Council - Regular Meeting

I welcome the city Council meeting. Today is Monday, May 18th, 2026. It's approximately 1 p.m. I'm Mayor Eric Enriquez. Before we start, I want to mention that we have an ASL American Sign Language interpreter up front available at every City Council meeting. If anyone requires, we'll start with our values for the very men and women of the United States Armed Forces as they protect our interests around the globe, as well as the courageous men and women of the Las Cruces Police and Las Cruces Fire Department. As they keep our city safe. 24 over seven. Councilor Harris, if you lead us in the pledge.

For the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The Marshal. Second, to allow Councilor Bencomo to participate via Zoom. So moved. Second. Chrissy. This is on the motion to allow Councilor Bencomo to attend the meeting via Zoom. Councilor McClure. Yes. Councilor Mattis. Yes.

Councilor Harris. Yes. Councilor Bencomo is absent right now. Councilor Koran. Yes. Councilor Munoz. Yes. Mayor. Yes. Next, we'll do the president for certificates and proclamations. Councilor Michael Harris.

Just the one. All right. This is for public works professionals. So anyone in public works who's here. I guess we could have you up here in the front, since there's quite a few. Oh, quite a few. Okay. You were. You weren't kidding. Yeah. Come on up and be recognized.

Yeah, yeah. You're okay. Great.

You know. Yes. Can we restrict up to one? That's a good point.

Yeah. Stand in front. Yeah, yeah. Of course. All right. Do we have everybody? I think we do. All right. Whereas Public works professionals focus on infrastructure, facilities and services that are of vital importance to sustainable and resilient communities and to public health, high quality of life and well-being of people of Las Cruces. And whereas these infrastructure, facilities and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of public works professionals who are engineers, managers and employees at all levels of government and the private sector who are responsible for rebuilding, improving and protecting our nation's transportation, water supply, water treatment and solid waste systems, public buildings and other structures and facilities essential for our citizens. And whereas it is in the public interest for the citizens, civic leaders and children in Las Cruces to gain knowledge of and maintain an ongoing interest and understanding of the importance of public works and public works programs in their ♪respective communities. And Whereas, the year of 2026 marks the 66th annual National Public Works Weeks, sponsored by the American Public Works Association. Now, therefore, we, the Mayor and City Council of Las Cruces, New Mexico, do hereby proclaim May 17th through 23rd, 2026 as National Public Works Week and urge all citizens to join with representatives of the American Public Works Association and government agencies and activities, events and ceremonies designed to pay tribute to our public works professionals, engineers, managers and employees, and to recognize the substantial contributions they make to

protecting our national health, safety and advancing quality of life for all. Can I ask that everybody get on the right half of the room to take this photo, please? Other right. That way.

My right in front of the blue city of Las Cruces. Background. Shorter people in the front, please. And we can have a couple people sit in those chairs in the front if they'd like also. And if you can't see me right here to your right, then I'll ask that you either come forward or get into a position where you can see me. Thank you.

Sorry. Did anyone want to say anything? No. Okay. Very good.

Thank you for all that. You do really. Appreciate you. This is a program for the highlights. And first is Parks and Recreation.

Good afternoon,

Mr. Mayor. Mayor Pro tem, members of the council and staff. For the record, my name is Jake Gutierrez. Still learning that? I was asked to come and present. Our presentation today. Forgive me, it has been a while since I've graced the podium. Trying to locate the presentation. Well, this just will give me. Yes, sir. No. Go ahead. I thought Katrina was coming, but. Okay. You got help. Okay. You have help. Where were you? Katrina? Thank you so much. Well, this will just give me time to to say it's been a while since I've had the pleasure of gracing the podium here, and I want to thank you all for the service that you provide our community. Thank you so much. Thank you. So I was asked to share the highlights for the athletics and aquatics sections of our department and the programing that we are proposing for this summer. So before you, you have the youth leagues and what we intend for our programs here. Some of this programs are underway. A Little Sluggers program is currently underway there at the complex. Indoor volleyball is. Registration is past. I would like to just mention indoor volleyball is the next big thing here. And this is for speaking with our youth. We have seen growth of over ten plus teams just this second year. And just to translate, that's 100 plus new kids participating in youth volleyball. So definitely good to see a good sign. And we are behind the scenes trying to

understand how we're going to continue to meet the demand. And we will. We have outdoor soccer coming up, and these dates here are the dates that we have. Registration. The programs will start after the fact. A few weeks after that, I want to highlight six v six coed team sand volleyball. I will credit the staff for making sure that we offer something across the board out of the times. We have our younger youth, but we are actively trying to seek programing that is targeting more of our older, pre-teen and teens in our high school age, there's a tournament there on July 17th. We also have Texas Spikes Football and the league begins August 17th. This is our adult programing. We have two grass volleyball tournaments. As I was alluding to, volleyball is not just to to youth adults. Programing is just bursting at the seams, if you will. This has been probably going on for a trend better part of 5 or 6 years. Staff does an amazing job offering and preparing the facilities that we have, and we are never disappointed with the registration demand. I believe registration usually tops out for 510 minutes online. We'll be happy to say that this year adult volleyball we added ten plus more teams. We added a new division, and one of the things we are looking into is adding a corporate division so we can further expand what we're doing. We have a summer basketball that will be a league there on your site. I believe it's 6 to 8 games. That will not be a tournament. That's an actual

league. We also have for V for Santa Barbara tournament that will begin July 15th. Move on to aquatics. And the biggest thing obviously, is opening our facilities and making sure that everybody has the opportunity to enjoy our facilities, but also summer swim lessons. Before the registration dates, we will have most of our registration are online, but this one will be in person. There are some reasons for that to make sure the logistics and everything are not missed, and that everybody has the opportunity to have their questions answered that day. Love. They will be. Registration will be at the Regional Aquatic Center. There will be three sessions offered and the. All sessions will be covered between June 1st through July 17th. They will be at our outdoor pools this season. The lessons of rapture that we have for our swimmers. Level one, level two, and then a parent in me option. It was a very brief presentation. I will stand for questions or comments and return the podium back to the council. Well thank you. Thanks for that information and letting us know what's gone on this summer for our youth and adult programs. Thank you very much. My pleasure. You all have a wonderful day. Next is highlights from visit Council.

Good afternoon mayor, councilors. City management. I am Rachelle Miller Hernandez. Visit Las Cruces director for the record. Today I'm giving a brief presentation on Mira Las Cruces, the festival's final report. This year marked our fourth anniversary and the first year that we added a five or, excuse me, a Friday night event. The event, of course, as many of you know, centered around the arts, culture, outdoor recreation, and the many other highlights are cuisine. Just everything that makes southern New Mexico and Las Cruces unique. The event was held over Friday, April 24th and Saturday, April 25th. So this is a brief look of the event this year. So again, that was just a very brief look at

this year's event. There we go. So some highlights. One thing I did want to remind everyone that this event is 100% funded by lodgers tax, but it brings millions of dollars to our city in GR. Marketing and add value and PR value. So the highlights for this year was our headliner was Annie Bosko. We also had the 575 band. Zaki, who is well known here locally. Our Friday night expansion had Rebel Creek Radio Norteno Band. We had a bigger drone show, we had the Public Safety Zone area, and I want to thank chief for that wonderful garrison flag that gave us some beautiful photo opportunities, which you can see one of them here. And we also had the land acknowledgment and traditional singing by the Mescalero Apache tribe, the pre-Hispanic Dance Connect. And I apologize if I mispronouncing that preview of the New Mexico Juneteenth Jazz Fest at the Rio Grande Theater Artist Alley, and just so much more. There's too much to even put on here. We also had the American 250 mural. As you know, this mark, this year marks the 250th anniversary of our nation, and we're doing a lot of activities around that. And Liz Vega will actually be presenting on that at our next council meeting. So here are the fund numbers, the great numbers. Our total attendance did rise this year, 33% from last year. And outside of the area it was 10%. It was 13% this year. And that's outside the 100 mile radius, which means they're most likely to

stay in our city at least one night. So that is actually a very significant increase in our industry standards. But the real highlight, I have to say, was our added value and our PR value. So our return on investment was obvious with these numbers. For our add value, we had 100 excuse me, 1,001% increase from last year. And our PR value was up 235%. Our page views were up 462% from last year. And what we forgot to mention on here, our promo video had 1 million views on YouTube this year. So this is a huge indicator of the success because a lot of our marketing is done outside of Las Cruces, and our staff attended a lot of trade shows, consumer trade shows this year. And they heard a lot of people saying, I've heard of that festival, or I'm actually going to Las Cruces for that festival. So everything is paying off. So for a four year event, these numbers are actually through the roof. So this is my sheet with the most notes because you know how they say putting on an event this size takes a village. Well, actually in our case, it takes a city, the city of Las Cruces. So I wanted to just thank first Liz Vega, if you could please stand. She's our event manager and without her year long planning on this, the event would not be possible. And Sergio Salinas, please stand. He's our distribution specialist. He handles all the a lot of the logistics and working with the other departments. Emily Lamb Haines she's not here today, but she's was a former intern to be an intern. It's a long, long story. But anyway, she was amazing.

And she made all the stamps for the 250 mural and Lorena Lozano and the marketing team. But also we wanted to say thank you to the rest of the Las Cruces team. But a special call out to Parks and Recreation with a special thanks to Franco Granillo. Across. Rocio Marmolejo and Joey Dominguez, as well as a special thanks to Topher Linenger and his team at the Rio Grande Theater, utilities, the police department, the fire department, of course, our city manager's office, communications, quality of life finance, and our employee volunteers. And I'm sure there's other departments I've forgotten. And also, we wanted to say thank you to the public for coming out and attending the event and supporting our efforts. With that, I stand for any questions.

Councilmember, and so thank you. I just want to thank you for the tickets that we received for the reserve section. That was folks from Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts. My son's had a birthday on that same weekend. And so all of those folks attended. Oh, nice. And they just love the festival. They love the food. And most of all, they, they love Las Cruces. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you Michelle. Thank you. A great event and the drone challenge is spectacular. Thank you. Thank you. Next week is a. Hello mayor city Council.

There we go.

All right. I am here again for our pets of the week for this week. So our first dog of the week is Canela. This sweet girl has a wonderful mix of gentle shyness and playful affection. She can turn into a total love bug, and she's eager to climb into your lap and just nuzzle in. She loves meeting new people and she blossoms with encouragement. She's looking for an adopter who can give her a little patience up front, and lots of love when she opens up. So that's our first pet of the week is Canela. Our second one is shy. Shy is smart, energetic, and people loving. A dog who enjoys attention and knows her commands well. She's confident and she's playful and she does good in playgroups. She has a big personality, enthusiasm, and she's always eager to please, and she'll thrive with someone who enjoys an active, fun and engaging companion our long term residents. As you can see, Rosa, who is our longest term resident, has been adopted. So that's super exciting. Thank you all so much. Our doctors who have been coming in. Yes. Thank you. We still have Watkins and Francesca, so they are our long term residents. Of course, we have long term residents, short term residents. We encourage the public, the community, come out and adopt and see our amazing animals, our events. You can visit us at the Farmer's Market on May 20th and May 27th. We were at Petco on May 9th. Will be at PetSmart on May 23rd, and we are at Tractor Supply on May 30th. The Tractor Supply on Montgomery Street. Last time I presented, I forgot that there was two tractor supplies. Now. So we will be at this one for our event. Come and check us out. We'll have adoptable animals there. And then just a little

call to action. We need fosters. Kitten season is here and we are seeing a major increase in kittens coming into our care, including very young bottle babies. If you or the community see a litter of kittens, please and don't know what to do, go to our a SCMV page. It shows what to do for kittens if mom's not around right then and there, it kind of gives a list of what to do. You can always call us, but currently we are urgently in need of kitten fosters and bottle baby fosters to help us get these animals out of the shelter into a safe and temporary home where they can grow, stabilize, and thrive. If you're an already an approved foster and you're willing to take additional kittens now, please reach out. We also are in need of dog and puppy. I apologize and puppy fosters are. Dog kennels are over capacity, and even short term foster homes can make a huge difference. Fostering gives dogs and puppies a break from the shelter. It reduces stress, opens kennel space for incoming animals, and helps us learn more about each animal. Francesca, one of our long term residents, is in a foster. So just because they're in a foster, it doesn't mean we don't showcase them. We don't put them, you know, on social media or anything like that. It's just a helpful way to get us get them out of the shelter, give us some more space for other animals who are coming into the shelter. Community members interested in fostering can find information in the foster application@ascm.org under the How to Help section. And as you can see, the more information, you'll see our website right there ascmv.org. You can always call us and reach out and we will gladly help you get to our foster coordinator who's really amazing. Just a shout out to all of the community members who are fosters. Now, when you guys step up, animals need you guys the most. We need to come together for every animal in our community. Your support gives animals comfort, safety

and a better chance at finding their way home or into a new family. So just a shout out if you're interested in fostering, we'd love an application from you. Those who are already fosters. Just a huge thank you. And to those who are interested in adopting, come by and see us. Our adoption hours are 1230 until 5:00. We'd love to have you and come out to our events. They're really great. Our off site event coordinators are amazing and that is all I have. So thank you guys for your support.

Thank you. Next. Under the City Manager or any member of the city staff, have any known conflict of interest with any item on the agenda? None. None.

None. Public participation will allow for three minutes now pending litigation or items on the non consent. Please come forward and state the name clearly and Katrina will go to the podium. Mayor. Councilors.

My name is Michael Hayes. I live in Las Cruces. Four weeks ago I spoke before City Council to ask Police Chief Jeremy Story two questions, which I. And then my counselor had asked him and to which he did not respond. Why did he request the city to seek $500,000 in state funds to purchase Swat vehicles? And why five of them? As I waited for a response, the mayor inserted to say that the period for civic comment was not the time for discussion of issues. Turning to his left, he assured me that the city clerk had heard my questions and would get back to me. She did not. The mayor knew that the city clerk would not, because not getting back to some citizens is part of her job. He knew that she had not complied with my inspection of Public Records Act request for records about a secret Council Committee on Public safety. Her violation of the law cost the city about $150,000 in legal fees and settlement costs, with the likely concurrence of the city attorney or the city manager. She did not comply with the mayor's false assurance. To me, if the mayor had wanted to get answers to my two questions, he would have turned to his right and asked Chief Story to answer them after the council meeting. But he did not want me to get those answers. Two weeks later, I got answers because of the efforts of others directed to answer my questions. Chief story replied not to me, whom he libeled behind my back, but to his two addressees, neither of whom believed his liable. He informed me that the Swat vehicles are not military style vehicles, but merely Ford 150 with emergency lights and decals to support state police in critical situations in southern New Mexico. This answer is unremarkable. So the question is why did Chief Story

refuse to answer my two questions? And why did the mayor and the city clerk shield him from answering them? The obvious answer these officials resent my questions, my successful law suit to get answers, and my public criticisms in abusing their offer office. They show, among much else, contempt for transparency and accountability in matters of public concern. Las Cruces deserves better leadership.

