Council - Regular Meeting

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Good afternoon. City Council work session. Today is Monday, April 13th, 2026. It's about five. Now. We'll start with a moment of silence for the men and women of the United States Armed Forces and for the police and Las Cruces Fire Department. Keep our city safe 24 over seven 365. Please join me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Here we go. First thing on the agenda is to read the closed meeting statement. The City of Las Cruces Council met in closed session today, April 13th, 2026. The meeting started at 10:04 a.m. the following were attendance. Mayor Enriquez, Mayor Pro Tem Munoz Councilor Bencomo Councilor. Karen Councilor Harris, City manager, City Attorney Brad Douglas, Henry Becker, Christine Rivera, our city clerk. Kyle Anderson, Joel Richards, Jose Vargas from HR police. Lieutenant Cody Austin housing. Natalie Green.

From parking lot. Katherine Harris Rogers from Public works. Jimmy Moreno from land management. Bill Ham, economic development. Elizabeth Peters, Jane Lambert from housing as well from parking lot. Steve Bingaman and assistant city manager David Sedillo, outside council, Chris DeFilippo. We met and we had these items. The discussion bargaining strategy, preliminary for the collective bargaining negotiations between the policy making body and the bargaining unit, which is closed pursuant to New Mexico State Statute 1978, section 1015 dash 1H5. We also discuss pending litigation regarding Brandon Barron versus the City of Las Cruces, which is closed pursuant to an MSA 1978, section 1015 dash 187. We also discuss items brought by housing, parks and recreation, and public works for the purchase, acquisition or disposal of real property or water rights by the public body, which is closed pursuant to an MSA 1978, section 1015 dash 1H8. We also discussed the pending or threatening litigation regarding 028 productions, LLC versus City of Las Cruces, also closed pursuant to Nmsa 1978. Section 1015 1H7. We also discussed the city of Cruces versus Land Investment

Corporation, which is closed pursuant to Nmsa 1978 1015 dash 1H7. The reading of 12 p.m. So now open up the work session agenda items 2.1. The first one is Municipal Court. We have Judge Anthony Phillips.

Good afternoon mayor. Honorable members of the city Council Anthony Phillips municipal court judge one for the Las Cruces Municipal Court. Thank you for the invite to be here. I was asked to come in and give an update on the municipal court, the staffing of the municipal court and some identified needs of the municipal court. So I appreciate the opportunity to present to council regarding those issues. I just wanted I know the council knows this, but I want to give a little overview of the municipal court for members of the public municipal court, Las Cruces Municipal Court. We're currently at 135 East Griggs. We have two full time municipal judges. Excuse me. We're a court of limited jurisdiction in New Mexico. What that means is we could only hear certain types of cases in the municipal in the Las Cruces municipal courts. We're limited in that. We only hear alleged violations of the Las Cruces Municipal Code. We're governed by the rules. I'm sorry, I didn't. Rules of the New Mexico Supreme Court rule set eight, which is the municipal court, rules of procedure, municipal courts, not a court of record. None of the proceedings are audio recorded. We don't handle jury trials. They're all bench trials. In all cases, if requested, can be appealed to the Third Judicial District Court de Novo, which means all over again someone's entitled to a new trial in front of a district court judge. For the most part, we handle these types of cases petty misdemeanors, DWI, traffic, animal control and codes. Petty misdemeanors are primarily housed within chapter 19 of the Municipal code. Those are batteries, assaults, resisting, evading or obstructing an officer, shoplifting, criminal trespass, larceny, harassment, criminal damage to property, all petty misdemeanors under

your municipal code. We also have jurisdiction per ordinance to handle DWI offenses first, second and third offenses. Most of the petty misdemeanors carry a maximum sentence of up to 90 days of jail and up to a $500 fine. The DWI are the only exception to that. On second and third offenses, they carry a maximum exposure of 179 days in jail traffic. We handle traffic. Those are contained within your municipal code. Chapter 27 Animal Control Cases. Chapter seven the updated animal ordinance that you all recently passed. Those are cases that we hear and we also hear codes cases. So that's just a little overview of the municipal court. I wanted to touch on the move to City Hall for court operations from June 2025 to March of 2026. As you all are aware, we we operated or we had substantial issues with the Hvac system, some other issues at the Municipal Court building, and we, in conjunction with conversations with city management, the decision was made to move us to City Hall and we did that. We were here from approximately middle to late June to March of of 2026. We just moved back last month. We operated several places within City Hall. We had the second floor conference rooms. We were, I think it's 2007, A, B, and C, those were made into two courtrooms and a clerk area where clerks worked. We also had the computer lab on the second floor. That's where our records department was. And then we also madam clerk offered her conference room and in the city clerk's office. And that's where our compliance department was housed. And we also occupied a portion of the community development front

desk where folks were. That was essentially our reception area where cases were processed that was operational due to the dedicated public servants at the municipal court. That was not an ideal situation to move to City Hall. But I give all the credit, and I'm very fortunate to work with 18 individuals over there at the municipal court that made that happen. We had clerks working out of banker's boxes. We had records staff back and forth to the courthouse to get records if they were needed for a particular day. So all credit goes to to the municipal court staff to make that operational. And as I'll get into, we didn't get really a cut in the amount of work that we got. Our case numbers went up and and it was a testament to the dedication of, of the staff at the municipal court. I wanted to touch on the public access website that we recently were able to go live with last year. This was a. And I'm excited to have this available to the public. You can access this website through the Las Cruces Municipal Court web page. This allows the public to search cases for individuals to find out their court dates, and also see what what cases are being heard by a particular judge. That day when I was an attorney practicing in the area, one of my big knocks on the municipal court was you couldn't really have any sort of online capabilities to to see what was happening in the municipal court. And we were able to get this up and running. Last year, there was a huge project that had to be completed before we could make this available. As you all may recall, when cannabis was legalized in the state of New Mexico, there was also some corresponding legislation that dealt with

expungement of cannabis cases. And the staff. Again, testament to the staff. We had to review the staff, and this started before my time in the municipal court, but there had to be 11 over 11,000 cases that were identified, reviewed to determine whether or not they were eligible for expungement pursuant to the state statute reviewed. And nothing like this had ever come up before. So we had to develop a process to expunge those cases. So this couldn't go live until we were able to get that project completed. So we're pretty excited about this. To have this capability in the municipal court, it enhances our our service to the community and our transparency to the public. So I just put a couple slides relating to that. That's the search. And then this is how you determine or check dockets for each judge for the particular day. I wanted to touch on our case numbers, and I just wanted to. This slide is to show the current demand and usage of the municipal court. This is not to show that these types of violations are happening more or less in the community. I have no idea if that is the case or not. It's not appropriate for me to talk as to that, a lot of these types of cases can be cited or charged under corresponding state statutes. In the magistrate, the Dona Ana County Magistrate Court. So this is just shows the current demand that we have in the municipal court. A lot of our time, most of our time as judges, is spent in the petty misdemeanor and the DWI cases. Those are the ones that oftentimes, most of the time on the petty misdemeanor cases, have attorneys involved almost 100%

of the time, pretty much 100% of the time. On the DWI cases, there are attorneys involved. So this is where a lot of our staff time, a lot of our the court time is being is being taken up currently. And all these cases under New Mexico law have to be brought to trial within six months from the date of arraignment. So we're constantly setting these cases for trial within the timeline for the case to go to trial. DWI are more complex. Their technical in nature. Oftentimes a lot of well, there is collateral consequences associated with with DWI cases. So they take a lot of time and they're they're pretty complex in some circumstances. So the court sets these for half day trials, every single one of these has a half day trial. Generally dedicated. A judge's time is dedicated to. So I'd like to just point out as to the usage from from 2023 to to 2025. You can see we had almost a, well, a 61% increase in those types of cases. And then and the DWI cases at two and a half time. And essentially we're already at in 2026, the amount of DWI is filed for the whole year in the municipal court in 2023. So we are extremely busy. Currently we have there is a high usage, high demand on the municipal court. I wanted to highlight a couple things that have happened in the municipal court since 2024. We've increased the capacity and ability to handle walk in court appearances. We do that four times a week. Folks can come in and appear in the mornings, four times a week, all the time, so we don't know who's coming in each particular day. This morning when I had

them, I think we had about 16 or 17 individuals that walk in and we process those cases and get them in front of the court. And so this is just to increase the accessibility of the public to to the municipal court. We've also expanded capacity for remote court appearances. These are generally on traffic citations. We allow telephonic appearances. So if someone's not able to make it during our walk in session, we allow them to appear remotely. We also all traffic hearings are predominantly handled remotely, so the. That's a benefit to the officer and and the individual. They're allowed to appear remotely. In all those cases are are processed and heard that way. We've also in an effort to reduce failures to appear, we we provide notice to individuals at the time the hearing is set. So that's very important. And that's another demand I've asked of the staff when someone comes into court and their cases, they're arraigned on the particular case and then it's set for pretrial. We give them their notice right then and there, so they know exactly when they need to be back in an effort to to reduce failure to appear in court also. This is becoming more common, a facilitation of court hearings for individuals that are engaged in treatment or other community based services. We don't want to disrupt that. As far as the municipal court, if those folks contact the court, their case workers or case managers contact the court, we facilitate to allow either an extension for a time for them to appear or allow them to appear remotely. So we don't, you know, disturb positive progress that they're making. This is another side or another

part of the service to the community that we provide. We did 189 weddings in 2025. This is a positive experience with the community that the court has with the public. It's also, I believe it's positive interaction with the public for city government. A lot of these weddings were done here in City Hall, and we there's folks taking pictures outside in City Hall after their ceremony. And when we're at the courthouse, they flow into Plaza de Las Cruces and take photos. This was I'll give credit to Judge Derosset. He. When he came and was appointed, he had the idea of expanding expanding capacity to do weddings. I didn't know if there was the demand or not, but there's clearly the demand for the community. And that's a that's a service that we're lucky and we're happy to provide to the community. I want to talk a little bit about our compliance program, s o, s and alternative sentencing options. When I was appointed, when this body appointed me to the municipal court in 2023, we had limited options as far as compliance. There wasn't. There once was a compliance department at the municipal court. It had. It didn't have that many options. When I was appointed to the municipal court, we essentially had either the option of sentencing someone to a period of incarceration, or you could order something, but there was no real opportunity to follow up with that. Ensure compliance with the court. So this body has supported the court the last couple of years, and I Councilor, Bencomo and Enriquez, I know you spearheaded the support of the municipal court in 2024. We were given a case manager position. We also internally staffed our our compliance department with two

other positions. We really got this up and going in 2025, and it's still not perfect. It's we've got room for growth and further development. But we essentially stood this up from from the ground up in the municipal court. So we went appropriate. This isn't appropriate in every single case and every case is different, but when appropriate. Now we have the ability to make referrals to outpatient and inpatient treatment. We also can refer folks through to treatment court programs, through the magistrate court or the district court. We also have through the case manager, the ability to connect people through to resources, through the case manager. Also, since 2024, we also have the ability we've set up a pretrial conditions of release compliance. If a judge feels like we want a little heightened release conditions on on an individual, or they have a history of of failing to appear, we can allow them to or order them to appear in court and check in with our compliance folks. So we ensure compliance with conditions of release and ensure their appearance in court. We've also set up a post-conviction probation and supervision on non DWI cases. This and I say non DWI cases. Currently there's a memorandum of understanding in effect with the city and the county for supervision of the DWI cases. The Dona Ana County Misdemeanor Compliance Office is pretty well suited to handle the DWI cases. And so all folks that are ordered to supervision term out of out of DWI cases are supervised by the Dona Ana County misdemeanor compliance. We also have electronic monitoring, which again allows us the ability to do. This allows us alternative sentencing options and also

heightened level conditions of release. In addition, since 2024, we've stood up a defensive driving program where we can order individuals to complete defensive driving, community service, or other types of classes. These are our numbers from 2025 of the Compliance Judge and I. We have to remain fair and impartial and neutral, so we don't get really involved in the supervision of individuals, because they may come before the court on a non compliance hearing. So the court manager, Don Shultz, who's sitting to my right, she handles the supervision of this of the compliance department. But these are the numbers that occurred in 2025. And not everyone complied. Some some folks failed on on these conditions. We've had some be successful, but the main goal of our compliance department is to get their case resolved. Most of the time this is. This is post-conviction. Ensure compliance with the court orders and hopefully work with them to to get them out of the court system. Also wanted to to point out, and I put this case to cases diverted from municipal court through informal agreements between resolutions between the prosecution and the defense. As you the Council likely knows, the City Attorney's Office has taken a much more active role in the prosecution of cases in the municipal court, and this is becoming more and more a part of the court where individuals who may not have that much history or or first time offenses, they're essentially working with the city attorney's office, their attorney, and the city attorney's office to enter into informal resolutions, which I'm not aware of the conditions,

but they generally result in if those conditions are met, the case being dismissed in the municipal court. So I would like to point out that that that's currently happening in the municipal court. Staffing. We currently have two full time municipal judges. We're the only municipal court in the state that has two full time judges. We have 18 current employees and three court clerk vacancies that these are all recently vacant. We're trying to work expeditiously to get those filled. And a court compliance assistant, which we're working with HR. This was a position that we tried to fill, but based off the education and the experience requirements, we were unable to fill it at the compensation level. So we're working with HR to try and get that position filled as well. And I was asked to come talk or identify some needs of the municipal court, you know, short term and long term facility solutions. Obviously short term. We're back in the in the courthouse. We'd like to stay there through the summer. We're working pretty closely with facilities and public works to make sure any issues that are pop up currently are being addressed, and we're able to stay in the building, and facilities and public works have have been great in doing that long term facility solution. I know that this is probably a tougher conversation to have, more expensive conversation to have, but if I'm able to assist in any way, I'm happy to do that. Increased demand on staff and supplies. This is reflected the increase of of supplies is is reflected in our current budget request. We're working very quickly to get those vacancies filled, which are much needed.

