Council - Regular Meeting

Your life.

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the work session. Today is Monday, June 8th, 2026. It's approximately 1 PM. I'm Mayor Eric Enriquez. We will start with a moment of silence for the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces as they protect our interests around the globe, as well as our courageous men and women from the Las Cruces Police and Fire Department as they protect our city 24-7, 365. If you join me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, so our first item on the agenda, 1.1, is city strategic plan update. Chris?

Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Chris Favor for the record. So as everybody knows, we've been working on updating the city strategic plan, which effectively is up the end of this calendar year. Earlier in the spring council and the mayor met with our consultants from single space strategies to sort of discuss what they'd like to see moving forward. That's been incorporated into landscape and needs assessment and so our consultants are here today to facilitate the first of three work sessions. There'll be another one in August and then I believe in September. Unless I have the months wrong. So this will be the first of three. I'd like to have a good discussion back and forth with the document that was sent over last week. And so I will go ahead and turn it over to Brittany Posse with the consultants to take it from here. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, counselors. We're super excited to be here with you. My name's Brittany Posse. I'm the vice president of data and research at Single Space Strategies. And I'm joined here by my team. This is our president, Angie Posse. Our vice president of strategic implementation, Janelle Johnson. This is our director of data and research, John Wagner. Associate Director of Research, Jessica Knox, and our Director of Government Affairs, Sydney Taez. And we're rolling deep because we're all just really excited about this project. We got to spend some time down here in February, spending time with some of you and some of the other city leadership and ever since we've been thinking and talking and writing about the challenges facing Las Cruces and sort of the opportunities that we see and we're super excited to report that out to you and then have a discussion about sort of what you all see in the next two to five years so oh sorry I didn't even pull up my presentation I'm so excited Okay, so just to sort of back up one step, want to talk about what the strategic plan is. This today is a really pretty early step in the process. We're not deciding anything. No one is coming here with like, here is your strategic plan. What we've done is we've put together a landscape analysis and needs assessment to sort of get us all on the same page, have a shared analysis and a shared language to start talking about what could be and should be in the strategic plan for the next two to five years. So what is a strategic plan? A strategic plan is a practical decision making tool. For the city, it's gonna help city council and city management identify priorities, align budgets, and make choices about what realistically can be implemented in the next two to five years. And that time horizon is really important. So, Las Cruces, as you all know, already has long-term vision documents, including Elevate Las Cruces, but the purpose of this strategic plan is different. It's about what should be focused on now and what should come first and how that progress should be communicated and tracked. a strong strategic plan is going to help the council to stay relevant and actionable and transparent we're hoping that it captures emerging issues it sets a road map for achievable outcomes guides resource allocation right especially in this sort of constrained fiscal climate that so many municipalities are facing and support public reporting through the city's dashboard uh... sold their report that you are sent last week the landscape analysis and needs assessment is a starting point for that discussion so it brings together lots of data leadership input information on the community uh... to identify themes opportunities trade-offs that need to be discussed before priorities are finalized into a strategic plan Just as importantly, again, this report does not set final priorities. That is not where we are. We're still in the discussion phase. We're gonna go out to the public and ask them what they think. I just wanna be really clear that no decisions are being made today or even being proposed by us. We really wanna hear what's on your minds. But what we're hoping for is that this report will spark some discussion and engagement. It'll sharpen the questions that we ask to the public later this summer. It'll clarify where we need public input and make sure that future priorities are grounded in both community needs and the realities of implementation in Las Cruces. So a strategic plan really matters, especially now because not everything can be done all at once, right? Las Cruces is experiencing growing needs and growing resident expectations at the same time that you all are navigating a more constrained fiscal environment. And this plan can help clarify the choices that you'll be making within that constrained fiscal environment in the next several years. It's an opportunity to sort of bring all of the great efforts that you've done in other plans. You all are one of the most well-planned cities we've ever seen. Like there's just plans on plans on plans, which is great. And the strategic plan is an excellent opportunity to help sort of connect to those priorities, to allocate resources and staff capacity in the sort of like near to medium term to keep working toward those longer term plans. So we can think of the strategic plan as sort of the bridge between long-term vision and near-term action. So focusing on where should the city focus first, where should limited resources be directed, and how can we track and communicate that progress. So that's sort of the groundwork of where we are and sort of what we're trying to do today and with the report. So we're going to just sort of do an overview of the report. We recognize that you're very busy, important people, and so want to just talk through what's in the report. I know you all have sat with it at night and read it really deeply, but I'm going to say some things at you. So for the analysis, we drew on lots of different sort of data sources. The biggest one is when we met with you all in February. We also at that time met with the executive team, who were great. We met with a bunch of department directors. We combined all of that with review of community satisfaction and staff surveys. We also collected data on current community conditions, including housing, economic, infrastructure, fiscal conditions. And we reviewed all the city plans from the comprehensive plan down to the departmental strategic business plans. And all of this together helps us see not only what issues are important, but where there may be alignment or tension or implementation gaps. And that's what we're trying to get at in this report. But I want to start with what we see as the city doing really well. And Las Cruces is doing really well on a lot of things. And first and foremost, I want to say that we heard so much about dedicated staff and how much staff cares about making sure that residents get the services that they need. And I think that that is one of your biggest assets is this dedicated city staff that you have. We also heard a lot about great partnerships with schools and nonprofits and the institutions of higher education that are helping the city do more with less and sort of implement all of these big ideas and this great vision. We were also really struck by how innovative city department directors are. You see a lot of times in municipal governments, a lot of folks are just like, well this is the way we've always done it, it's the way we're always gonna do it, but there was such a spirit of innovation and adaptability, and I think that that's a real strength. And also your strong planning culture is a real strength. And then strong community assets and quality of life. Residents reported a lot of satisfaction with arts and culture, place making in the city. For example, we heard over and over and over again about the downtown farmers market. You're doing a lot of great place making here. So this plan can build on all of that great work, all of that great infrastructure, align it, resource it, and communicate it more clearly so that the next two to five years just build on this great foundation. So one of the big sections of the report is this current conditions where we just sort of want to level set. We know that you know about your community. We're not here to tell you about your community. But just to sort of level set what the data are saying about sort of what's going on in Las Cruces right now. We looked at demographics, housing and economic conditions, infrastructure, community well-being, organizational climate, fiscal conditions, things like that. So just a couple of highlights from that. Obviously, Las Cruces is growing. The city's grown about 5% since 2020, which is higher than a lot of places around the state. And as you know, the city's also part of this broader growth corridor in southern New Mexico, which creates opportunities, but it also changes demand in terms of housing and infrastructure and services. Las Cruces is younger than a lot of its peer cities and a lot of other cities in the state and has a lot more renters compared to owners. And a lot of that is like having a big higher ed institution in your community, but it's definitely something that sort of changes, again, the demand on infrastructure and housing and services. Speaking of housing, housing is one of the clearest pressure points in our analysis. Home prices have grown much faster than wages. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Homeownership is increasingly difficult for many residents and the city's facing a significant shortage of rentals and affordable housing. Rising rents and less vacancy is creating competition that is hurting lower income households and folks who need more flexible housing options. And there are new developments underway. You all are leading the way in the state in terms of housing, but scale and timing remain major challenges around housing. In terms of economic conditions, this is an economy, as you know, really anchored by government, education, and healthcare jobs, which means that there is sort of some economic stability, which is a real strength, but on the flip side, there's limitations to sort of private sector growth and job diversity happening in the city, And our analysis points to a gap between economic stability in terms of these sort of like stable jobs and household financial stress that a lot of households in the city are facing. Wages and incomes are lagging behind state and national averages and poverty and unemployment in the city is too high. So it's not about sort of whether the economy is stable, but how is that stability sort of translating into broad-based opportunities for residents? In terms of infrastructure, again, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but much of the city's infrastructure is aging, and maintenance and replacement needs are ongoing and increasing. And at the same time, there's growth in other areas of the city, rising costs, energy demand, there's water constraints, climate impacts are all adding pressure onto that aging infrastructure system. In addition, road safety remains an ongoing issue. There's gaps in broadband and affordability. And so this is why we really try to drive home the point in the report that growth strategy and infrastructure strategy cannot be separate. They have to sort of go together. Where and how the city grows will shape the cost of service delivery and the need for new infrastructure and the city's long-term maintenance obligations. In terms of community well-being, higher education obviously is a major strength and economic driver. But at the same time, residents are facing barriers to stability and opportunity. There's mixed K-12 outcomes, some housing instability, homelessness persists across the city. So overall conditions are reflecting really ongoing progress, but ongoing need. And a lot of that is is about sort of systems level thinking and i think that that's sort of where a body like the city council can can really have an influence is how do we coordinate across systems because these are really interrelated issues in terms of health and safety you know crime rates remain higher than national average but they're going down behavioral health needs remain significant limited access to health care providers the opioid crisis continues to impact the community And again, you all are definitely making progress and people are working really hard and this strategic plan is an opportunity to sort of strategically invest in coordination and things that are working across the system. So sort of moving on from community conditions, we wanted to highlight some key things that we saw throughout the analysis that we think are gonna be candidates for you all to address through the strategic plan. These are things that continually rose to the top. Obviously, housing and growth pressures. One of the clearest items that we saw in the analysis was about housing. And a key issue is that development's been weighted towards single family homes while the community seems to need a broader mix of housing types. And so how to sort of address that gap. And then we heard a lot about how permitting timelines and regulatory processes at the city influence development capacity negatively. That folks sort of need the processes to be more streamlined to get developments off the ground more quickly. Economic development and workforce retention also came up as a key theme. There's concern about retaining local talent, attracting diverse opportunities, and creating jobs that allow residents to both stay and thrive in Las Cruces. There's some skepticism about relying too heavily on incentives to get big companies in here versus equal attention to the sort of local business ecosystem. And we'll talk about sort of the strategic decision points in a minute. But this is where we really see one is sort of like spending resources trying to attract folks here versus sort of like what does it look like to invest in the local ecosystem. Another key thing that came up is around downtown development, place making, community vibrancy. Folks talked about how great the development downtown is going and that's really exciting. And then there's a broader question around how the city supports vibrancy across a more geographically dispersed community. What does that look like to do place making throughout the city? in terms of you know parks arts cultures public spaces things like that another key theme obviously infrastructure and development capacity you know utilities transportation broadband wastewater site readiness all affect what kind of development can happen where it can happen and how quickly it can move so this is a really important thing to think about you know as the city is developing and wanting to develop more And it can be helpful within the strategic plan to connect council priorities to the capital planning process and to those sort of implementation decisions. Another key theme, again, is the stewardship of existing infrastructure. Folks talked a lot about needing to reinvest in roads and parks and facilities and public spaces that residents use every day, and that there is some tension between new development and the opportunities around new development, but that that only creates more maintenance obligations on top of infrastructure that needs a lot of maintenance. So the strategic implication here is that the city needs to balance investment in new development and reinvestment in existing assets. And this isn't an either or question, it's not do you do one or the other, it's again about in a strategic plan, how do you do sequencing, how do you do funding, how do you do sustainability? Obviously public safety is a big thing that came up. And again, crime rates in Las Cruces remain higher than national averages, but crime rates are going down, the city is getting safer. And at the same time, residents are seeing and experiencing issues that shape how safe they feel, including homelessness, traffic safety, visible signs of community distress. So there's a little bit of a disconnect between what's actually happening and sort of the perceptions of residents And so this is about how to define public safety priorities in a way that addresses both the experience and the sort of actual on the ground realities, and also thinking about what does public safety look like in a more broad, holistic way, sort of across issue areas, because it's not just about enforcement. Another theme that we saw coming up through the data was organizational coordination. So we did see, and this is not unique to Las Cruces, all complex municipalities have this issue where departments can be in silos, there's some internal coordination could be more efficient, communication could be more clear. and having these strong plans but implementation not always keeping pace. There's just some organizational capacity that I think could be addressed through the strategic plan because any strategic priority is gonna depend on this implementation capacity. And again, not because anybody's doing anything wrong, everybody's working really hard, but this is just a thing that happens in complex organizations. And so what are the ways that this plan could spur some more cross-departmental coordination, communication between staff and council, things like that. And then of course, a key thing is the budget, right? The city has a lot of vision, a lot of plans and many important priorities, but implementation requires resources and staff capacity. And so really what this is gonna be about is looking at the resources and sequencing and aligning it to the budget. This plan needs to be very realistic. It needs to be implementable, even in the current fiscal conditions. We have talked a lot about, in conversations with you all, how we don't want this to be a plan that just sits on the shelf collecting dust. And a huge part of that is that it's realistic to the budget and to the sort of implementation climate. And so we're here to really help, you know, help that become a reality so that this plan really can be used and implemented in this climate. And then another theme that came up is community trust and coordination. And this is really tied closely to communication and transparency. You have a really strong communication department. They're so amazing. And residents don't always understand how decisions get made. And this can lead to frustration even when the city is making progress so we encourage you as you think about what goes into this plan to think about how you're going to communicate it and how you're going to communicate processes or progress and success and wins you know we believe that clear communication engagement and progress reporting aren't add-ons to a strategic plan they're part of implementation and so we want to encourage you to think about that And then finally, in terms of themes, is that you all have just such a great community identity. There's a lot of disagreement, but there's a lot of shared aspirations around the city being a good place to live for everyone who lives here, thriving. And people really value the culture, the quality of life, the natural environment. And there's a shared desire for this sort of more vibrant, active, connected city with stronger economic opportunities for residents. And so how do we keep what people love about Las Cruces and just sort of continue to move us forward? So out of all of that, we sort of collated all of this into what I think is really the heart of this report and of this discussion, which is the strategic tension and trade-offs that we see sort of in the next two to five years. That growth and expansion needs to be balanced with existing assets, with stewardship of existing assets Housing production needs to be considered alongside infrastructure capacity. Economic attraction needs to be balanced with local ecosystem development. Downtown vibrancy being considered in the context of broader development patterns. Public safety perception being addressed alongside measurable safety improvements. and community expectations getting into alignment with organizational capacity. So these are, and this is not exhaustive, this is just what we saw and we're hoping in the discussion that follows this presentation to sort of stress test these and talk about what we're missing and what feels like what you all wanna tackle. But this is sort of what we're seeing based on our analysis. And so this is all sort of in the same vein. Here's where we think the biggest strategic opportunities are in the next two to five years. And again, these are not final priorities. These are just the things that we saw. But it's things like housing diversity and supply, economic diversification, workforce retention, infrastructure development readiness, downtown and community vibrancy, public safety, community well-being, organizational effectiveness and communication, and aligning priorities with resources. So that is sort of the long and short of the needs assessment. So just wanted to flag what will happen next in sort of a big picture way. So today Janelle is gonna facilitate a discussion where you sort of react to what you saw and we talk about what we need to go to the public to talk about later on in the summer and you'll help us sort of refine that today. Then, At the end of July, we're gonna do a bunch of public meetings in each one of your districts, which will be really fun, we're really excited. A lot of what comes out of this discussion today will inform what those meetings look like, but we really just want the public to be able to weigh in on their priorities and those trade-offs and their desired outcomes. And then we'll go away and we will draft some recommendations around what we heard and what we heard from you in the public and what should be in the strategic plan. We will have city staff review the plan and tell us if we're crazy and help us to sort of like make it make sense in the context that they know so much better than we do. Then we'll bring it back to you and we'll have another discussion and you'll tell us if we're on the right track, you'll tell us if we're missing anything and then we will eventually, we'll have one more after that where we come back with a more near final plan and we talk about performance measures and things like that and then hopefully by the end of the year, we will have a strategic plan that will really set you all up to hit the ground running for the next two to five years. Sound good? Okay, so like I said, Janelle's going to facilitate a discussion, so no need to react to me in this moment, but if there are any sort of clarifying questions that I can answer before we get into that discussion, I'm happy to stand for questions.