Mayor, city Council, I'm Liz Rodriguez Johnson. We continue our efforts to stand up for the disadvantaged in our community. We've brought to your attention on many occasions the fact that the city made a commitment to prioritize disadvantaged properties when inspecting and replacing lead and galvanized piping that conveys drinking water throughout the city. This commitment was made to the New Mexico Finance Authority in order to receive $15 million in funding, and for which the city must repay only a quarter. Unfortunately, the evidence continues to go that Las Cruces Utilities is not, in fact, prioritizing disadvantaged properties. As explained at the April 20th meeting, only 20% of city inspections so far are for disadvantaged properties. This is unjust. This is dishonest. It looks like fraud. It smells like fraud. This needs to be rectified. Handouts A and B are the fifth fifth set of lists that we've provided, identifying genuinely disadvantaged properties with estimated values of less than $200,000. Like the previous four sets of list, we again ask utilities to inspect these disadvantaged properties, immediately hand out. C is yet another example of a mobile home community that has been left out of the inventory that should also be inspected. Now, we've asked city management and the utilities department numerous times to demonstrate that fraud is not intended by doing the right thing. Getting back to focusing on properties of less than $200,000. Estimated value. This is necessary to remediate the clear evidence that lower value properties are not currently being prioritized. However, at this point, there is no evidence of progress. Instead,

80% of properties inspected are not disadvantaged. Now we ask for a clear demonstration that the city does not intend fraud. The first way this can be done is to immediately inspect 50 properties. We have included on the five sets of list of properties, with estimated values of less than $200,000. We've done the work and looking up their estimated values. Of course, each inspection needs to be fully documented. The second way is for the city to immediately inspect 50 properties. Las Cruces Utilities classifies as disadvantaged, which are estimated to be valued at less than $200,000. In this case, the city needs to do the work in looking up their estimated values. Inspection of 50 properties can easily be accomplished in one week's time. We ask that the city demonstrate it does not intend to defraud by immediately carrying out these 15 inspections of disadvantaged properties, then all disadvantaged properties in the city should be inspected before even one more non disadvantaged property is inspected, absent an overriding reason. Thank you.

Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem folks here today those watching online I'm Lynn Maurer. We citizens are dealing with the utilities department and city management. That again and again failed to do the right thing. They failed to comply with the lead and copper rule, and they failed to behave like decent people. They're certainly not like ducks, hard at work, putting their feet under the water, rather. Unfortunately, they're supine on the shore, chewing gum, laughing and making snarky comments. Councilor Mattis asked former assistant utilities director Carl Clark during a meeting February 17th, with what specific properties were being sampled for lead. Mr. Clark said he had checked addresses and suggested that new sampling was underway. EPA requests responses reveal that in reality, no sampling at all was carried out in 2025, and because they sample only once every three years, as shown at the last meeting in handout one, they won't be sampling the largest water system, the Las Cruces municipal water system, in 2026. Either. Added to this significant shortcoming is the fact that Las Cruces Utilities is not sampling the tap of anyone with galvanized or unknown piping who requests it. Even though the federal lead and copper rule requires it, they're not. Unfortunately, the director has never displayed the courtesy to tell people who've requested sampling why the department won't do it. Management has not prioritized disadvantaged properties, despite its explicit commitment to do so. Consider this A taxpayer owns a property on North Mesquite Street, in the oldest part of the city that's most likely to have lead pipes. It's valued at less than $100,000. She's asked to have her tap sampled, but the city has never responded to her request. She cleans house for a property owner who lives on

Arrowhead Road, a property valued at almost $600,000. Built in 1987. After the lead ban, she's aware that Las Cruces Utilities has tested the drinking water at this property four times every third year since 2015. She wonders why city management considers her property not important enough to sample, and why the director doesn't have the courtesy to tell her why. Here's more examples of the city's not doing right by its citizens failure to resample drinking water of a disadvantaged property owner whose lead was 89 parts per billion. The action level is 15. Failure to report lead levels truthfully, in the annual Consumer confidence reports failure to include all mobile homes in the city's inventory, much less inspect them for 18 months, answering virtually none of the public's questions. These failures, unfortunately, demonstrate again and again a lack of honesty and common decency. Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Good afternoon. My name is Rigo Salazar, and I'm a resident of district one and general manager of a striking image, a 36 year old cleaning company based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, that serve as residents in every district of our city, including members of our esteemed city council. I'm here today because I believe Las Cruces is facing a threat that is rapidly approaching, a threat that I believe many in our country are actually sleepwalking into. Since late February, the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed. 20% of the world's daily oil supply has been cut off. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is being drawn down faster than at any point in our history. And just this past week, officials in California, the state most dependent on Middle Eastern crude, announced that they have 4 to 6 weeks of gasoline and diesel supply left. Analysts at Chevron and JP Morgan have identified June and July as the window when critical shortages start reaching American consumers directly. That is not far away now, as Cruces produces some of its own energy. And we are not California, but we are a city where most people have no real alternative to a car. When the stations in El Paso start running dry, people will drive here. And when the panic buying begins and it will begin, stations can go from full to empty in a matter of hours. I'm asking this council to act now, while there's still time to do so, calmly and strategically, rather than in the middle of a crisis. Specifically, I am asking for three things. First, fuel purchase limits. Cash transactions of 10 or 15 gallons. It costs nothing to implement, and it is the single most effective tool against panic driven dry outs. It worked in the 1979 oil crisis and it will work now. Second, a priority fueling plan for essential workers, our.

Firefighters.

Nurses and grocery workers need to be able to get to work. Even if lines start forming. That framework should be in place before we need it, not scramble together after the fact. Third, expand Roadrunner Transit now and advertise it heavily. I believe public transit will become increasingly necessary as the world adapts to a new status quo. I've left a brief summary with the city clerk that outlines these requests, and a few more. But more importantly, with the data behind them. I understand that there are many demands on the City Council, but the cities that got through past energy crises and without chaos were the ones that planned early. We have a window, a shrinking window, and I am asking Las Cruces to use it. Thank you.

Good afternoon everyone. Mayor, city councilors, everyone else. So nice to see you. My name is Pamela Kort and I currently serve as president of the School board of Las Cruces Public Schools, and I also serve on the Community Schools Partnership Board, and I have done so for six years. As you are prioritizing budget items, I would like to insist that you continue to fund our community schools as you have in the past. Las Cruces Public Schools has a joint partnership agreement with you, the City of Las Cruces, that establishes a framework to combine resources, budgets and personnel to transform our now eight campuses into neighborhood hubs. Together, we integrate academic supports, health care services, food banks, and family outreach directly into those eight school buildings. Because of our mutual agreement, we are able to tackle nonacademic barriers in learning such as poverty, food insecurity and health needs, just to name a few, so that our students and families can succeed. Without these supports, students cannot learn. As Maslow's hierarchy of Needs explains. If excuse me, if we don't satisfy foundational basic needs, but we then we cannot fulfill higher level growth needs. Which basically means if you're hungry or frightened, there's no way that you can learn without the funding provided by the city. Our eight community schools will not be able to provide the services necessary for our students and our families to thrive. The money the city spends on community schools is an investment in our youth, which means it's an investment in our city, and it

is one of the most valuable investments you will ever make. Thank you so much for your time. My name is.

Brad Huff. At the first of this year, there were 11 illegal homeless encampments in the Burn Lake area. While the park rangers were being trained. Around mid January, they discovered these illegal encampments and started getting them removed. The last encampment was removed around February 7th. What has attracted these trespassers to the Burn Lake area so much? One reason I discovered is that when I asked some of them why they came here, they said that the community of Hope had sent them to over to the area. But I believe the biggest reason is that unmaintained or abandoned properties are where the homeless people target to set up their abodes, because they know that these areas are not being watched. We have seen numerous abandoned buildings getting burned because these trespassers have broken into them and set fires inside. It is the same story with properties like Burn Lake. If it appears abandoned, they will gravitate there. The trees and the brush provide shade, shelter and anchor points for the illegal encampments that they build, and the burn lake bed. They've altered the soil and landscape and left major impacts within the lake bed. Since these trespassers build illegal campfires, the risk of a major fire in the lake bed was very high. They had started a fire in the lake bed several years ago, and we had to evacuate our house for several hours, and we did not know if we were going to have a house to return to. If the wind had been blowing from the north that day, it would have blown across I-10 and caused a major

accident over on the freeway. The reason all these encampments had flourished so well is because for the last five years or so, Parks and Rec and Public Works could not agree on who was to in charge of maintaining that area. Well, we now have a new public Works department head, Mr. Kyle Allen, and he's got it figured out, and it looks like he is there to get things done. On May 4th, city crews started a maintenance project over there, and the results have been absolutely amazing and have far exceeded any expectations I had on what the city could do to maintain the burn lake area. The trees, brush and grass. Grass has been removed or mold, and the altered landscapes have been bulldozed back to what they're supposed to be. So a big thank you for making a huge difference in bringing life to parks to Public Works Department. Thank you so much. Great job.

Mayor Council. Thanks, Councilmember. For bringing it right choice for him up for discussion and possibly leading to a repeal of the city's. Designed to disenfranchize voters in municipal elections. Our city negatively impacts voter confidence complexity in understanding the process of the ballot itself. And on the subject of repairing, what is this? Let's not forget the repressive tax that came from banning single use bags of scrap dealers. But as Cruces clings up to it in the name of quote Flores Cruces beautiful and letting the city of trash. Fast forward from 2022 and now we've got some scenic piles of garbage and trash decorating near every corner. Plus, the city has partnered hundreds of thousands since then, and I continue. The mayor kept his cool when I was in town and even cursed in these chambers, all because he stood by his faith and backed the program at the end. Meanwhile, we have a councilor who throws a tizz when someone points out problems in her district, but turns her back on a citizen during public comment just because she doesn't like what she hears. I won't say it's childish behavior. Let's just call it unprofessional. And in closing, according to the FBI, there were 90,178 assaults on officers in 2025, and 53 officers lost their lives to felonious acts. Police after police say nonstop hate and dehumanization of officers makes attacks on cops feel normal, even expected. It's not just talk anymore. Look at the

shootings and assaults. Meanwhile, the head of the Las Cruces anti-police group and his crew keep pushing venom like and I quote Lcpd killed a person in the act of being a person. Never mind. The felon had already powder meth, 500 fentanyl pills, 20g of fentanyl powder, 28 prior arrests and drew a gun. Otherwise, I guess you could say he was an upright citizen. What? One other gem more training for the police leads to help us better. That's not protest. That's irresponsible speech. Stuff like this puts every cop at risk. There are people out there who are unstable or just itching for an excuse to go off. It's only going to get uglier, in my opinion. I think the Las Cruces anti-police group will be right up until another cop gets killed. Thank you.

Hello, Council members. My name is Robert Williams. I'm from district four. I was actually here to talk to you, Joanna Bencomo, but I am here representing a small community school named Reyes de saber. And what I wanted to do, I wanted to ask one of you all. We're looking for somebody to come say some kind words. First of all, I'm the secretary of the Council of the Padres of the school, and we're looking for somebody to come talk to our students that are graduating from kindergarten and fifth grade on May 29th. I was going to ask Joanna Bencomo. I've been trying to get Ahold of her, but I have not had a chance to do so. And I showed up to the office. But if there's any one of you all that can spare maybe 20 minutes of your time, please, if you can reach out to either me, I can leave my card or Lucia to. Like I say, the 29th is the is the graduation to be really nice for the kids. I was very fortunate as soon as I became a the Secretary of the council, I was really blown away by the student council there. That is K through fifth grade. How they put their agenda together. They have an actual agenda. The chairperson all the way down to the Secretary. And they really do like a really good job. It's very, very professional and they raise their own money. So I would like to shed a little light on recognition for them. And if one of you all can do that, I would really appreciate that. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Williams. Commissioner for the city of somehow I'll get back to you. Thank you.

Just hear. Howdy. I am Lonnie Montgomery. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, and I haven't been here in a long time. Last time that I'm also a people person who prays. So I'm going to pray, Lord God, send your blessing on us Council that they may have better just discernment and wisdom, that they can make wiser decisions. In Jesus holy name I pray. The last time I was here, fellow old man here pointed out that. I was. Forefathers were dead. You know all of this. This comes from Deo, which means God. They believe in God, meaning Jehovah. Yahweh. The Great I am, and then I. I'm a teacher. So in this thing here, I can preach what I want to. But in the riff raff, as a teacher, I think I would dabble in history and civics and science and things like that, but I'm going to skip that today. So we're going to state things and different things like that. But Martin Luther King once said, I have a dream that my little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And what have we done in the 21st century? We have promoted CRT critical race theory, where the teachers tell the children of color, you're a victim, and the light skinned people, you're an oppressor. Was this Mr. King's dream? I think not. And that's just one thing that's going on in our schools and high schools. We're supplying books so that students can, and I quote a lot

in there, can explore their sexuality, unquote. They can learn that it's enjoyable. It's okay to do it. If you want to have sex with your young sister, that's okay. If it feels good, how about the young brother? That's okay too. There's also a law that teachers don't have to inform parents that their son wants to be a Mormon. They don't have to tell them that son will be given drugs to help him turn into a woman, and even have his genitals removed without the parents consent. So that's going on time after time. And then in Santa Fe, I think they finally passed a law that they're going to teach a are they going to teach reading this year? And I left this. You can say anything. There's one of the young man comes in and says, there's so many police things. Not about the statistics, but they didn't give them making sure you use the F word. And there's the kids here. They bring in the lead thing every time, and they put it up here and it goes there and it goes on the right path. And it's, you know, it's like the city council and it's like the city Council doesn't give a reference posterior about having lead in the land, in the water of the people of Las Cruces. Thank you very much.

Hello, my name is Connie Chapman, and these remarks are in response to the misleading, exaggerated, disrespectful and hateful comments expressed at the end of public participation during the May 4th Council meeting, a man proudly commented as if he was some super citizen hero that he had personally quote, all by myself unquote called LC PD 127 times in the first 123 days of this year. He stated that 119 calls pertained to issues within district four, and that he had made them in an attempt to make the community safer for all. He questioned what Councilor Bencomo was doing in her own community to make it safer. The real question is, why did he orchestrate the circumstances that led to those calls, calls that potentially put people in harm's way? What was his motive? The vast majority of those 119 calls centered around people seeking shade from a building near the community of Hope campus, which happens to be located in district four. Let me repeat he targeted people seeking shade, people waiting for the community of Hope to open, waiting for a ride to a medical or legal appointment. Or maybe, just maybe, they were there simply to eat their lunch in the shade, he decided all by himself that those folks were a nuisance, or a potential hazard, or a threat, and needed to be removed. So he proceeded to create the circumstances leading to his 119 calls. What

a misuse of our public resources. And for the record, as a resident of district four, living near the community of Hope, I have no concerns around my safety from the folks on that campus, but I do feel unsafe in a community with a man who would manufacture conditions and then call the police on people seeking shade, and then place the blame at the feet of someone else. He ended his comments by saying that he will stand in support of law enforcement against the evil found within our City Council chambers. The only evil found here in these chambers is his level of disdain and lack of compassion for his fellow human beings. That is truly evil.

