as adjustments. Those are the the numbers required to take us from cash basis or from acural basis back to cash basis for DFA purposes. Then they require that we go in for each and every one of these funds and we have to detail out whether they're in the accounts receivable, the accounts payable, whether it's like if we get received investment income. So that's changed investments. We have to go through and reconcile and balance out all of these. So it's it's really a long lengthy process. I don't understand why they don't want to do acrruel, but that's where we're at. So, just in case you guys ever wondered what the adjustments are, the the notable pieces to mention this time for for the budget changes that we did, we added some 150,000 for the trade port to get things rolling there. Wastewater got a $3 million grant that we we've gotten on the books. So, that's a revenue and an expenditure that have been added. Fire department, we added an extra $600,000. So, they got the rest of the funding for their new shiny truck and we got a $200,000 grant in for street repairs. Water received a grant just over 800,000.

Uh law enforcement got a small grant for uh I think it was for overtime for DWI or one of those. I didn't detail what that was. And then within our risk management, our seniors, we did a couple of budget increases to to make sure and shore things up for needs that we anticipated for the year. We also recognized a $75,000 grant for housing purposes. A lot of the other details on here, I sat today and I went through each and every transaction. A lot of them, we have to show them on here, but they're just transfers within lines, so they net to zero effect. But those are the major increases that that we saw during the year. We do have a few decreases that we also recognize when we close a grant out or a project out and we zero out the rest of the re revenues, the rest of expenditures to say it's all done. We we're ready to move on and that releases those funds if there were any left back to be able to use be used later on when we come up with a new budget for the upcoming year. Do you have any questions? Um, when will all of these be reimbursed in terms of like I know we're because they it was ending the negative cash balance. Maybe they're all different.

They're they're it's it's a whole bunch of different grants. So, I don't have dates on them. I know in the 219 fund that is the new building and some of the big expenditures started last October and they they've continued from there on. We just haven't gotten all the money in to get it caught up yet with all all of our outpouring of cash. And hopefully I'm hoping by year end we're not having to have that big of a loan, but I just don't have a prediction of when the when the funds will come in because I mean when we're providing a temporary cash transfer from general fund, I assume I mean it says temporary. So that means we will be getting money in from all these grants to supplement this money that's shown right here, right?

Yes. and none of it will come from the general fund. I mean, I'm just trying to figure that out.

So, if I have a grant to buy widgets and I I spend $100,000 to buy those widgets and it comes the end of the quarter, I don't have the money and yet we do a temporary loan and that's part of the approval process. I say I loan $100,000 to this fund for those widgets while we wait for our reimbursement. If the time for the loan comes, it's expired, it's time to close it out, and we're doing all the paperwork and for some reason we failed to get that reimbursement either through a denial of the claim, somebody's paperwork wasn't right, there was an issue with with approval process somewhere. If that were to happen and we are not going to get that $100,000 for those widgets reimbursed because of some failure of something somewhere, then we're required to come back to you and say, "We had a problem. Now, we ask for you to permanently transfer $100,000 into that fund to replenish it for that expenditure that we we didn't reimburse. And that has a cap has happened on occasion. The main thing is to try and and get the department that's involved to recognize it quickly so that we don't repeat the same mistake. And and there's so many different requirements. It's not one simple thing. Oh, don't ever do that again. They have a lot of different requirements and a lot of different reporting mechanisms. So, it could be any number of things that go wrong when we don't get the reimbursement.

Okay. And then, sorry, just my brain's like a little bit slower now from all the whole day, but if it they're mostly getting reimbured after the new fiscal year, right? So, then does that make it counting hard because it's coming in after the new fiscal year? I don't see.

So, so what we have to do is we prepare a schedule at the end of the fiscal year and our new grant um coordinators um taking control of that this year. That's been one of her tasks. I've given her the schedule. We detail out every single grant for the year. We show how much money it should have had. We show how much we received, how much was spent. We show what should be an outstanding receivable. And then then we start booking all the receivables. If there was a receivable from last year that we received in, we we obviously change that and we analyze them to look for anomalies to look for issues to look for concerns and then then we break it out for the auditors. Um particularly the the federal grants is is one they have to specifically look at closely and they'll pick their single audit items from that and then they look into the ones they choose from that very very closely and make sure everything's exactly on on track with that one and in compliance.