Okay, thank you. Any questions now or wait for the discussion? Question? Go ahead, Mike.

Thank you. In the report that we got, we got surveys of community needs and stuff. And so I was wondering if you could just give us a quick explainer on how you conducted the survey, how many results we got, where it was advertised, stuff like that.

Yeah, absolutely. So Mr. Mayor and Councilor, we did not run those surveys. Those are surveys that you all had implemented, John, 20, it was a year or two ago, 20, 24, 2024. And yeah, so it was, I think you all have had a presentation on that survey already. But yeah, John, do you have the number of responses that they got? It's, yeah. okay yeah but it was it was a representative sample they did you know we we felt really good about the data they did all the waiting and the you know stratified sample and all of that and so we felt really comfortable with that data okay thanks that's good background thank you anyone else okay we can begin with the discussion thank you

Shorter than her. All right. Hello, Mayor, Council. It's good to see all of you again. As Brittany mentioned, we now want to move out of the findings from this report and into a real discussion. So again, if we're going to take this out to the public and write a plan that you're going to use and won't sit on a shelf forever, we want it to be really intentional. And so we really want to take this time to touch base with all of you about what you've heard in the report, what you've read in the report, and sort of what Brittany sort of covered high level, but we're going to really anchor the discussion with this slide, slide 27, the emerging strategic opportunities. So as Brittany mentioned.

Excuse me one second. Just you have to state your name for the record.

I'm so sorry. Yep. Janelle Johnson. Sorry. With single space.

Thank you.