Good afternoon. Mayor Council everyone. My name is Yoli Diaz. Today I sent.

Over 80 people an email titled Urgent Escalation and request for Immediate intervention. Alleged barriers to Cancer care access for uninsured and indigent residents described in the email essentially says that Memorial Medical Center did it again on Friday, May 15th. I was informed of a resident diagnosed with cancer who reportedly was unable to obtain an appointment through the Memorial Medical Center Cancer Center due to uninsured status. This resident reports that she was also not financially screened by Memorial Medical Center, nor Memorial Medical Center Cancer Center after being referred to Memorial Medical Center Cancer Center by a Memorial Medical Center physician. Thus, unfortunately, the usual problem I have complained about is the people, the vulnerable, sick people who are not able to get through the Memorial Medical Center door to receive needed treatment at all. My efforts have not been complaints towards care, just those who are not provided the opportunity to receive needed care. I appreciate the work of both City of Las Cruces, Anthony Turner and Dona Ana County Commissioner Gloria Gameros in their immense dedication of time to consider all residents in Dona Ana County and their work towards improving the local health care system. I am not surprised with Memorial Medical Center's action of not providing this resident an appointment. It is the same old problem that I began my advocacy with in year 2021. However, what does surprise me is that Memorial Medical Center C-suite,

including CEO Dennis Knox, continuing to allow these barriers of access to cancer care for the most vulnerable in our county while they are being investigated by the New Mexico Department of Justice and the City of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County's lawsuit, one might think that they would show some very real concern and prove that they are serving the most vulnerable, as they should. Most often, I do not provide personal comments, but today I will. I'm asking you to try to imagine what you would feel if you were a child. Again, an underage child, and your mother was diagnosed with cancer and she was not able to access an appointment for cancer treatment, do you think that you would feel the fear that your mother would die? What if the tables were turned? You were the mother or father and you were diagnosed with cancer. Would you feel the fear of dying and your child left without you? I want you to put yourself in the position of residents in this position and try to feel those fear, fearful feelings and demand health care access to all residents in our community at Memorial Medical Center. Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor, city Council, my name is Fred Miller. I would just like to request that we keep ranked choice voting. There are potential benefits to ranked choice voting. I won't go into the complaint that it's too complicated is specious, because you don't have to rank all the options if you only care about one candidate, just put a one next to that one. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. That's no more. For people who don't like ranked choice voting, they don't have to treat it as ranked choice. They can just pick one candidate as they would otherwise. So thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor, city Council, following one of those. This will be tough. This morning I met with my radiation oncologist at Memorial Medical Center, Doctor Carl and I am three years cancer free. It was a. It was a long. And arduous journey.

Started out in Silver City, being diagnosed by the National Science Institute. Sent to El Paso. Big big tumor removed. Came right back, then sent to Colorado Springs UC health and they treated me for about a month and said, we're not getting anywhere. You are. You have about 3 or 4 months to live. We came back to Las Cruces. I got signed up with the hospice program and the Death with Dignity program. But before we left Colorado Springs, we did ask one of the members of that team to at least see if they could find me some palliative care, and fortunately, they did. One day the phone rang and we got a call from Memorial Medical Center. Doctor Carl said, come see me. Went and visited him. CT scan. He said, I think I can treat you. It was it took a year. Quad shots, lots of radiation and then chemotherapy after that. But here I stand here today, three years cancer free and I would not be here if it were not for Memorial Medical Center. I hear that there's some grousing going on and there's lawsuits, but I would urge you to go sit down in a room and share your differences and work something out. All lawsuits do is cost people money. And I think the last thing that this community could afford is if a memorial medical group decided, hey, it's no fun doing business there anymore, let's move on. And we got nothing. So please, if you can pick up the phone, go knock on a door, sit down with them and talk. I think there's a great group over there and I'm happy to be here. Thank you very much.

Sir. For your help. Thank you for sharing. I think for the record, we need your mind to state your name. My name is Charles Burt. Thank you. And I'm sorry I forgot to do that. Not a problem. Thank you.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Leticia Magallanes, and I am here speaking today for a woman in our community who was diagnosed on May 5th, 2026 with breast cancer, while also facing another painful reality. She is undocumented and uninsured. No person should have to beg for cancer treatment because of their immigration status, or because they cannot afford insurance. Cancer does not ask for papers. Cancer does not care about citizenship. It only cares whether treatment is given on time. The patient was referred to Memorial Medical Oncology in Las Cruces seeking medical help. During one of the most frightening moments of her life. Instead of feeling protected and cared for, she felt dismissed, afraid and concerned about whether she would receive the treatment needed to survive. Hospitals exist to help to heal people. Medical ethics require compassion, dignity and equal treatment for every human being who walks through the doors with a patient with breast cancer. When a patient with breast cancer is denied access to the oncology services because lack of insurance or documentation, it raises serious moral and public health concerns to our entire community. We understand hospitals face financial pressures. We understand systems are complicated, but there are financial assistance programs, charity care obligations, patient navigators and emergency protections that are supposed to help vulnerable patients, especially those facing life threatening illnesses like cancer. Undocumented residents are part of our communities. They work here, raise families here, pay taxes here, worship here, and contribute to New Mexico every day. They deserve humane medical care. We are asking for

fair review of this patient's case, access to charity care, screening and financial assistance, transparent communication from MMC and MC oncology, protection of vulnerable cancer patients regarding our immigration of immigration status. Accountability when medically necessary care is delayed or denied. Breast cancer already brings fear, pain, uncertainty and emotional trauma. No, no patient should also carry the burden of feeling invincible or unwanted while seeking life saving care. Health care is is not only a business issue, it is a human issue. Today, I ask that our health care institutions, elected leaders and community members to stand on the side of dignity, compassion and equal access to care. Thank you.

Council mayor, I. Am Jim Wilcox.

Today I speak to you as the bicycle representative on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. The City of Las Cruces is reapplying for a bicycle friendly designation from the League of American Bicyclists, establishing Vision Zero goals works towards raising our status from a bronze level to a silver level. Unfortunately, after five years, we are only hoping to retain our bronze status. In fact, three quarters of our achievements have been from nonprofits, not from the city, such as safe routes to School, Every body rides with Grace and the bicycle repair. Becoming a safe place to bike is good for business. If you doubt me, please consider what my assistant says. Hey Google, what are the reasons corporations consider whether a city provides safe bicycle facilities when deciding where they will locate. Let me try that again. Hey, Google.

What. Hegel. What are the reasons corporations consider whether a city provides safe. Bicycle facilities when deciding where they will locate. Corporations, prioritize safe bicycle facilities during relocation, primarily to attract and retain top talent, particularly younger professionals who value active transit and a strong work life balance. Dedicated infrastructure also supports corporate sustainability goals, reduces the need for expensive parking structures, and fosters a healthier, more productive workforce with lower health care costs.

So some of the things that corporations look for, and I would say that given this, I would expect our business development department to be actively pursuing safe bicycle facilities, including Vision Zero goals, to attract businesses and improve our economy. Proclamations that Las Cruces is bike friendly are appreciated, but they don't mean anything to businesses. Results are what are what matters. Biking is good for business. Don't leave money on the table. And I've left you a written statement of that Google statement. Thank you.

Good afternoon all. Diane Starbuck. For the record, I wish to address the issue of reserving the flagpole space. Apparently, at least three groups tried to reserve the flagpole in front of City Hall on May 7th. All three of these groups were told different things at different times during the past year. They had the flagpole. They didn't have the flagpole. The city is working on a procedure. The procedure is not available. None of this is fair to anybody. Then I guess in an effort to be fair, word comes down that groups need to take turns. Is there any type of written record over the years of who has used the flagpole? How is turn taking to be determined? My issue is not who or who did not get the flagpole, but about the process. If there is a procedure for reserving the flagpole, it seems to be a mystery. There needs to be a clear, public, fair and equitable standard operating procedure for reserving this space. The lack of SOPs continues to be a city problem. We all remember the hiring of the city manager and how painful that was to resolve. At that time. I spoke to the city attorney, Mr. Douglas, and he agreed that SOPs come in handy. That's the gist, not Mr. Douglas's actual words. So here is another example of when an SOP would have come in handy. A simple fix is to say nobody can use the flagpole. This is not a reflection on any city employee,

but points to a lack of leadership. I know the city has more pressing issues to deal with, other than who's using the flagpole area, but instances like these undermine faith and trust in our government. The city government needs to be accountable and transparent. I know you can do better. Thank you. Good afternoon. Mayor. City councilors, appreciate the chance. Good afternoon. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment.

Can you stay?

Oh. I'm sorry. Excuse me. Leslie Woods. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. You may recognize these words as the beginning of the Bill of rights. One of our founding fathers, James Madison, begins his statement of American rights by forbidding our Congress from making any religious law or any law establishing a federal religious institution, thus establishing a wall of separation between church and state. The First Amendment was violated in 1952, when Congress declared an annual National Day of Prayer. On the first Thursday in May, according to the First Amendment, our government has no right to tell us what our beliefs in a God ought to be or ought not to be. Our government has no right to declare the existence or the benevolence of a God, any more than it has the right to affirm the divinity of Christ, or the inspiration of the Bible by the Christian God. In 1952, when Congress passed the current National Day of Prayer resolution, affiliation with religion and a belief in a God was nearly universal. Mr. mayor, this is no longer the case today. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of Americans identify as nones. We declare no religious faith and identify with no religious institution. We do not share the sentiments or declarations made in the typical National Day of Prayer resolutions. Unlike the religious, we consider the many contributions of the United States of America to be the advancement of humanity, to be the work of enlightened men and women, not the interventions of supernatural beings. Given that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional and is not representative of the opinions of all the citizens of this city, we ask you, city's councilors, for resolution forbidding National Day of

Prayer and any other religious service or ceremony using the grounds of Las Cruces City Hall. Yes, we are here again and will continue to bring these issues to you until a resolution is made. Do better. Thank you. Good afternoon.

Mr. Mayor. City Council, my name is Jim Hurst. Yesterday, our national nation's capitol, there was a National Prayer jubilee. The speakers included the three most powerful men in our government. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and the speaker of the House, Michael Johnson. The prayer. By Michael Johnson included so many.

Falsehoods and distortions of Christianity, Western European history, and American history that requires a response from me this afternoon, Speaker Johnson asserted that the idea that all men are born equal and free is a biblical principle, and that its inclusion in the Declaration of Independence was due to Christian influence. Mr. mayor, that assertion is false. If it were true, the American Revolution would have been unnecessary.

I defy any Christian to show me any verse in the Bible that says explicitly that all men are born equal and free. Instead, we find the New Testament verses that say slaves submit to your masters, which implies that the God of the Bible willed some men to be masters and some men to be slaves. Another principle we find in the Bible is the divine right of kings. Romans 13. The idea that secular authorities are ordained by the God of the Bible, and men are commanded to submit to them, and that anyone who opposes the secular authorities opposes God. That's what we find in the Bible. The contrast. The Declaration of Independence declares that governments are instituted by men and that men have the right to abolish any government that doesn't protect their national right, their natural rights. Mr. mayor, you can't have a Bible that both defended slavery and declares all are created equal and free. Mr. mayor, religious groups are opposed, are prone to distorting history in ways that put them in the best possible light. This distortion of history is an insult to our intelligence and to the legacy of enlightened founding fathers like Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Franklin and banishes America's unique place in history. Mr. Larry, please preserve the separation of church and state in this city and base the governance of this city on

reason, not religion. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Council mayor. My name is Donna Striker. We're supposed to maintain a professional, respectful tone when addressing the city. That doesn't happen every month, every week, every meeting. And there definitely is disrespectful, degrading, threatening or slanderous remarks. And they are supposed to be strictly prohibited. I spoke last week with several people who say that they are fearful to come to council because they don't feel safe, and the reason they don't feel safe is because of the disrespectful, degrading, threatening and slanderous remarks. The intent of public comment is to allow everyday citizens and impacted communities to directly inform government decision making, ensuring transparency and accountability. It provides lawmakers with diverse perspectives, highlights and unforeseen impacts, and helps agencies craft fair regulation. It's to inform and to educate. It allows the public to provide local or technical information and that policies may not. Policy makers may not have been aware of. It helps government bodies spot unintended negative impacts or proposed rules or projects that may have a negative impact on the community. It also establishes an official documented record. But when there are disrespectful, degrading and downright threatening remarks, so much so that a city person cannot come here or feel safe because they feel threatened by people not necessarily up there, but back there. That concerns me as a citizen, and I feel bad for them. And I just thought it might be good to understand what is public comment really supposed to accomplish? Is it personal? Is it private? Look at me. It shouldn't be. That's not what it's supposed to be. At least I don't think that's

what it is. Maybe you guys could answer that for me. Thank you. Good afternoon.

Mayor, city. Council and Chief of Police Tim Jenkins here. I would ask that we all take a moment to consider and to reflect on Police Week that just passed this as an honor and respect. And thank you to all the men and women who selflessly served our community day and night. God bless and protect them from this day forward. I stand before you this day as a member of our community that is sick and tired of seeing our police officer blamed for problems they didn't create. Every time crime rises, every time another repeater has been repeat offenders back on the streets, the first reaction is often to question the police. But the truth is, officers can only do their job if the rest of the system does theirs. Our officers arrest the same offenders again and again, only to watch them released back into the community within days and sometimes within hours. Many of these are repeat offenders with long histories of violence, theft, drug crimes and assaults, and every time they are released without meaningful accountability, it puts the public and our officers at greater risk. We ask police officers to run towards danger. We ask them to stop violent people, break up domestic disputes, respond to overdoses and to confront armed criminals. Then, when they do their jobs and make arrests, too often the same system turns around and sends the same offenders right back out into our community. This only creates frustration in our community, burnout in law enforcement, and danger for everyone. Supporting police means more than just saying thank you during ceremonies. It

means creating a justice system that actually backs them up. Accountability matters. Consequences matter. Public safety matters. Our officer safety and well-being matters. I'm not saying every person belongs in jail forever. Rehabilitation matters as well. But repeat violent offenders who continue to threaten the public should be kept, should not keep getting endless chances while officers and citizens have to pay the price. If we truly want safer neighborhoods and streets, we need honest conversation about where the system is failing and not keep blaming our officers. We need leaders willing to stop treating police officers like they are the root cause of every problem in society. Our officers deserve support. Our residents deserve safety, and our community deserves a just system that protects law abiding citizens instead of repeat offenders over and over again. Thank you very much. Good afternoon.

Mayor. Council.