But the more cases being filed in the municipal court, with more attorneys being involved, that increases pleadings and papers being filed into the court. Each pleading requires staff to to process that that pleading get it docketed in our system scanned into our system. So we've we've seen an increase not only with the the case number increase, but also the more active role of the city Attorney's office. They file a lot more pleadings and we're trying we we keep up with that demand. Indigent attorney and public defender. I know this is a conversation that's going on for a couple of years. This is currently housed. The Indigent Attorney Fund is currently housed in the municipal court budget. That's a variable. Our biggest variable expense in the municipal court budget. And we currently have two attorneys that are taking cases in the municipal court, only one that takes DWI cases. We had four when I started and two of those also two of those attorneys had federal practice in their federal practice became much more busy and involved. And they they stopped taking municipal court cases. So it's currently working how it how it is now. But and I know that there's been conversations about potentially moving this from the municipal court budget. I support that idea, but I don't know where it currently stands. And, and if I but we would like to see kind of get resolved that particular issue, because it's vital that if the city is going to prosecute the amount of cases that they are in the municipal court, that we make sure that the the

constitutionally required adequate representation is is also maintained and maintained throughout the process. I've put in here compensation of language access specialist under the the Rules of Procedure Court employees who are certified through the Administrative Office of the courts. They. They take a certification. They take a test. They have continuing education requirements and they're able to provide interpretation services to to the court, actual court proceedings and limited types of cases, mainly traffic cases. So when we're doing the walk in court arraignments, we don't know who's coming in. It saves the. And these employees of the court are allowed to interpret under our rules. And it saves the court time. It saves the it makes the court more efficient. It saves the court money in our budget for not having to to pay for an interpreter. And currently they don't get compensated any extra for that, for that certification that they have that they maintain and help the court with. So that is a need I've identified. I believe other municipalities pay those folks extra for getting that certification. I believe the state pays employees extra for having that type of certification. And I think I would I would ask the the council, if that's something you're interested in doing. We would. I would recommend that because I think it it is a good service that these folks provide. And there's really no incentive for them to get the certification currently updated vehicle. I believe that this is currently

in our budget request. We currently have a over a 20 year old vehicle that is becoming less and less reliable, and we use that vehicle on a daily basis back and forth to the detention center and the police department to get filings in the municipal court. So I believe and I believe that's currently in, in, in our budget request, we would ask if if you could support that. That's a pretty important to the municipal court. This isn't a. Specific budget request we have, but updated technology and courtrooms. That's something we're going to try and handle internally with our budget. One of the good things outside the air conditioner here in City Hall when we came here was the technology and the conference rooms, and now with more and more videos, body camera, law enforcement, body camera videos being presented in in cases and surveillance video type evidence being presented in cases, we realized we need to update the technology in our courtrooms, so it's better for case participants and litigants for presenting their cases and also attorneys. So that's just a need that we have. We're going to try and handle that internally with our budget. Also final thing, this isn't really a need, but I wanted to alert the council. We currently don't have any alternate judge under section 17 dash 30 4-C. We did have one and he tendered his resignation a couple months ago, indicating he had his eye towards retirement from the legal profession. Judge and I take the positions very seriously. We're there all the time. The only really need for the alternative judges, certain

cases when we both have to go to the mandatory municipal judge conference so we wouldn't disrupt the the service to the public. If judge, jury and I both need to recuse under the rules of or the Code of Judicial conduct, that would really be the the only reason why. But but I would just want. And I don't really identify it as a need, but I just wanted to alert the Council to that, that if you were interested in appointing an alternate judge, we currently don't have one. And with that, I'll stand for questions. Thank you judge, I appreciate it. Anyone with any questions? Councilor.

I just wanted to thank you for sending along all the data that you you all sent last week. Thank you for that. And then I do. I didn't completely understand the public defender question or the your your what you said about public defender. You said you support it leaving the budget and going to the city attorney's office, I'm guessing. Or can you talk a little bit more about what you meant when you said that?

Sure. It's currently under our budget and I think it's been there for a long time. It's variable in that we don't know how many cases are going to be filed. We don't know how many folks are going to request an attorney. We don't know how many folks are going to be determined to be indigent. That, or get an appointed attorney that we have. So it's hard for us to budget. I just personally feel it shouldn't be the court's responsibility to make sure that we have. Recruit defense attorneys to to take the cases in the municipal court and worry about budgeting or moving things around based off the need of the of the the indigent Council. So I would support moving it away from the municipal court budget and how somewhere else within the city budget. That's just my request.

And Council fine, but I would like to add to that.

Thank you, mayor. Councilor Gorin, currently, it's my understanding the the agreement for a full time public defender will come before the governing body in June. I would I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with it. Well, I would have a problem with it being housed in the city Attorney's office, because I don't want there to be that perceived conflict of interest. And so our city clerk has graciously offered to house that agreement within her department. So that's where that one and any subsequent agreements will reside.

Thank you. And then they would be kind of an independent operator, I understand. So independent of municipal court hierarchy and the prosecuting hierarchy that the city attorney's office is. Okay. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Brett. Councilor Bencomo. Thank you. Thank you so much, judge. It's good to see you again. You as well. Just just to follow up on this. So right now you do have a budget and you out of that, you pay these private attorneys who sort of take on this role. Is that correct? Mayor Councilor Bencomo that's correct.

Okay. Thank you for that. Yes. We were sort of over here whispering like it would make no sense for this person to be under Brad's office. I think that'd be pretty big conflict of interest. So thank you so much, city Clerk. This is why you're the best city clerk of the state. No. In all seriousness, thank you. I think that's really important. And I hope that that works with I'm glad you're speaking in saying like this is this is what makes the most sense. Last year, late last year, Councilor court and I worked on updating our welcoming city resolution. And I learned a lot through that process, working with the city Attorney's office about what we can tell you to do or not to do, which is nothing. We can't tell you to do anything. And so it was really good learning process. But I'm glad to hear you talk about one of the pieces that we had talked about in the Welcoming City resolution was the opportunity for remote accessibility. And so you are offering that to folks if an attorney asks, because someone, you know, maybe has, is afraid for because of their immigration status or whatever, you're able to provide that for them.

Mayor Councilor Bencomo yes, we do provide remote. Essentially all traffic cases. Someone could receive a traffic ticket or citation and come to the or contact the municipal court and request a telephonic arraignment. We facilitate that. And then all. Hearings on the traffic cases are handled remotely, and then any other types of cases generally require a request to the court for remote appearance. And then that would be up to myself or Judge Derosset, whichever. Whatever judge is hearing the case to determine whether or not it's appropriate for remote appearance.

Thank you so much. That's really important. And then in terms of the SOS court, I just really want to thank you for being open to that suggestion from us a couple of years ago. I feel really strong strongly about providing alternatives to detention. And by no means do I have the expectation that this program is to be perfect right out the gate. But I just really appreciate your willingness to be open to that. And I know that sometimes things are tricky between this governing body and the court. But you know, I want to I want to hear from you and your case manager on what's working, what's not working. How can we be supportive that I really care about that. And so whatever we can do to help you make improvements and those kinds of things, I think that's that's really important for us to hear from you, and I welcome that.

Councilor. Bencomo. Yeah, we. We greatly appreciate the support that the council has given to the municipal court the last couple of years. And none of the things I talked about would not have been possible. But for you, this governing body, listening to some of the ideas that I had and, and supporting those. So thank you so much.

No, that's a testament to your leadership, judge. You're doing a wonderful job. And then my last question is around the Tid. I'm wondering, Chris, if you can answer this. I'm just curious for things like some of the more capital needs that the judge mentioned up here, like the vehicle, is that something that tid could help cover? I'm just curious about what that would look like. Mayor Councilor Bencomo can you say the last part again? You said capital.

Judge, will you go back to your needs? Slide? So like, for example, the vehicle for municipal court or technology improvements, is that like those kinds of more, you know, they're not programmatic. They're like these tangible things is the tid able, like, can we have discussions about tid funds being able to cover some of these things? Mayor Councilor Bencomo yeah, I think that's definitely we could have a discussion and if you'd like, I could include that at a future Tid board meeting. I believe April 27th will be the next one, if you like. I can put that on the agenda and we can discuss.

I think that would be important just given the court's location and that there is funds in the Tid. That could go a long way to supporting the court. I would I would appreciate that, certainly. Thank you so much. Thank you Chris. Those are all my questions, judge. Thank you. Councilor. Yes, thank you Anthony. Can I just get on the poems come from. Do you have a breakdown. As far as our revenue budget? Yeah. Is it all comes from the general fund.

Or 100% for the fund. And I bring that up that there's some. You know, we have a need for. And, you know, the vacancies that I think that the budget. You'll just have difficulty. Filling them with them.

We. Mayor, councilor Mattis, thank you for the question. We're in the process of filling those vacancies now. I believe they're relatively recent vacancies. What what we've kind of experienced or my last couple years at the municipal court is we bring folks in at the court clerk position, entry level. They. We train them, develop them, invest in them. We get them to where they need, and they either potentially move on to a different city department or to the state courthouse, which offers a little bit better pay. So we're constantly and we're trying to figure out ways internally to to retain folks, but we're constantly in a training development type phase. So we're trying to fill those immediately.

Mr. Flores, you have two judges. How many years have you had to go through like that? Ten years ago? With with the two judges? Mayor, Councilor Mattis, I believe it's I I'm not sure exactly. But it seems to me when you think about it, you know, looking into the case numbers. So. Do tomorrow night. Councilman.

We we yeah. We go home at night, but we're there early. We handle our our court hearings start out at 730 in the morning. So we're we're there. Yeah. I mean, my, my feeling is not only somehow the capital infrastructure needs to be managed and. I thinking about it, I think with the population today. I suggest that maybe this council request. An excellent approach. So. That's the one for the presentation. So thank you very much for it, mayor. Councilman, thank you for the questions.

Councilor. Oh, my question is just really quick related somewhat to what Councilor Mattis was mentioning. Judge Filosa, when you say there's no alternate judge, does that mean we should update our code to add an alternate judge in that I see this reference, and if so, I. I know that you probably don't like to tell us what to do, but if you are, I. Now is your time and we're happy to hear it and we will follow up in doing so.

Mayor. Councilor Corrine, thank you for the question. The that specific reference to the municipal code talks about an alternate judge being used in situations when neither the full time judges are available. We're on leave. We're incapacitated, absent at a municipal. I think it states the municipal judge conference. So we just like I indicated, Judge Ross and I are there all the time for the most part, and we stagger our time off. So the court is generally there's one of us there, but in a situation where. We both have to recuse off of a case for for whatever reason, there would be no alternate judge to hear that case. And so that specific ordinance deals with that sort of situation. So I have no position on it that hasn't come up yet. And we stagger our time off. So generally, the court is able to function. But yeah, I hope that answers your question.

It does. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that I didn't miss. If you were requesting something of us that I, I was missing, I, I appreciate you clarifying. It's just a matter of finding that person and, and you, you all that's something you all do internally, right? Appointing the alternate judge. I don't think that's something that we've ever done that I know of. Councilor. Corinne. I believe under the ordinance, it says the mayor, with advice and consent of the council, would make that appointment. So it's not the municipal courts appointment to me. Okay. Thank you. Yep.

Thanks, mayor. Just to follow up on that, I, I don't know, like in the past since I've been here, I know that there used to be several alternate judges. And so I don't know what happened to those if people just retire or go or whatever. But if we need to, if we need to appoint them, I don't know, maybe we worked with the city clerk to put that out. And then because I know that we appoint we also appoint municipal judge one and two until you have to go to an election. That's the only thing the caveat here, right? Like there's a difference between alternate judges. And then I don't know if we wanted I don't know by the city charter, we, we would need to create a whole new third position full time because then there's like elections involved and things like that. The alternate judges, those don't go through elections. They're just appointed there to fill in any vacancies. I just wanted to add that little bit of context. But Mayor and Christine, I think if we can go ahead and recruit people, I think that that we can do that.

Thank you. Thank you, judge service, and for your patience and patience with the working conditions that you're you're in currently. A couple of questions I remember for our members. Thanks for sharing the overall numbers. The, you know, we're we're aware of the increase with the misdemeanors and, and you know, that that is concerning. There are some positive trends. The weddings I like that shows more people are in love and getting together. So please continue that good work. But there are some curious.

So when I looked at animal services complaints or animal control, there was a considerable drop from the very beginning. You know, year after year after year, there's a drop. And this might be again, another question for law enforcement, but I want to see if you have a perspective on that same thing for codes. You know, codes, for example, started 591 and then ended up last year at about 265 or something to that effect. Do you have perspective or any insights on that other than what law enforcement mayor?

Mayor Pro Tem Munoz, thank you for the question. I apologize, but I don't. We just handle we don't know why cases are being filed or why they aren't. We just handle the cases as they come in. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. Appreciate you.

Councilor Anthony. Sorry, I just had another question. The idea of alternate judges because full time, you know, complicated elections and and budget. What does an alternate judge earn? Is there a set amount of money that is put out by the clerk's office when we apply for an authorized judge, or do you do it?

Mayor Councilor Mattis, thank you for the questions. If I can, if I if I could just have one. I mayor Councilor Mattis, I believe it's in the ordinance. And I looked at it this morning before coming over, coming over here, I believe it says by resolution passed by the Council as to their pay, I know, I know that there was one because there was use of of alternate judges recently. And and those were able to to pay that individual.

And the reason I bring that up is. Not attractive. I have several agendas just waiting for to jump in and help because maybe we need to look at that compensation, you know, if it's five years old through, you know, the cost of increased and, and maybe it would be more attractive if, if, you know, the compensation was great just to have you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you for being here today. Thank you for what you're doing. This is a great presentation. So we can address some of those things as we discuss the alternative judge and the technology of the vehicle, see how we can generate some resources there for you, some funding and the public. It sounds like it's already in the works and is going to be done. And of course, we don't lose sight of the long term. The building. We know that's a that's a huge issue. And we're always looking at it and see what we can do and get it in our capital outlay to to get you a new home, because the second floor is, is, is not where it should be. But I'm glad that you and your staff were able to do the best with it. And actually, as I said, the numbers even increased. So just want to thank you for all that you do. And presiding, justice for our community. Thank you very much, mayor.

Council, thank you for the invitation. Have a great day. So agenda is item 2.2, fiscal year 2627 budget Review and public hearing. Leslie Doyle.