Okay, so as Brittany mentioned, these are not our recommendations to you or the priorities. They're really issue areas that we're hoping will drive this discussion today so that we can start to clarify what are the priorities. So today we're gonna ask, we're definitely not asking you to finalize or give those recommendations. We're gonna just do a fun little facilitation exercise. So to make sure that we hear from everyone, we're going to use a structured round robin format. I'm going to invite each of you to respond to a few questions. And we're going to go one by one. And if you want to pass, that's totally fine. I can come back to you. If you still are a hard pass, that's also fine. No pressure. But we want to make sure that we capture the full range of council perspectives on each of these. So where we want to start is we're trying to think through where do you all believe clear direction is most needed, again, over the next two to five years. So this question is designed to move us beyond the broad issue identification and toward the underlying strategic questions. I'm going to ask each of you, but I'll say which one I'm going to ask first in just a second. But the question is, looking across these discussion areas, where do you think the city needs the clearer direction over the next two to five years across these? So I'm going to call on Councilor McClure first, because District 1 will go in order.

I'm split a little bit. I try to fall back on my lane, which I would say is communication I would say for example like the climate action plan not a lot of people know about it But we're starting to implement things that people residents should know and we don't have any of that I think housing diversity is something we really need to discuss to a large degree and I think we should be more innovative than we happen. Okay

Okay, thank you, Councillor. Let's see, we'll go, Councillor Karan, you wanna answer next?

This is, all of these are exciting and really interesting, but I think, for me, one of the fundamental things that I think was called out that is, has the longest term implications is the economic diversification and workforce retention. In particular, and I noticed, thanks for calling out Project Jupiter in your thing as like a threat in our community, but I think it's a really good, I think it was in this context and in the context of infrastructure and development readiness, but I think A lot of what you articulate in the report that you had is related to improving the conditions of everyone here. There are some specific measures about our lagging wages and our lagging employment, both of which are behind the state level averages. And I think as a city, I don't know all the ways, and I think of this because I feel like we've done a lot of good work on housing and infrastructure development, our zoning code. I don't know that we've done the same kind of paving the way for good economic development, for good paying local jobs here, and I think that that is a fundamental way we can make a dramatic shift in thinking about it, and also understanding the greater context of sustainable businesses, both in the truly sustainable, lasting for a long time, but also not harming the local environment or the local community values. And so I feel like that's the biggest way to help us move some of those measures that I feel like are fundamentally important, like wages and employment rate. And I don't know how the city may or may not be facilitating that economic diversification, especially on a local level, since it was called out as something that we might not do as well as we do for other bigger corporations or industrial sort of partnerships. Thank you, Councilor.

Mayor. Yes, thanks. Now, I think these are all great. I think they line up with what we've discussed, what we've talked about, but I would also agree that when we talk about now and we talk about first and where we're at at this current point is budget cuts. and due to our revenues, well, our expenditures exceeding our revenues, and I agree with Councilor Caran. I think we need to be stronger in economic development. I think we need to prioritize that. We need to look at, as you say, the growth is what attracts individuals and people to Las Cruces, what would attract businesses to Las Cruces, and what do we need to do? What also hinders those things, I think is very important to our community, because all these strategic plans are great, but if we don't have the funding, then something's gonna be lacking, and I think it starts with the economic development.

Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Harris.

Um, thanks. So I think I largely agree with Mayor and Councillor Curran that economic diversification and workforce retention is the next thing to focus on. Housing diversity and supply, I think, will start to work itself out with the new zoning code. It's unfortunate that some of the new stuff that is being built today is being built under the old code for reasons and I think one of those reasons is timing and getting permits through the process but you know I think we're on the right track there and and it's going to work itself out but really focusing on how we can the pie chart that was in the report how we can take make that a lot more even than just having the three sectors that basically employ everybody in this town um and that'll make us a more resilient and economically prosperous place to be and then that that flows through to all of the other things on this chart i think um so once you're once you're economically prosperous then all the other things get easier thank you counselor matisse

Well, Councillor Harris probably took some words out of my mouth, and that is you know if you have a very safe and uh... well being type of community if your community is uh... the structures and everything is upgraded and you have uh... metropolitan recovery act take some of the abandoned buildings and the unsightly uh... looks of the city then the economic growth you know the economic portion grows economic development grows and if that grows then you have some revenue to do some of the other things without the um... Without the city being attractive to new people coming, whether from California, I don't want too many people from California, sorry. But if you have people coming from all the states, because Las Cruces, the Oregon mountains really kind of shape our people. And I don't mean to be sarcastic, I mean they're high and we have a lot of dispensaries. I meant they're beautiful to look at and it's a great place to live. And then I think we have the diversity of the housing. I'd like to see maybe housing Spend less money on the housing that we're building. I think Cassie and I, Councilor McClure and Councilor Munoz, we were talking about tiny homes. you know to where if you spend less money but provide more housing then maybe that money could go toward some of the other features public safety and community well-being fire department and if you have a and we have unbelievable number one in fire department and crime is going down which is which is a good sign and if we uh... Sort of model the city of Las Cruces after the people that I've known for 59 years that I've been here. You know, they're very kind, they're very generous, and I think you saw that even with staff, and very cooperative to have a good city. I think we can build better on organizational effectiveness and communication so that the public knows this. So when you have your summer meeting, you know, summer's only what, a week away?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and so you're gonna have these meetings in the summer, which, when's your first meeting, a week, two weeks from now, or?

The first of our public meetings? Yes. That'll be the last week of July.

So you're gonna miss all of, okay, the last week of July.

Right, we put it a little later in the summer so that we could account for the folks who leave for vacation with their kiddos and come back a little closer to the school year.

OK. And with those meetings, they're going to be representative of the public. I mean, they'll be the real estate people, your developers, school teachers. You'll have really big meetings. And the reason I say that is because I think that communication and your organizational effectiveness to get that out there and get the word out and what we are doing with a new strategic plan It's only going to be successful if we have hundreds and hundreds of people that will give us some feedback. I think the seven of us could do a good job. Well, maybe not when you look back at the last ten years, but maybe we'll do a better job and have the budget in place. And we'll have things that will be, I think, for all the people of Las Cruces. And we'll be number one in public safety. So that's my priorities.

Thank you, Councilor Matisse.

Thank you.

And just before I move off of that, I do want to say we're going to have six total public meetings, one in each of your districts, as well as a few focus groups. So we are trying to cast a very wide net. There's also gonna be a survey that goes out. We're trying to target youth. We are trying to get as many people out. And also I just need to give a thank you to city staff who are helping us with that outreach. It's a pretty big effort to get everybody out and provide several different modes where folks can participate in this process. So we're really hopeful that we can do exactly what you're talking about. And get a good sample.

Mayor, if I may? Yes. Will that be continual in June, July in like our utility bills? Will that message be in our utility bills?

I believe so, yeah. We have one more.

Okay. And then how will that be distributed in the school system?

The school, I think we're, we have folks that were, somebody in the community outreach team sent stuff out to school partners to let them know about it and also when we do the youth focus group.

And then New Mexico State University students, will they be involved?

I think so, yeah.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Yeah.

okay last but not least on our first question counselor ben como oh my gosh yes thank you i'm so excited for the city to be working with your team and thank you for coming here today and for providing this really well thought out plan um yes i think all of these you really uh i think uh were able to encompass everything really well in these in these key priorities Honestly, I think, maybe I'll cheat a little bit because I think aligning priorities with resources to me feels like a really important one because I think it can actually go under all of the rest of them, right? Like strategically spending resources where one, community is asking us to, like responding to community needs in a much more strategic way. I don't always think we do that. I think we sort of saw that the little bit of tension that existed with the new GRT funds and how we best spent those. So I think aligning priorities with resources can go towards all of these. Even when we think about housing diversity and supply, which I agree with my colleagues, I think we've done a phenomenal job at that. Even that, I think there's tension between what the city, the public dollars that are being invested and how the market is also responding to what needs to be built. The private market also needs to uh... step up to the plate a little bit and i think that's going to be we're going to start seeing a lot of that because of realizing our land use and zoning code so i'll say that there and then uh... i agree that economic diversification and workforce retention is something that we have not done a good job at in the last ten years or before uh... where what actually really caught me is The takeaways that I had that was really interesting was the age distribution that I hadn't really thought about. I think the narrative is that our community is a retirement community. And then I saw the age distribution was highest in 20 to 29 and 30 to 39. And so I'm like, how are we building a city that is responsive to young working people and perhaps young families? and responding to their needs in terms of workforce opportunities. And then the other big takeaway here was low wages, high poverty rates, yet we're still seeing a higher cost of living and like higher home prices and things like that. Those to me are, you know, clearly need to be addressed and I think within the context of workforce opportunities, diversification, economic mobility is something that I've been talking about since our budget retreat. To me those really, I think, if we put a greater focus on that, we will start seeing a difference in the rest of these, like community vibrancy and community well-being and community safety. And so I actually do think that needs to be more important. And we just need to get out of the bubble of economic development that I think we've been in and really start talking about economic mobility and diversification and retention. So I will stop there. But thank you. These are great.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Council, for indulging us in our first question. We're gonna move on to the next round, and this is really focused on the public engagement phase. Rather than like going out there and asking Las Cruces like a broad what do you want question, we really want, our goal is to like understand what do you need to hear from them before drafting the priorities. So this is gonna be a twofer, this one. So the first question in this round is where would public input be most useful to you before priorities are drafted? So for this one, I'm going to start with Councilor Harris.