City staff. My name is George Pearson and I'm vice president of Cruces, the local bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organization. I'd like to thank you for the recent work session on Vision Zero and Traffic safety. The presentation gave a good explanation of Vision Zero, and the idea that the only acceptable number of traffic deaths is zero. The importance of using the safe systems approach was explained, where we understand that people make mistakes and that the built environment needs to anticipate these mistakes to reduce the severity of crashes. Using proven safety countermeasures, we can create a safer environment for all modes of transportation. The presentation talks about the Safety action plan that is underway and funded by the Safe Streets for all Grant, but once again, it seems that we're waiting for some future action before we implement any meaningful traffic safety solutions. Five years ago, we adopted the Active transportation plan, but for the most part, we have been waiting on finding an active transportation coordinator. Now we're waiting for the safety action plan. At the work session, we heard how in 2019, Albuquerque committed to Vision Zero by 2040, showing progress with a 7% decrease of fatal crashes in 2025, El Paso adopted a Vision Zero goal 2022 and is showing results with about a 15% decrease of fatal crashes in 2024 and almost 25% decrease in 2025. Do we have to wait for the safety action plan to make any progress? Why can't we start now with the low hanging fruit? Let's pass the Vision Zero resolution and join the Vision Zero network. Let's change the default speed limit for unmarked roads from 30 miles an hour to 25mph. Let's evaluate speed limits so that they are consistent according to roadway function, not changing along the same segment of road, and no higher than 35 miles an hour on any city surface street. We should do a

crash analysis studio treatment for fatal crashes, not to determine blame, but to prevent future similar crashes. Let's update city ordinances to reflect changes in state laws that stop. We've talked about speed safety cameras, but have not moved forward towards any implementation. When we address safety issues for vulnerable road users, we make the road safer for all users. Please, let's not kick the can down the road waiting for the safety action plan. We've already. We're already years behind Albuquerque and El Paso. Let's start immediately and prevent future fatal and serious injury crashes now. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council mayor. My name is Nicole Martinez. I'm here with the Mesilla Valley Community of Hope. First, I want to say thank you for funding the Health Related Services Fund for all of the agencies who applied. I'm speaking today to offer context on this process. I've been through many cycles and I've seen the process shift from competitive to, at times, an inequitable ranking of partners. The process requires a letter of intent to apply, and when you get the thumbs up for that, then you can submit a full grant from there. And then after a few months, we show up for over the course of two days, we're required to make an evening presentation to the committee members and our peers. We then get publicly ranked at the discretion of the committee members. It is, shall we say, humbling. It's also rare. Certainly don't do this for HUD or our federal Grantors when awards get smaller and the process is highly competitive, it is our clients who suffer. I know that community of hope depends on the amounts given to fund a unique program that doesn't have access to many funding sources. And if we were to change that, I wonder which agencies would get more and which client programs would be crushed by the changes. Many of the agencies are already working on shoestring budgets pieced together by various funding sources. All of our agencies are connected, and I speak for myself when I say that I feel happy when everyone gets funded at equitable amounts, they are all doing amazing work. I posit if Casa de Peregrinos doesn't get funded, what happens to our client food allotments? We need a stable, equitable funding model. The client, served by agencies like ours and our partners depend on consistent, reliable sources and not a lottery of which committee members show up to rank us. In fact, we've seen declining participation from the committee itself, with only three members present at the last several competitions. I know it can't be easy for the committee members to decide when there are so many agencies doing important work for vulnerable residents of Las Cruces. I'm grateful to the members that are making the

effort to support this funding. I urge the Council to move away from competitive grant cycles for these essential services and toward a partnership model. We will still uphold rigorous monthly and annual compliance and reporting. Submit the grant applications, but we must stop treating basic health

And hunger needs as a competition. If you're not going to just add us as the budget line item, we should be, then at the very least, please do away with the presentations and consider funding all agencies at a higher level. Let's face it, we know that the issues we are addressing for constituents are not going away. Hunger, health care, diabetes, domestic violence, homelessness, helping people with disabilities and cancer. Let's fund our partners at the levels needed to keep our community healthy. I would love to discuss this further with any of you interested in making some of these positive changes for the Health Related Public Services Fund? Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor, mayor, city councilors. My name is Alberto del Campo and I'm an organizer with New Mexico Dream Team here in the community of Las Cruces. There is an evident disregard for working families in Las Cruces. Just in the recent comments made before me, there's an evident through line going from preparing for a short shortage of fuel crisis utilities impacting household valued under $200,000, and the city's failure to respond to water testing requests from low income households to asking from support for support for students as they continue their studies, emphasizing how lack of access to food and poor housing conditions impact their performance. This is what we mean when we talk about community health and safety. It means providing your constituents with the resources they need to thrive. A lot of the concerns brought up in the earlier portion of public comments exposed the painful, violent reality of the failure to identify what makes our community safe, our priorities when assessing city funding are wrong. The slogan defund the Police has received as a room splitting violent statement. The reality, as presented by the police department, is that crime has risen even while funding for the police continues to grow higher and higher. Listen to the requests made of you by the constituents in this room, who have highlighted the total disregard for working class families, health and safety in the city, and reckon with the fact that as you continue to pour funds into the police, you're also taking on the violent act defunding our communities. This community is strong and resilient. Many initiatives here are volunteer led and have direct material impacts in the days of everyday people who live here. This is a strong community even without government funding. So please stop defending our community.

Thank you. Acceptance of agenda. Mr. Second. This is on the motion to accept the agenda as presented. Councilor McClure. Yes. Councilor Mattis. Yes. Councilor Harris. Yes.

Councilor Bencomo. Yes. Councilor. Koran. Yes. Councilor Munoz. Yes. Mayor. Yes. First item on the agenda. Is resolution number. 46-142. A resolution adopting the municipal budget for fiscal year 2026 and 2027. Move to approve. Second.

Good afternoon, mayor. Council. Leslie Doyle, finance director. For the record before you today is the proposed fiscal year 27 budget. Many of these slides you have seen at the work session, just some a little updated information for you as we go through. But a lot of the information will look familiar. So this slide is encompassing of all of our funds. Specifically, I want to speak to the special revenue funds and the capital projects funds, because they do have a significant decrease. This is due to the fact that we do not bring in the budget until we have grant agreements. So those funds will increase throughout the year as we receive the grants. Additionally, Internal Internal service fund decreased because we did move the fleet department and function into the general fund. You can see here for the general fund, which I will be speaking in much greater length later in the presentation, but there is a 2.2% increase from our current fiscal year 26 revised budget, going from 167.5 million to our proposed of 167.9 million. Again, for those of you like me who like to see nice, pretty pie charts, you can see here that 28.6% of our budget is general fund. Enterprise funds is 33.9. Enterprise funds are inclusive of utilities, airport transit. And then we also have our

capital capital funds at 16.4%. Again, just noting that from our adopted budget or from our revised budget, which is our fiscal year 26 budget as it stands today, to the proposed budget that I am seeking approval of, there is a 0.2% increase. So this is our general fund summary and the fiscal year 27 work session. That column there in the middle is really just for context of where we were at the work session and where we are today. So for our revised budget, again, I'm not going to go through all of the numbers, but I will say that our expenditures, which are the ones that I think were all most interested in fiscal year 26 revised, is 167.5. As I just mentioned at the work session, the expenses were 180.7. And so after the direction that Council had given us to go back and reduce, we are coming back with a 167.9 general fund expense request. Specifically, I want to look at the unreserved fund balance because in fiscal 26 it is 18.2. At the work session it was 2.1. And now, based on the proposed budget, it is 20.2 million. So where does the money come from? This is the revenue side of the equation. We have a total of 186.4 million. By and large, 79% of that is related to gross receipts tax. We also have fees and charges of 10% and then

property tax of 9%. And then franchise and cannabis tax rounding out the remainder. So for general fund, again, we have 125.6% in personnel. And I will show you kind of the difference in the subsequent slides from where we were at at work session operating of about 41.8 million, and then a small capital amount of 461,000. Again, we don't typically pay for capital from general fund. So that's a pretty small amount with a total amount requested for expenditures of 167.8 million. So the change in the general fund is, as I mentioned before, about 0.2%, which is 0.4 million or 400,000. So again, 10.2 million of that is personnel operating expense went down 8.9 based on the direction that council has given us. And then capital went down at 0.9 million. So again, just kind of reiterating that the difference in fiscal 26 proposed and 27 is it's a pretty flat budget. So because so much of our budget is based on personnel, there's a lot of thought and consideration that goes into what it is that we budget for this year. We have budgeted for a 2% general wage increase. Any longevity is incorporated in the budget, and we budgeted our vacant positions at 50% health and insurance at employee plus

spouse spouse rate, and there was no para increase this year at the work session, I will note that we included a premium increase of 20%. We've got an additional information that it's actually going to be closer to 18%. So as part of the reduction, we did go in and reduce health insurance by 2%. So this is the fiscal year 27 personnel. You can see again at the work session, it was about 130.33 million. And now we are requesting 125.6 million. Not surprisingly, public safety are the two highest because they are the two most staff heavy departments that we have, Parks and Rec and public works rounding out the top four there. And this is the personnel breakdown from the work session to current. Just so you can see where those savings were were recognized. Again, I want to note that health insurance and para, which is a huge amount of our salaries budget, we have no control of that is dictated at the state, and we are at their mercy every year. All of that to say about 4.7 million was reduced in salaries. Then we have our operating. You can see here at the work session it was about 50 million and now it is 41.8 million public works, fleet parks and Rec and police are rounding out the top four for operating expense. Then our general fund transfers, we've got MPO at 40,000, Griggs

Walnut at 200 000. Vehicle vehicle acquisition, which will speak to more in a later slide. Airport $776,000 transfer from general fund worker's comp. About 950 000 prisoner care 1.3 million. Transit 4 million. This is inclusive of. This is the required match for our grant. Then we have liability claims of 6.5 and debt service of about 9.4 for a total transfer from General Fund of 23.7 million. Now this is our fiscal agent contribution. This is inclusive of animal services and Metro. This slide has both the City of Las Cruces contribution as well as the county contribution specifically for animal service. You can see that there is about a 7.5% decrease. Both county and city have a 2.1 million contribution, and the reduction is actually due not to a reduction in expenses, but an inclusion of fund balance that they had that they have incorporated into our contribution, meaning that we can contribute less and they can still keep the same amount of expenses Merv does. Similarly, we did ask for them to include a utilization of fund balance. And while that did go up about 1.8%, the increase would have been more had they not utilized that fund balance. And then Metro remains the same year over year. So this is the slide that I started with. Make no fear, it does look better in the next

slide, but I just did want to give some context to where we started because this was a huge undertaking. And I, I think it's prudent to give a shout out to every single department because everybody came to the table, the amazing budget team that worked tirelessly and did everything that I asked them to do, and even some that I didn't ask them to do. So this is where we started. This is where we are now. It's not perfect by any means, but it is a much better place to be. You can see that we are now much closer and headed on the right track. Just for some additional context, as we work to close that gap. That council did give us the, you know, the direction to go and work to close this gap. You can see, again, 4.7 of that closure amount was personnel. 8.1 was operating capital of about 16,000. 1.1 was a transfer that we were able to reduce. And then we were able to find two 2 million in revenue that we can actually recognize. So again, similar information here. Just a little bit of apples to apples where you can see the proposed budget on the left was at work session. And we had a fund balance and ending fund balance of two, about 2 million. And if you look at what we are proposing today, you can see revenues increased. Our beginning balance increased a million. That's because we were able to recognize a million in revenue this year, and then another million in revenue in fiscal 27, expenditures decreased from 180 to 167. We

also had a transfer increase of just over a million. So our ending fund balance, as it is proposed today is 48 million with a are required to twelfths about 28 million with an available balance of 20 million. So all of this shows a budget reduction, a net impact of budget reductions of 15.9 million. We are still utilizing 5.1 million of our general fund or of our reserves, but it is much better than the 20 million that we were utilizing at the work session. So this is our updated outlook kind of going forward, because I think it's important that we put into context what that $20 million fund balance will look like in subsequent years. So you do have the proposed budget on the left with a $20 million available balance. And then if we move that in to 28 with some, you know, assumptions that we are making are available, balance will be 13.6 million. And in 28, we will continue to utilize about 6 million in fund balance. So again, we are on the right track, but there's still work to do. And so I do want to. Just make note that we're not out of the woods, but we are definitely headed in the right direction. And so a lot of what we have done is, you know, look long term, like we want to we don't just want this to be a one time like we have to, you know, do all this work and then everything kind of just stays the same. So we do have two committees that we are currently have have currently convened. The realignment committee is chaired by Mandy

Leatherwood. She's the director of communications. And this is to evaluate current departmental structures and identify any collaboration and efficiencies between departments. Then we also have the Revenue and Efficiencies Committee, which is chaired by Chris Faber, and he's the director of community development. This committee is being utilized to assess revenue opportunities where appropriate, and then also process improvements and efficiencies. Our internal auditor, Viola Perea, actually sits on this one, and she's working more specifically on efficiencies for maybe even separately from this committee. But these are two committees that we have put in place at the direction of the city manager to make sure that everything that we are doing, we continue to, you know, gain those efficiencies and don't lose sight of the fact that there's still some work to do. I sit on both of these committees, and I'm pretty excited about some of the stuff that's actually coming out. Again, I know you've seen this slide, but I love it. So I'm going to continue to share it. As we look at bond cycling and not continuing to cycle and are more strategic with how we incur debt, you can see that our debt service does continue to go down. And essentially what this means is it lessens the burden on general fund, because we do not have to continue to pay that debt from general fund and transfer it. This is the vehicle acquisition list that I mentioned earlier. There is a $500,000 transfer from general fund. This has not changed from what you've seen before. I do just want to note again that both the fire and utilities vehicles are being paid from other sources from

general fund, so those are not included in the $500,000 general fund transfer. So here you have our Telshor facility fund. We are estimating our beginning balance of about 34.1 million know estimated revenues and our proposed expenditures and transfers out of 17.4 million. I do just want to add to this that there is investment income that is being recognized in this fund, but it is really not great budgeting practice to budget against investment income because it's really volatile and we don't really know what that is. So I don't want anyone to think that there's no investment income. There is. We just have not budgeted it. So our estimated ending balance for Telshor is about 16.4 million. These are the project fund updates for Telshor. You can see your original budget and then carry over estimate. And then a continuation here of those projects. And then finally just the regular annual allocations from Telshor for mano a mano of 737,000, we do have the transfer out of 600,000 for public health services and the homeless outreach program of 175,000. I will note that the security for Mesilla Valley Community of Hope, as well as the nuisance abatement. Both of those have historically been paid from general fund, but we are requesting that they are paid from Telshor fund at this time. And then I want to speak a little bit about Las Cruces

Public Schools Partnership. We did we do have the community schools funding of 9000 in prior years. That funding was 150,000. This year we are we have currently budgeted 9000. Additionally, there's crossing guard funding of 337,000. I will tell you, as a former CFO of a school district, that typically crossing guards do not get paid by municipalities, they get paid by the district. Additionally, we reached out to the chief chiefs of Police throughout the state to see how other municipalities did it. And I would say 99.9% of those the school district covers as well. So for this year, we are going to go ahead and cover this for the schools. But they are aware the district is aware that in fiscal 28, this is an expense that they will need to pick up. And then just this is just, you know, a summary of everything that we've gone over. So you can see fiscal 25 actuals revised work session and proposed. This is everything here all laid out for you. This is the revenue side of the equation. And then I know that this is kind of a horrible slide, and I apologize for that. But no matter how many different ways we try to slice and dice it, this was kind of where we ended up. So you can see again, fiscal 25, actuals 26, revised 27 work session and proposed budget. Our request for expenses is 167.8 million. And with that,

I'm actually going to turn it over to some of the directors. We have quality of life parks and public works that are going to be speaking specifically about any service impacts that these budget cuts have, will have. And so, Carol, where are you? Okay.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Carol Bray, director of the Quality of Life Department. And I didn't know I was first. So but I'm ready. So and thank you, Leslie, for guiding us through this process. And city Manager and Assistant City Manager Sonia Delgado, I want you to know that our department took this exercise very seriously. And we tried to minimize minimize the impact of these reductions on our services. However, I will say that with two reduction exercises we've had for this fiscal year, now, we have reduced our operations budget by 42.3%, and this will result in some impact on programs and services. We still have most of our wonderful team, and they have been they have resolved with me that we are going to do our very best for the community with what we have, but I want you to be aware of where there will be some reductions. That. 42 point.