Okay. Yeah. And that's exactly why having the grant manager that manages our grants is so important because the monitoring of grants is like so much. Right. That's good. So Patty, the um or go ahead. No, no, you go here, Patty. Um so the two it looks like the two biggest outstanding grant reimbursements are the senior center and the airport. Yes. Okay. That's that's the major portion of the six million. Yes, it is. Right. And is airport FAA or FIA or

um they're either it's either FAA or state? I didn't look at the specific grants, but I I did alert as soon as I noticed them, I reached out to our grant coordinator and I let her know that I need her to focus on those to make sure we we get that rolling and make sure we get caught up and recognize if there's some kind of issue or concern with them. Okay, any other questions? Thank you. Um, if we have a motion to approve the Motion to approve resolution number R2026-13 third quarter fiscal year 2026 budget adjustments and report of actuals.

Councelor Piano. Yes. Councelor Garcia. Yes. Councelor Yosley. Yes. Councelor Molino. Yes. Mayor DeFoli. Yes. Thank you. Um, our next item is a budget adjustment in the amount of $2,200,600 for the Navajo Gallup water supply project. Um, and our speaker today is Jackie Lea.

Hello, Mayor Council. I come to you for a budget adjustment in the amount of $2,200,600. This is for the Navajo Gallop water supply project. in particular. This is for the engineering design and procurement services for pumping plant number eight. What this will do is we'll give you a complete set of bid documents including 100% plans and specifications that will be provided based on the completed 30% design package. The work includes all NMDOT permitting in coordination with the Bureau of Reclamation. The funds for this will be coming from the Bureau of Reclamation grant that we received and this grant is 100% reimburseable. With that, I stand for any questions.

Go ahead, sir. You have a question. Really quick, mayor. Um, when are we receiving the funds from this? We receive the funds pretty much as as we go along. Okay. Um, the poly sends sends me a statement and invoices and I get approval from the Bureau of Le Bureau of Reclamation to enter it into a system called ASAP and that what that does is it initiates the payment request and that in turn sends the payment to us via a wire transfer. It's usually once a month that I do this. So it's not like the 2,200 200,000 is come to us like all at once.

No. No. But we are asking the council to approve that total lump sum. Yes. To move over to get reimbured. We will solely get reimbured for it. Reimburse it till like whenever whenever we expend all of this $2 million. So let me let me help you there. So the way the ASAP system works is um the statements or the cont from the engineer the contractor are sent in through a computer through their ASAP system. Um the check is written direct deposited or is it a check? It's an a AC. So it's a direct deposit back to the city and then that and the city doesn't cut the check to whoever it is until that that is received.

That's right. So, so there, so the city is what we the beauty about the reclamation project, not only with the Navajo Gallop, with the water smart, is that the city's never out any money. Um, and I wish that we could convince the state on more projects that they could reimburse that way instead of waiting six and seven months. Um, the I hand the federal government, they're way ahead. Um, and they they they understand that people could be out a lot of money. people don't have that kind of money to to to to uh hold or to keep the state uh the federal government whole while the contractor is working. So, right. So, the more reclamation water smart grants we get, the better off we are. That's right.

Okay. But then clarification, when are we when will we be done with the engineering design of pumping plant 8? That's a good question. I'm not quite sure.

So, the uh sorry, I'll answer the question. So tomorrow we have our we have a coordination meeting with reclamation and you know the um the whole project now is coming to a deadline. You know they want to make sure that we have water in the pipeline by December 31st, 2029. So this project and then they but they want to actually have the line activated before then. So the uh the the intent of the pumping plant 8 is to get it completed and installed by the middle of 2028. That'll give us another 18 months what they call commissioning uh before the while the other and the other plants are being built. Now they got to do their part you know up on the they got some big big issues they got to they got to they got to overcome but we'll anticipate this project to be done by 2028 mid mid 2028. Um, any other questions?

I got I got a question. After this plant, this pumping plant is built, it's our plant. Yes. We're responsible for maintenance and Right. So, that that's the um the city of Gallop is takes it takes uh ownership of all the assets which is great for our assets. Um but then of course we have the o operation maintenance and that's one of the things Patty is working on our we're working on the uh rate study and then we will be going into the operation maintenance and replacement negotiations with reclamation and NA here um next couple this year starting the negotiations up

good good like to make a motion everybody's done motion to approve the bud budget adjustment in the amount of 2.2 2,600 for the Naval Gallup water supply project. Second. Councelor Molina. Yes. Councelor Piano. Yes. Councelor Garcia. Oh, yes. Yes. Councelor Yazy. Yes. Mayor Dewali. Yes. Thank you. Thanks.