Thanks. OK, this is a good question. I guess following from the economic diversity workforce retention, I kind of wonder if you could choose a job, what kind of job opportunities Are we missing? And I think that a big problem that I just kind of get the vibe. I've lived here my whole life, so I see this. But you see the jobs that are around, and you kind of just assume that that's it and that nothing can change. And so maybe leaning leaning towards that. What kind of jobs do you think would be nice? And I wonder, is it would be nice to have here? Because then you're thinking of what other people could do. But if you wanted to move up or across and do something different, what kind of opportunities would you like to see? education opportunities, job opportunities, all that kinds of stuff. There is interesting kind of just a comment based on the communication stuff. It kind of goes for the private sector too. We live in an interesting town where we do actually have some high-tech industry, but by the nature of that high-tech industry, we don't talk about it, and you're not supposed to. So there is some miscommunication that you have to leave to get some of these higher-tech jobs. So, yeah, I guess that would be my interest. I have a lot of others, but that's one.

Great. Thank you, Counselor. Mayor, where would input be most useful before priorities get drafted?

I think that's really a very difficult and tough question. I think it's hard because even as we've just seen, for example, our voter turnout is very limited. So even if we want that input, there's always limitations. But I guess to answer, I would say getting the stakeholders getting a lot of the stakeholders and getting the information from them. If we're talking business, bring in some of the business stakeholders, our youth, our students from the university, the community college. Bringing in the stakeholders I think would get more of what I always refer to the boots on the ground that are actually doing it and working with it and bringing them and getting their information on what the dilemmas are, what's working, what's not working, what do we need to stop doing. A lot of that information would be, I think, valuable, but trying to get that to come to the table is what I feel is always a challenge.

Great. Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Curran?

Thank you. This question, yeah, it's not easy, but I do think, to echo what the mayor is saying, but also really thinking about the context of this is, fundamentally we have to make decisions that this is like for six-year a six-year plan does that mean that i will be able to keep the street that the residents have been bugging me about forever uh... in my district probably not right like my district is is over resourced and and generally if you looked geographically and in terms of new development that's what my district looks like right it's it's a place where we've experienced a lot of growth and development and really positive ways and for me to say, oh, I would love, I hear from the residents in my district that I should fix the street, and we should, however, I hear from those residents, right? So I think thinking about strategically the folks who are least heard from, right? If you've never sent me an email, then you should be the person that fills in the survey for this thing, right? Like that's the basic qualification of people, where people are that I would like to, hear from and I do think also that means looking at We've done everything in such an incremental way six years a plan here a plan here That looking at that in a big I think Parks and Rec were called out and and this as one of the top three I think things that people were looking for that in and we've been having this conversation about where we should invest in new recreational facilities and I think I would like to be able to answer that question, right? And that includes input from people in the places where there isn't a rec center, right? And so however we can, however you all might be able to target the information and and input and collating all the other information that exists that is just kind of out there would be very powerful, I think, to me to see. If you can't just say, if you've never emailed your city councilor, we wanna hear from you, then maybe the places that we know we've strategically left behind, we can make sure that we think about those and add that as a variable in an equitable understanding of what we might do moving forward, I guess.

Great, thank you. Councilor McClure?

I agree this is a more difficult one A little bit of a different tact on it. I have not been born and raised here. And one of the questions I used to get all the time was, what keeps you here? And I think one of the questions we can ask is, what are we doing well that people wanna see more of that we can support as a city? And also, it's really easy to complain, but to have people sit and really think about what keeps them here. Sure, we get the land of entrapment a lot. Of course, we're gonna get that in these questions. But beyond it, I would say the people keep me here. shockingly enough right I know but it is it's the people it's the culture and a lot of people who do have the ability to leave do stay and figuring that out would be really interesting thank you councillor Bencomo thank you yeah I think

I think it's the balance right between the folks that are like already highly engaged obviously those are important folks to continue to engage, and it's the folks that aren't, right? Like I think to me, I think always the hardest folks to try to get are the folks that are too busy working, working one, two, three jobs, right, to sustain their communities. And so for me I think some of the most important voices and places to engage would be working people, low income households, the folks that rely mostly on the function of government and local government the most to be able to tell us and inform us how we could be doing a better job.

Great, thank you. Councilor Matisse.

You know, I keep thinking on the organizational effectiveness in communication, and I think it's very difficult to reach a lot of people. You know, maybe on a strategic plan proposal, maybe we should just put in there, but not tell the truth, that we're gonna raise their taxes, and we're gonna raise the utility bills, and the place will be packed. You know, so people react to what's important to them. And so I think it's your job, you're going to have to make this strategic plan actually important to them, not to us. I mean, play down the role we have, because if it's important to us, they're not going to like it, or they're not going to attend. But if it's important and valuable to them and their children, their home ownership and their neighborhoods and and the safety of the city I think you'll get a good a good turnout not only in survey but I think you'll get a good turnout at the different locations that you have if you do a good job trying to reach a lot of people with something that is important for them you know that their home values are very important and their neighborhood safety is very important. Their education, their children, and the safety of their children in the schools are very important. So if we accent an economic development, the jobs for these kids that are in, I think the mayor said it best, the jobs are the future. for these kids that are in elementary school and junior high, just like Councilor McClure, so they want to stay here. I love Las Cruces, I really, I just love it. And they want to stay here. And they want to grow up in a city that has good jobs, whether high tech or whether skilled, but I think that's the reason why people like Carol, the library director and others have attended. I know Sonya has our after school program meetings, because we need to develop that. That would be one of the priorities that we have to align with, and that is training our young children in skills and career paths. And so all of that I think is important for these people when they see a strategic plan. I mean, do they want to see a strategic plan that says you're going to be an all electric city? I don't know, I wonder about that. But if the plan's going to be no choice, and we're just going to decide that our strategic plan for the next six years is to have an all electric city, you're not gonna get a lot of people, maybe you will get a lot of people attending. Maybe they want choice. Maybe they want a choice between natural gas or solar or electric. But if you confine it to certain things of this strategic plan, that only align with certain people or certain priorities, you're not going to get good attendance. And that's what I like to see. I like to see a general request that we're helping more people in Las Cruces enjoy the rest of their life here. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Matisse, I'm actually going to do the next follow-up question based on some of what you shared. So we'll start with you there. Because before we go out to the public. I pass. No. I can come back if you really don't want to. Before we go out to the public with these discussion areas, What do you think, based on your experience with your constituents and being a resident of Las Cruces yourself, what would make these more usable, more clear? What needs to happen to these to make them really resonate when we do go out to the community?

I think I almost kind of answered that. I'm sorry I jumped the question. That's all right. But one thing you do is serve good food. If you have some food available, I think you'll get a lot of people attending. And if you open it up to families, if you have it at an hour, I'm trying to get council meetings to meet at least one time a month in the evening so we could have the working people actually attend. I think the mayor's amenable to that. He's trying to work on it. But if we could have it a good hour, to where working people could come and children could come, have food, and then, like I said, have subjects in there that are good for them. Like, is your neighborhood safe? Is your home value increasing? um what do you think about our fire department in other words you know kind of give the questions that they really love about las cruces and and you know our our police department uh our traffic stops you know there's things that are happening right now our metropolitan recovery and how we're going to rebuild solano and El Paseo, we're gonna make it nicer. Our ordinance, our nuisance ordinance, I think you've been doing a good job trying to get some of these abandoned buildings, Chris and that department, some of these abandoned buildings and unsightly buildings condemned and made to where that neighborhood looks good. I think that's what people are interested, I think. You don't know until you put it out there, but I think that would be, yeah. something that's personal to them you know they're not interested in the big picture they're not interested in what's going on in the world what's going on 10 000 miles away they're interested in what's going on between you know their three or four neighbors and their street i think thank you thank you counselor matisse counselor mcclure

Is there anything about these that we should make more clear? Should they not be combined? Should some of them be combined before we go out to the public?

I guess what I was thinking about when we were talking about that, not quite answering that question, sorry, was we have all of these plans and with that we can construct a future they want to live in. And giving them the example and the buy-in of here's what your future could look like but then I see my role to a large degree as educational to walk them to the process and say okay but that is also based on funding and this is where funding comes from and funding is very human especially when it comes to capital outlay so how does how can we educate what the process looks like so they don't get discouraged from that vision that we're trying to create for them that they have buy-in so I don't know if that answers your question but that's where I'm going with it thank you

Councillor Bencomo, back to you.

Repeat your question.

Before the discussion areas are shared with the public, what would make them more clear, more complete, more useful for community input?

Yes. I think You know, we all sort of travel in circles where like this kind of jargon is very common. I'm wondering if there is ways to make some of these topics more relatable to people so that there's like a, like capturing folks to come, certainly hope fear mongering isn't one of the tactics. But yeah, I think more like more of a relatability to some of these. And I also, you know, like Elevate, for example, is what is it like 20 year plan or something? Very long, 20 years, thank you. This strategic plan is a lot shorter term, right? So it's like, what's the like, Yes, in your immediate future, right? What's the impact you wanna make and the feedback you wanna give the city to make in a very immediate future that you can potentially see right away? But I do think more of like a relatability, more relatable language.