Carol, if you wanted to just move to the next slide.

Pardon me. Oh, I'm sorry, we're not on my slide, are we? Excuse me. There we are. All right. But just in time, because I was just getting there. So as I said, 42.3%. That totaled 1.16 million, roughly in reductions. So some across the board reductions, these first three were reductions that we saw throughout our department. So supplies and instructors for public programs. This is going to result in the elimination of some of our paid speakers and musicians at museum events, as well as fewer dance classes for seniors and other senior programs where we have outside paid instructors also. And as I said, we'll use our talented staff to step in where we can, but the public will likely see fewer of our more specialized programs at our libraries, senior centers and museums, minor office equipment may sound like a minor expense, no pun intended, but we are reducing this about $50,500, and this will be for computers, other hardware, specialized equipment needed for our kitchens and certain programs. This reduction is not sustainable. I will say, as we have a schedule for replacement of staff, computers and other equipment. And when we can't replace these items, which happened in FY 25 and will happen again in FY 27, we risk using aging technology that just doesn't function properly and will affect our ability to provide service. Eventually. Food and beverage for programs. And I want to stress this is not food and beverage for seniors meals. This is not food and beverage for our living collections at the Museum of

Nature and Science. In case you were worried about that. But this is a $16,535 reduction for snacks and light refreshments that we provide at many of our programs, something that our public has come to us to expect, for example, signature programs such as moonlight at the museums, our museum exhibit openings, which happen frequently throughout the year, and senior dances such as the Halloween dance and the Spring Formal. We also provide food for our teen programs and our storytimes for little ones. And you might see that dichotomy, but both of those groups really need food to engage well at our programs. And then I also want to mention, we are looking at a small reduction in Branigan library hours. We are proposing a reduction of eight hours per week. This would be Sunday afternoons and then evenings. Monday through Thursday we would close at seven instead of 8:00. There's two reasons for this. One is we cannot afford the security it takes, and I will not allow my staff to work at the Branigan Library without security being present when we're open. Because of the more intense nature of incidents we're seeing there, and we need to keep our staff and our patrons safe. The other thing, as we thought about this reduction in hours, we realized that we have a lot to do in preparation for vacating the Branigan Library. As we get ready for the hoped for expansion and renovation project, I have been through numerous library moves in my career, and I can tell you that there is a lot we have to do to withdraw outdated materials, get our collections in order, organize our files and archives,

our special collections, and more in order to prepare for for what will be a major move and relocation of items while we are under construction. So following reductions of some staff positions at the library, which we face, some vacancies we could not fill. This will allow us to have more staff on duty during work hours as well, so we can assign staff to these special duties. We do expect to return to our full schedule of 64 hours per week, which would reduce this to 56 hours per week. Once the newly expanded and renovated library opens. So we assure you of that in terms of streamlining digital resources here, we're talking about Hoopla and Kanopy. That's a reduction in total of about $100,000. We will still have Libby, which is a very robust digital resource tool that we have, which will provide many of the same kinds of digital streaming experiences that our patrons have. Now we'll just have one platform instead of three. The elimination of the museum studio art classes. We're actually hoping to put in place a new model. The studio art program has been a long term program at the Museum of Art. It's a very good program, but we have found that attendance is decreasing. And generally, I would say these programs, in a sense, are not as inclusive because of the cost. They're generally 60 to $80 per class. And of course, much of what we offer to the public is, is free or at a lower cost than that. So in place of the studio art program, we plan to provide more free workshops and one off classes that are very talented. Staff can provide with limited assistance from outside instructors. This was something that the museum team worked on long and hard. I think they've come up with a good solution

and it will save us some funds. Also at the museums and actually throughout the department, I wanted to mention we've eliminated all professional membership memberships except our Smithsonian affiliate membership and as well as travel had already been eliminated. So this will affect our professional development of our staff and something, again, that is not sustainable. I wanted to mention our wait list for senior programs. This is something that we just recently recognized would happen because we were required to eliminate all temporary staff for FY 27, and we had been relying on some temporary staff this fiscal year to provide home care services for our homebound clients. So we're going to have to put about 14 clients on a wait list, because we simply do not have the staff in place to provide this kind of service. And I want to take this opportunity also to mention that we do not yet know how much state and title three federal funding we will receive for senior programs, programs for our our congregate meals, our home delivered meals, our respite care, our home care, and our Grandparents Raising Grandchildren program. So we are really hoping we will not face any reductions in that in those grants, but we do not know at this time. So we're just I'm kind of preparing you that if those grants do not come in as they have in past years, we may see more waitlists for some of our programs. So and what that means in terms of home care, the 14 clients out of 69 that we currently serve is about a 20% reduction. And then, as was mentioned by Pamela Court during the public comment. And also Leslie mentioned this as well, we are proposing a reduction of 60,000. It's about a 40,000, 40%, I'm sorry, 40%

reduction in what we have been giving to the Las Cruces Public Schools community schools. This does reside within our operating budget. However, I want to say we believe in the importance of this program. This was a very difficult decision for us to make, but given the reductions that we're making in our own programs, we felt this was one we could not avoid. Our team will still work hard. Our museum team will still work hard to provide curricula for the community school classrooms, and our outreach team will still be at their events that support families with students at the community schools. However, we felt we had no choice but to recommend this reduction this year. I also want to mention one other significant reduction that I didn't have room for on my slide. That is our quality of life marketing budget. It was reduced by 33%, $89,365. And we have a relatively large marketing budget. And even so, our community survey that that we do every two years showed that people are not aware of many of our services and programs. As hard as we try to keep them informed. You've seen the wonderful access magazine. We also we advertise on radio, we advertise on television, we advertise in the bulletin and other media, traditional and not. And also social media. So we had to reduce our advertising somewhat for radio and bulletin ads. We're reducing vendor services for required surveys. So our staff will take over the data entry. And we're reducing some of our special products and production for social and digital media. You know, we will continue to do all we can with outreach and what media we have available to us. So those are the reductions and the impacts that we're proposing as part of this budget. And I want to thank you for your time and your

attention to our department and the support that you've given us to date. Thank you. I guess I'll stand for questions when we're all done. Correct. If we need to. Okay.

Stephen Bingham, Parks and recreation director. You know, I don't want to downplay the challenges, but at the same time, I went through the Great Recession and saw a 20% cut that happened over a couple week period. It allows for an opportunity to be innovative. It allows for an opportunity to create partnerships. It allows for us to evaluate every single program on its merits and whether the money we are spending on it best serves our community. There will be impacts. Since I've come on, I believe we're in the neighborhood of 47 additional acres of parks and medians that we have brought on as we have caught up on our construction projects. That said, we will find ways to be creative and innovative and partner, and I always like going after additional money. That's not our own. We are going to have to extend maintenance schedules. Will they? There will be more time between periods in which we get back to maintain a specific area. There's reduce some public events. We're going to have fewer music in the park, fewer movies. We are going to use more local talent and bring in less from the outside. Some of our lower priority park planning efforts. Those projects will be slowed down, but they will continue. They may be pushed into another year, but we'll make efforts to continue to the highest priority. Things to continue

our efforts in these cuts is about preserving the core, and that's what we will do. We will see reductions of water schedules resulting in increased plant dormancy. We'll see extended time frames to replace park amenities and equipment, prioritization of the maintenance for those core assets and the high public use areas. And we will end up putting participation caps on programs. Like I mentioned, it's given us, will give us opportunities and is already and I'm going to let Kyle help talk about this because it's provided an opportunity for us and incentives us as a departments to departments to look at how we can better handle the work. And is there ways to redraw lines that make more sense?

Good afternoon. Your interim public works director, Kyle Arndt. As everybody who has spoken before me has has laid out for you. These steps are are pretty, these cuts are pretty steep, but evidently they're quite necessary as well. I'm going to highlight a couple that we feel that the citizens might notice with regards to public service. We have seen a huge increase in vandalism due to copper theft to our street lights. We have 8000 street lights citywide, and we currently have about 240 that are offline and nonfunctional. As we seek to repair those, we're going to prioritize our arterials, our collectors, our main roads, all the areas of acute safety concerns in our intersections. Some of them will have to wait for us to get to them. Our pavement condition program, which is our pavement maintenance system, consists of everything from chip seals, crack sills, surface treatments, overlays and complete asphalt rehabs. The complete asphalt rehabs are the most expensive. What we will see is a shift away from doing as many of those, and doing more of the really inexpensive chip sills and surface treatments. This will buy us time to get us past this difficult time. Our pothole system. Currently, that crew does a stellar job of getting to almost all of our requested potholes. Within 24 to 48 hours. We can expect that that crew is going to see some delay, and hopefully we can keep it minimized, especially where safety is concerned. Our facilities, we will prioritize all the facilities requests that our health and safety, welfare concerns, things like putting fresh paint on a building will be secondary to a

sanitary sewer leak within a building, water not working, stuff like that. Public works has a lot of expensive infrastructure streets, traffic systems, buildings, all this stuff is pretty expensive to maintain. These cuts are heavy on operational, but what allows us to do is prioritize our most important investment. And that's our staff, our highly qualified and dedicated staff, which we want to keep working for the city for as long as we can. Thank you.

While we did ask that quality of life, public Works and Parks specifically speak to the service services that might be affected because those would be the most forward facing for the citizens. There's every director here that can speak to any questions that you might have as to how it might affect their affect, their department as well. And with that, any of us will stand for any questions. Okay. Thank you. Before we get to questions, I'll let the city manager say a few words.

Thank you. Mayor Enriquez, Mayor Pro Tem Munoz and city councilors, the city manager. And I just I appreciate the opportunity, mayor, to to share appreciation for for staff, especially to Leslie and the budget team for doing this with under-resourced staff and budget. We didn't rehire certain positions. And so Leslie, not only being finance director, she acted as a role as budget manager. And that's something that we don't plan on filling because of the budget reduction. So there are impacts happening, but kudos as well to all the staff. 1800 employees trickled down from the department heads, allowing them to look at their required reductions. And they having the the direction to work with their staff. And I appreciate Meena and several managers and, and, and staff who are listening online here today. Everyone took part in these budget reductions. I'd love, Leslie, if you could go to slide 15. This is probably my favorite slide here because it shows a bit of a picture of what's happening here. There's a lot happening here. And I just wanted to point out to, to council and to those on online. And we have a lot of staff paying attention as well. So we have two times that the lines are set. And whatever the red is above the green, that means that we are out of balance and we have to work towards a balance. So if any sex act 19, FY 20. And then it also had sex again at FY 2324. I want to bring to everyone's attention and remind everyone the the not only, you know, what's happening here, because in FY

27, we have red and green going on in several ways. And if we don't bring them back and bring these lines back, we're we're going to be in trouble and it's not sustainable. So thank you to council during work session last time, giving us the direction to start bringing these lines together so that the green can at least balance. And it, it is our goal as staff to always balance the budget. One thing that made me most is why is green above the red in FY 21? And this is something that you all may remember. But destination based taxing occurred during this time. So this is why revenue spiked revenues spiked during this time and essentially is whenever you make an online purchase, the local municipality can now get part of the GR didn't exist before 21. So this is why we have a spike. And because of the spike, we were able to do things that the city had never done before. This is one of three things occurred. And so because we have additional revenue with city, we're not trying to make a profit. So council work closely with staff to to start raising the quality of life for employees. And I'd like to remind the public what happened. We lost the floor so that no more full time position exists in the city, that you overpaid less than $15 an hour for full time position. So that's one that happened. Number two, we raised the premiums. So the employer right now covers 82% of the premiums, and employer only covers 18. Well, before that was 6040. And third, there was a class in comp, which essentially is an analysis that looks at all the different

positions in the city. And we do our best to get all employees to where they need to be closer to market. It's not perfect. It's always a challenge to get everybody there. But all of that costs money. All of that is great. And I think that staff and council, you would we would defend that because that's what makes us become the employer of choice and be the employer of choice, and also treat our number one asset as they should. But there's a cost to that. And as you can see, the red line continues to grow. And in the next slide, Leslie, as we see, because of what you have done and the decision, we made a work session. And for all the work that staff has done, we see the lines coming together. This is what I appreciate and hopefully this is where we continue to go so that the lines can intersect and we can balance the budget. Again, I just want to say thank you to all the staff. We couldn't have done this without without you. And there are impacts. And thank you to the department heads who shared what those impacts are. And we are asking staff to do a lot for 47 additional acres. And not hiring additional staff can be tough. But I appreciate that because the the staff that I have seen, that I've heard from are working with this challenge as an opportunity to reset, to reimagine the level of service that we can do for our community and for our departments. And I want to thank staff and I want to thank us. Council. That's all. Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager. Any questions? Comments by Council councilor Kern.

Thank you. Thank you. Leslie. This is very powerful and also very painful to those of us who who are not wanting to reduce service at all. Right. Like this is. So I really appreciate you working on this, bringing this up to our so that we can have a facility and understanding this gap, this graph, and also considering all of the departments contributions as they've gone along. So thank you to the city staff who have, I know, worked on coming up with a plan to. Do this in the best way possible in which is still extremely painful. And I don't think any of us wants this to be a persistent approach in how we how we offer city services. So I think I appreciate all the staff who have thought about this and continue to think about being really economical with your with your efforts and. I hope that this this is an investment in the future as much as it can be for, for our future sustainability, I do have I. So I just want to appreciate you and folks who have been contributing to this and also acknowledge that it is not without pain on the part of the staff, on the part of the folks who are going to feel the impact on the part of us as decision makers. So I, I want to acknowledge that I do have some worries about the future that, you know, we heard about. We got this explainer on oil, oil prices. We know that their electricity prices are going to be changing in a direction that is going to affect us very dramatically, probably. And we know that water also will become probably more costly in our in the immediate near future. So. We've been able to preserve our staff. We haven't

been able to preserve our services at the same level. I'm curious. I guess I would just like to speak to the two committees that are formed. I hope that they can also do some future casting for those types of things that are going to increase at a rate just like this, when health insurance increases at a rate that we have no control over, but have to continue to respond to those. Those are three variables that I can think of, that in the next three years, we're going to have to have dramatic changes. So I'm hoping that the committees, the future, the committees that are working on this can consider those things as well as variables. There are the city, the staffing things. I really appreciate that we have kept staff in place and continue to give to plan, to give staff a small increase in in wages. But as we consider staff community service impacts, I, I hope that we can also add those externalities to this. Like I think health insurance, whatever our projections are, we should probably increase the way that we're calculating that. I think that's also true of our utility basic utility uses. And, and considering the use of natural resources in particular, that we will be having to pay a premium for. So I hope we can do a little bit of conservative estimations in the future, and that will be part of those two committees while they're talking about that. And I would that that is also to say, I hope that in the future we can have more conversations about what this looks like, how if you can extrapolate the graph a little bit for us and, and I hope that maybe mid year we can have a little bit of a discussion about what this is looking like in terms of our impacts, in terms of our budgeting for the next year. When we start the budget conversation, I would love to see this graph with some of those additional projections into the future. So that would be my my hope. I do really appreciate you, including me

having a meltdown last week of not being able to read a bunch of graphs. So Leslie herself was helping me in that, in that context. And so I really want to appreciate you and all the staff that have put their work into that. So those are my requests at this time. And again, acknowledgment that this is painful. Thank you, Councilman.