Okay. The um next item is the adoption of the Gallup comprehensive safety action plan. Um and our speaker today is going to be um excellent page. Looks like I picked the wrong night to be on the agenda, but and uh

Okay. So, uh, staff is, uh, requesting that, uh, city council review, uh, resolution number R2026-15, uh, which will adopt the GAL, uh, the Gallup comprehensive safety action plan 2026. Now within the US Department of Transportation, safe streets and roads for all grant program, comprehensive safety action plans, also referred to as action plans are the basic building blocks to significantly improve road safety. Action plans are comprehensive safety plans aimed at reducing and eliminating serious injury and fatal crashes affecting all roadway users. Action plans use data analysis to characterize roadway safety problems and strengthen a community approach through the through projects and strategies that address the most significant safety risks. Uh the SS4A grant program is guided by the safe system approach which involves a paradigm shift to improve safety culture, increased collaboration across all safety stakeholders and refocus transportation system design and operation on anticipating human mistakes and lessening impact forces to reduce crash severity and save lives and improve crash responses. Crash response to

Everybody wave better. Is Claire talking to you? Is she calling you excuse me? Oh, sorry. We Sorry. Y'all were muted so I couldn't hear what was going on. Is it Is it time for the presentation? Highlands. PowerPoint now. Oh, no. She's still there, but she can't hear us. Can you hear us clear? Yeah, I can hear you. Can you guys hear me? PowerPoint now. Okay, great. Sorry, I think I think y'all were on mute for a second, but I think we're good now.

Can you maximize it on the screen? Can y'all see my screen? Yeah. Yeah, but it's tiny. Okay, go ahead. Tiny up there. Is it tiny? Let me try again. No, we lost it.

Is that okay? He's on cops comes to mind. I don't know. Can you all see my screen? Yes.

Okay. Sorry. Okay. Well, I I missed what um CB was saying there, but um uh my name is Claire Haley. I'm a senior planner with Bohan and Houston. Um and we've been working with CB and Nikki on the Gallup comprehensive safety action plan. Um so I I presented to city council last November. So some of you may remember that presentation. Um we're here now today to talk about the finalized plan and the public outreach that we've done since that plan. um and also talk about um the vision zero commitment which we're um putting in front of council today. Um, so I'm going to touch quickly on the plan framework, why it's important to have a safety action plan, um, and then talk about the the components of the action plan, quickly go over the crash statistics, talk about the survey results from our community survey, um, go over the priority projects in the plan, and then lastly, um, we can have a discussion about that vision zero commitment, um, which is a required component of the plan, um, and basically would be a commitment from the city of Gallup to, um, to an eventual reduction of um fatal and serious injury crashes. Um so this planning process uh the funding for this project came from the NMDOT. Um so they have a technical assistance um planning program and so this plan was created at no cost to the city of Gallup. Um we did work closely with our Gallup city partners in the development of the plan. Uh and the whole purpose of the plan is to create a federally compliant safety action plan um which would make Gallup eligible to apply for federal funding under the safe streets and inroads for all program. Um that's also known as SS4A. Um so that funding comes with a 20% match and then the rest of the funding comes from the federal government. Um we just heard that the last round of funding is open for that um funding opportunity. Um it'll be open until the

end of May. Um so this is kind of good timing for this plan to be completed. Um there's over a billion dollars nationally for safety projects. So it's it's a really great funding opportunity for Gallup. Um and then lastly, that leadership commitment and goal setting piece or that vision zero commitment is a required component of the safety action plan. Um along with several other required components like um data analysis, public engagement, um stakeholder engagement and things like that. Um, so I'm just going to really go over some of the um, key aspects of the safety action plan. Um, I I showed this slide last time I was here, but I just want to touch on it quickly again. Um, just to kind of highlight the the severity of the of the problem here in Gallup. Um, so with the 5-year period that we analyzed, there were over 3,000 total crashes within Gallup city limits. 32 people were killed and 95 were seriously injured. And there were 15 fatal and 18 serious injury pedestrian crashes. Um so those are really high numbers. Um and I put up there also the fatality rate um per 100,000 people. So you can kind of compare Gallup with New Mexico in the US. Um and you can see there that Gallup has a much higher roadway fatality rate than um than other places. Um, so I bring this up not to be negative, but just to highlight how important this issue is and um and highlight how important it is to to make progress um towards that vision zero goal.