Thank you.

I'll think about some suggestions as well.

Thank you, appreciate it. Mayor, anything about these discussion areas that we should make more clear, complete before sharing with the public?

Yeah, I think it's hard to come up with the proper verbiage or the terminology, but growing up here, being raised here in Las Cruces, and being out with the public and what I hear, so the basic needs that I hear from them are a cleaner city, a safer city, higher paying jobs, and activities for our youth.

Thank you. Councillor Corran?

Thank you. So are you sure you want me to give you this feedback? Yes. So when I ran for re-election, I recorded 40 introductory videos. Every one of them, I was like, that was terrible, that was terrible, that was terrible. I edited them all. Then I showed it to two very trusted folks. And they were both like, that was terrible. After 40 edits, they told me it was terrible. And one of the many critiques that I received in that conversation was the word infrastructure and the idea about infrastructure. And fundamentally, I think they were correct. And I did eventually edit that out of the video. I got re-elected despite the video. But I think the idea of infrastructure, even among us, you might not hear a common idea of what infrastructure looks like. Like I mentioned, roads, buildings, the buildings that exist, The utility, I feel like utility projects often get sort of glazed over and are a really huge part of what we have to consider in our bigger portfolio of things that we're spending money on or ways that we're investing or we're asking people to pay more in their utility bills, for instance. So I think the idea of infrastructure and development readiness is really nebulous to people probably. And it's just hard to say, so just to save you all the 40 takes of infrastructure and whatever that means, I think that that language is a little bit vague. And also, I think, as Mayor mentioned, as Councillor Bancomo mentioned, really putting this in the way that people think about their daily lives, their commutes, their... clean water there ability to not be burning hot when they wait for the bus right like so i think those are things that people are experiencing and then the last two things while i think those are fundamentally important to us to focus on i don't know how the public the public will want more communication no matter what. And considering that I just have been, like every communication thing that I do with the city is similar, 40 takes usually, I know that these things take an extraordinary amount of resources and don't necessarily, they're still not permeating the type of communication that I think we would hope for. So to me the last two things are things that we as an organization, we as leaders need to reflect on that the public won't necessarily have enough information to be able to really, articulate what that looks like for them. So to me, those two things, I would just like to say I want us to focus on them and work on them collectively, and I think we should keep them, but I don't know that asking the public about that I think it would be a really hard conversation for them to say, what do you want to hear from the city? I think people would say, oh, where can my kids go bowling? And that's 1,000% not what we're going to tell them when we communicate more, right? So I think, for me, those two things are important, but I don't know that the public that public input generally will change how we do those things. I think we just need to invest more and really think strategically about those things for ourselves. So those would be my things. Don't make yourself say infrastructure 1,000 times. And maybe put some more things. I don't know that, sorry, just to get back to this. I am imagining the strategic plan might have sort of like, the outcomes conversation and that feels like these first five or six things and then the process related things I think fall from that and maybe directly related or may not be directly related, but things like how quickly we can produce permits or turn around plans when someone wants to build something new, that's something that we really have to reflect on internally. So I'm hoping that however it's structured can have both an outcome and then these are the things that are associated with that that are internal processes and I think that's more to those last two things. So sorry to go on. Thank you.

And Councilor Harris.

I think I also agree that we want to use more relatable language and examples when we go out and ask about things. Because I think that one of the reasons why we get stuck here, or entrapped in the land of entrapment, is that we kind of, things are actually pretty stable, and I think you mentioned that in the economic slide earlier, is that, like, things are pretty stable, like, it's, could be better, but, you know, everything's not on fire and falling apart. And so, if you ask somebody, like, what new job do you want, or what What kind of more economically diverse city or vibrant community do you want? It's really hard to answer that question without an example. And I got this question a lot, speaking of being on the campaign trail, on the campaign trail of like, well, what do you mean by the word vibrant community? And it's kind of hard to communicate unless you're somewhere that you would, it's kind of like a you know it when you see it situation. So I think examples are really helpful. I agree that infrastructure is a very loaded term and can mean a wide variety of things. So that might, if we're trying to figure out questions, if we're trying to figure out desires about infrastructure, That's also a hard thing to answer as a user of it. So just as a person who uses water and gas and electricity and roads, I'm like, well, I want all those things to work. But that's like the end of my input. I don't, since I'm not a subject matter expert on all those things, so my level of interaction with them is kind of like, they should function. In my current role, I'm learning a lot more about that, obviously, and we have higher level ideas. But I think getting input on what you want your road infrastructure to look like is difficult. And in transit I'll mention transit because it was in the report and one of the reasons why I asked the survey background is that there was a question that said 40% of Respondents said that transit was easy to use that public transit was easy to use and 85% of people said that they don't use public transit at all so You know What does that mean? And we don't have a good example locally of a functioning... I'll do respect to our transit system, which is pretty good, and for the resources it has, and I think staff does an excellent job, but on a global scale, we don't have a functioning like that a European city would or a larger North American city would. And I think that there would be no disagreement in city hall about that. So we have a very, so from a public perspective, when you go out and you say like, what would make the bus system better? Nobody knows because they don't have an example of it. So yeah, that's kind of my answer.

Great, thank you. All right, Mayor and Council, we're moving into our last round from this facilitation portion. And this is where we're gonna move back into the strategic tensions and trade-offs that Brittany had covered a little while ago. To be clear, this round is to help us surface those harder choices that otherwise sort of stay implicit. And it's not about forcing either no choices on anyone, but if we're gonna go out into the public, make sure we have a good sense from you all about which of these, if any, we should really be keeping in mind, and make sure that we explore when we are out there in the public talking about this process and the priorities. So, Mayor, I'm gonna ask if you wanna be the first to answer that question. Which of these trade-offs, if any, should be explored as part of the public engagement process?

You know, I go back to the economic development. And I think that would be the priority. And then, you know, I'll continue with public safety. And the community expectations, like I said, like what are the family activities? What are the youth activities? You mentioned it from the beginning that we're growing. I think our biggest thing is sunshine. So it's our outdoor and our recreation and those type of activities, but how can we tie those in to benefit us with economic development?

Great, thank you, Mayor. Councilor Karan.

Thank you. This is a great question. To me, I'm answering this question because I feel like I want us to do the most we can to address equity gaps that exist in any of these categories. And so to me, this comes in the growth and expansion versus stewardship of existing assets. That's like a geographic conversation about where there might be inequities. And then the... other part of this is related to sort of downtown vibrancy versus auto-oriented development plans, which is putting a very specific name on it, but as from the auto-oriented outlying part, I understand that this is like that transit, bikeability, those things were mentioned among the priorities that people highlighted, so I think they get to the tensions of where people are safe and or commuting short distances easily versus having to commute a long distance where roads are safe, where people have access to service. So I think to me, growth and expansion versus stewardship of existing assets, and I put that in there as, I'm just gonna name it, I know that we've talked around this, but I think, I wish we would have real conversations around things like the airport. which it goes into the, I think stewardship should include how we invest in existing assets and why we're investing in those assets and I would like to put things like the airport in a short-term real conversation about what that means for people's things like transit or access and how does it fit the priorities of, in my opinion, increasing equity of transportation in our community.

Thank you, Councilor Corrine. Councilor Bencomo.

I really appreciated this part of the report, so thank you. It's interesting because I think that these tensions and trade-offs if we were to have these conversations internally with among city staff and city leadership and then also like outside of the city with residents, I think those conversations would be really different actually. So I think we should explore that, number one. But also, so are you saying explored in community conversations? Which of these, okay. I'm gonna do three, I'm sorry. The first one for sure. I think the first one is very important. I think as the facilitators of the meetings, I think you should be prepared to have this conversation about public safety versus measurable safety improvements. I think a big topic of conversation will be around safety And I think it's important for us to continue to have the conversations about what does that really mean? Like when you strip it down, what does it really mean that people, how they wanna feel safer? For some people, it's pedestrian safety, right? For some people, it's burglaries. For some people, it could be very different. And so I think you should be prepared. for these conversations to arise anyway and to be able to provide these measurable safety improvement opportunities for people to think about. Then the last one I will say is the last one, community expectations versus organizational capacity. And not just capacity, but like, organizational authority, even if I think about the previous one, like the city has no role or authority over how long someone stays in jail, for example. And so I just think that's just one tiny example. I do think it's important to talk about the, or like the bowling alley, right, like what's the, what is the city's ultimate role, responsibility, and authority, and I think those are really important and exciting conversations to have with people as we think about the next few years. Thank you. Councillor Harris.