Thank you. Mayor, I also want to thank you and your staff. This is squeezing blood out of a rock. And I know this is hard and it's it's hard choices that we have to make, but I guess we're the kickers, right? And so I'm going to pick one niche. And I do think that we need to refund the community schools. I've only been a part of it for six months, but what I've seen there is speaking directly to some of the needs that people are asking for is how do we actually reengage with our larger community? How can we we're asking teachers to do so much, and this is our moment to step up and be part of that village. And I think $60,000 is really a little bit more of a squeeze we can do. For those who don't know, this is this is an ask sort of for community schools or coordinators. So what they do is basically the person who realizes that a kindergartner is not coming to school wearing the same clothes every day, you know, he's or someone else is hungry. And we can leverage our resources in very actionable ways with these coordinators. So I would also like to say that the caveat would be as much as, oh yeah, afternoons for for the library is going to be hard because that chess club is really great. And I have a bunch of kids that, that are loving it. So if you guys can move that, our household would appreciate it. But also, I know other people are going to see some of these issues, but it's going to get probably kicked out of a book club. If I say, hey, maybe we can squeeze a little bit more for things like the library where we will see just an explosive growth because of some other choices we made. But when we're talking about our youth, I do think that we do need to fight for them a little bit more. That's what the community is asking for. And so I'm going to have that ask to that. We look at that a little bit more. I like what Steven said earlier, too, is preserving the core. And when we're, you know, making

sacrifices, I think our families all will sacrifice. You know what? I'm not going to have Netflix, but my kids are going to get shoes. Right? And if we're at that level right now, that's where we need to be. What else did I write down? I think that, too, is specifically what Councilor Corrin said. That is a legitimate ask for our future here, right? This is an investment. This is also so that we can look at a long time. Like if we we are following these community schools from elementary to. How did they end up in high school? If we cut it now, we're not going to be able to do that. So yeah, I do not want to pull more out of for quality of life. If this has to be a telshor fund ask, I will make that request. I hope my other counselors would be willing to say that $60,000 is something we can do right now. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor. Thank you, Mayor and Leslie and everybody for their presentation. I do have a couple technical questions on slide 27. Speaking of the Telshor fund. Okay, maybe not 27. Yeah, there you go. 26 so if we're paying that out. Of general fund with now, then turns around and sells a property. Not that, you know, we're getting a huge amount of those things. Does that go back? Will that. Go back into the Telshor fund?

Mayor? Councilor Harris yes, if it is if the cost of abating a property is paid from Telshor, then any sales would also go back to Telshor. Good to know. And then 29. Hopefully I got this one right. Fleet. While this was obviously. Before my time, but Ryan. Fleet 0 in 2526 and then it's new in 27.

Mayor Councilor Harris this is because in prior years, fleet was actually considered an internal service center, and this would be the first year that we have moved it to general fund. So there was actually no general fund expenditures related to fleet in prior years. But this bill spent money on it. It just came out of other parts of the charts that were showing. That is correct. Okay. And then, of course, I think as with everybody else, I greatly appreciate that. 21 because our debt going. Down into the future, and I fully support continuing that trend.

So my other comments are also about quality of life. I really appreciate the thinking of consolidating services to like the regional services to the stuff people. Use more. I have. Some initial. Concerns.

About that, but then I talked with Sarah about it, and that seems like it's on the right track. And I'm also concerned about the community schools funding. I do understand, though, that we probably have other funding methods, like I want to continue funding community schools, but I also think that there are other funding sources that we can use for that. But I'm going to come up later in the summer. Maybe the Tesco fund is an option. I think we might have some discretionary opioid settlement funds that will be coming up for discussion in the future as well. And some of those those programs, you know, align with what the community schools coordinators are trying to do anyway. So those won't be in-person to continue those programs. And then we will come out is our third. While I am perfectly happy to forgo lunches for city council meetings and events, I think that we do need to fund food for teen programs and kids because that's why you show up and it's far enough for me to to scrounge somewhere or come up with 10,000 bucks. But, you know, 5 million that we're still I don't think that's a huge ask, but that that's a really important thing. So. Thanks. Thanks.

Let me see if. Councilor.

I am mayor. Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Leslie, and your team and city manager's team and you know all the directors for getting us here. It's obviously incredibly difficult to, you know, stay in this position and and have to hear the kinds of cuts that we're having to make, especially in quality of life. I'm not going to lie. I think those and not that some matter more than others, but I think there's just some cuts that are having a very direct impact on people's lives. And and, you know, I'm sitting here thinking about like the backdrop that this is happening in, right? Like we're watching the state of New Mexico have fairly healthy budget with his like historic high reserves. We're watching, you know, some federal volatility happening. I know that every single day. Some people in our community, like every day Las Cruces, are having to make very similar kind of decisions in their household every single day. And. And so none of this feels good. None of it feels right. I think for every time we ask, you know, can we save this? I know that something else is going to get cut. So I think those are just important considerations to make as we move forward and think about the stakeholders involved. I am curious about Leslie. I am curious about the what was that conversation like with the superintendent or the or, you know, like around community schools and the crossing guards? I'm I'm curious where if you can provide any sense of where they're at.

Yes. Mayor Councilor Bencomo that conversation happened with the city manager and the superintendent, so I will defer to him to speak to that.

Thank you. Leslie. Mayor Enriquez Councilor Bencomo and City Council, thank you for that question. Talked with Ignacio and told him that we would hold it for one more year on paying about 330 000 for crossing guards. I. I think it's important for context to share that we're one of the few cities that pay for crossing guards in the state. And so it has come to our attention as we're looking at anything and everything from all departments. That was one of the things that we looked at. On why we are paying that, obviously not of the reason of importance. We know that education is important. It's just we noticed a pattern that we're one of the few that are are paying that. So we agreed with the volunteer that we would pay one more year. They needed time to figure it out, since they're funded from PD and from the state, that they would figure it out. And so we'll take that off our books. If it if if that would be our recommendation to council to take that off our our books so we can have more capacity for our internal departments. Thank you.

Thank you. And yeah, thank you for having those conversations. I think cultivating those relationships is important for moments like this where you're you're going to have to have hard conversations. So I appreciate that. You know, I also am thinking about why I'm so adamant about the GR, the new GR funds being more diversified and not one project being, you know, overly funded versus the many priorities that we have in our community, right? Parks, public works, you heard from them about getting, you know, making these difficult cuts. And yet we're also. Trying to make those pots smaller with the GR funding. To me, that doesn't make sense. Right. And so I think this is one of the reasons why we why I want the public so badly to understand that running a city is deeply complex. It is not just one department. It is not just two departments that must be fully funded. It is. Every single department does incredibly valuable work that touches the lives of people and. We just have to remember that. I mean, I would ask for the public to have some grace around this and, you know, to have some understanding, to try to understand the position we find ourselves in. Given the increase in health, the insane, frankly, increase in health care costs and those kinds of things that are really out of our control. But you also don't have to you can be as frustrated, especially if your life will be impacted. You know, I certainly want to hear from folks and, and, and continue to have conversations so that the city can manage these better. The last thing I will say is that I one of the biggest concerns that I have is that I

don't think as a city as a whole, we. Take our liability risk seriously. I don't think this is something that we are willing to face and talk about and make some changes to, and I think it's going to continue to be a really big crutch, and I hope that changes. You know, it hasn't since I've been here, and I get a lot of pushback when I talk about it. But I certainly hope that being in this position helps us better look at how much of, you know, like our liability risk is, is a pretty serious crutch here. So again, I just want to thank all the staff, all the directors, budget staff for sure. I'm sure it's not. It hasn't been easy. I'm sure it's been lots of sleepless nights. So I really appreciate appreciate you getting us here.

Mayor. Thank you for the presentation and thank you. Directors. I'd like to look at slide 28 or 6 to talk about franchise fees and cannabis. But before I do, we we look at those numbers or projections. We want to balance the books. And I appreciate all the hard work that's gone into this. The bottom line is that when we finish talking about this, the bottom line is people is people that are out there working for the city, trying to do the best job that they can and have to work through this, working faster, working more efficient, optimizing. That's that is appreciated. It's also said those who and the residential property taxes and expect services as well. And so I know this has been a very difficult exercise is a very difficult ask and it's totally appreciated. I, you know, especially as frustrated as the, the community school funding last couple of weeks, I spent some time with some schools. I went to Mayfield High and spent some time with some students there, some artists up and coming artists, and they were so passionate about the work that they explained, you know, different techniques that they use and how they come up with pieces and how excited they they are about further education in their craft. I spent some time with Picasso, Picasso, Elementary School, you know. Well. Young elementary kids are so curious. So

honestly, just amazing, amazing. And just, just so grateful. Right. And I could not leave without taking a slice of pizza because they forced me to eat some. Some I think it was, I don't know. Peter Piper. And there were little, little Caesars, but there's no, no, eat with us, eat with us. I'm like, okay, any questions they ask, what exactly is it? Pro Pro Lys Pro tem. What what is that? And so I explained a little bit. And then when the young student raises his hand, oh, I know what it's like a substitute teacher. I'm like, well, maybe it was, maybe it was. And then, you know, I talked it out with the actor. They invited me to read my reference and I was amazing. It was a sold out crowd, probably a couple of hundred of students learning. Simply a few folks that are from that actual historical, cultural museum where the original composers wrote their masters composers in, in Europe and traded back and forth for Europeans learning from. Folks right now, and also vice versa, where the conductors and the composers in Mexico learned. And so the students for a few days learned how to read music, learning to play. Different schools in our area. And it was just extraordinary. The. Disappointment was that the director told me that he had to turn away, you know, hundreds of students because I was just

not enough room, not enough room. And we've been talking about engaging our youth, our young adults, and helping them. Grow. So particularly frustrating. I understand, but when you have the system to to slide six. Slide 28. Cannabis, you know, it seems like there is a significant amount of money going to the state capital, but there are municipalities. Or maybe that's just a perception that is posted that the state seems to be getting a better cut out of the. Exercise. Do you feel that local. Change or things will balance out in the future, where they may see an increase there as far as revenue coming in?

Mayor Mayor Pro Tem Munoz honestly, I, I don't I see it continuing to be flat if not decreasing. Gotcha. Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. That's that's disappointing. As far as franchise tax, are you getting more opportunities to grow there or do you see any way we could optimize that in the future as well?

Mayor, mayor pro tem, I would actually need to defer or have to defer that to I would there's a lot of different areas that touch franchise fees. I'm going to start with public works. Kyle, is that the right are you the right person for this question? Again? Kyle, Public Works interim director actually, I don't have a lot of information on the franchise fees other than it affects a lot of our infrastructure. Often. I'm not sure who exactly is working on it. It was kind of a combined effort.

Let me get some additional information for you and I'll find out because there's a I know there's a lot of departments that touch it, and I'm just not sure where I need to ask that question, but I'll get you the information. The city manager can chime in on it. Mayor. Thank you for the question. It was various. Departments touches. On what.

We received. About 1.5 million from E, P and franchise fee. And that is something that is being discussed. And whether a increase the franchise fee can come back. We we can do that. We have brought it to a work session to council to see if we could bump that. I think it's about 2% looking for an additional percentage to total 3%. And with that additional percentage years ago, they talked about energy efficiency for for LMI community low to moderate income community. In addition to that broadband, every time that they're looking in our in our easements, we charge them a tax as well, a franchise fee, sorry, not a tax, but a franchise fee to, to, to connect. That's not boding well for us. But we also receive franchise fees from our own utilities as well. So there is a combination of things. But if you were to ask me, I would love to, I would love to see and what we're looking in to is relooking at our franchise fee agreements with broadband so that every time that they're touching our roads, getting into our our easements, that we can charge them and ensure that we're charging them per linear feet or looking to ensure that we're, we're charging them market rate on that. So we can look into that.

Thank you very much. And that's what I want us to do. The community and our. Many other stakeholders looking for opportunities to optimize, to be more efficient, to increase revenue. There are also want to ensure that from from the fact of, you know, the services something is, is super critical and you're seeing the effects on that on the community employees, I. One of the things that I felt like I, I, we, we, we see an example for that that has really player, but some of them say, well, we've, we've cut them in some places and we've, we've tightened up again in this area after we have a waterfall. We tried to make this work. It's not working. And I for one of the committees will come back and keep an eye on that and provide some, some feedback on that piece and provide other feedback, perhaps on, on, on, get some additional revenue that we may, you know, be leaving on the table. But I will say is I had an opportunity since coming to the city to work and spend some time with the city family. There's any that folks are hurting people. They work hard. And I, I appreciate that. And again, as, as we work through this together, we're looking at insight. We'll get you inside. But it's been involved for. Inflation can involve volatility. And any way that we can be supportive. Please let

me know and thank you for for this information. Appreciate it. Thank you. Councilmember Chase. I will bring. Up the slide. On the committees that you've created. I guess that. I.

With the city manager's permission and possibly yours, could I spend some time with these committees and then give some suggestions on what I believe and go through the whole thing today? But I have some suggestions, and I'd like to look at this particular department and then look at its impact and how many people are switching. You know, a lot of times we'll start with our quality of life and the sacrifice that county has going and. Again, with with parks. So with that, with that go out and, and actually sit with that and find out how they're doing, how they're doing with assessing and, and then on that, on the village that I do believe, can we give money and, and where there are hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Do we have a. Do we have the financials and, and what they want to get that done, that all the information that that they're doing. The I'm s Reverend the. And properly spending their accountability and some of the money that we give out to nonprofits. So different departments or a developer, I, you know, I'd like to look through that because it seems like there's millions of that they have for the city of patients. And I realize that that your, your, your debt retirement enormously high for some of the signs, is it not.

Mayor Councilor Mattis, I, I believe that it is. Yes. Yeah. And so if if I you know, if they would value my experience, I've been around a few years. Councilmember, you don't even attend closed sessions. You don't even attend. Closed sessions. Council. Correct. Hold on. Okay. Councilmember. So so I'll speak to it. Thank you.