Claire, is this because of lighting or what? Like is there a specific reason why we're having more fatalities in our area?

Yeah, I mean lighting is definitely um in the plan as as a safety focus area um and a lot of the crashes did happen because of dark conditions. Um, and it's really not a simple answer. There's not really one thing that's gonna fix this issue. It's a lot of different things that come together. Um, so yeah, I'll touch on the plan recommendations in a little bit that kind of show, you know, what needs to happen to to work on this problem. Um, but lighting is definitely a big one. Um, and this map just shows the crash heat map. So, these are the the fatal and serious injury crashes, which are the ones we focus on. Um, and you can really see the hot spots. Uh, and I wanted to bring this up just to show that there are a lot of hot spots on the New Mexico DOT owned roadways, um, I40 and the and other highways in town. Um, but there are also a lot of crashes that happen on Gallup's roadways as well. Um, and so we know there's a lot of planning and safety efforts um, being done at the DOT right now to help improve safety on their roadways. Um, so we really wanted to tailor this plan for Gallup owned roadways, um, and kind of make it specific towards actions that, uh, what you can do as a city to to improve safety. Okay, I'm going to talk quickly about the outreach survey. Um, this survey was open in February. Uh, we had, uh, 215 responses to the survey, so a pretty good um, response rate for that survey. Um, we asked respondents about plan priorities. Um, so we had them rank different um, recommendations and priorities and and let us know what they think is the most important um, recommendation that Gallup should focus on. Um, so that includes um, location specific roadway projects like corridor reconstruction projects um, and intersection projects and things like that. Um, but it also kind of goes beyond that. Um, it is a comprehensive

safety action plan. So, we're not just focusing on infrastructure, but we're also looking at policy, um, programming, and enforcement as part of this. Um, and so that's all kind of wrapped up in those recommendations. Um, we did ask the public about the vision zero commitment and what they thought about that, and I'll get to that in a little bit here. Um, and then we also had an open-ended comment field, too. Um, and we found that those comments really aligned really well with what we were asking in the um, in the plan priority questions as well. Um so we took the recommendations and sorted them into these buckets um and then folks could rank them on how important they are. So these are in order of um how people ranked them in the survey. So the most important priority would be roadway design and construction then enforcement and then programming and then evaluation planning and policy. And within each of these buckets we had um respondents um pick their you know their top recommendations that they would want to see happen. Um so for the roadway design and infrastructure category um people wanted to see more accessible sidewalks and crossings uh better street lighting and crosswalk improvements. Um for enforcement um the top recommendations were increase speeding and DW DWI enforcement and expand police training on strategies to reduce DWI for programming. um expanded alcohol use disorder treatment programs and then establishing a safe routes to school program which would um kind of help create uh safe ways for kids to walk back to school. And then for evaluation, planning and policy um the top top recommendation um by a pretty wide margin was um uh maintenance. So having better plans for striping and resurfacing. Um so what we did is we took that feedback from the survey and we combined them with these other project prioritization criteria. Um so we looked

at crash history, project cost, um their impact on vulnerable populations, uh which we defined as children, seniors, and people with disabilities. Um the impact on vulnerable road users, which are bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit riders. Um so those folks that aren't protected by a vehicle if a crash happens. Um that public support was from that survey. technical feasibility and then um would it be located in an especially disadvantaged area. Um so with the help of our stakeholders we developed this criteria um and weighed them and ranked the projects. Um and then these were some of the top projects that came out of that process. Um and I just want to make sure to clarify that um you know this plan isn't prescriptive. It's not like um it's not like a to-do list that you have to do if you adopt the plan. um that but these are the recommendations and hopefully kind of give you um just a way to narrow it down a little bit and focus on some of the biggest issues. Um so it's up to you all what you want to apply for funding for, what you want to implement. Um but this kind of maybe can help you focus that effort on what's going to be most impactful. Um so this pretty well reflects um what we heard in the survey. Um some of the top projects were coordinating on um better driver and bicycling education programs, that safe routes to school program. Um we have a few road improvement projects um like one on Aztec Avenue and then one on um Park Avenue as well. Um developing a bicycle and pedestrian master plan. Um some of the recommendations are kind of more citywide systemic improvements like um citywide crosswalk improvements. um things like restriping your current crosswalks, adding more visible signage and safety treatments um you know kind of throughout the city. Um police training, um a citywide examination of speed limits and speed limit signage to make sure that those speed limits are appropriate for the