Yeah, I also want to know more or at least have the conversation about perception versus measurable improvements. And when it comes to public safety, when it comes to traffic, when it comes to transit, those were all areas in like that were in the report that kind of stood out to me as that it's clear that perception did not match the reality on the ground. And we can say that perception doesn't match reality on the ground, and all of us would say it, but that also doesn't necessarily change people's perception. And so what can we... Right, exactly. It feels dismissive. And so trying to break that down and figure out where that lies. And then as far as what the city's role in that is, One, I think there's a strong argument to be made that the main role that the city has is in the built environment. That's the main thing we control. So what can we do to improve perceptions with that? I notice in there that a huge percentage of people said the traffic was awful. and a very small percentage said that it was not bad. That's again kind of an example thing. I can say, well, have you driven anywhere else? But that also feels kind of dismissive. And so there's actual complaints and desires that are behind those things. So we should suss those out. I think the incentive-based economic attraction versus local development, that seems to me as more of a technical discussion. And I don't know. that that's a thing that, you know, will people care too much about is it a productive conversation I guess to have in a public meeting of like, should we do X tax incentives or permitting reform? I don't know how productive that is. If we had meetings with business people, small business owners, large, medium business owners, something that would be very helpful is to get to the, again, the perception versus reality. A statement that I have heard repeatedly in my years is the city is anti-business. And if you look at our general fund, which is funded entirely by gross receipts tax, and think about that statement for five seconds, obviously that's not true. The city needs businesses to function. At a very basic level and so obviously we're not but that perception is there and so what is the actual? What are the actual blockers that put those perceptions there? Downtown vibrancy versus auto-oriented development patterns I Think that's also a useful thing But not necessarily like downtown as a destination. So, you know if you live further away from downtown like i think it might be a more useful conversation to ask like well what would you what amenities would you like in your neighborhood or nearby your neighborhood that would make your life better and then we can use those as strategy for you know master plans and things like that versus saying what would what should we add downtown so that you would drive downtown more often um So that's kind of how I see that conversation going. I also don't want it to... You know, we also have to face the reality that, like, we live in New Mexico and things are very far apart, and every household has at least one car, and that's... an important way to get around and so like this isn't uh... a war on cars type scenario uh... just it should be easier to get around with less less driving uh... the community expectations first organized organizational capacity i think i think exploring like what what things people need out of the city uh... and again touching on our actual capacity to do things uh... yet the city can maybe make it faster to get a permit for a bowling alley but the city can't decide that there should be a bowling alley here and thus there is a bowling alley so yeah that covers most of it thanks thank you councillor matisse janelle would it be okay if i just uh answered later by using ai because i think i'd have great answers for this these questions but no uh

You know, I think the tensions are not really there between departments as much as it is sometimes where the money comes from. I mean, when you look at a city, you have to maybe concentrate on housing. because there's so much federal money. You know, Natalie does a good job getting money from everywhere else but the general fund, and that's millions of dollars. And then on economic attractions, I think that has to be a big city role. I mean, we need to make sure that the stewardship of the existing assets, that the city keeps looking good. And I don't think we've done that real well. We're sorry about El Paseo and some other things that have deteriorated in the city. And that deterioration is over 10 to 12, 15 years. And so now we have to go and fix that. So yeah, there'll be trade offs there, but you really have to do both. You know, I don't see it versus. I see everything here. It has to be both. It can't be versus. It has to be equally both happening. You know, the downtown vibrancy has to continue, but so does... development have to continue as well with private enterprise. And then public safety perception, and we have to always, and again, that's federal money that comes in on the public safety, both the fire department and the police department. So you have grants you have federal money and then you have to put a lot of city money if you want to keep a very safe and and and clean city and have excellent fire department of course and you want that iso to be as low as possible so that that's good for the the community and they don't know that you know there's a lot of good things that we do that save the public a lot of money both in their insurance, but they don't know. And so maybe that might be part of the strategic plan too, is that as we develop a department and we put more money into that department, we're not just building, we're not just creating jobs just for the sake of creating jobs. We're actually creating patterns that help the public pay lower costs, like for their ISO, for their insurance period. And the public needs to know that. And the LIGHT program and other programs and everything with public safety. So I see public safety perception and measurable safety improvements. That has to be concurrent. That has to run together. And then again, back to community expectations. We live by example. What the council does and how they act and how they behave is exactly what the city expects from us. And so, if we're good leaders, believe it or not, I think community members will be good leaders, both in the school systems and in the neighborhoods. So, thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor McClure? Truth be told, I'm a little all over in this one, so I don't, well, let's see how it goes. So I guess the first one I'll go with is the downtown vibrancy versus auto-oriented development. I don't know if this is something that came up in our conversations that was sort of one-on-one, but it was always interesting to me, and piping down to perception, is the idea that you would talk to people, especially in the Mesquite District, where they'd say, oh my goodness, I remember walking to the Sunshine Bakery with my abuela, and that is just treasured memory that I have. And then they say, but there's a commercial lot going in.

like two doors down from me, how dare they?

I'm like, boy, I mean, I understand the concern, but I think the bean on mesquite's doing pretty well. So it's interesting to me that people have a sense of where they wanna go and what they love, but they don't understand what growth looks like in sort of meaningful ways. And when we talk about growth and expansion, I think of how we can do that internally in the city. I very much worry about us growing, expanding as a city into the desert. We can't do it, it's not sustainable, it's not practical. And also how, especially since we don't, I don't feel like we have leadership on the development level on the private side to say what is it gonna look like to have a walkable area that has the needs that meet you right there. If you think of Metro Verde, you have to drive to leave to get anywhere. So if we're thinking about Mesa Grande expansion and there's gonna be, if we can't incentivize that there's gonna be a grocery store, then North Main's gonna be even more of a mess. So things like that where we're actually thinking about what this future will look like, that goes back to what I said earlier, is that idea of that future is something they can help control when they demand it, when they ask for it, when they say, I don't wanna move into that area, but I wanna move into this area, and that's starting to happen in the Mesquite District too. I do think that we have a very powerful local ecosystem. I think, I don't know if Councilor Harris was kind of touching on that subject, but we have a lot of people who could be entrepreneurs if we gave them the chance to be that. And what would that support look like? But we have no safety nets for people who want to take those risks. To a large degree, that's our society's fault. But the idea that you want to take a chance and you want to build a restaurant, you want to build a bookstore, you want to build something that makes a community, we don't have any ability to give that safety net. And we should maybe think about what that looks like for us. Housing production, I think we need to think of different ways. I am a tiny home person. I see what it could look like. I have to say that I went up to Albuquerque and they had one of those there and I was just not down for it because it looks like a prison. That's not what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be a community. It's supposed to be looking in different ways for what your needs are. I was explaining to someone, I think to Connie the other day, where I have not found it again, where it was a bunch of homes where the backyards were Facing each other and I thought like um like I would hate that so much But you know what maybe when I'm 80 and I want to you know stick my head out and say does anybody want to play Parcheesi Maybe that would be more interesting to me. It's kind of about life stages, and we don't give a lot of you know Examination of what that looks like here, so it can't all be single-family homes forever, so that's where I'm out with that Let me think did I hit pretty much everything I Public safety and perception, I think it's real to say, what does it look like to be safe in our areas? How are we using public spaces? I think that's one thing we didn't really talk about here, but how is public spaces something that we need and that we value and that it's, I don't necessarily just wanna have all my conversations at Walmart Market with somebody, but I want to be able to walk around somewhere and say, hey, Betty, I haven't seen you in forever. Again, how do we make community in viable ways with our parks, with our community centers? Do you have to be 55 plus to actually gain that entrance? No, we're starting with some of our quality life programs. We have ways for our youth to use these spaces, but what does that look like meaningfully? All right, I'm not a pontificator, so that's all you get from me. Thank you.

Thank you, mayor and counselors, all of you, for participating in our facilitation round. I'm going to hand it over to my partner, Angie.