Counselor Mattis and city counselors, to answer your question on the opportunity to meet with with staff and the two committees, the realignment committee and the revenue efficiencies I afford that opportunity be offered to you and any other council members that would like to meet with them as they're coming up. If you wanted to share your thoughts, you could share. Absolutely. You could share your thoughts. But I would ask that that opportunity comes again to you as all counselors, if you would like, that that is afforded to you.

Thank you, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. I want to make sure and the. Stages of approval. So thank you for that statement. And and I promise I'll look at that time. Thank you. Thanks. I have one other comment. Just to kind of piggyback on what Councilman Munoz was saying about franchise fees and stuff. Something else that I'd.

Like to make sure we're we're looking at when studying that is making sure that reimbursed for damage to public right of way and structures, you know, whenever you bore a hole through the sidewalk or the street or gas tends to come out and pay for utilities along with the pothole, it might seem like a small little patch the size of a piece of paper or something, but you know, you're still covering the roadway and that decreases its lifetime significantly. And so like Kyle was talking about, we're having to prioritize pavement fixing and things. So we need to make sure that I think we're being compensated for the decreased lifetime of some of our infrastructure that's being caused. And I understand that we might not have an existing fee structure for that. So since that was mentioned, it popped into my mind and I wanted to to mention it. Thanks, mayor.

Councilor Harris, I do know that that is something that we are working on a process for. So it's not the first time we've heard it. So yes, that is something that is on the radar.

Again, as it's been said over, it is very difficult, very challenging. So thank you to all the staff, the city manager, everyone. It's it's difficult when you have to cut. So I thank everyone for that and the efforts and the attempt I share with you as well that I think the community schools has been something that has been moving forward in a direction that we like with the relationship and partnership with the schools, to not lose opportunities with their facilities, after school programs and things like that. So I definitely want us to have that that can be looked at. And the the onus is on continuous strategy and strategizing team that is going to have to look at that like monthly. I mean, stay on and see what that results in, what our expenditures are. And if it comes to like, again, if we have to go into the telephone fund for things like that, I would advocate for it as well so that we don't lose out on services and opportunities for our community. I want to say we do that immediately because that's an impact right now on quality of life and for the partnership and what we want with the community schools. I hope that will continue, but I know there's other impacts elsewhere that other departments are going to feel. So if we continue to work and see what this revenue and efficiency will criminals and see where they're at and where those impacts are. Again, I mentioned the GRT and we have that before. And that's what a lot of that is for that, we have some of those maintenance and issues that come up. We can always look at that for for addressing some of those issues. So those pockets of the opioid, the, the. The fund or even some of the GR for critical

infrastructure, we can always look at those things. And then again, maybe you start really addressing those issues and see where we can always come back and advocate for, for funding for different areas where they're being impacted the most. That that's why I'm at with that. But I really feel strongly as. I think. Everyone else here with the, the community schools and see what we can do to start looking at that some of those and not lose any ground. Do we? Again, sorry.

So since since there's interest in preserving this community schools funding, is that something we need to to do something about? Make a formal motion to do that?

I believe it will still be continued. It's just been reduced. So that's something with this. I believe the committee to to focus and look at that and see how we continue. We don't want to lose any possessions or anything based on that. But see if we can continue to move forward as if it was and if we need to add to it later, then we can we can bring it forward as well that we're looking at.

Mayor, I think the best approach would be to continue with the budget that we currently have as it resides in quality of life, and then the additional 60,000 we could budget from Telshor if everyone would be in agreement with that. Or do we have to do a motion? I guess we're asking procedural question here. So moved, as amended, for 60 K for community schools. Is that simple enough? I don't I give me what what to say Christine.

Okay. Hold on. Is that what we need to do right now? Okay. So did you get that or. Correct. And the second. Second. No. Councilor Munoz I mean, oh, they both did. Yeah. So you've got the third. Second. Okay. Christine. So this is on the motion to amend resolution 26-142 to add 60,000 for the community schools from the Telshor fund. Councilor McClure. Yes.

Councilor Mattis. Yes. Counselor. Harris. Yes. Counselor. Bencomo. Yes. Counselor. Koran. Yes. Counselor. Munoz. Yes. Mayor. Yes. No. Call the. We're not going to have public comment.

Would you like to speak to. Is there a public. Can you raise your hand? Yeah, I'll give you ten minutes. Come on up. You got. Thank you. Mayor. My name is Lucas Herndon for the record. I would like to. Just say out loud.

That it is disheartening to sit through this presentation and watch a presentation about services being cut after we've spent the last almost full year talking about how to spend the money to the benefit of this community, and then to look through the budget as being drafted here and abroad, apparently without a slide or a presentation from the chief about what the cops are giving up. Where's that slide? Where's the slide about how they're not getting a racetrack? Where's the slide about how they're not getting their new vehicles 20 miles to the gallon? Speaking of to the point earlier about fuel crisis. How is this city going to come to the voters and ask us to vote on a bond for the library, which I very much support? Library folks, don't come for me. I'm here for the library. But when you're asking us to fund this new library, we've cut services. What is the point? It's been said many times in different ways that a budget is a moral document. And the morals of this city council moving this budget as approved today and on the backs of workers, a 1% rate. Meanwhile, the cops continue to get their raises every year, year after year, they get their new toys, they get their new racetrack, they get their new cars with not a blink from anybody on this council. Shameful.

Hello, my name is Sierra Administer. Yeah. I would like to echo the disappointment. I know everyone is disappointed in seeing these cuts to quality of life. And yeah, again, I would also like to echo the fact that it's just disappointing that if you look at the police budget, the funds that are going to the police, the GR money that's going to the police, I feel like it doesn't reflect the economic situation that we're in right now. But if you look at any other area in life in Las Cruces, it very clearly reflects the economic crisis we're in right now. I've heard it brought up, you know. This this was brought up in the public comments about we're calling the police the root cause. I'm not calling the police the root cause. I'm saying that we should be funding to fix the root causes of, of crime and, and unsafe communities, which is not having quality of life for the community members. When I look up the type of funding that the police department receives, when I hear numbers like 1,750,000 194,000, or specifically 450,000 secured by Heinrich for camera trailers, drones, automatic license plate readers, auto activated car and body cams. I just find it hard to believe the sob story on why the police need such a huge portion of our GR money. This feels a lot like the GR meeting of trying to figure out where to put these tiny amounts of money and making cuts here for that. And again, yeah, just the aspect where we're not saying, we're saying fund the community. And it's just really, it's really tragic to not see that reflected on all aspects in all departments and that the

community are the ones that are having to take the biggest hit for this. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor. City council, city staff. I'm Linda Sinclair, I'm the president of the Friends of Thomas Branigan Memorial Library. As you know from my emails, I care a lot about strategic budgeting. And so I was very pleased to see the creation of two committees to start looking at things a little bit more strategically in terms of trying to get more alignment and increased efficiency, because I do think those are important. And of course, you know that I'm disappointed in any cuts that are made to the library. But I do want you to know that the friends of the library will be working very closely with Carol Bray and Sarah Booth to try and make up as best we can, some of the cuts that have been made so that the library is able to meet the needs and the expectations of the community. Councilors Mattis and Harris. We have money for food that will be done. Not a problem. If anybody on the council would like to suggest other areas where they'd like to see cuts not made, councilor McClure, evening hours. Come and talk to the friends of the library because that is what we are here for. That's what friends are for. To try and help and make up when there are problems. So I'm really pleased to be able to do that to the extent that we can. We just had a book sale last weekend. I don't recall seeing any of you there spending money. You should have been. It was great sale. We made $1,645 goes into your food budget. But finally, I want to thank all the members of the council and the staff for answering my myriad questions and listening to my ideas, some of which are not fun to listen to, and some of them are not as well baked as others are. But there will be lots more questions going forward, so I

hope that you'll continue to be patient with me. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you Christine. This is on the motion to approve resolution 26-142, as amended. Councilor McClure. Yes. Councilor Mattis. Yes. Councilor Harris. Yes. Councilor. Bencomo. Yes. Councilor. Koran. Yes. Councilor Munoz. Yes.

Mayor. Yes. Thank you. Lisa. Next is item 7.2, resolution number 26-143, a resolution approving the Capital Improvement Program for fiscal year 2027 through fiscal year 2032. So moved. Second.

Good afternoon, mayor, city Council, my name is Cynthia, Capital Improvements program Manager, and I'm here to present the proposed FY 27 2032 CIP program. I first want to start with talking about what is the actual what is capital improvements program or better call CIP? So it is the city's capital planning document required by city charter that identifies what Council asked us to build or to improve the cost of each investment and the projects plan for the future. So in essence, it's a document that gives the opportunity to look in one single place. All of the projects that we have related to infrastructure. So why is it relevant for us? In past work sessions, we have noted how our funding for infrastructure needs is not enough to cover what we have. So our needs increase what we have available. So with that, we have limited funding. So the CIP can help identify the projects that have received funding this fiscal year and the cost associated with each project. So when we have to make the difficult decision as to what project gets funded, the CIP help us communicate those projects. It also provides visibility into projects that are needed but do not have funding yet. So while this is a simple, it's very critical to identify the projects and its associated costs that need to be funded. We have multiple opportunities, including capital outlay and grants. So knowing and having clear scope of works and cost estimates can facilitate the process of matching those funding opportunities to the projects that we have in place, specifically, talking for capital outlay, the CIP is the

basis for the state capital improvement program, which is a requirement for us to consider or to submit projects into the capital outlay process. Lastly, it helps us or the city manage and track the use of capital funds, which means that the CIP is a transparency tool where we can help track and manage and make sure that the funds are spent to what Council allowed us to. So how does the CIP work? We start in the fall, where departments identify capital needs and submit them to the CIP program. Then the selection is informed by City Council approved plans, which includes. And it's not limited to elevate the action plan, climate Action Plan, and even the plans. All projects are evaluated and funding opportunities are explored as possible. And lastly, the projects are organized into the six year plan. Out of that process, this is what we generate, which is the CIP document. So I'm going to quickly mention how to read this document for the public. So first we identify categories. We have 16 categories which help us answer the basic question as to how are we investing our infrastructure projects. We also have project types. We want to make sure we identify the the type of projects we have newly funded carry over annual and future. We then identify the projects. As we mentioned, this is a transparency tool, so we want to make sure that funds that have been allocated to specific projects are spent in that project. We identified the department that's helping implement that project. We then have a column for the funded

what we have funded this fiscal year. That means that is funding that the projects have available to move forward. We then list the five next years of unfunded needs. These are needs that we have not been able to secure funding for. Lastly, the Lad column identified potential funding sources. So the proposed F2732CAP has 311 projects. As we mentioned, CIP is six years, one year funded and five unfunded. So we do that at addition. We're talking about a program that has $1.7 billion. But out of that, the funded amount is for this fiscal year is $210 million. That's allocated across 133 projects. Then for the next five years, where we need to secure funding, we're talking about 1.2 billions, and that's spread across 178 projects. This is a breakdown of the 311 projects that we have on the CIP, again, divided by the categories and the categories help us answer the question as to what type of infrastructure project we're funding. As you see, the smallest category is streets new. The. Which includes the Mesa Grande project and the categories with the highest number of projects is utilities with 34 public facilities, which includes. All of those facilities are open to the public, like the library, the rec center, the senior center. There are 61 projects and street improvements, which includes 7067 projects. Out of those three, 11 has been

briefly mentioned. We have different types. One, 110 projects are carryover projects. Those are projects that had some sort of funding last fiscal year, and we're carrying it over to this fiscal year. More than likely, these are our multi year projects that need more than one year to implement. We also have 50 annual projects. These are projects that we know that year with year we have the similar type of project. For example, this is where we have our roof programs, our parking lot projects, all of those that we know are recurring in nature. We have 145 future projects. Those are the projects that we know that are needed, but we need to secure funding for them. So we're trying to plan ahead for them. And lastly, we have six new newly funded projects. These are projects that are receiving funding for the first time in the CIP program, and those are the ones that are expecting a capital outlay that was awarded this year. So I mentioned how much money we need to cover all of the projects that are across the six years. That is a 1.47 for fiscal year 27, we noted that we have allocated 210 million, but for the next five years, those are starting 28, 29, 30, 31 and 32. The total needed is 1.2. So the significant part in the takeaway is the way we have allocated our future needs. If you see fiscal year 28, our programs or projects have identified a need of almost 500 million, which is quite significant. And it's quite a challenge to try to secure in one year about 500 million. So we have initiated conversations with departments. CIP will

start the process of working with departments to refine our projects and make sure that we scope out our projects better, and we have the opportunity to spread out those future years more equitably. So right now, you have the CIP that will be adopted for this fiscal year, but we have already initiated conversations about how can we secure funding, or how can we bring additional funding for the future years, because we need to plan ahead, but we also need to have realistic project estimates and projects that will be able to get higher opportunity to get a grant or capital outlay. So we'll be working with departments to spread out that future costs throughout the years. And so we can use CIP as a planning tool. Now we have 210 million allocated for this fiscal year with 133 projects. So out of that one. 99 million are the carryover projects. Again, projects that have already some sort of funding, and 18 million is allocated to those annual programs that are recurrent in nature. This is the breakdown of the funding. You see, the majority of the funding comes from local funding. We have grouped that. But on the. You will see on the side the table of the funding sources that compromise that local funding. We have the texture fund, Tid taxes, the other category are different category capital improvement accounts, which majority come from utilities. We have included some of the pay as you go funding, and we have PIF and the impact fees of water and wastewater. Next we

have bonds and loans which constitute about 30% grants, 22% at 46 million. And lastly, capital outlay. That represents 6%, which is about 13 million. So as you can see, in order for capital projects to move forward, we need to do some sort of capital stacking. That means a combination of multiple funding sources to get our projects move forward. This is a breakdown by categories. As you can see, the the category with the least amount of funding. Right now it's city operational facilities, which that is City Hall. Those are facilities meant for operations. The top three. We have attainable affordable housing with 22 million street improvements, which includes street reconstruction to chip seal replacement at 25 million, and utilities at 72 million. This is a summary by department. So these are the departments that have a role in implementing the current projects. We have Vista Las Cruces with 75 million, which are improvements to our convention center. And again, our top three departments are housing and neighborhood, public works and utilities. So what do you have today is the adoption of the CIP. But if approved, this starts the next cycle of maintenance. Internally, we have worked with departments to ensure that projects get completed or advance as much as possible. We have quarterly meetings with all of them to review specifically capital outlay projects to make sure that our funding is moving forward. We also have tracking documents. We will be expanding that

review to funding and go on funding as well. But after that, we still need to make sure that our CIP is updated and kept as accurate as possible. As we mentioned, that is our communication tool to ensure that the community knows how our capital infrastructure funds are spent. So as we identify and we allocate new funding sources, we're going to come to council and update the CIP to reflect the available resources. Since we're still working on the current fiscal year, projects can still move forward. So after the completion of the fiscal year, we're going to come back and make amendments to reflect the funding that the projects have available. Lastly, when we come back to Council for amendments, we want to use that opportunity to provide additional details on all of the projects that we bring forward to help communicate each project, scope of work and cost. We want to continue the conversation, and we want to make sure that the 311 projects that we have on the document, we recognize what is it that we're trying to accomplish and what is the benefit to your council options? But we're here for any specific questions that you might have.