Excuse me. Good afternoon, mayor, Council staff and public. Leslie Doyle, finance director. For the record, today I am here to present to you our fiscal year 27 proposed budget. In addition to that, I would like to take the opportunity to provide some realignment strategies that we may want to consider. All funds expenditures is before you. Our fiscal year 26 revised budget for all funds is 691.5 million, and for fiscal 27, it's 598.1 million. This is very summarized, but I would say that we do have our proposed budget book online available at the library, as well as the city Clerk's office. If you would like to see the detail of these, I will be talking very specifically about general Fund throughout the presentation. But there are a couple things that I do want to point out in this slide. The first is that our special revenue funds and debt service do show a decrease year over year. Those funds are typically brought in throughout the year as the agency and council approves those budgets. So you will see that increase throughout the year. Also, Enterprise Funds has a budget of 199 million. I just wanted to point out is utilities, with the exception of transit, which is 8.6 million, which includes our grant match as well as airport of 3.5 million. Other than those two enterprise funds, the remainder of those expenses are related to utilities. And then lastly, internal services. In the past, we have budgeted our fleet department out of

internal service. Going forward for fiscal 27. We are moving that to general fund. It is a budget neutral move, but just from an operational standpoint, does make more sense to have fleet in the general fund. So for general fund specifically, you can see that there is an increase of 13.2 million from our revised fiscal 26 to 27 proposed. That is a 7.9% increase. And for those of you that like charts like I do that, help me see a little bit better. There's our, our chart. Again, the bulk of our budget is in the general fund, enterprise funds and capital funds. So for our general fund expenditures, as I just mentioned, there is a 7.9% increase from 167.5 million to 180.7 million. So I do want to point out, before I get to the fiscal proposed, I want to look at the adopted versus revised, because there has been a lot of work that has been done to get, you know, to a better place throughout the year. So you can see that our beginning balance, based on our audited numbers, was reduced by 10.9 million. However, we were able to bring in additional revenue of 11.9 million. But what I really want to point out, because it's been a lot of hard work and all hands on deck for all departments and the budget team is that we were able to reduce expenses of 7.8 million, as well as transfers of 5 million. So that is the work that we have done throughout this year to help mitigate some

of our budget constraints. So now looking forward to fiscal 27, we are projecting a proposed beginning balance of 52.2 million revenue of 185.4 million, which is a 3.9% increase. Expenditures of 180.7 million, which is a 7.9% increase. Transfers will be going down. You've heard me talk a lot about transfers. So we do anticipate transfers going down about 16.6 million. And all of that will once we incorporate our required 2/12 reserve, will get us to an ending balance of 2.1 million. So where your money comes from, this is the revenue side of the equation. By and large, the revenue does come from gross receipts tax about 79%. We have fees and charges of 18 million, which is about 10%. Property tax is 9%. And then franchise fees and cannabis excise tax to get us to a total projected revenue of 185.4 million. Now, where does our money go? You can see that we have 130 million in personnel operating of about 50 million, and capital of just shy of 500,000. We typically don't make capital purchases out of general fund, so that's to be expected. About 72% of our budget is personnel and 28% is operating. And so you did hear me speak a little earlier about the total increase of the budget being 13.2%. One of the things that we asked departments to do was

go back actually to fiscal 25 in their budget. And so we were able to hold both operating and capital flat. So you can see that the entirety of the increase in the budget is related to personnel. So speaking of personnel, the considerations that we did make when we were projecting our personnel budget is a 2% general wage increase, g w I longevity for those employees that would get that is incorporated. We have vacant positions budgeted at 50% health insurance at the employee and spouse rate. Thankfully no parent increase this year, but we do have an insurance premium increase budgeted of 20%. So this is the personnel going back to the 130 million that I did mention. You can see police, fire and Parks and Rec round out the top three. Not surprising because they are the most labor intensive of the the departments. For the personnel breakdown. I did want to show this because there's a couple of things that we are completely out of our control. So we do have salaries of 62% health insurance and para of 14 and 13%, respectively. Both of those we have no control over those increases. Those come down from the state. We do have some control over the percentage that we pay as a city, but the increase itself is not something that we can control. So you can see health insurance 18.7 and para of 16.5. Those are huge amounts as part of our budget that we really

have no control over. Then I want to talk about operating of 50 million. You can see again, public works, Parks and Rec and Fleet round out the top three as far as operating expenses. And then for our general fund transfers, we have MPO of 40,000 Griggs walnut of 200,000 vehicle acquisition, 500,000, airport, 776 worker's Comp of 950. Prisoner care 1.3 million. This is our transit required match of 4 million liability claims of 6.5, and then debt service of 10.9 million to get us to a total transfer from General fund of 24.7 million. So I know you've heard me talk a lot in the past about debt service and not really wanting to incur additional debt. And you can see here why? Because if we do not incur additional debt that transfer that we make from general fund to our debt service does go down. So this chart is assuming that there is no additional debt that we're going to incur paid from the general fund. Then we have the vehicle acquisition list. First and foremost at the very top is the Muni court Ford Escape. So we've already we got you. I do want to point out both fire and utilities. Those while they are on the vehicle acquisition list, they are not going to be paid from general fund. There's other funding sources that will be utilized for those vehicles. For fiscal 27. We do have new

positions. The new position, all of the new positions that we have budgeted are related to the opening of Fire Station nine. For our fiscal agent contribution, fiscal agent contributions. Let me get to my right page here. We did work with our partners at both Animal Service Center and Merida to incorporate additional fund balance this year. So you can see that for Animal Services, we have about a 7.5% decrease. And for murder, it is a small increase. But it because they did utilize that additional fund balance, the increase is less than it would have been had they not incorporated that additional fund balance. And then our metro transfer or contribution is the same year over year. So for Telshor project updates, you can see here we have our original budget and then our carryover estimate, which has been provided by CIP. And then page two of Telshor. So the next slide that I want to talk about is something that you guys have seen. Oh, there is one more. I'm sorry, these are the new telshor requests. Mano y mano health related public services of 600,000 homeless outreach. All new requests for Telshor. About 1.5 million. Now, the next slide that you guys

have seen, a version of what you have seen historically and I have presented has been for fiscal 23 forward, because I have said and do still feel that Covid really skews a lot of our numbers. But I did want to see what what we looked like pre-COVID during Covid and then subsequent years after Covid. So you can see here, fiscal 19 and 20 looks really good. The lines are right exactly where we would want them to be. Revenue and expenses are equal. Then as Covid comes, you can see the the revenue increase. I would also add that effective fiscal 22, we did get the destination based Ggr, which was a pretty significant increase to our revenue. But then when we got to between 23 and 24, you can see as you. We've talked before that line can. Where revenue is not matching expense. So that continues. And what happens in that case is that we have to utilize our fund balance. So you can see over the years where the fund balance does continue to decrease and the budget as it is currently proposed does also exceed expenses, do exceed revenue. So I talked a little bit about what we have already done. Excuse me to help this year. I want to call out a couple of additional things that we've done where we have aligned our 26 and 27 budgets back to our fiscal 25 expenditures and actual budget reduction of 9.1 million in fiscal 25. In fiscal 27, what we did was as departments, excuse me, as

departments propose their budgets, we told them that they needed to go back and reduce what they were asking for. We reduced general fund transfers by 9.8 million, which is a pretty significant decrease from 26. As I just talked about, we reduced our JPA contributions. We instituted a hiring committee and hiring freeze reducing FTEs by 33 positions. And then we just performed a review of all funds. As I say, we looked under every rock to find any available funding that we could utilize and bring back to the general fund if it was appropriate, and then reduced travel costs and encouraged online trainings. So this is what our budget looks like over the years, from fiscal 29 to our proposed. Again, you can see capital is pretty negligible, not much paid for from general fund for capital funds operating while it is increased. It's a pretty steady increase. And even for fiscal 27, you can see a slight decrease. But personnel is really going up pretty dramatically. And so what what gets us here for personnel because that is the biggest part of our budget, the biggest increase in our budget. So what are the things that got us here? I wish there was one thing that I could point to and say, this is what what caused this? But there's a myriad of them. I'm just going to point out a few here, going back to fiscal 22, when we were self-insured and then went to the state plan, and the city picked up 80% of the costs and then 20% the

employees paid. We had a minimum wage impact where all city employees were moved to a $15 minimum wage. That was about a 4.02 increase to the budget. And keeping in mind, as we talk about all of these, they compound year over year. So while it might cost us 4,000,001 year, it's going to cost us four point something the next year. Then in fiscal 23, we had police contract increases, 14% sworn increase increases for 14 of 14% for sworn officers and 6.5 for Non-sworn officers. And then we had a class in comp study that was implemented that cost about 4.3 million. And then in fiscal 24, we had 13%, 13% increase for fire for their represented employees. And then the state of New Mexico instituted a 10% increase. And rather than pass that on to the employees, the city did absorb that, thus creating 82% that the city now pays for, and 18 that this employee pays for. For fiscal 25, we had a 10% increase in insurance. 26 we had a 20% increase in insurance. And then in fiscal. 27, our current budget, we do have a 2% GWP budgeted. We also have pending collective bargaining agreements for both police and blue collar, and a budgeted increase of 20%. So one of the things that I would like to talk about now is what are our

options going forward? What can we do to get to a fiscally sustainable budget? And so if we this is the current budget as it stands on the left here. We have a beginning balance of 52 million revenues of 185 million, expenditures of 180. Net transfers of 24. That gets us to an ending balance of 32 million. From that 32 million, we do have 2/12 that we have to subtract out, thus leaving an unrestricted fund balance of 2.085 million. So that is the current budget as it stands now. As we forecast and look forward to fiscal 28, we did make some assumptions and wanted to see what that might look like if we adopted the budget as it currently stands, we have forecasted a beginning balance of 32 million revenue of 190, expenditures of 183, reduction in net transfers sum of 24 million, giving us an ending balance of 14 million. So what does that mean? That means that our ending balance, we would have nothing to budget in subsequent years, because we would have completely utilized all of our fund balance. In addition to that, we would have to use 1/12 of our our reserve. So that is, if we do nothing and budget in the budget passes as it currently stands, we would utilize, if we did that with our current budget, we

would utilize $20 million of our fund balance. So we do have the option of vacancies. The budget does include 7.8 million of vacancy savings. These are positions that are not currently filled. If we were to do that, the expenditures you can see would decrease from 180 million to 172 million, thus, meaning we would only use about 12% of our fund balance going forward with the same assumptions in fiscal 28, that would leave a available balance of about 1.1 million. Along those same lines, if we chose just to cut operating costs of 8 million, it's a similar effect. We would utilize fund balance of 12 million, giving us an available balance in 28 of 1.3 million. And then lastly, if we were to do both of those things, that means that we would have total cuts of the 7.8 million plus the 8 million in operating costs, fund balance utilization of 4.1 million, giving us an available balance of 18,000,000 in 28, which means that we would have a beginning balance. Then in 29. So just to quickly summarize the options here, we could adopt the current proposed budget as it is utilizing $20 million of fund balance. We could use vacancy savings of 7.8, and we would utilize $12 million of our fund balance operating cuts, excuse me, operating cuts of 8 million, also utilizing 12 million of our fund balance. And last the option would be to use utilize both of those. And we would

have vacancy savings and operating cuts of about 15 million, decreasing our fund balance utilization to about 4.1 million. And with all of that information, I will stand for questions. Thank you. Leslie Councilor.

Thank you, mayor and Leslie, that's that's a very good presentation. I think we've we've all seen it several times before coming up to this. So there are hard choices to make. With an easy question to start off on slide nine, you said longevity for employees. Can you define what that is, what that means for.

I can't speak specifically. I don't know if HR is here. I do know that we have policy that says, if you've been here for so long, then you would get an increase.

Got it. Okay. And then. Let's see. Slide 13. Just wanted to say that I'm happy to see this line go down. That's that's good. That's good for for everybody in the city and our future sustainability. On slide 15 on the fleet, I was wondering how many of these I mean, it looks like we have one hybrid vehicle. Are we having serious conversations about electric hybrid vehicles, whether we need giant f-150s and stuff? I know this is all departments and they have their own needs, but looking towards operating expenses, which is, you know, half of what we're talking about, you know, have how are we looking at our fleet and the, the operating sustainability of it?

Mayor. Councilor Harris, I would have to get some information from Mercedes. I am not entirely sure how how she's approaching that. Okay. Let's go. And then 27 on the I guess our options. So I just wanted to clarify that when when we're doing when you're saying vacancy savings, that that means we're talking about laying people off who already work here. This is positions that are budgeted, but they're vacant like nobody's currently in them. And we will just decide that they will not be filled.

Mayor. Councilor Harris, that is correct.

Okay, so then I guess my thoughts on this is that on our final options and these are my thoughts. Is that cutting? If we just have operations, then seems like we'll have people who are, we'll have more people with less to do because their tools have been cut. And, you know, likewise, if we just cut one or the other, seems like we're, we're solving the situation for next year, but we are kicking everything down the road a little bit and not really setting us up for to be in a sustainable place. And, and it does seem like, you know, positions are great and things are still getting done with those vacant positions. Obviously, it's not ideal. And then, you know, when it comes to insurance increases and general increases and stuff, I completely understand cost of living is going up too. And obviously it's for each department to decide what their own internal needs are. But a question that that I've been asking myself, I'm sure lots of people are asking is, you know, would I rather have 2% more money next year or an extra hand, you know, to work beside me? That's a hypothetical question. But, you know, I think to me, it seems like we need to probably do both things from just a financial sustainability perspective. So those are my thoughts.

Councilor.

Thank you, I appreciate, I really appreciate you fleshing this out even more. And I know that you won't name some of the things, but I would say that, you know, insurance prices as a function of our investment in our personnel are an enormous li volatile and frankly infuriating expense. If I can just name something that I that is a variable that you don't control, that is dramatically affecting this and will keep affecting us. So I'm going to name a villain in that understanding of what those things are. And I'm, I have no regrets about increasing our staff salaries or our contributions to insurance. I just know that that's something that we're now experiencing the consequences of. So I just want to be clear on from from my perspective, I think I can be convinced to any of the more conservative versions of this that that are presented because I, I also am discomforted by that red and green graph. If you just want to put that up, that can like Lord over us. Yeah. That one. All of these still include a 2% increase for staff, the salary class and comp, whatever is sort of outlined in that plan and potential CBA discussions. Those are all kind of still part of the whatever we decide here, those three things are on the table, period. And is that my understanding of these three proposals or four proposals?