Mayor Enriquez, counselors, I'm Angie Paz, president of Single Space Strategies. I just want to say thank you for such a great conversation. We know we're asking a lot of you as we go through this process, but we're super excited to get into the next phase and address a lot of what you've brought up here and take this to the residents of Las Cruces to get their input. And so my job is to prove to you that we were listening and just reflect back to you that what we heard and give you an opportunity to say like, oh, I've thought of something in the process of sitting here and listening. If you wanna add to it, we're here to just make sure that we capture every thought that you have on this process and on the needs assessment. And so I'm gonna just do a quick synthesis of what we heard, sort of high level. I'm gonna call some folks out sometimes and not others. It's just because of how I took notes, no offense. So on the question Janelle asked of where does the city need clearer direction, we heard that we need broader communication about the really good things that the city is doing so that residents know that those things are happening. It sounded like we had pretty like, clear alignment from all of you that there's a need for economic diversification and especially in this budget restraint time we have solid alignment from you all on needing to address housing diversity counselor Bencomo how to ask how do we align priorities with the resources that we have so within this plan strategically spending resources where communities are asking them to be within the sort of emerging opportunities that we placed into the needs assessment and then aligning the plan with the age distribution skewing lower than I think it there's a perception that Las Cruces that you mentioned might be a retirement community but within the demographics within the analysis we see that that is not the case so how do we look for young folks to participate greater in in the city and and be a part of this plan Councilor Bencomo also mentioned how do we have a greater focus on economic mobility so that we can be raising revenues in the economic diversification piece of this so that when we have budget restraints, maybe they're a little bit less if people are making more money, if people are rising up. What's the same? Rising tides? And I'm not gonna try. And then Councilor Crayon mentioned, you know, clear direction on sustainability in all of these things that we're doing. And so how do we make them lasting and also not causing harm as we go? going to pause on that one that was the question where does the city need clear direction from us in this process anything new coming up that we should take note of All good, all right. The second facilitation question was where would public input be most useful? We heard that we need to engage stakeholders really intentionally, NMSU students, we need to really talk, dive into talking to the business community. Councilor McClure, we also got some really great questions to ask in some of the public meetings, so ask what keeps you here. What can we do more of as a city in the public meetings or in the, the survey that we're gonna do and so appreciate those recommendations. Councilor Matisse pointed out it is our job to make this strategic plan important enough for people to actually show up and to like make this a plan that is also engaging the residents and It's it's a plan that the city has to implement But how do we make the residents feel some sort of ownership over the process and what we're doing? Counselor Harris gave us a recommendation to ask what kind of job opportunities folks and educational opportunities would people would want to see in Las Cruces counselors been como and Quran emphasized the need to like really make sure that the we're not just engaging people who always participate how do we reach people that who are not always at the table having a balance of folks who are really engaged continuing to engage them and reaching new people especially those who rely on the government and making sure that they are heard how do we strategically reach folks who are at least up that's yeah My notes are just messed up. I was gonna repeat what I just said. And then addressing the fact that parks and recreation rose to the top in some of the needs assessment. How can the public become part of the process to determine where those things go, like where new parks are built or community centers? And yeah, that was my synthesis on that question. Anything to add? Great. We also got some great feedback on the public process and how to engage, how to utilize the strategic opportunities slide. So what to do at public meetings to make them good. We're gonna provide really great food. Already thinking about it. If you have recommendations, email us, we will, We will get the food ordered. Make sure that folks are educated on the process so that they have a base level of education. Make the topics and wording more relatable and less sort of like strategic planning focused. And use examples throughout to make, in all of the communications about the meetings and opportunities that we're inviting folks to participate, just make sure it is relatable. not jargony we should make the meetings about the immediate future elevate is a plan that folks I think in the city know about but that's a 20-year plan this is sort of like come to this meeting now and we are determining like things that we're gonna do now and so making sure that we're emphasizing that this is an immediate near-term future plan The Mayor, Mayor Enriquez, emphasized what you hear people say on the campaign trail and out in your daily life. Folks want a cleaner city, safer city, higher paying jobs and activities for youth, so how can we incorporate that into the communications around the public meetings? Several folks mentioned that there's not a shared language around infrastructure, I agree. So how do we make sure that we are saying that in a way that makes sense to folks and using examples of what the infrastructure is that we are talking about? And then I think it was a different slide that's no longer up but somebody mentioned that The last two slides seemed more like outcome base. I think it was you councillor Crayon and so making those sort of like Maybe not something we take to the public but that become action items in the plan

Anything I missed? Thanks Angie. Mayor, I just wanted to add a couple things. An opportunity for meetings to be bilingual I think are really important. And then the other piece I was gonna say that a great connector has been our community schools. It connects the city, the schools. I know that I have pretty good turnout when I do my district meetings at community schools. So I think that could be a really great opportunity to explore that we're going to people as opposed to asking them to come to city hall or whatever.

Absolutely, and I believe that's the only one we're waiting on a date for, but we are doing one at a community school. Yeah. Anything else?

Mayor, if I may.

Are you thinking, you know,

Las Cruces loves pets. I mean, everybody loves their pets. Would you consider an outdoor one? Maybe at Young Park or one of the parks and maybe Steven can provide a, we can get a tent and they can bring their pets.

Yeah, I don't think that these are all baked, but I don't see why we couldn't explore that with the folks that we're working with at the city to make the plan.

I'd love to bring my pug. I mean, he's very hospitable.

Are animals allowed in the chambers? Pardon me? Great. Are animals allowed in the chambers?

No, not in the chamber. I was thinking maybe at a park.

Well, I was going to ask you to bring your pug to the next work session.

Oh, to the chamber. I could.

Sorry, just to really quickly actually follow up on that. Yes, I'm here for us bringing the pets to all the things all the time. Let's action that. But I will probably be having actually a community microchip event that's like animal focused I think at the end of June. And so I say that if you all have some materials that are available before you start having the community meetings, if you can get them to us, if we have other Potential avenues for distribution like there that would be a great place for me to at least like have a QR code for people to To be able to weigh in so as soon as you have that Material that would be really useful and there will be dogs there and if you want to bring your pug you can I will awesome. Okay.

Yeah, I would love to get everybody collateral that they can take to any meetings outside of the ones that are a part of this process that you're hosting in your districts or wherever like if you just want to like have a stack of business cards in your in your purse to take out in your life we wanted as many people as we can possibly get to take part in the survey that will be a part of the public engagement all right last but not least uh question was asked what trade-offs should be explored through public engagement i'm going to read sort of the ones that had multiple votes across we had Public safety perception needs to be addressed alongside measurable safety improvements. That was sort of public safety rose to the top with everyone identifying that as something that we should look into as we have these public conversations. Downtown vibrancy needs to be considered in the context of broader development plans. Economic attraction has been a theme throughout the discussion. We're not taking that for granted. Along with growth and expansion need to be balanced with stewardship of existing assets and then a few specifics that were mentioned there were votes for others of these but in the The essence of time I'm gonna just go to sort of some of the the notes that you all mentioned that were important for us to consider as we go forward. Councilor Matisse, you said that these shouldn't have to be always like this versus that. Is there possibility that these things can be done together in tandem and they don't have to edge each other out? That's something we'll keep in mind as we go through this process. Councilor Harris, Just you mentioned the importance of like breaking down the perception piece both in public safety and in traffic we use the term perception and just making sure that we're. Being clear about what we mean there you mentioned that the incentive based economic attraction versus local ecosystem might be too technical and maybe. maybe a good place for a focus group with business owners. You also mentioned in the conversations around downtown vibrancy versus the auto-oriented development patterns, ask the public what sort of amenities they want, and I think that's a great question to get a conversation started with people in these spaces. Councilor Brancomo, the conversations you noted between, that we're having right here in these chambers and when we get out to residents are gonna be very different and don't wanna lose sight of that. And then Councilor Caran, just like making, these are, it's a list of things but like how do we make sure that we don't lose sight of like the equity gaps within each and every one of these areas and so we'll, we're always thinking about that and we'll, make sure that we build the public meetings accordingly to address those things. And then you also mentioned, as we're talking about stewardship and place and growth, like how to include existing assets like the airport in transit conversations, in space-based conversations. And that is what I had. Did I miss anything or do folks wanna share anything else?

Thank you, Mayor. I just had one other thing to add, which is I think several people have mentioned working closely with the schools and including, when I said, like, what amenities would you like in your neighborhood, I think including schools in that, you know, City of Las Cruces and Las Cruces Public Schools are separate governing bodies, but the school district has to build schools in the city on land that the city kind of decides how it's going to be developed. And part of our strategy, I think, going forward should definitely involve the schools. And how do these schools fit into their local communities, into their neighborhood? How do kids get there?

Safely and all of that so I just like to see some collaboration with LCPS Well, thank you so much for having us that was our the last that we had if You get into the needs assessment and you have questions Last week we're available. I think everybody has a way to reach us and just really appreciate your time and attention and