All right. Thank you, Cynthia Council.

Thank you, Cynthia, this is great. As always. I appreciate reading through the CIP. I was wondering, I really appreciate the weight of all the unfunded projects and also the process that we use to determine how we're going to fund things, the updates that come, and some things that have no funding whatsoever. So I was, and I think streets is the place where I've seen this the most. But I was wondering, and I know you're pretty nerdy not to like affectionately, I say, I know that you really like data and are always thinking about this, and I appreciate the way that you think about that. But I was wondering if you might be able to, at some point when we're doing CIP updates or something in the next, however long, forever, if you want to do this forever, we do it almost every week. There could be some kind of cost, some kind of rough number that's included with this. About our delay cost, that is, we put it off on average, each project costs 10% more, 12% more. And I understand that's affected by lots of externalities. But. And I'm not saying for every project, I just mean generally, I think it would be helpful for us to understand what it means when we say, yes, we're going to do this at this time. No, we're not going to do it for three years. No, we're never going to do that. We just put it in the outer years and hope for the best money raining down from somewhere that there is a there is a building cost to that. And I think that's somewhat in the. But sometimes we do a plan and it's. That's the amount that we go with. And even the next year, it's totally different from that. So I'm just hoping maybe you could include a little bit of. Not getting stuff done. Cost to help motivate us to think really critically about this.

Yes.

And so again, it's just a mild request, but I just think that weighs heavily on me. I think about Fire Station nine specifically, which is a very clear example. We use geo bond funding. We had a number when we started four years in. That number was different. And I know that there were changes both to change the what it was going to look like to, to make it more in budget and the cost of the things that were happening. But the slower we do things, the worse that the steeper that becomes. I think that graph. And so I'm, I would love something included with this related to our dilly dally tax that we might be incurring as a city police. And I leave that totally to you. Dilly dally tax please.

Yes, mayor councilor Karen thank you. That is part of the conversations that we have. We need to initiate with departments. Given the large need for future funding, we need to strategize, and we need to prioritize and make the hard decision as to what projects get funded versus which was not. So that implies what happens to a project if it does not get the funding as initially planned. So we will include that in our conversations. Thank you. Councilmember.

Thank you. And yes, I appreciate all of the forward thinking on our capital improvements. I agree that it would be nice to know, like if we don't let those projects run now, okay, in the next five years, when we do actually get it done, it's going to cost twice as much. And so maybe we need to go ahead and get it done. The, the other, the other comments about our kind of related. So I mean, like looking at this line saying half $1 billion in FY 2028, that is it's a statement. I don't know if it's a helpful number. And what I what I mean by that is like, we have so many projects that just saying we have $1 billion worth of projects is like completely overwhelming. And nobody can plan for that because everybody knows that we're not going to fund a billion and a half dollars worth of projects. And so, you know, it's good to know that we have all this stuff and kind of this is our. But I wonder what. And this is me coming in new. I'm new to the council. Of course, but like, would it be more helpful for us as a council to give directions that are more genericized like you have a categories in CIP plan. And so instead of like having a political bias, which obviously is our job to nitpick and pick, you know, politically nice topics. But like if we just said we're going to put $10 million towards rail improvements this year and every year from a variety of funding sources, I don't know what that looks like procedurally. And $10 million is just a number. Of course, I'm sure that doesn't even

touch the road improvement budget. But, you know, I'm just spitballing numbers. You know, with that kind of maybe categorization level direction, be more helpful and then staff can be trusted to say, okay. Council decided that of the that we have the big pot of money, for instance, and we want to fix and 60% of it goes to infrastructure improvements. And that's the only number we'll say. We said, here's 60%. We have a vague idea of projects, but like, we're not holding you to those necessarily do what needs to be done. And then staff would go and do what needs to be done. I don't know, I'm open to feedback on, on that suggestion or, or, or more details on what the process actually is. Maybe, maybe I'm right and that's what, what you already do. So.

Okay.

Mayor Councilor Harris, there are trade offs in how a capital improvements program is managed. If we have just programs or just just generalized programs, there is flexibility in how funds are spent. But then the trade off is given that we have limited funding, if we spell out the projects we communicate to the community why and how those limited fundings have been able to spend and to what project. As we mentioned, we have about 311 projects. So making that decision as to what gets funded, it's critical and it's not simple. So it's it's just trade offs. One thing for the other, what we want to do is make sure that we have a reason as to how our limited funding is used across the board in different capital projects. These are projects that are significant. They're visible and they're expensive. So we want to make sure we're transparent as to how those capital funds are invested or spent. But like I mentioned there, there are trade offs as to how much can we providing flexibility, how much can we probably alleviate in some of the operations versus what is the end result? But we can continue the conversation as to finding ways. So we have engaged in conversations with the department as to understanding the needs for the future years, understanding additional strategies as to how can we prioritize and be strategic about the projects that get funded.

Okay. Appreciate it. Thanks. Councilmember. No thank you. Muchas gracias. Cynthia. Okay. Thanks, Cynthia. Christine. This is on the motion to approve resolution 26-143. Councilor McClure. Yes, councilor Mathis. Yes. Councilor Harris. Yes. Councilor. Bencomo. Yes. Councilor. Koran. Yes. Councilor Munoz.

Yes. Mayor. Yes. Okay. So then we have the proposed ordinance. There are two Council 26-22, ordinance number 3114. Bring it forward, please.

The other one is Councilor. Well, number 26-023, ordinance number 3142. Next, we have City Council member board reports and comments. Councilmember. I don't have too much just to thank everyone for your support of community schools. I think it's very important, and I'm just glad that you all helped along with that as well. Thank you. Councilmember. No comments today. Thank you. Councilor. I thank you. I have.

Two comments. Actually. So one which I think was. Brought up by public comment.

As one of the councilors who was questioning how we awarded those public health service funds. I appreciate the suggestion to kind of change that model. So I, I agree with the allocation. I guess what concern me is the words that were being used and how those grant proposals. And I think Nicole's comments earlier sounded interesting. I'll be open to to a work session or something to approach that further. Other thing is this is I have this in my notes about probably mentioned, I would be interested in a work session or departmental highlight on risk management and our liability risk and problems that are being done to reduce those things. I know that that is something that is being worked on. And a lot of the, you know, we, we pay this six, $7 million to those to those things in this budget. And a lot of that is because of stuff that happened in the past. And we have new programs that ought to be reducing that on the side, on the HR side, just across across the board, I think would be very interesting for us and the public to kind of learn more about that. Likewise, it was mentioned that Public Works is having a hard time responding to copper theft, and I understand that we're going to be looking at that. Or staff has been looking at ways to discourage that. And so I'd be interested in taking that up at a future council meeting as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Bencomo.

Thanks, mayor. Yeah, thanks. Councilor Harris, I, I agree with both of those, all of your suggestions actually, including looking at that process for the awards and definitely for the liability risk. I just have one comment I want to make today. I last week I got a very interesting email from a very passionate ten year old in our community resident of Las Cruces, who wanted to express her concern regarding the number of chickens allowed in the city. And she's advocating for us to raise that to at least ten chickens. And honestly, in this economy, I think that's a really valid suggestion. And I am wondering if this is an administrative ask. I'm wondering if the number that currently that currently exists in the code was, you know, if it came up because of certain health reasons or if it was an arbitrary number, I think it's a very valid request from this young lady. And I would love to, for us to have that conversation and whether it can happen or not. I, of course, have invited her to come to public comment, so hopefully we'll see her once school is out for the summer. That's it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, I, I. On this chicken question. I, I, I, I genuinely do not remember how we came up with that number, but I don't think it was a public health related. I just can speak to it. I don't think it was a public health related thing, and I don't think it was related to a particularly robust research process. I can say I don't I didn't do any research in understanding what the best number of urban chickens might be. But I do know we have very explicit other restrictions on noisy roosters, but chickens, I, I don't know, but I, I, I will attest that I don't think that's a particularly. Well researched part of the ordinance. So I would I would be happy to help in figuring out how to change that part of the ordinance as well. I, I actually also had a really interesting conversation with someone because a pot bellied pig arrived at the shelter and we weren't clear. We weren't sure if a pot bellied pig was something that people could have or not in the city. Yes they can. Brad's shaking his head, but. Great conversations. And it's only because, well, in that case, it's a bummer because the pig ended up at the shelter, but I. I really appreciate your. The person that reached out to you. Councilor Bencomo to that to that idea of animals. The shelter had on last Thursday of last week, 62 animals came in. And so in one day and about 40 kittens and 22 dogs or something like that, something appalling. And so I just want to reaffirm what Amelia mentioned earlier, that you can save a life. I, I have a whole bunch of supplies to help someone if they want to foster, including like a little backpack. If you want to carry the kittens around with you. But the shelter is being inundated with kitten season and a combination of other factors that that they're

experiencing. So I do want to speak to the power of fostering and how important it is in at this moment. And then last, I want to just call out that Thursday we'll be having the ribbon cutting or grand sort of discussion at the Peach Tree Grand opening, although I think people have been living there for several weeks, if not a month or so. Now that's 144 units coming online for people in district five near a middle school and an elementary school. And the apartments are amazing. I think they're almost all leased or pre-leased. And then the second phase will be coming up pretty soon. So I'm very excited about that grand opening and to welcome those folks to their new neighborhood and, and to our neighborhood. So that's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Mayor, councilor. As we move forward, I would like to encourage our buyers to consider the youth Council that that we've been talking about and pushing that forward. I go back to the the Pikachu Elementary students. They had, you know, right after that, I was really proud of the writing team. And it's a team that should definitely support to, to bring in revenues with a company that was coming in to investor, their leadership, very innovative idea and will create

A good number of drugs known as Cruces. But I thought I was like I was I was late, but I'm. I didn't remember why I was doing that was an interactive and engaging way to talk to me about water usage and risk and safety. Elementary plays were so important, and I remember that one for chief dental for science and firefighters, where they spent some time with us, eight months of pizza, but they wrote by the end of the. I appreciated that in your. And we're thinking about today, we talked about the budget. And I will tell you that there was about 44 to 45% that they break up on the divorce because of families. And so I didn't ask them if it was. But I want to say, you no direct conversations with which I think is a difficult conversation, but we'll work through it together. This is our opportunity to really be creative, to help each other, to not just survive, but to thrive to this. Because when we think about this, it's really about our future together. It's about the kids. I want to talk of community. We're going to need them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So a couple of things. And you know, we've talked about the youth and we talk about the community schools and things. So I just wanted to say thank you to our police department. One of the things that has been gone for years in our schools is a Dare program. And on Friday was the first graduating class at Carney Elementary for the Dare program, helping students make good choices to eliminate alcohol from their lives. And this is a great program, and we're going to continue it and keep moving forward. And I think the partnership with the school is so vital to our community and our youth. I just want to thank the. Mayfield Club that brought back the once again this past weekend. And that was over 200 teams, along with competing and having fun on. And that's a good thing. And with that, thank you again. Police fire public works for providing services and helping with that event again brings activities to our community, both to our community, and just gives an opportunity, as said, so that our community can thrive. And that's what I want to do. The budget, the cuts. It is difficult. It is tough. It is challenging. We got to see how we can reduce and get better and be a high performance organization, is what we're looking for to serve our residents in this community. So again, I thank you all for for that task. That's very difficult and challenging. But like everything else, we're going through it. We'll get through it. So thank you. And now City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor Enriquez, Mayor Pro Tem Munoz and City Councilors, City Manager and I, I wanted to share one thing, and it might be a bit longer than normal, but I did want to be a bit more personal today, if I may. Last week at at City Council, I appreciated some of you who knew Jonathan Delgado and shared some some words I did not personally know him. And it's. It's been my goal to try to get to know the person he was. So I'd love to share a few thoughts, if I may. Some of you may have noticed I have been wearing a pin. This is a pin that I got from his vigil. It's of of him. And in life, many of us have lost loved ones and it's so easy at times to to move forward. And so I have been trying not to move too far forward before taking the time to, to really understand who this gentleman was. So Jonathan, on, on, on Selma Delgado tragically passed away on May 3rd, but since that time, I have made an effort to learn more about Jonathan, about his work, his life, his relationships, and the impact he had on so many people. Two Fridays ago, I.

Made a surprise visit.

To the museum's staff to check in with them, connect with them, and to visit Jonathan's office. I am grateful to staff members like Brian, who took the time to walk me around and introduce me to everyone, and to Garland, Cortes and the entire team who made time for me that day. My heart continues to go out to all of our Las Cruces museum staff, including Mina Stafford, who was here earlier, Shelly Richard and everyone who worked alongside Jonathan. Last week I had the blessing of attending Jonathan's vigil at the historic Railroad Museum. When I arrived, I could not find parking. I parked a few blocks away and as I walked towards the museum, I noticed that there were several events happening at the same time. At first I thought perhaps there had been some poor planning or competing events in the same space, but when I arrived, I quickly realized something much more meaningful. Those who are not competing events, they were organizations and people Jonathan had worked with that supported that. He empowered and advocated for. In many ways, the full temple lot and the busy museums were a reflection of Jonathan's life, full of people, full of purpose and full of community. I only plan to stay for a few minutes at the vigil, check in with staff, and quietly leave. I hope it still works to the exit door, thinking that that would make slipping away easier, but then the floor for people to share their stories about Jonathan and I found myself unable to leave. Story after story of hearing. About his kindness, his passion, his charisma, his courage, and his ability to bring people together. As I stood there listening, all I could think about was the regret. I felt that I had not had the opportunity to know this amazing individual while he was still with us. Jonathan was only 28, but his impact was far beyond his years. He was an

educator, an organizer, a curator, and a bridge builder. Through his work with Las Cruces Museum, his service to young people, his relationships with community members, and his deep love for Las Cruces. He showed what public service can look like when it's rooted in purpose and heart. I also had the opportunity to attend his funeral this past weekend, and my heart and prayers go out to his parents, Mr. Anselmo, Delgado Martinez, Miss Catherine Nayeli Delgado to his family, to his best friend Dom, to his girlfriend Lily, and to all his friends who were truly like family to him, Jonathan's life is a testament to the kind of extraordinary people we have working for the city of Las Cruces. People who serve quietly, who pour themselves into their work, who build community, who make a difference in ways that we may not fully understand until we stop and listen. Jonathan, rest in peace. And may his family, friends, coworkers, and all who loved him be comforted by the incredible legacy he leaves behind. Thank you mayor.

Thank you. We appreciate that and appreciate you attending and being a part. So thank you. With that, I look for a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second. This is on the motion to adjourn the meeting. Councilor McClure. Yes. Councilor Mattis. Yes. Councilor Harris. Yes. Councilor Bencomo. Yes. Councilor. Koran.

Yes. Councilor Munoz. Yes. Mayor. Yes.