roadway context and not too not too fast. Um developing a complete streets policy to make sure that new roadways and roadways that that are retrofitted have facilities for walking and biking. And then again that um striping maintenance and resurfacing plan. Um there are other um priorities and projects in the plan as well, but I just wanted to pull out these these ones that scored highest. Um so now I'm going to touch on that vision zero commitment. So um what is vision zero? Um it's a national strategy, international strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries while increasing safe, healthy and equitable mobility for all. And I think CB mentioned the safe systems approach. So this is Federal Highway Administration's um uh kind of their strategy for achieving vision zero. So again, it's really comprehensive. It's not just looking at roadways, it's also looking at safer behavior, making sure that speeds are safe. Um that postc crash EMS um response is um is really quality. Um and I think you know the principles are kind of on the outside of this graphic if you can see them. Um, and I really just want to highlight this top one that says death and serious injuries are unacceptable. Um, and that's really, I think, the cornerstone of vision zero. Um, that says our goal should be zero traffic fatalities and injuries on our roadways because it's just not acceptable and there are um things we can do and things we should do um to make sure that that um that people are safe on our roadway systems. Uh so like I mentioned before, the vision zero commitment is a required component of the safety action plan for um the plan to be eligible for future federal funding. Um the vision zero commitment is flexible. So um you know, there's a couple different ways you can phrase it and um and structure it. Um most of them pledge to achieve zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries.

Um some communities will commit to a percent reduction. So like a 50% reduction in fatalities by a certain year. Um there's no funding repercussions if the commitment is not achieved. We've had some communities kind of express um some concern that you know well if we don't get to zero traffic fatalities. Is the federal government going to ask for their money back? Um the answer is no. They're not going to do that. Um we know it's an aspirational goal um for a lot of communities. It's going to take a long time to get to zero. Um but it does show kind of um good intentions and kind of that um Gallup is is taking this issue seriously and that's what the federal government wants to see when they approve these grants. Um so we did ask survey respondents what they thought about the vision zero commitment. Um we threw a couple different options out there for people to respond to. Uh we got kind of mixed results. I don't think we got a clear consensus on what um exactly they wanted the the phrasing to be on the vision zero commitment. Um but we did get general support for vision zero. Um so not a lot of comments were opposed to the concept of a vision zero commitment. Um so today we have the plan um in front of you for adoption. Within that plan is a vision is a vision zero commitment to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2045. Um so that's already in the plan. If you adopt it as is, that will be the vision zero commitment. Um, if you'd like, you can also amend that commitment and we can put the amended commitment in the plan as well. So, we wanted to um, you know, leave it up to you all to decide what that commitment should be. Um, and just note that we can amend that um, before the plan is finalized. Um, and that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for letting me speak to you today. Um, and I'm here if you um, have any questions.

Well, thanks Claire and hi Denise. Um, a couple questions that you know with the safety plan and I, you know, I know you guys working on this a long time. Um, the the yellow a lot of the orange and the yellow is in highway department properties, rideaways. What What do in order to get federal funding, what do we have what do we have to get from the highway departments? Sure, we could say 100%, but um how does the highway department treat this?

Yeah. So, to get the federal safe streets for all funding, um you you don't need any, you know, if you're working on local gallop owned roadways, you don't need any permissions from NMDOT. Um you know, they don't need to be involved with that at all. uh obviously to get to vision zero and zero fatalities. Um there's a lot of work on the DOT owned roadways that needs to happen. Um so that's I mean that's just something that that will have to be uh worked on collaboratively with NMDOT and I know that um I you know I can't speak for them but I know that they are very interested in in working in safety and Gallup um and there's a lot of ongoing projects right now um that are focused on on Gallup interchanges. So yeah, and that's one of the things, you know, we have particular intersections that we want to definitely fix because there's more. We couldn't believe the fatalities, you know, at the especially the one at Mitmore or County Road One, five fatalities in five years. Um, but it's not listed in your in your list of uh projects there, but it's it's more, you know, those that list was kind of more broad except for the Hoso Park and stuff. um a amending those lists, is that something that has to be done if we do have particular projects that we want to see done?