Mayor? Councilor Karen. Yes, they are all are are all on the table with whatever direction you give us to go.

I just wanted to say that I, I am really glad that we are still including a salary increase, even if it's negligible in the scheme of how expensive things are. I just really want to say whatever we decide and we can keep this. I'm sure we'll keep having this discussion going, but I really would like to say that I don't. I want those, I want that to stay and I want it to be. Part of this conversation. I think, you know, Michael's right. Councilor Harris is right. It's a it's sort of a hypothetical, but it's not exactly a hypothetical. It's like a real like thing that we have to figure out moving forward. And so for me, that that is a really important variable that I appreciate you including in this and maintaining as part, not putting that thing that we're trying to do, invest in the human beings that work here, not putting that on the table as something that is necessarily negotiable. So thank you. And I just, I, I'm curious to hear what other folks thoughts are and this conversation going forward, but I want to speak to that 2% keeping it.

Thank you. You mentioned or I saw some. Overtime reporting on.

On our expenditures. One of the things that I would like to look at, and I get the. Not filling positions and having vacancies, but also make sure that in the grand scheme of things, we're actually netting a win out of this. If we don't win positions and we increase the overtime or keep the overtime as is. I think we're going to move the needle forward right mathematically. And and also for work life balance, right? If we're overworking the current employees we have with vacancies, that's also concerning for quality and just quality of life as well. So I'm assuming that the departments in are looking at their scheduling. They're looking at their overtime and managing that as well.

Mayor Councilor Munoz, yes, that is actually something that they have been looking at for quite some time. It's not just new to this, this budget, but something that we have asked them to look at for quite a while now.

Wonderful, wonderful. The other, the other piece that you touched on here, I want to look at at checking reserves. I know that cities have ratings. I'm curious to to see what our rating is. And what if I can just, just, you know, maybe share that with everybody else. You know, why the rating is so important to a municipality and what that does for us long term.

Mayor. Councilor Munoz yes, essentially the rating is just like a credit score, like any individual would get. And the better the rating, the less it costs to incur debt. So you're going to pay a lower interest rate, the better rating that you have. Thank you. Moving parts there. And. We're going. To squeeze water from the turnip or rock or whatever that is. So thank you, thank you, thank you mayor. Thank you, councilor Bencomo.

Thanks. Thank you so much, Leslie, to you and your team for all the work you've put on this. I think this is important. I think you should keep this up here, but I appreciated the big context you provided in terms of how did we get here. And if you could go to those slides for a little bit, I because for me, it just feels really important. Where did which slides were those?

Yes. You didn't have page numbers on them. So you didn't have these couple of slides to me show that we got here because we made a serious investment in our greatest asset, which is our people with salary increases with 80 over 20 insurance split. You know, when I first came on council, I this was one of the things the fire and the blue collar unions talked about most was this 80 over 20, like how little they were taking home after insurance benefits. Right. And, and we made that investment in our in our people. And to me, that feels something that's really important. You know, that also that $15 minimum wage, I mean, we were paying, some people were making $12 an hour. Like that is not appropriate for a city like us to be paying poverty wages like that. And so like, all of these things to me feel it's like this super hard place to be in then, right? Because then you create that other graph, right? And as we keep forward, obviously it's not sustainable. So I just, but I did want to point that out that to me, it feels like it's, these are sort of the things that come with living in capitalism, blah, blah. Anyway, I won't go there. What I did also want to add though, for me, I think obviously in the options you've provided that there's really only one option, which is for both. And the only request that I have. Actually, I have a question before I say anything on the vacancy savings that does that include adding the, the benefits that that's like salaries and benefits projected. Okay. She's she's saying yes, nodding her head.

Yes. Mayor Councilor Bencomo yes, that is true. What I would say is that that it's the, the jobs or the vacancies that were vacant when we pulled this in January. It's going to look a little bit different now because there's some, you know, jobs that have been filled and things like that. But ultimately the 7.8 million would be our goal.

Got it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So and then what I was going to say about the operating. I really think it needs I just want to make sure that it's consistent across all departments. You know, there was part of the budget retreat, there was a presentation made about, you know, going back to fiscal year 25. Some departments were excluded from that, some weren't. I, I just think that moving forward, it has to be consistent amongst all departments because I, I don't think I believe that us as electeds, as administrators, we shouldn't be placing a hierarchy on departments, right? Like which department is more important at the end of the day, this city only it's a puzzle and it only functions of every piece is there. And so I just think that that that's my request as we move forward. And, and I know this is an easy place to be, but I'm just so glad that we have really competent staff, that we have really great finance folks and that can make, you know, make this happen. So I really appreciate it. I just had one last question before I forget. Slide 17, I think. Do you off the top of your head, have the portions for the other entities here? And if you don't, that's okay. I think in the future, I would like to see that be shown for us.

Mayor Councilor Bencomo what other entities? I'm sorry. So for like this is the last Cruces portion for these for these three, I'm assuming the county has a portion. Yeah. So for animal services, it's the same. We, we split it for Merv de is slightly lower than us. I can get you that information, but I don't have it. Okay. I think.

Just because this is a little bit of a conversation, conversation we had last week when it came to the driving track in terms of like, who put in what. And I think Councilor Coren actually mentioned a little bit of, of the tension there. And so I just, I think we have, you know, patterns here that we've, that we've already established. And I just think it's important to show what they have historically looked like. And then my last request is we haven't had a specific time allocated to talk about the Telshor fund. That would just be my request. If that can happen between now and I don't know, I guess it doesn't necessarily have to have the deadline that the budget does, but I do think we should have a specific conversation about Telshor. Thank you.

Councilmember. How long have you been dealing with this process? Is it a long? Mayor Councilor Mattis It is just over a year. Just over. A year with the city. Yes, sir.

Just so yeah, I it's a very difficult position. In economy. Want to thank you for being so tough. Of course, I appreciate all. Of course. And I am on the personnel. What I'm worried about is like 27 or 28, 20, 20, 29. What should we do with our zero? Equals? Just putting it. What happens when that time comes for something? I mean, you know, preparing for increases in the insurance you're preparing for an appointment. And when the short form of zero is quite a lot of departments that want to tap income, but they still need to get their services and the employee is paid. So I'm preparing a 2021 just in maybe 27.

Mayor Councilor Mattis I'm worried about all of it. I him too. That said, we looked we modeled out to 28 and as far as the Telshor fund, we don't actually pay any salaries from Telshor. So that's. Well.

I know you don't pay salaries, but what I'm saying is when, you know, we'll have 4 or 5 names for the department from an employee. Then we're going to provide the project. You know, because you know what the Bible to you. And when that goes away, we will be. A contaminant in preparing. Where do we find that now?

Mayor Councilor Mattis, I don't know when Telshor is expected to to go away. But $44 million. Was the. Balance in front of you with that? I can tell you in 22 it was actually 33 million. So we've had some interest. Interest that. Has you know, that was. I, I only have until 22, but I can get you that information.

That's okay. I. 464 and I have. That's where I thought that's the 45 right. Thank you. Councilor Khan did you have your light on. I did have a question, but I think it it was related to the Telshor fund also, and I agree, I would like I think we just need to have a separate conversation about that. But the 600,000 was listed as new. Is that different from the usual 600,000? That is the kind of interest based grants that we issue or not. Mayor Councilor current. That is the. Okay.

So that is the that is not that isn't a new. You think I'd have this thing. I mean. I'm in for doubling it. I would be all about that. But I didn't think that that was part of what you were presenting. Okay. Thank you. So. That was my only question. I think it's on the next the next one. And I just wanted to check in and make sure. The health related public service. Yes, ma'am.

So that's these are that one or all of these are the same as the last budget year. I know that one is that's the one that we talk about the most. They are all the same. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Difficult presentation. Thank you.

You know, I appreciate knowing how we got here. I think that was I didn't see it. Maybe, maybe I missed it on the $15 an hour minimum wage. Was that included? Okay. Because yeah, that was another thing that took place. I remember the closing comp, the insurance pickup and the $15 minimum wage. So, you know, that's, that's like, it's always tough when you see the expenditures greater than the revenue. So we have to do something. We have to make some adjustments. And I will be also in favor of, of the vacancies and the operating costs. But like. Everything else, there's always exceptions. There's always exceptions. I think that's a starting point. That's what we have to look at. That's what we have to address. If it's a vacancy, clearly, if it's not needed or if it hasn't been, then we shouldn't be moving forward with that at this time. And then looking at the operating costs, I think looking back, one of the things that we learned during Covid was, was some of the things that how are we going to conduct business and what was vital to the community, what was absolutely needed and what wasn't. And I think we need to go back and, and review some of those things as an organization and say, what can we do? What can we do different? How can we reduce costs? How can we do things that we can manage and, and still get ahead? But again, like I said, there's always an exception to the rule. So if that vacancy has been vacant that is needed, then that's going to be the city manager and the director's calls to see what those exceptions are. And the same way with cutting back on the operating costs. So that's. Where I at this point is definitely looking at the

cutbacks. But then again, there are exceptions to the rule. Thank you mayor. So am I to understand that the next step for us is to work with the departments to look at those vacancies and the $8 million cuts. And then do you want us to come back to you one more time before budget for a work session? What is the direction there? How's everybody thinking? Moving? I'm sorry, city manager. Did you have something? Yeah, I think. That's a public.

Hearing I forgot about. That is. Let's open. It up to the public and we can we can finalize the direction at that point. Thank you. Thank you. Leslie. So at this point, let's open it up for public comment. Wants to come and speak to this issue. We'll give you two minutes.

Start making your way to the podium. Lucas. Hernan, for the record. Cutting operations based on the graphics that were presented today affects Parks and Rec, and I believe it was utilities the most. Which I find. Disparaging to this community that has repeatedly and loudly called for more investment in these community assets. I also couldn't help but notice there's a lot of. At one point in one of the early slides that listed liability payments at $6.5 million, and judging from the history and record of the police department of this city, I imagine that a good amount of that money comes from liability based on the times that they've committed criminals and have cities had to pay for those crimes. And it's worth noting that $6.5 million is only about a half million dollars different than the proposal to freeze hiring. So the city is at a position where we have to choose between whether we hire for budgeted staff environments for all departments, or pay for the privilege of our pipes. Something to consider as you

make these decisions moving forward. Thank you. Mostly to the budget. Discussion. And I'd. Love to hear. About how we can. Increase our revenues. Perhaps the. New business ordinance would help. The last council meeting was full of smiles, distractions and officials who does a lot.

For the Rockefellers. I'm all for green spaces. I've got nothing against parks. I've spent plenty of time with my son and I'm a fan of the lottery. But City page. Las Cruces has nine parks ranging from small neighborhoods, pocket parks to large destination spaces. There's 1500 acres of parkland, over 100 acres of athletic fields, and 37 miles of multi-purpose trails could lose more parks, maybe rec centers. Sure. Could we do a better job keeping them safe and maintained? Definitely. So why the sudden shift in tactics from the Cruces enterprise group? They prefer. Even though I just heard it again here for our work facilities. In my opinion, attaching a trifle defund the police was too blatant. So I quote noble cause to bring it away from public safety. Some of the Council are using the same playbook. Public safety and lost funding. Meanwhile, the city's crime problem keeps growing. The crime still gets what they want. We can't afford to decrease our financial performance. Simply look around you. Why aren't the businesses coming to Las Cruces? Why are we trying to push away new businesses? Because they don't want it here. Because in part, the crime problem. Thank you.

Hello.

My name is Giovanni Hernandez, and I would like to. First recall that I don't think there is a city in the United States that has ever reduced its police budget, ever. So that's not a concern. I don't think this council will do that. The the police budget will maintain the same and probably go up as as is wont to do. That being said, remembering some of the comments made earlier, I would like to remind us all about some of the things that our police get up to, in particular with an individual who's named Tony Valenzuela. On February 29th, 2020, Las Cruces Police stopped a vehicle with two women sitting in the front and Tony Valenzuela sitting in the back. The cops made Tony get out of the vehicle, and Tony ran. Like so many people in the United States, Lcpd hunted him for a parole violation. He had experienced much police brutality in his lifetime.

Officer Christopher.

Chase, after Tony tased him and put him in a chokehold until he passed out and died, all in a matter of less than three minutes. You can hear my sister saying to Tony, I'm going to effing choke you out, bro, while choking him to death in a few seconds later, saying to the onlooking cops, yeah, he's out after you can hear Tony snoring, taking his last breaths, smile on his part, and handcuff Tony's dead body and left him on the ground for 12 hours. Tony's sister, Valerie found out that her brother was brutally murdered by Lcpd through a friend who happened to walk by the scene. A few hours later, when Valerie called Lcpd, they refused to give her any information and her brother was killed by the police. Valerie began protesting for justice for Tony Judge Driggers, who put a gag order on Valerie, meaning if she continued protesting and putting her brother's name in public eye, she would face consequences. He cited that Smelser was afraid for his life during his trial after he killed somebody. This trial. During this trial, Judge Driggers dismissed Mosley's murder charge, citing that there was enough evidence, even though there was obvious body cam footage of Smelser killing. Tony Smelser was then given $225,000 by the city of Las Cruces to settle. That talk came. Thank you.

My name is Fred. And the big question in my mind is what is the city supposed to do for us, the government? You know, in my mind, they should be providing public safety, good streets, good infrastructure and things to make our quality of life correct. I'm sorry, but I don't think it's your job or the city's job to provide entertainment. Mr. Herndon and his group, they got the Oregon Peaks National Monument. That's thousands of acres that people can go out there in our public lands and entertain themselves. We don't need more parks. You heard how many parks and trails Mr. Garcia just mentioned. It's astounding. And when I saw these budget figures that Parks and Recreation was right up there, I mean, right up there with the police and public works, it's like why you should be focusing on the quality of life. You know, most of these streets I drive down, it's like, how many centuries ago were these things paved? This is what we need to improve our city when in fact for Burn Lake, which you all know, I'm calling the Lake guy. I mean, the restrooms over there, the nice, big, expensive restrooms. They're gated shut because they can't be maintained. Why do we need more parks when we can't even take care of the ones we have? So let's focus on public safety and infrastructure and

making a good quality of life. It's not your job to entertain us. Thank you.

Councilman. I was just going to say that I don't need another work session. I think personally, I feel like Leslie has and the team have laid out a path forward for the budget. But that's just my suggestion. And also remind us the deadline. When do we have to approve by. We are adopting on May 18th. Let me see. Yes, Cynthia says yes. The last the last day of April. The last day of April. Oh, okay. Well then, no work session.

Oh, we have to get it to the designer and available for public and. It'll get approved in May. Yeah. I believe the budget gets approved in May, but I would be in agreement too, I think I think we can move forward from here, but go ahead. Mayor Pro tem. Mayor, city Council's point of qualification. So that's option four that we're talking about that I think. Yes. Just wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page.

Christine, I don't know how to get this back on here. Yes. Where? Krista is coming. I'm sorry. I can't hear anything. Okay. Here comes Vanessa to the rescue. Vanessa. To save the day. Thank you. So much for your work. I think we're kind of in agreement, and we have consensus, but I just want to make sure we are exactly on the same page.

I think I could have figured that out since I'm solving world hunger here. Okay. Option four. Yes, yes. Just one more thing for. The agreement. Thank you ma'am.

Yes, yes. Thank you, thank you. Next is item 2.3 Capital Improvement Program FY 27. And then we'll have the review and public hearing. Cynthia Lemieux.

Good afternoon mayor City Council. My name is Cynthia capital Improvements program. And I'm here to present the proposed fiscal year 27 CIP. Prior to starting my presentation, I would like to take a moment to thank city staff. All of the departments have been very helpful through this process. They have been very patient with CIP staff, and as we constantly reach out to verify and gather information, CIP is a program of two. So I want to also thank the current CIP analyst that helped me get through this process. The capital improvements program called CIP is required by charter and it helps us identify capital needs and identify potential funding sources. It also helps inform the selection of legislative priorities, as every year the city seeks to try to secure state funding, it informs the public of the city's infrastructure investments and provides a view of both funded projects and unfunded needs. The CIP produces a capital improvement document where we have one year of funded and five years of unfunded needs. Those are needs that we have not been able to secured. The projects are guided by City Council adopted plan, which includes and is not limited to the Comprehensive Plan, active Transportation Plan, Master Plan and Climate Action Plan. And the main intent of this is where we have the Elevate Las Cruces as the most prominent plan. Elevate Las Cruces sets the direction for the city in the long term, but it will basically set policy. For example, let's make sure that we improve all streets to accommodate for all users. Then the CIP will be used to identify the best reconstruction projects to ensure we can get to that goal.

The CIP also relies on multiple funding sources, including local funds, grants, bonds and loans, and is approved by council and is amended as needed. As of today, the proposed CIP has 309 projects. Our number went up a little bit as we had new projects, but it also balanced with projects that were completed. If we decide to complete all of the projects that we currently have on the CIP for the next five years, we will need 1.2 billion out of the projects we have in the CIP, 164 projects have no funding identified, and 145 projects have some sort of funding identified. I want to point out that this slide really identifies the funding need that the city has for the next few, for the coming years, for the future. I also want to clarify that the projects that do not have any funding right now does not mean that are not priorities, or that they are not necessities, they're just projects that we have not been able to find funding path to ensure they move forward. The proposed fiscal year of 27 CIP. This is a comparison from last year. The funded projects had a 4.4. increase, which is always good as we know it is. We had a more grants and more funding allocated to some of the projects, but at the same time, our unfunded needs for the next five years significantly increase. So we're constantly seeing this need of capital projects in needs increase our capacity to meet that demand. As I move forward, I also want to make a note that the preliminary CIP was published

in March 30th and there was a. With the numbers and presenting. Right now there's a slight change. We are anticipating some grant funding for the airport and for the Animal Service Center. So we want to capture that. So we're reflecting those numbers to capture those upcoming upcoming funding. So how does our CIP looks right now we have 309 projects and the CIP group's projects in four different categories. This is to help us understand and keep track of our projects better. We have 110 carryover projects. Usually those projects are the ones that are multi-year. That means they need one year or two years in the CIP in order to get completed. We have 48 annual projects. These are projects that are recurring in nature, where we know that every year there's an anticipated need to make sure we meet that demand. For example, trail improvements. We know that the improvement of trails will be a recurring need. We also have future projects. We have 147. Those are projects that unfortunately right now have not identified a funding source. And then we want to highlight the newly funded. While we have only six newly funded. We're trying our best to secure funding sources for all of our projects. On the other side, you'll see the breakdown of the current funding that's in place. You see that 94% of the projects that have funds are majority carryover. Again, at some point it started and then they're continuing into the next fiscal year. We have then 6% for only those annual projects where we anticipate that recurring need year after year. Now, when we talk about funding for CIP

projects, it's important to recognize that we need to rely on multiple funding sources. It's really hard and challenging for a project that's in the CIP to be able to get completed or have a significant advancement. We just one funding source. So the critical asset in CIP is to. How can we combine our multiple funding sources to make sure we move our projects forward? Currently we have local funding at 3,037%. This includes all of our impact fees. We have to ensure we have t. We have state funded. That usually represents our capital outlay and any other grant that was given by the state federal funding with 15% and bonds and loans with 31%. Next, this is a representation of our CIP projects by category. The categories in the CIP are meant to help the community understand the breadth of the project themselves. So the takeaway in this slide is that the number of projects really does not guarantee the number of funding sources. For example, I can point out at attainable affordable housing, they currently have only four projects, but the amount of funding sources they have in that category is one of the highest. That means because their projects are more complicated and more expensive. So then this will help us understand how the CIP projects vary in nature. We have smaller projects. For example, we have it just two projects for almost $500 $500,000. But then we go on the other end with utilities,

20 projects and a carryover of 72 million, which is quite significant. We that have the breakdown of the CIP projects by department. Hopefully this will give you a a quick view on capacity related to the department's. We follow the same logic as to not necessarily. The most funded department carries the largest number of projects. We have. Again, the largest number right now, 42 projects with Public Works. We're currently they have 44 million. But then I can point out again to, for example, Parks and Rec with 23 projects for 60 millions. So again, this is a reminder that CIP projects are not one of a kind. They vary in size, they vary in need, and most of all, they vary on the funding strategy in order to move them forward. This is a breakdown of our funding needs for our next five years. We're currently presenting a CIP that has a funded column for fiscal year 27, but we have already identified the needs for the next five years. And as we mentioned at first, that that funding need is increasing year by year. So if we want to make sure we move forward with our projects, make sure we get them to completion, we need to start thinking about how can we maximize our funding sources? How can we maximize all of the funding opportunities at the state and government gives us, and we should take advantage quickly. You can see that the highest need right now is public facilities, which includes all of our community

centers, our rec centers, all of those entities where the community really can benefit. And it's considered an amenity. So we mentioned how we have significant funding sources, but still, it's important to recognize that the funding needs for the next five years are still significant as well. Here we have utilities where they have right now 72 million for this next fiscal year. But for the next five years, it will need 162 million. Well, we recognize that they have funding sources. They also have significant needs and that those needs vary. For example, when a project that they need is a lift station upgrade, which is just $100,000. But this has been an existing project that we have not been able to secure and be able to procure. We then have street improvements for the next fiscal year. There will be county with 25 million, but for the next five years they need 230 million. So how can we plan in completing this project and how can we plan on moving forward? For example, the new project is Lohman Avenue widening. That's a huge project that's coming up and the estimated cost is 23 million. We recognize that our city is growing. We recognize that we want to keep good care of our buildings and take care of our streets and roads, but how can we plan ahead on the actual need to secure those projects? This is a project to expand the multimodal capacity for East Lohman Avenue from I, 22 Mesa Grande Drive. So we know that's anticipated need. And also we recognize the cost of it, which

is quite high. Another example is for attainable affordable housing. Next fiscal year they will have 22 million from carryover projects, but they still need to secure about 26 million. We know that housing has been very active in securing housing opportunities, and they have multiple ongoing projects, but we still need to help them continue moving forward and close out as many projects as they have. Public facilities. When we just mentioned they will have 19 million to move forward with existing projects, the unfunded needs for the next five years go up to $317 million. With that, we have many existing projects that are multi-year project, for example, the East Mesa Public Recreational Complex. We know that project has been ongoing, and we want to close as many phases as we can, but we have to recognize that we need to face it out and move us as the funding needs allowed. Public safety. In 2027, they'll have 18 million, but for the next five years they will need 208 million. Here, for example, we also identify new projects that just came up. It could be a one time, one project for 500,000 Dalton safety bollards. But while it seems like something tangible and easy to complete, we need to help the department secure the funds to move forward. So there's this constant balance of how can we move forward existing projects? How can we move forward? Projects that have been a need for a while and suddenly or have become

critical when our funding funding is limited? Park improvements. Another example the funded is 8 million with a need of 62 million. Here I highlighted the Playground renovations program. This is a program that we know that year. With year, they will need funding in order to maintain all of the playgrounds across the park system. So this is one of those situations where we know the need is there, they have a plan, they have a system on how they need to, how frequent they need to replace them. All they need is the funding to move forward. So city council, those are the the highlights of the proposed fiscal budget, fiscal 27 CIP budget. And the main intent is, again, to identify and recognize that our capital infrastructure needs exceed our capacity to fund them. Our next step is once we have finalized the CIP, we will continue to work with departments directly to help them secure as many funding opportunities as we can, which includes funds, loans, grants

At the state and federal level. So we're going to continue to be very proactive. But the main takeaway is to recognize that our CIP includes a wide range of projects, small projects, significant projects, multi-year projects, one time projects. Our funding is not enough to cover all of those needs for the next five years. And, well, five years seems like there's plenty of time we need to plan to secure those. Right now so we can anticipate our our needs for the next couple of years. And lastly, I want to also mention that some of the projects have been on the CIP for a while, and while we have not been able to find a funding financial path for them, they continue to be a priority and they continue to be a need for the city. So with that council and mayor, I stand up for any specific questions.

Alright. Thank you. Cynthia Councilor Harris. Thank you mayor. Thank you Cynthia. I guess mine is more of a a comment, but I guess, am I right in saying that roughly a quarter of the CIP is for streets? Street related projects? Sounds like over the next five years, 230 million plus 25 here and there. It's about a quarter of $1 billion.

So for the. Mayor, councilor Harris, for the next fiscal year, here we have the breakdown. So right now, the highest number of projects it is in public works. But right now it's street reconstruction. It's also a few traffic calming issues like the Hawk system. We also have facilities recently joined public works. So that has been also part of that. And then but on the other hand, you see that the other department that has the higher volume projects is utilities and parks and rec. But then when you look at the value of those, it's kind of proportionate. They can have a smaller projects because some of them could be public. Works also have the chip seal program, which is an annual one, which is a smaller one. But then we go to the other end with the street reconstructions will be more significant.

Okay, so I've chosen to skip to this slide. It reminded me of a question. Can you maybe run the P 1A9 resiliency. What is that between nonprofit and parks?

Yes, resiliency is a category where we want to identify and recognize projects that can help us. Once they're implemented, that can be sustainable by themselves. So for example, let me quickly note one project right now, resiliency does not have a lot of projects. So for example, we have the fleet electric vehicle chargers that will help us in the long term. We also have a couple of infrastructure. Infrastructure improvement projects. And we also added the South Fork Marina water retention pond. Cool. Yeah. So I guess that's.

That's kind of where I was going is that when we're thinking about these CIP projects, what I want to make sure that we're we're thinking about is the next five years. Like when, when we build a capital thing, it costs money now. And it also costs money forever. So, you know, especially when we're talking about widening Loman, right? Unless we're talking about widening it to add a dedicated bus lane or something in it, you know, we're adding $1 million a mile per lane for any street in maintenance. So and those are recurring costs that just we just have to keep paying. So if we keep kind of doing, we do need to think carefully as we develop about, you know, not just kind of mindlessly doing the old manner that that cities have always done. And this is definitely one of them. We've got more development over here, so we just need to add another lane to the road or whatever, because those decisions are, are very expensive as we as we put infrastructure on the ground and in the ground, it costs money forever. So I just want to make sure that we're thinking about that. And I appreciate the resiliency projects a lot. So thank you. That's all I got.

Anyone else? All right. Thank you Cynthia. We'll go ahead and open it up now for public hearing. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak to this topic? All right. Seeing none. Thank you. We'll go to the next item. For the natural.

Gas infrastructure in New Mexico and existing development. We have Chris Faber, Adrian Whitmer, Jenny Hernandez and Natalie Green.

Good afternoon, mayor, City Council. Chris Faber, community development director for the record. So staff thought we would give council an update on a few things specific to what code says about natural gas, what utilities has some information to add. Sustainability is going to talk a little bit about some of their efforts and then housing. We'll talk about some of the impact related to affordable housing as we move forward. So we put a couple asks on the screen for things, you know, direction from council developers to continue installation of electric and natural gas lines for new commercial and residential construction. That one speaks more to code, which I'll get into in a minute. And then utilities has a specific gas related to to complete natural gas line extensions into service areas. Okay. So specifically chapter 37 of realize has what is called adequate public facilities. And that basically outlines what the expectation is for development to go in based on the development standards. And so that's 37 chapter 30 7-4. Additionally, the subdivider of any approved subdivision shall be responsible for all on and off site infrastructure utilities necessary for filing the final plat and then adequate public facilities is defined under the substantial completion section. Substantial completion is a little bit too large to put on one slide. So the first the first section talks about ensuring the health, safety and welfare of residents.