That's a good question. I think that if you want to apply for funding um for a project, it needs to be in this action plan. Um and I I will say that the the recommendations in the plan um they are not on any NMDOT owned roadways. So NMDOT is not eligible for funding under this program. Um so it's only local communities that can get the funding. Um so if that location is on an NMDOT owned roadway, it wouldn't be eligible for that funding. Um

but I will mayor this Thank you. This is Denise. I will say that we have already shared some of these results um in a in draft form in conversations on the projects that we are working on um with the NMDOT and you could certainly do the same to encourage them to as Claire said get their own funding source and all of the data and analysis that was completed in here could support that for them. They just couldn't get the safety action plan funds. Doesn't mean they couldn't use this data to get other funds for you.

Right? So, this this is mainly for local roads outside of the rideway. Um, you know, that was one of our other questions with a rail was a railroad component uh to accompany this. Um, you know, because most of the there's a lot of deaths on the railroad and I don't know how many of these were counted as the railroad was not part of the study at all. And I can understand why now because this is local roads. Yes, it's local. We will never meet the zero. local roads that go across the railroad tracks. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I guess um you know, we can adopt this plan start you know what what applications would we start park or what what projects do you guys anticipate?

That's something we have to look at after the plan is adopted which priorities you guys want to start with you know um but we do need a the way it's drafting now is it's it's like 100% in 20 years. So if you guys want to reduce that to like 50% or whatever and like Claire said, it's not set in stone. It's just something to shoot for. If we don't reach it, it's not going to affect us in any way, but we are making an effort to get there is basically what

And what about the railroad portion? I as as a you know, as a component is does is that I guess I'm asking Claire or Denise is is the railroad because you know that's that's that's the big issue in Gallup. Um what what do we do with the railroad especially like a Metmore road in particular? Third street. Third street.

Third street not second's highway but third street. See Gallup applied for the safe streets grant last year. We didn't have a construction component. We found out um the cog applied for us. Um it was rejected when we were in Washington DC. We we asked them for a debrief. Um they did call us the next week week and gave us a debrief and said ours was passed on forformational purposes for the committee but with a does not qualify because it was just portion of it was planning. Um there was no construction. They they said it was a great great written plan but it needed a construction component. Today we met with Jere Jeremy Wgner from BNSF. He's in their Washington Washington DC office. he's taken these plans to um his boss in Houston. So, it's quite quite a bit up the poll. Um we're at 66 60% completion I believe on the crossing the pedest

the pedestrian crossing. Uh I believe so. I haven't looked at it. I think Alicia said 60 when I talked.

Yeah, this she sent in it today. It was 60%. So, we're we're looking at making that a a part of our safe streets application this year, the construction component, because that that's vital on the the deaths we have there, the the accidents, the there there's there's just no no safe crossing. Um the railroad would support it and and help pay the match, the state DOT, um you know, but the thing that's missing is is is we have no rail data. So, you know, when we say transportation plan, that's the original transportation in Gala.

You just say it wagon, train, and railroad and and railroad still is a big portion of our transportation. Um, us not riding it, but interacting with it and and on our roadways and and and a lot of our pedestrians. So, we're we're looking at some Chrissy grants through the the Rail Transportation Administration um to to put up fencing to stop the illegal crossings. Um but again, second and third street are are legal crossings. Ment is is a legal crossing and we have big issues. So, we definitely need to adopt this. I'm going to ask the council to adopt this, but I am asked if we can add an amend addendum to it at a later date on on on our rail data because I think that's going to be big on our our safe streets application. BNSF did say, you know, we have one of the worst worst safety not safety worst fatality rates for for the railroad anywhere. And and and I think that's something we need to be addressing. Um

so we can get the data that would be on a separate project. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Separate. This plan covers vehicle safety and vehicle pedestrian conflicts and things like that. We'll have to do a separate railroad uh data gathering project in order to get that information, but it wouldn't be incorporated into this plan. It would be separate. Yeah, I'm getting texts that they're still not getting sound on Zoom.