And then specifically that final plat will not be filed and permits will not be issued until subdivision has reached substantial completion, which is defined here. And so specifically, it addresses the things that the city and code current code calls out, which is complete roadways, electrified light systems, water, wastewater, natural gas, energy drainage, electric and natural national natural gas, utility connections, parks and trails, retaining structures, retaining walls and any offsite infrastructure improvements. So that's currently what Las Cruces Code says. So from here I'll turn it over to utilities. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilors. Adrian Whitmer, the utilities director. And on this first slide, just wanted to give you all a little bit of information. You know, for over 90 years, the city of Las Cruces has provided natural gas to its customers. And actually, because it's an enterprise fund and it has always been an enterprise fund, it is those customers that have actually provided the funding to build this system. Through here. And when we had our last rate review, utilities had agreed with the board and council not to fund extensions unless, of course, it was to increase efficiency or redundant looping. And it's based on need. That need could be anything as far as adequate pressure or required volume. The energy, decarbonization and transition plan is to develop a business model for services provided by the natural gas and energy line of business, without having to lay off employees. And as part of that, we're dedicated to go ahead and work as hard as we can to meet the goals that the city has for greenhouse gas emissions. But the need for natural gas for utilities during power outages is crucial for water and wastewater infrastructure. For emergency generator generation, and it'll be used that way until there's another source that's dependable and reliable and identified and actually put in and cost effective. In addition,

as part of our dedication in assisting in lowering the greenhouse gas emissions, utilities has devoted a lot of time and effort in participating with Sustainability Office and on its own for putting in solar installations, which include the East Mesa Water Reclamation Facility, the West Mesa Industrial and Innovation Park, including the plant and the lift station. There, three wells and our latest has been the covered parking at the utility's main campus. So we've completed one phase out of four that are planned upon. So our position regarding natural gas services is to go ahead and continue to follow the development code. And in addition, we would like it where approved subdivisions did not disenfranchize one utility user group over any other. So what that essentially means it's either all electric or it's all gas, not all electric for one user group and gas for another user group. And with that, I will pass it on to sustainability. Thank you.

Mayor. Council. Jenny Hernandez, Sustainability Officer For the record, I want to preface by saying one Happy Earth Month for those who celebrate to that in my presentation, I'm going to go over some of the policy that has brought us to where we are today. And that's to say that some of these conversations are hard. And I want to emphasize a little bit what Adrian said is that utilities and sustainability there is push and pull with each of our perspectives, but we are trying very hard to. Find a path that works for both of our goals. And so that to say that they the energy transition that they are taking on is a difficult task. And we have been pushing back, but they have been very receptive and open to our feedback and comments. And so all this to say is that we understand that this is a difficult conversation, and I am hopeful that these in these short slides that I will present, that you can see our effort where we're trying to lead both collaboratively and in partnership together. So this first slide is to show that almost for ten years, we have set a precedent of certain policies that push us towards decarbonization. The first one is the Paris Agreement, which was in 2017, and this was a resolution signed that allowed us to basically join the climate mayors. Climate mayors was a network of cities all across the United States to try and see what the realities would be to make, to meeting

our agreement that we signed on to with the Paris Climate Agreement, to keeping temperatures from rising below 1.5 degrees. And this really set a precedent for we, the city of Las Cruces, to try to start looking at how we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Then in 2018, we passed a resolution called the Municipal Clean Energy Goals. And this was specifically to say that all city buildings that used electricity would be produced by solar and wind. And then in 2019, we not we, the state legislative passed a law for the New Mexico Energy Transition Act. And this specifically says that investor owned utilities such as El Paso Electric had to have had to start working towards diversifying their portfolio through renewable energy. And they have a goal that in 2030, their grid has to have a diversity of, of diverse portfolio of renewable energy of 50% and 100% by 2030. In 2020, we adopted Elevate Las Cruces, which Cynthia talked about previously, basically guides the city's growth for the next 20 years. And it is really the anchor of which all our other policies live under. Shortly after that, we brought forward a resolution to adopt the Climate Action Plan, which allowed us to do a greenhouse gas inventory that told us where most of our emissions were coming from, and create a roadmap of how to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions through certain strategies and goals, which I'll go over in the next few slides. And then after that, the city adopted a

city fleet transition to zero emissions resolution in 2021, which was a it was a resolution that was EV first policy adoption. That said, when reasonably and able to. We should transition our fleet to EVs. And that was mainly because our greenhouse gas emissions showed that transportation was our biggest sector. And then, as Adrian touched upon the utilities, natural gas transition resolution was also adopted in 2021, which set up utilities to start their path towards understanding what it would look like to start to decarbonize the utilities. And then in 2025, we, not we, the state, adopted their climate action plan. And so I really want to put emphasis on this because what that shows us is that Las Cruces, for almost the past eight years, has really led on climate policy. When the state in barely 2025, last year has adopted their climate action Plan, but ours was adopted in 20. In 2019. And so we are really leading the way in a lot of instances. And council should feel very, very proud of that. And I will say that the New Mexico Climate Action Plan also has goals and strategies that have are aimed at decarbonizing their building stock. And so more specifically, what does it say as it relates to some of the things that we're talking about today? Elevate again, is our comprehensive plan. And under elevate there are 19 actions that live under three policies

that basically allude and lead us to transitioning to renewable energy. And so specifically, you see some of those examples. But again, there are 19 different actions under some of these goals. Specifically, what is our climate action plan say? So again, our climate action plan allowed us to do a greenhouse gas inventory, which looked at all our emissions within the city limits and told us what what the biggest things were. The first one is transportation at 53%. The second largest is buildings at 38%. And so it created a path that outlined how we can reduce these pies, so to speak. And so the overall arching goals of the climate Action Plan are to reduce our greenhouse gas reductions by 19% by 2030 and 73% by 2050. In 2024, Lotus, which helped us, is the consultant who produced our Climate Action Plan actually presented to give an update on our greenhouse gas inventory. And they found that because of population growth, we had increased our greenhouse gases substantially, that we are currently off target to meeting our 19% by 2030, which means that we have narrowed our window to meeting that 73% target by 2050. And so all this to say, which I think some of the councilors and some of the previous conversations that we heard today alluded to is basically any infrastructure that we put in, regardless of the fossil fuel type. On average, their lifespan is 40 to 50 years. So just thinking about that in terms of what our goals are and the timeline for those goals. So what is our

current landscape look like? I want to make very clear that the policies I just went over do not call for an immediate end to gas or any fossil fuels. It guides us to a strategy to try and achieve those things over a long time. And we, as sustainability in our office, also recognize that it is a little bit unrealistic to want to say, by tomorrow we have to be off fossil fuels. But in our office, through the work that we're doing, we have come across some of the challenges of what that means, and we're encountering those in the work that we're doing now. So the first challenge is retrofits. And when I say retrofits, I'm talking about buildings and residential homes and going in and repairing them. Retrofits are challenging and they're costly. And because of that, it is actually really important for us to consider how our decisions today will impact the work that we have to add on to or do in the future. The other reality is grid modernization is needed. If we are working towards decarbonization, we have to have a key partnership with El Paso Electric and we have to have hard conversations, and they have to be our partners, and we have to sit down and be able to collaborate with them together to understand what decarbonization looks like for our city. The other thing that we're seeing is that the market, this is beyond an outside Las Cruces. The market is moving towards clean and efficient electric technologies, and we as as the market is moving, it puts, you know, it, it makes some of these technologies more

accessible because it drives down the pricing and cost. However, are we there yet tomorrow? No, which correlates to my economics point is some of these things are not accessible right now in terms of affordability. And we understand that and we know that. And at the state level, energy, natural resources, energy, natural resources and minerals department, I always mess up their name. M nerd is heavily subsidizing some of these cleaner and more efficient technologies because they know that they are not accessible currently right now. But what that does is it provides us an opportunity, us as a sustainability office and other cities, to try and find ways that we can offer those, that accessibility to everyone so that they stand on their own once the subsidies end, because at some point those subsidies will end. And so all this to say is that that was a lot of doom and gloom. But I want to make very clear that here's what our future could look like if we continue making an effort towards decarbonization. As utilities mentioned, they are working on their decarbonization transition plan that will help inform the decision of the path that gets outlined for us to work towards. I want to emphasize a lot on this point that what we have tasked utilities with doing is very, very hard. We are only one of seven cities who is actively working towards this. Again, we're leading the way on this and it's very important that sustainability and utilities continue to collaborate on this. And like I've mentioned, we were asking utilities really tough questions and they have been

open to it. And we're trying to figure out how we move forward with trying to achieve both goals. The other. Thing that I want to say is that it's also not only utilities role to 100% move us in that direction. There is a role that sustainability plays and is responsible for. And in that essence, we are working on trying to find those solutions to those barriers and challenges. And so for example, as I mentioned on the previous slide, some of these things are not accessible to everyone. We are trying currently in our office to find out how we can provide alternative financing mechanisms. For example, working with the green bank at the state level to then be able to offer these solutions in parallel to what utilities is working on. So all of this to say is that we understand that they are tasked with something really hard, and it's also our job and our responsibility as a sustainability office to work in parallel and bring solutions to some of the challenges that we're seeing as well. And the last point I want to make is that the the state law with the state legislature, legislative law for the Energy Transition Act, as I mentioned, requires investor owned utilities to diversify their portfolio through renewable energy. This means that every home that currently has electricity or will have electricity in the future, that as EEP cleans up their grid, their home will be powered by renewable energy. And so today, what. However, we move forward with setting up those those homes. They'll be ready for us. Well, they'll be ready and we won't have to do

anything that they are powered by clean and renewable energy. And so my final point is to say that we have an opportunity, as you saw in the first slide, have led a lot of this work based in comparison to other cities in the state that were leading on a lot of this. And so I would just say that we have a an opportunity to continue that, especially, you know, what seems as two opposing ideas with utilities and sustainability, I think that we're working together in collaboration to prove that there is a way for us to move forward, working on this together that can help us lead the change, so to speak. And so I'm going to hand it over to Natalie, who's going to close us, close us off with her final slide.

Thank you. Jenny. Natalie Green housing Administrator for the record. So we just did a comparison between homes that have natural gas and homes that are all electric. So when we have natural gas in affordable housing, especially if it's a new area, that could result in increased infrastructure costs, if it's in the infill, then that infrastructure is already in place. Currently, natural gas is a lower monthly utility cost to homeowners. It has been more reliable and consistent, and there is a benefit for it being municipal, a municipal owned utility for all electric. In new areas, it can be lower infrastructure costs because again, you're not putting in the gas infrastructure. In order for households to realize the cost savings, there can be higher upfront construction costs in order for them to build to the efficiency needed to capture all of those cost savings. If those homes aren't built to those efficiency standards, then they can result in higher utility costs. And then we have seen that it is dependent on the grid, and there can be some performance variability, especially in the summer months when we have some of those rolling blackouts. So with that, you have your asks from staff and we'll open it for discussion. And I'll call Chris back up.

Thank you all for the presentation. Any questions? Comments? Councilor. All right. I was going to go last, but I got a lot. This is my thing. So I guess first I want to emphasize the point that these these asks are not to discontinue the gas utility in the foreseeable future. Right. Mr. Mayor? Councilor Harris. Correct.

Yeah. I mean, as was mentioned in the infrastructure that we put in the ground today has a 40 to 50 year lifespan. We're going to have a gas utility for 50 years probably, right. We've had 97. So nothing nothing massive is going to change there probably. So the the main thing that, you know, I think we're here to talk about as the weather for new development, we want to continue to force developers to put in natural gas extensions into the into their development, even though the market. People who are buying the houses and as in this case, represented by the developer who might think, I can sell these houses and people will want to buy them if they're all electric. So even when the market has spoken, the code says that we must add natural gas lines. That will be that we have to maintain eventually, right? So I think so. I'm correct in that that's that's what we're asking is like we're talking about maybe going and either providing waivers, which I understand we've done in the past to developers who don't want to put in gas or amending the, you know, directing you all to maybe amend the code.

Mr. Mayor. Councilor Harris. Yeah, I guess that that's correct.

Okay. All right. So, you know, I, I think it's a pretty much a no brainer at this point that at this point in history, that it does not make sense to extend natural gas infrastructure beyond what we've already got. We have a pretty vast system. It works pretty well. The people who maintain it do an excellent job at maintaining it. We have to find outside people who damage it, which is another item I'll bring up later. They've done some job keeping everybody safe in those regards. But you know, the technological tide has turned and there's it just doesn't it just doesn't make much sense to build a new house with gas utilities. I mean, personally, at this point, it's a personal choice. If you really, really want a gas stove. And I like my gas stove, it's fun to cook on, but I pay an enormous premium in utility costs to have that luxury. You know, there's a little wooden house, a little handout that I prepared last night. But I, I prefer to run those numbers to kind of remind myself of this. And what I did last night was kind of look at the cost of water heating in particular, because that's the only thing you use gas for year round. This this year's season was incredibly short. Next is going to be shorter. Maybe we won't ever have a heating season after that, which is unfortunate for, you know, the that's the underlying problem. But I you know, we we have

we're at this point in technology at worldwide, where the cheapest and the most successful. Frankly, we're going to build a new place is, is to do with electric utilities, with electric appliances. So I can go into that much discussion that we want to have there. But I, you know, maybe the upfront cost is a little higher, but the upfront cost of the latest gas appliances is even higher. The latest houses that were built, one that a family member just moved into their condensing gas water heaters in them, which is the the latest and greatest technology. The developer, I think did a great job since they have gas, they put in what would be the most, the highest end and least expensive to run appliances in there. And they're less than half as efficient actually. Sorry, they're four times less efficient to run than an equivalently priced electric water heater that uses all modern technology. So, you know, I think the tide is developers are starting to see that this is not an economically useful thing to put in. It's very expensive to add the lines that passes the cost of the homeowners. If the cost of gas line per into a new development for houses 3000 bucks or 4000, 5000, whatever it is, you can just take that and put it into the slightly higher upfront costs of the electric appliances, and then you're done forever. It's also worth noting that, you know, the industrial uses, we do have a new tenant in Industrial Park who's using gas, which is fine.

That's not a new gas line like that's using an infrastructure we already have leveraging the, the, the investments we've already made vying for an industrial use. I think they will based on what they're doing, they would have a really hard time doing that job with with electric furnaces. But any residence has a really easy time heating and cooking and heating water with with electricity. So that's, that's part of my thought in a, in a nutshell. And part of what I was, you know, running these numbers on these are my accuracy bills and, and gas bills. One thing that I noticed, and I was actually, I knew this just kind of vaguely, but when I actually did it, I was actually surprised at how much the cost of the gas infrastructure actually dominates the cost. Since there aren't any around here or even for a very long season, the majority of the cost of my gas service is paying to keep the pipes in the ground maintained. It's it's the access fee and the access fee, which is what they pay. So, you know, the usage costs are really coming down. And if we were having this conversation 20 years ago, it would be completely different. But you know as well, and I think this is the path forward, so open to a lot more questions if there's more.