We uh I think the main thing is it would be an amendment or I or we'll let Denise and Claire decide how to do that. You guys have probably been down this railroad issue before. Huh. Yeah, we can do a focused review of that, but I'll just note that probably one or potentially one of the challenges for you to get the safety action money is you do have to have the approved plan. So, I'm certain that they will be much more um you know, receptive to giving you safety action funds with your application if this plan is approved. Yeah, sounds good.

Yeah. And I'll just note on on the rail crash data, um that that data is not included with the the standard police report crash data. Um so, you know, if you can get that data, I think that would that would add a lot of benefit to be able to look at that. Um but but we didn't have access to that for this plan. We we can reach out to our police chief. They they have all the all the data. um the pedestrian fatalities, the vehicle fatality, uh the accidents, etc. So, we we can pull that data for you and hopefully it could be a quick amendment because we we already got the COG working on the grant.

Yeah. Whatever they come up with. Um, I have a quick data interpretation question just in a glance at the survey responses, which I'm really impressed that we got over 200. That's great. Um, but there's a lot of them that don't look like there's like clear front runners. So, I'm when you're interpreting that and you're saying this is what it the survey resulted in, are you just taking the top like whatever was the top even if it wasn't by a very wide margin?

Yeah. So, um, what what we did, we kind of had a a unique setup for the survey where we had folks pick their like what they thought was the most important and the least important recommendation. And we did that so that um, basically so we wouldn't throw up 30 recommendations in front of people and have them get overwhelmed with responding to the survey. Um, so, you know, I I think with that one, we were able to kind of see like which ones were were people like really interested in. Um yeah, and the the public survey prioritization piece was kind of a um you know, just one piece of our prioritization um method. So um you know, we kind of put it as high, medium, low support um put them in those three buckets um based on the data and um you know, used as part of that broader prioritization process.

Okay. Thank you. And I just want to state for the record for um councelor piano that I'm excited to see more roundabouts if we said you don't like roundabouts. The thing is they're so effective though.

Yeah. No, but also just in regard to the um thank you guys so much for your work on this. I I really appreciate it. It's a lot of work that went into it and um I think it's a really great vision for our community and thank you for hanging out to the end of our late council meeting um in regard to DWI. You know, we have a long ways to go on that in our community and it's going to have to there's a lot of different approaches. It's not a simple thing to fix. And um so just want to comment on that too that I know that's a big factor in a lot of our uh fatal and serious injury crashes. And I know we're doing a lot, but it's going to be a hard road to to do more and eliminate that factor.

Yeah, I think we focus mainly on the the lowhanging fruit like the the maintenance end, the striping end, the crosswalks, things that we could tackle and we could get money for. Sidewalks are a big factor in that thing. I know there was a push to get rid of sidewalks in certain areas, but that's actually going backwards. You know, that's why people are getting run over because they have no place to walk safely. So, we need to keep sidewalks and push sidewalks. Um ADA compliant sidewalks is a big factor. So, there's a lot out there that we could do with the money that's available now and then focus on the big issues like DWI, you know, programs and things like that.

And CB, I know this isn't my district, but I know Ron handled it. told the person to talk to Ron it sounds like Ron you did talk to I know someone mentioned me the lighting out out at the I think it's the TA right at that end of it is so dark you can't even see and people have told so I I told him yes I'll bring that up counselor right so Ron's on it but yeah I mean that sorry council but I mean just some of the lighting in certain areas too where people are driving it is so hard to see and that's an accident because a lot of people walk at night and they don't you know they're wearing dark clothes and Oh yeah lighting is a huge issue Um, you know, on the on the the DOT rightways, I think we have an agreement with them that we maintain the lighting. I'm not sure about that, but

there is no lighting. There is no lighting here there. Yeah, it's not signals. There's the signals, but there also lighting. So, there's two different, right? I'm talking street lights. Yeah, street lights. There are none there. that that has been brought up in the exit 16 design meetings and and hopefully it's going to be addressed and I think the striping Oh gosh, it's just terrible. There's not most definitely. We need to see something about the striping everywhere. Yes. Yeah. You got to guess which lane you're on. That's a big assumption

that that's primar that's again that that's that's not a city that that's primarily the state roads and and we do not we don't do the striping on those. We need the state to come in and do the striping. So this report can reinforce us going to district six saying they're even saying it's not just us. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's added support for them to get it done. Um Maloney is is absolutely ridiculous. Manuel Silverp pass. You you turn there onto um off of Port or Mamira onto 66 and you guess which lane you're in. Yeah. Especially if it's dark. Especially if it's dark and wet.