I know out data and information that that. And then I'll just go with the one. I think we'll probably. Have to have a gas.

Electric on in the energy sources, but I found out that traditional subsidy, for example, to provide the power for energy using natural gas is. Electricity generated 44% using. Again, electricity generated final triple stack. And those actually generated 34%. So again, electric company uses 20 and waste energy to provide electric source. Whether it's to our to our company and the industrial park. My other. Discussion, maybe I can answer that. How much faster supports the general fund? We have a number right.

Thank you for the question, mayor. Councilor Mattis, I can't tell you specifically what gas itself is. Pain. I know in the franchise fees it's been it's almost $400,000. Last year, it was $400,000. So as the utility grows, the franchise fees will go up. If the business dwindles, then obviously the franchise fees will go down in amongst with that, there's there's other fees, like, for instance, gas pays taxes and pilt as well.

Okay.

I appreciate your page 15 seems like natural gas is no longer consistent compared to electrical cables. And I appreciate that. And what, what I'm trying to get out of this hole. I'd like to find some insurance. So I think the studio remains available, so I have to something similar with the nitrogen balance or natural gas. And so that's what I have to consider myself and. Enterprise for particularly returning. Enterprise has. All of the components that they have. Gas, water, wastewater. And trash. So I would not like to say that if we just continue, this continually remains another subdivision that will bring attention. When our president says, no, it doesn't. If it doesn't, it dies. So I need to stand up for a viable. Thank you.

Councilor thanks. Thank you for this presentation and for all of your inputs. I just want to bring up a couple of things. First, from the district where the. Electric all electric homes are selling like hotcakes. Like there are many market based things that we could talk about, but I don't think those are necessarily something that we should discuss, although the electricity, of course, would win in all of those domains as well. But I think my understanding when I joined Council, there were a number of discussions about whether or not we were going to continue new electric gas lines and whether we would take on debt related to those that new infrastructure. And it was a really clear consensus a number of times on Council that that's the way that we were going, is not to require new electric gas lines and in fact, to emphasize choice of folks who are developing areas to be able to not put down gas infrastructure. And my sense is that still the consensus of Council. I just think if we need to bring a resolution forward to make that really clear, I mean, that consensus has existed for my five years on council and I think several years before that. But. I don't know if if it's necessary that we have new ordinances related to this that we need to vote on, or if we just need to re-up that that is not the intention of of us and the energy transition plan. I understand that it's underway, but that's I think the transition is away from gas, right? That's implied in the in the energy transition plan that we have been working on for some time. So I think that's part of this conversation. I'm happy. I'll be happy when that comes forward. And we have more formal things. But in the

meantime, I, I understand the consensus of, of council throughout the past however many years as we don't want to require natural gas lines, especially for new developments. So new infrastructure, just as a note, just gas rehab in the CIP unfunded CIP years, 2.8 million per year is is gas rehab. So this would add however much that would add to that proportionally over time, we can imagine the degradation of the assets that are not being used as only increasing. So I just hope we can either move forward just so that everyone's clear that that's that that requirement. I think I don't I think we understand that requirement to be something that developers don't have to add, add gas lines. But I'm, I'm happy to bring it forward as a resolution to, I would happy to be seeing that as a resolution, and I think it would be a good step that then would the energy that part of the energy transition plan doesn't have to be debated any further. So.

Councilor. Bencomo.

Thanks, mayor. Yeah, I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed we're having this conversation. To be very frank. I think the consensus has existed for some time, and the energy transition plan, which while many folks freak out about it because it's potentially implying that we're getting rid of a natural gas line, that is not true whatsoever. And I think what's disappointing to me about that is that we are in a time frame where that is almost ready to be finished, and I would love to see what that will yield, what kind of information that will yield for the health, for the health safety are not only our gas utility line as a business, but for the health and safety of our community, particularly low income people. And we could talk about markets. We could talk about that. I, you know, I, I'm not even going to talk about because I think this particular slide actually is missing a whole all kinds of information. Like, for example, the like large disparities in, in health outcomes and in low income neighborhoods because of natural gas. Also, the consistency, I would argue, is not actually real. A few years ago, people in our community had insane gas bills because a pipeline broke in eastern New Mexico and that increased the the pressure to the natural gas lines. We had not to mention, you know, Storm Uri, all of these things that I don't actually believe make natural gas reliable or consistent. So I, I, I also, I also find it odd that we're talking about new subdivisions. If a new subdivision is all electric and you are someone who is trying to go buy a house, you have a choice not to buy that home. Just like you have a choice not to buy that home because it's not near a park or wherever, whatever reason. But it doesn't seem like a lot of people are not buying those homes. It

seems like a lot of people are buying those homes, which they had a choice to, whether they bought it or not, given that it was they were all electric homes. So I, I also know that the natural gas on all of our line items and Adrian, correct me if I'm wrong, all of our utility line items are budgeted to maximum capacity, right? So like we have to, on any given day, we have to make sure that we can provide that natural gas, that water, whatever to the peak, to the peak level. Correct.

Mr. mayor Councilor Bencomo that's a really good question. It depends. So yes and no. We have someone, Mario Fuentes, our gas system analyst, and he looks at what the future is going to look like. And he orders gas for that, which has a completely different graph. Dimension, which is opposite of water. So in the winter it's high, in the summer it's low. And so that has been consistent. When there are weird things that happen like that. You brought up Yuri or the line break, those particular things. It does make it a little temporarily more expensive. But the, the demand itself is, is very reasonable. And that's why we hedge a certain amount within the system that we say we're going to buy it, whether we use it or not.

Yeah, I think the since I've been on the utilities, that's been my understanding that we plan for peak level usage on any of the line items. So the more we build, the more we will have to live up to that peak. Meanwhile, though, as the market says, gas is dwindling, more people who can afford it are moving off of gas utility and towards electric. And if we continue to build towards and budget towards meeting that peak of the gas utility, the less people that are off of it, the people who cannot afford to get off of gas utility will have to bear the burden of the cost of maintaining a gas utility. We know those things to be true, in fact. So I think even, you know, I also love my gas stove. I've talked about this forever. I love my gas stove. Pry it out of my dead cold hands. But the reality is that we are moving towards this isn't about today. This isn't about just today. This is about the future, about future generations. Ten, 20, 30, 50 years from now. And what's what's the kind of infrastructure that we're leaving them and what are we building towards? And I think to me, this is a matter of responsibility, not just whether someone has an option or not to to hook up to electric or gas. And if developers are saying it's worth it to build all electric subdivisions, I think we need to make sure that we continue to respect that. Thanks.

Thanks to the. Last one. I think that's basically the question you're asking. Yeah, I. Like why. We're here is because in the past there was consensus. I don't say that. I totally agree with that. And so, so according to this, it's because there's a lot of questions and concerns, a. Lot of others. As a gas is electric. And so. What I've done is a clarity. I'm in favor of. The first one is changing the code and leave. It up to the developer.

They can decide whether they want gas or they want electricity, whatever they decide. And that's it. When it comes to the extension, honestly, I would look at saying we need to serve our customers that want gas and to extend their lines. But at the same time, we just had our presentation with looking at the option of vacancies and operations. So if that's something that we don't want to go in the direction of extending the gas, then that's something maybe we should spell. It.

Out for profit. Another problem that has been interested for two years now, and why we're here today, is because what I heard was utilities was the board had hired. A.

Consultant and the consultant was going to come and give us the pros and cons to gas, electric or commercial. And here we. Are months later. And no results from that. I don't even know where that consultant presentation is at. So that's why we need to have that clarity is like, how are we going to move forward? And I will be in favor of having the option. And I bring another option to the table. If we're not going to extend the gas, that could cut down on some of our operating costs, and we just sell it and let it handle the gas. So that would be what I will be looking at. I know this is also for public hearing, and I know Mr. Scott asked for some time. Go ahead Chris. I'm sorry.

Mr. Mayor. Council, if I could just make one comment. So if we're having a discussion about potentially changing the language of code, I would point out a couple of things. One, under the language here, it says, if applicable, to the development, which I think gives us some latitude to determine which development some of these standards would apply to. The other thing I did want to bring up is there's a connection between the adequate public facilities and some of the new zoning that came through with rely. So specifically, if you're zoning in to say the NH three, which is more higher density and also has larger commercial capacity, if you eliminate, say, you know, the gas into NH three areas and potentially you could limit some of the commercial development that may depend on that gas utility for their operations. And so if we're going to have that discussion, I would say maybe we have that discussion as it relates to, say, maybe NH one, where it's, you know, primarily going to just be single family homes, there is still some commercial development that can go in there as well. Maybe not as impactful, but the larger you get with NH two, NH three, you're going to see your larger commercial development. And not having that option could be an issue. So if you're going in and say you're zoning new areas, say all NH, CH2 or NH three, those decisions of the infrastructure could eventually have impacts on the commercial development that could happen down the road. So I would say maybe we look at limiting specifically where we're wanting to have limitations on natural gas, only specifically to some of those higher NH two and NH three. Zonings. Thank you.

Thank you Chris. That's a good point because one of those also for us is our national park in that area. We, we, we have an abundance of gas and we're limiting electricity. So we've, we've got a we've got to work that out as well. But giving the developers that option in certain areas, for sure. Councilor.

No, that's what I was going to say is I think we're I think we're consensus is that we want to give developers the choice and not, not force people to put in stuff that they don't want to or that they don't think is that the market's not going to bear. So yeah, I agree.

Okay. So I was correct that this is what I just got used to saying that, but there was an opportunity for public participation. And Mr. Moscato reached out to me. So if you want to come forward and we'll give you about five minutes to discuss as a developer. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. Five years ago, the Metro Verde development came forward with an amendment to their concept plan. And one of the major public benefits in that document was going all electric for development in that remaining thousand plus acres. Since then, there's been more than a thousand home sites developed, hundreds of homes, all electric, none of those home buyers has been disenfranchized that that's a silly comment. They have chosen to buy all electric homes. They have options throughout the city. Thousands of homes are sold every year. All these home buyers have the opportunity to choose all electric or a home with natural gas. They chose all electric. I think that's a path forward for the city that is reasonable. So people have a choice as to code. This section. Notwithstanding what Mr. Faber said about the development code, substantial completion. Substantial completion refers to completing the permitted construction drawings for that particular development. If the

construction drawings don't include gas, then substantial completion does not pertain to gas. That's that's that's very clear from the wording of the code itself. There's also a section in. Excuse me while I read. It's also a section in. 34.4 B, which specifically discusses adequate public improvements required. And you can look at that list. It includes water, wastewater, roadway, streets, everything. No mention of gas whatsoever in a particular section that pertains to public improvements required that was passed by this council less than a year ago. Why would you change that now? Also, this council recently approved the technical manuals in the technical manual under utility improvements, utility improvements. It says specifically gas. If the Subdivider desires to install a natural gas system within the subdivision, the system must meet or exceed specifications. If the developer chooses. So why would this. Would this council even consider taking a step backward and do exactly the opposite of what has been the successful pattern of development and home building? And then you have the issue of affordability. You know, there was a slide that said, well, it's higher infrastructure, it's much higher infrastructure

costs. You're looking at three, four, $5,000 per home because of installing natural gas that increase prices. Significant number of home buyers out of the market. It makes home affordability more difficult. It makes home attainability more difficult. We have enough funding developing Mesa Vista, which we will be bringing forward to council in the near future. We've been working with the Land Office to meet an affordable, attainable housing commitment. That commitment is going to be much more difficult to achieve with increased development costs, increased housing costs, because it's not just the developer, it's the developer passing it along to the home builder. The home builder passes it on to the home buyer. So it's, it's, it's across the board increases. And I don't see why council would take a step backward at this point, especially given the fact that I think if you read the code correctly, you'll understand that there really doesn't need to be any change in code. You simply need to follow the code as it's written. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Our city attorney would like to chime in. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor Brad Douglas, for the record. And so. How do I say this? I think I would say I agree and disagree with Mr. Moscato's reading and interpretation of the code as currently written, because portions of chapter 37, which I see that you have reviewed carefully, refer to natural gas utility, whereas other portions of the code refer to. And I should have brought my reading glasses. Essential public improvements and services. And then there's an earlier references to a different part of the code. There's a referral to chapter 38, which is not helpful because it simply refers you back to chapter 37. And so I think what I would recommend at this time, subject subject to change, is simply to clean up that code and make it consistent and easier to understand, because I'm not embarrassed to say that I'm the third attorney in my office that reviewed the code. And we did read what you read. And so for consistency's sake, for clarity's sake, I think I would recommend modification of the code to be consistent.

Thank you, thank you. Yeah. Is there anyone else from the public? Yes. Come on up. We'll give you a couple of minutes. Hi. My name is Don Curtis. I live on Missouri Avenue. And just a point of confusion that you're talking about. If the confusion is resolved. I think what I hear the council saying is that it needs to be resolved in terms of giving developers the right to choose which they use. If we didn't and I asked this question of AI just today, ChatGPT, we would be the only city in the country that they could find that had that kind of rule requiring natural gas. It simply isn't the way this is handled throughout the country. Second, Councilor Mattis mentioned that the importance of the contribution of utilities to the to the general fund, that cannot be the reason we keep our utilities going and make people use gas is because it helps the general fund, which is just go directly to that. And this idea of reliability. I just want to mention this because it's a. It's a misconception. People imagine that if the if the electricity goes out, they'll still be sitting with their furnace and everything. No, because the electricity runs the furnace, the Hvac system, etc. So it's really not a backup. It's like belt and suspenders and the suspenders cost you hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars and don't even work, right. So once the electricity goes down, the gas is essentially gone too. Unless you're talking about huddling around the oven. And so I think the final thing I'd

like to say is the councilors and the mayor, I would hesitate to put my full confidence in the energy transition planning that's being done in the utilities right now because the if the the there's a lot of difficulty with that plan. And it is explicitly not addressed. The problem of diminishing gas. It's it's addressed everything but that. And I think you need to pay real attention to that. And at any rate, I would not put my faith in that. I would use your own good judgment. And with. That is just information that you could use. Thanks.

Is it okay? One minute.

One minute. Okay, I can I can talk fast. Mayor. Mayor, thank you for having me. Council Rico Gonzalez with El Paso Electric. Just a couple points of clarification on on what was stated. We have not had a controlled outage in decades or a or a blackout or brownout. We are in Texas and in New Mexico, either 1 or 2 in most reliable utilities. We work both well with Adrian and Jenny. In terms of the context of this conversation today, programs that are moving forward in our current rate case, we have new rate design programs for low income credits for electricity. We have a large load credit or a large load tariff that would allow for for if a large node came into the city, that it would be paid for by that large load. We have. A plan for phase in any rate increases. If we if we see them, we also have a whole house rate for EV owners, meaning that if they have an EV, they get a discounted rate on the off peak times. We have time of use rates in terms of economic development, we do have plans for building a new 45 345 kV line from Acton to airport sub, and anytime we want to get going on building that arroyo to airport, I'll be the first one buying the t shirt and knocking on the doors inside of our integrated resource plan. We have some very innovative demand side resource programs that are already in Texas. A little bit easier to do stuff in Texas, but we're bringing them here to New Mexico. And then our

advanced meters allow for us to respond earlier to outages turning on and off energy, and allows, I think, a very important conversation that that people have with their own electric use. A couple other points here, but not important. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah. To the line losses. I'm going to check on that. But we are right now at over 70% carbon free energy in in Las Cruces. You're using every single time you flip on a light, it's it's over 70% clean energy. That's from nuclear and from renewable. And, and as we grow these, these all electric homes, we really do at El Paso Electric want to start diversifying how people are using energy, their own relationships with energy, moving people over to non-peak hours, getting off the peak. And with that, I just want to say thank you for the time.

Thank you. Yeah. Come on up.

Mr. Mayor. Excuse me, councilors, my name is Leslie Graham. I'm the general manager for Zion Natural Gas, and I just wanted to come speak in favor of natural gas. We have a vested interest throughout the state to make sure that people understand what a great product this is to use. It really is truly the most efficient way to burn energy within your home. You do receive a significant line losses burning natural gas in the power plants. I was amazed just listening. Just a few months ago at the Project Jupyter presentation, where we're going to have to bring on several natural gas power plants just to to power that project. Why not use natural gas in the home? You can you have to burn three times as much in the power plant versus what you have to burn in the home in order to get the same amount of energy use. It is also a cheap option and it's there. We don't have rolling blackouts. Rico just spoke to this, but we don't have rolling blackouts. We have natural gas there. It's always there. I also want to point out it was an interesting comment, but we we get feedback at Zion Natural Gas about developers being frustrated because they can't get natural gas within their subdivisions. And so they are going to electric because they're struggling to get it hooked up. I am not here to work well with the city, and the city's done a great job. And so I know that they're working hard, but I know that they're also frustrated trying to figure out how to expand natural gas into different subdivisions. And so I do want to say that developers are getting fairly frustrated and turning to all electric in order to get their projects finished. And so it may not always be that that's what people want. That's just what they're getting. Finally, I do

believe as a citizen that people should have that choice. And so I do want to continue to encourage you to fund, to look at and to work with natural gas. Mayor, councilors, thank you so much for your time. Councilor.

So I just want to clarify, I think we've talked about consensus if we have it or not. To Brad's point, clarifying the code to make it optional so that people building new materials and new developments have the option to not extend gas lines to that area. I, I would just ask, I mean, unless you have a sense of the consensus, I just want to make sure that we're clear on the majority of council's sort of orientation here. So I'm hoping that we can make clarify, as Brad suggested, and bring it forward as a new resolution to make sure that the code allows the option. Councilor.

Yes, that's that's my thought. So I'll, I'll add that I, I agree sounds like from Mr. Moscato's point of view, the code does say that and does give the option, but it sounds like there is maybe some ambiguity in the wording. And so we want to make sure that that ambiguity is resolved.

Okay. Well, I think we're clear on the code, but as far as extending or what was the second question is kind of like, what are we going to do with that really is, is really the question for I believe this council. Councilor go ahead, Richard.

One of the reasons that has been brought up, because our service area, if you go back to the very first of the. That one here, that's our service area that's way bigger than the city of Las Cruces. And so we have had people that are just north of town off of El Camino Real requesting natural gas. And so essentially, we've told each one of those, if you want natural gas and you all need to get together and you need to give us some money, that's a, that's a low to moderate income area. It is outside of the city limits right now. They are on propane, which is extremely expensive. In addition to that, I think that's where we get a little confused because our service area is so large. When it comes to extensions, it is up to whoever wants the extension to go ahead and and pay that bill. And we do have some they come in, they say we want the natural gas and we will take a look at it and we will tell them how much it will cost to go ahead and extend that that line. They say, okay, and we'll extend the line. So just to make that as a clarification that we're a regional provider, not just a city of Las Cruces provider. Thank you.

Thank you. Adrian Councilor.

Thank you. Thank you for that clarification because as far as I'm concerned, if someone wants to pay the cost that it costs, they could get it. It it doesn't compute to me that anyone would actually do that outside of a large industrial user, because if they're going to pay the enormous expense to get a natural gas line extended to their location, depending on how far it is, they could just just get the latest and greatest, fanciest electric heat pumps and never worry about it again. But I'm I'm not opposed to if someone wants to pay the full cost, that's fine, but I don't think it's appropriate for the city to subsidize that in any way or go into debt for it or, or expect existing ratepayers to subsidize it either.

Councilor. Yes, I think we have. The same circumstances, if I'm not mistaken. You have a few years instead of just paying for the installation and the natural gas, even in television. I don't know how many people, but I know so many. They've made the choice that they weren't for gas, and they provided the service.

Mr. mayor, Councilor Mattis, yes, people in the Talavera area have reached out and they're requesting natural gas, and we tell them how much it's going to cost to extend the line to their property, and they have installed it. And then we provide we provide the service. Thank you. And we'll provide natural gas. I mean natural gas to Picacho Hills as well. Correct. That's that's our gas. And you companies on providing that.

Mayor Councilor Mattis actually, we have an agreement with natural gas and they have areas that we we transport their gas to them and we charge them for that. We do not sell them the gas. We transport it.

To. And that such. That's on our systems. All that. And that's my point that I'm trying to say is that if people need it, if they want to move into a certain area, they disenfranchisement. If they want a mountain view. And the best developments are go to the house in our house, not in this area. So I like to say that for people to change their. Know how to live. Well, I guess I don't know what those mountain views and they want to open up the Metro Vista and that, and that's what I like to say. I would just like to say that we will be somewhere. Determine what we cannot have. I, I think people need to have your full service. Thank you.

Councilor. Bencomo. That's that's what I realized was. So I think that, you know, that's an important note to make about the importance of realize. I'm curious about extensions right now who are like, what are the requests for extensions? Councilor. Councilor. Bencomo. That's an excellent choice. If someone comes in and they say that they want to have gas, we're essentially telling them, well, you front the money, right? Who is asking right now? Who is asking like, how many requests are?

Oh my gosh. Over the last few years, we've had quite a few. I can certainly get those statistics for you. Yeah, I would, I would like to see that. Like what, what are the, where are the requests coming from? Are they coming from new subdivisions?

I think the, well, we've had a few in the new subdivisions that are all electric. And I can ask staff if they've kept track of that. I don't know that they're keeping those statistics, but I said that was probably a good thing for us to start counting. I know that we have had some in the all electric areas that they're wondering, well, why can't I get natural gas? Yeah, we've had developers bring that up as well. I can ask staff to come up with a, with a list on, on the statistics on that if you would like.

Right now, if a new subdivision, if someone submits for a new subdivision and they say, I want to build for both, they just, they're that good. They want to do both. Are they able to. Mr. Mayor Councilor Bencomo you mean both as in. Offer, either. An electric. Yeah, certainly. They can. You mean like provide both? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, they can.

Right now, if a new subdivision wants to provide natural gas, they're able to correct. Okay, okay. Just someone said people are developers are having a hard time. I'm not sure why that would be if the issue here is communication, then we should get better at that. Communicating people's options. And also, you know, I don't know, like maybe we should communicate to realtors about, you know, ensuring that when they're selling a home, they're telling people this is, this is the option here so that you can, you have consent to choose whether you want to buy that home or not. I think my thing about with extensions and having, you know, us sort of build out extensions, every time someone requests it is that if that person isn't paying, isn't isn't paying for that, then the rest of the customer base has to subsidize it. And I don't know who paid for the Talavera extensions.

Actually everybody did. Yeah, we did. We went and we obtained bonds to actually do that. And that was after a majority of that subdivision supposedly wanted it.

And arguably Talavera, I wouldn't say I wouldn't consider low to medium income level. So true. So I think there's serious equity issues when it comes to that, that we need to consider in the long term. And so, yeah, I think the extension to me is feels a lot more complicated. And if there is confusion out there about what new subdivisions and developers can do or not, we need to get clear on that. In fact, I think government forcing developers to provide gas lines is quite the opposite of what my colleague here is saying, so I think it seems like we need to just clarify that developers have the option to build whatever kind of energy they want to use. And with extension, I think I'm personally opposed to that, but it seems like perhaps we need more information to make those decisions. I don't think those decisions should be made so flippantly. I think that's those are really long term conversations to be having.

And I'm thinking, Mayor Councilor Bencomo, there may be a little confusion on the distinction between a developer and a developer. So a developer of a subdivision builds all the infrastructure. They sell lots, and then a builder comes and builds, and it's the builders that have been complaining to, to us, not the, the developer, because the developer builds it and then sells the lots. And a builder is the one that actually. Hey, I'm selling a lot. You want to build a house. And so there's.

I mean, the code doesn't apply differently to developers and builders, right? Well, there's. Do you want to explain how developments.

Mr. Mayor Councilor. Bencomo. I think what Adrian's trying to say is once the developers come in and develop an area and now starts and gone with maybe one say just electric only in this example that when the home builders come in to actually build homes to sell out at that point in time, if that infrastructure doesn't exist, they're limited to just building an electric home. So I think that's what and we've heard that before. So the distinction is between a home builder and the developer who's developing the actual subdivision. So. Councilor.

But I mean, to me, that disagreement sounds like something that's between the builders and the developers. Just, just throwing it out there. Right. I believe that's right. Mr. Douglas was saying was. Cleaned it. Up so that there was. No confusion there. So I think consensus.

With that, with the exception, I think it's what Adrien has said. If they're willing to pay for it, then that's where I'm at on that with the if if they want that, I don't know if we need to go further or bring up more work sessions or data. I'm still. Does anybody know on that consultant that was going to come in with a study.

Mayor thank you for the question. We are expecting them to be done sometime in July. We'll find out what they what they say. And as part of that is they're looking for us to transition off of natural gas into a different business model so that we don't fire all of our employees or lay them off. We teach them new skills and they provide some kind of service, whether it's with renewable natural gas or solar. That's one of the things that they're looking at, is to come up with different business models, to actually take a look at it and how to transition the natural gas and energy line of business into a different business model, which would be multiple types of potential energy uses.

Okay, thanks. Thank you. Well, I guess we'll see that when it comes at that time. And they can present and we can go from there, but definitely clean up for sure. Go ahead Chris.

Mr. mayor, so just to clarify a couple points, you know, I don't think we would do this via resolution. I think we would just come back with a cleanup of the code. So that would be an ordinance. We could potentially do another work session if you want to have, you know, more conversation about it. My question leaving here would simply be, are we looking at making that an option across all residential zoning? So NH one, NH two, NH three are only specific to your lower densities that are going to be primarily single family homes. So that would be, that would be helpful to know. So we could figure out how to make that adjustment into the code.

I would be in favor of not limiting ourselves with the commercial Councilor. Yeah, I. I guess thinking about the types of businesses that would be limited and coming in there, you're probably really only talking about restaurants. Mr. Mayor. Councilor Harris not necessarily. I mean, I think there could be a variety of commercial that could probably need to have access to natural gas. And, you know, depending. Heating, maybe.

Yeah, potentially or other things that may, they may need it for within within their store. So I, I would just given, given the way that we updated the zoning and really tried to integrate commercial and residential into those same zoning types, I would be very hesitant to just come out and say something that ten years down the road, we may have eliminated the potential for certain types of commercial because we didn't have that infrastructure installed at the beginning. So if it's a conversation about primarily single family neighborhoods or NH ones, that that would be fine. But I think NH two and above starts to be a little limiting when we look at commercial development down the road. And, you know, as we, you know, if you think back to when Sonoma Ranch was put in and, you know, the housing came in first and now we're 25 years on and we're starting to see that commercial really come in. You could see a similar situation in some of these other areas where the commercial wouldn't come into the residential, was there to support it. But if the infrastructure is not there to support the commercial, I, I just don't know what that situation could look like 25 years from now.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say in 25 years, you probably won't have restaurants cooking on gas. Honestly, with the way that technology is going. But. Yeah, I mean, I think the code change that we're talking about is just to give developers flexibility. And if developers are predicting that in this lot, people probably won't ever want gas might be able to solve the lockdown later without that. There were some limit them I in favor of flexibility for developers. I guess. And I, I don't want to limit our commercial choices either, but I don't see how we would be terribly by just making it flexible.

I agree, I think any zoning class should have the option so to not have including any mixed use up to and up through NH three. So I, I would say no, I think if we already have hundreds of vacant commercial buildings that I'm sure have gas. So that's clearly not the variable that makes a difference in whether or not someone goes in a commercial space, from what I can tell. So I would hope, I would think that that's not something that would limit commercial development. So I would, I would say in any NH one through NH three, from, from my perspective.

Yes, I, I'd agree with that. And then the last thing I'll say on extensions. Yes. So then someone could pay for it themselves for it to get extended, but the maintenance of that will be on the city for the rest of time. The maintenance costs. Right. You good? I'm good. Thank you mayor. Okay. Thank you all. I think that concludes motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second. This is on the motion to adjourn the work session. Councilor McClure is absent. Councilor Mattis is absent. Councilor Harris. Yes, councilor Bencomo. Yes.

Councilor Kran. Yes. Councilor Munoz is absent. And mayor. Yes.