It's a free. It's very scary. So So again, most most of the city roads are just a two lane. So So you know where you're at. It's when you get into those four lane, which are the state highways, that that's getting beyond the scope of this and and and the scope of us applying for grants, unless we want to apply for money to do the work on their land, which then they'll be mad at us, which is an option. Well, we do the work. We'd go and do the work for them and then they'd complain that we're doing right on their rightway. Yeah, we offer, but they don't they don't they didn't allow it because we said we would just they don't even want to do that. I think we have plenty on our local streets that we could use the money. Yeah.

Potholes. Yeah, there's a lot we could do. City. Absolutely. Yes. So, I'd recommend council adopting it, but asking for an addendum with real data. Good idea. Um, we could have a motion. I make a motion to approve the adoption of the Gallup comprehensive safety action plan 2026 with the exception of an addendum to put add railroad safety into it. Second. Councelor Molina. Yes. Councelor Garcia. Yes. Councelor Piano. Yes. Councelor Yazi. Yes. Paul. Yes. Thank you. All right, Evan. It's done.

Thanks. Yep. We'll uh it's approved and we'll even have a railroad study done. Um the the next item is is adjournment. Yeah, there's comments by council if anybody wants to make comments. Motion to adjourn. Wait, wait, I'm making a comment. I'm done.

I am making a comment. I'm tired, but I'm making a com. Um, I just wanted to say that I had to really say this for I attended the administrative appreciation day and Marcus and Tasha, Matilda, those that put on the event, you did a great job to appreciate the employees. I just want to say to the directors and the and um supervisors to please let your employees attend is very important appreciation day for the employees cuz they really enjoyed it and we enjoyed um uh having them there and appreciating them there. So thank you. It was a great success and I look forward to next year and it being bigger and greater. Thank you Marcus.

Thank you Linda. I have comments. Okay. you know, the one time we're here till like 9:30. I have a bunch of comments, but I'll try to be fast. I just want to make mention.

Hey, I just want to make mention that this Saturday um is the Dos Mayo the city event at the courthouse square. Um from I don't remember 5:00 PM to 10 p.m. No, that's not right. Is that Yeah. 5:00 pm to 10 5:00 pm to 10 p.m. So, that should be a fun time. People should come out. There's also a Mother's Day craft sale this Saturday at the mall as well. So you can go to a craft sale, then go have tacos and dance to music. So super fun. Um there's also on May 6 there's a UNM job fair. On May 5th in at 6 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. there's a Chamber of Commerce business after hours at the Hilton Garden Inn. Um, on May 7th, there is the spring student art show at UNM from 2 to 6. And then there's also a campus pride resource fair at UNM from 11 to 2 um, tomorrow. Actually, tomorrow. Yep. Um, and then lastly, but not least, there is the start of the Route 66 Centennial traveling exhibit is at the Rex Museum starting May 9th all the way to December 31st. So, this coincides with um our centennial and all the Route 66 activities, but this is the traveling exhibit that we got selected for and it starts May 9th at the Rex Museum. So, I think that'll be really cool to like go check out. So, a lot of things happening in the next week or two. So, I want to share that so that people don't say, "I'm going to leave town." Don't leave town. We have so much going on. Okay, that's it.

Thank you, Sarah. With that, we have a motion to adjourn. One more. Go. Yes, feel free.

No, I I I I want to thank Chief Parrot and and and the Gallup Fire Department. Um, you know, they've been staying real busy. Sunday, high winds, um, apartment fire in GCO, which we have anou to cover. Um they they did a fabulous job. I mean that was what a 6 8 unit apartment complex that it could have gone up with the apartment complex next door but his team did such a fabulous job on their attack. They pretty much limited the main damage to the one apartment. There was some the common attic space damage to to the others, but the the rest of the people's goods were saved and and and in that kind of 20ome mph winds with high gusts in inferno type thing, the response time to go. I I just got to give kudos to Galif Fire for for what they did.

Yes. Wonderful. Motion to adjurnn. Fo. Yes. Councelor Garcia. Councelor Yazy. Yes. Councelor Molun. Yes. Mayor DeFali. Yes. Before everyone leaves, if you'll sign the budget resolution and the audit resolution items. CB, how many years on on the train did it for this? Uh, they went back.