All right, thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks. Next on the agenda is item 1.2, vacant and abandoned property ordinance. Chris Faber.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. Again, Chris Favor with Community Development here to do a work session on vacant and abandoned property maintenance ordinance in advance of bringing this to adoption later this summer. So before we get too far into it, I just want to say thank you to the NAT team, which has been helping us facilitate a lot of this, and to Legal, who has helped us. And the NAT team is sitting back there all close together, so a very tight-knit group. But a lot of, as you'll see through this presentation, a lot of... Hard work has gone into it. There's a lot of overlap between what the NAT team does and what this ordinance does. And so you'll see that throughout. And we'll kind of talk about where things come together and where things are a little separate. All right, so desired outcomes for what we're trying to do with this particular ordinance. It is not intended to penalize responsible property owners. It is intended to create accountability that remains, accountability for properties that remain vacant for extended periods of time. And we are trying to encourage action before they become an actual NAT property. And so as we've discussed previously and in other meetings, there's a real effort to help revitalize all parts of the city, some more than others. This ordinance in connection with what we do through the NAT team can really facilitate that and hopefully head off issues before they become a real problem. And the goal is simple, get properties maintained, reactivated, and contributing to the community again. So just to sort of clarify a few things that this ordinance does not do. It is not the intent to punish properties simply because they are temporarily vacant. There is a normal course of turnover when you're dealing with commercial and residential property. We understand that. We have exemptions for that and processes to deal with that. It does not apply during the first 24 months of a certificate of occupancy and we'll talk a little bit more about some of that information as we go on. It does not replace the existing NAT or building safety enforcement. These will work together. You can be vacant and not be on the NAT and so there's a distinction there but ideally they work together. And it does not remove due process or anyone's right to appeal decisions. So I thought I would start off by just kind of sharing some of these numbers, kind of talk a little bit about what staff has been doing over the last several months. We've broken this down into properties with a vacant structure versus parcels that do not have a structure. And so we're looking at just a little shy of 900 properties that identified with a structure on them. Approximately about 425 of them would qualify for some type of exemption and we'll discuss the exemptions a little later on. Several have also been identified as NAT properties. And then we've identified 768 or so properties that are just vacant parcels with no structure. And again, some of those may qualify for exemptions if they are listed for sale, for example. So you can see we're dealing with very large numbers. Staff has spent a considerable amount of time identifying these. We've been using utility data, which has been a really useful tool. We take that data and they actually go out and on days where, for example, you put your trash cans out, we're driving the streets, we're checking the addresses, we're looking to see if there is a trash can out front. That sort of helps us narrow down where properties really are vacant. So there's been a lot of legwork put in over the last several months to kind of get us to this number. We started with thousands and thousands of potential properties. So just a real quick overview of the ordinance. It would be under Chapter 18. It would establish a process for identifying, registering, and monitoring long-term vacant properties, designed to support revitalization efforts, help with redevelopment and neighborhood stability, and as I said before, work alongside the existing NAT process, not replace it. Again, supporting revitalization efforts within the city, encouraging property owners to return vacant properties to productive use, prevent long-term vacant buildings from contributing to deterioration or neighborhood blight. I'm trying to protect surrounding property values redevelopment opportunities and again economic development efforts and create a clear administrative process for tracking and addressing long-term vacancies which has definitely been an area that we didn't have anything before and I think through this process we've actually created something that can really can really work and kind of keep keep tabs on this as we move it forward. So how will this work with the NAD? So NAD addresses nuisance, unsafe properties. This ordinance will create a separate but complimentary tool for long-term vacancies. As I said before, a property can be vacant without immediately being a nuisance property. And if a property creates a health, safety, or nuisance concern, then the NAT can kind of step in and sort of deal with it from that capacity. And again, the intent is to identify properties earlier before they become a larger enforcement problem. I also want to say too that CODES has been really, really helpful in the last several months on researching some of the stuff, going out, dealing with stuff on the ground. So we've been working really closely with CODES on a lot of these issues and have actually had some real progress through some of their enforcement efforts. So what is a vacant property? So a building structure or a portion of a property that is not lawfully occupied or in operation must remain in that condition for a continuous period of two years or more. It applies to both residential and commercial. And new properties are not considered vacant during the first 24 months. It's important to note that typical turnover for residential home sales is between 60 and 90 days. So this shouldn't create any sort of additional barriers or restrictions for vacant you know, homes that are for sale. And again, there is a process through exemptions where we can sort of deal with that where we have to. So by and large, I think that that opportunity is a good amount of time for what we're trying to accomplish. Multi-tenant commercial properties are treated differently than single-tenant. A multi-tenant non-residential property qualifies only if 50% or more of the gross leaseable area is vacant for two years or more. and a multi-tenant residential property qualify a 50% or more of the dwelling units or spaces are vacant for two years or more. One vacant storefront or tenant space or apartment building doesn't really trigger the ordinance by itself. So again, we're not really trying to enforce areas where there's typical turnover and that's just part of the natural residential or commercial cycles. So we've identified some properties that we would recommend would not be covered by this ordinance. I would say government-owned properties, lawfully established and maintained parking lots, utilities, drainage, stormwater, or flood control property, and then landscaping, open space, parks, trails, or recreational properties, and then actively used agricultural properties. Those are all things that we would recommend not having the ordinance be applicable to. So through this process, we have created an assessment process. We've kind of gone out and done a lot of this legwork so we have an idea of which properties kind of fall into what, but we have an official assessment process. There's a form that'll be on the website so everybody can understand what the criteria is that's been built into the ordinance and how that will be utilized to assess the properties. So evidence may include leases, utility records, mail, property inspections, business registrations, or other relevant information. The standards are not intended to provide public notice, but do limit the city to only the listed examples. And assessments may be based on available information or inspection or both. So they'll be working with the property owners to determine if it is actually qualified for vacant. And all this stuff will be available on the city's website. So registration requirements, so once your property has been identified as vacant, the responsible party may apply to register the property as vacant through the city's website. Applications may include basic ownership, contact, and property information. Responsible property parties must identify measures being taken to keep the property in compliance with the International Property Maintenance Code, which is a standard that we use through the NAT process to make sure all buildings are not a public safety nuisance. And also similar to what we do with the short-term rentals to provide a 24-hour emergency contact information. So if we need to get in touch with someone regarding a property, we do have contact. That's been one of the biggest challenges both for the NAT and for this is just identifying contact information for current legal property owners. So having that on file will definitely be useful as we move this process forward. The registry will be maintained through the Community Development Department. The registry will include final assessments, prior assessments and objections if there are any. The registry will include properties granted exemptions and registry will be available online through the city's website and so we're kind of working to build out that internal infrastructure right now for the city to engage with the property owners to get properties registered. There's an inspection process and proof of occupancy to determine whether they're being utilized. And so we'll, you know, community development may inspect the building or properties to determine whether it does qualify. They may be, the property owner may be asked to provide proof of occupancy. And again, there's a variety of things that they can provide to us to show that the property is legally occupied. And again, if there's some sort of an objection, there is that process there to work through that with the property owner. Objections and final assessment. So written assessment is provided to the responsible party if known. They have 30 days to respond. If the objection materially changes the assessment, the city may reassess the property. A reassessment becomes the final assessment. And if no objection is submitted within 30 day period, the original assessment becomes final. So just trying to work with them to say we've determined this property to be vacant, there's an assessment process to make that determination and work directly with the property owner to finalize that determination. So here's where we get into some of the proposed fees for vacant property and these are you know we've discussed this with our team we kind of looked at some other places what we thought would be an applicable fee not something that's going to make it difficult for people but something that may provide a little incentive to move forward with. with actual redevelopment. And of course these are just recommendations, so that's part of today's discussion is to see if these are amounts that we're all comfortable with. So on the residential side of things, we're looking at starting off at $500, year two would raise to $1,000, and then year three and beyond would be a $2,000 fee to be registered as a vacant building that is not otherwise being utilized. Similarly, on the commercial side of things, we proposed a little bit higher fee under the assumption that commercial property might have a little bit more capacity to take those extra costs on and to try and turn over some of this property to help with some of the redevelopment efforts that we're really pushing. So we recommended year one, 2000, doubling in year two, and then year three and beyond, $8,000. Basic information about when the fees would be due, 30 days of the earliest applicable date, when the property is first registered, when an exemption ends, May 31st of the current fiscal year, no fee is due for the first full fiscal year if the property is registered or an exemption ends within four months of the start of the first fiscal year on July 1. And the fees may be collected from any responsible party involved with the property. So we have provided examples of some proposed exemptions, because there are several properties out there that are making a good faith effort to either sell the property or revitalize the property. So we were recommending an active building permit or permit application tied to Rehabilitation or renovation on an approved timeline and that's basically a situation where someone has a permit and you know They're they're they're making good a good faith effort to make good on that permit and move through that process in In a timely manner not sort of dragging it along Properties purchased through a foreclosure where redemption period has not expired so allowing some leniency for properties that may still be going through a legal legal process and uh... property secure and subject to probate or litigation one of the biggest challenges that we deal with is when we do identify a property that is uh... you know say in that property right now there may not be an identified legal owner maybe the owners deceased uh... and so sometimes we'll see a relative trying to go through probate to take legal ownership and that that does take time and so we appreciate someone trying to take responsibility and there's allowances to allow that process to happen if a property is actively listed or marketed for sale at no more than 130 percent of fair market value so we don't want to incentivize a situation where someone just lists the property for sale at an unreasonable amount of money just to say they qualify for an exemption has to be a good faith effort to to actually try and sell that property and then working with uh... historic preservation specialist to find a way to make sure that we're helping historic properties uh... and encourage them to go through the process uh... so where there is an active owner working with uh... the historic preservation specialist uh... and participating in the applicable design review historic preservation committee does have a design review process for properties within uh... the Mesquite area and then the Alameda Depot has their own process as well. And so if they're going through that process, they would also qualify for an exemption. And then the change in property status would reset the clock. So let's just say you had a residential property, it was in bad shape, you go in, you demo that process, that restarts that time clock so that you now have time to either get permits or put it for sale or do something so you're not being penalized for having now a vacant lot when you've dealt with a vacant, you know, a public safety issue in the structure, you took care of that. We don't, you know, we wanna sort of, you know, disincentive eyes somebody from from taking that first step uh... we're proposing that uh... exemptions require an application from one of the responsible parties uh... every twelve months that way they can check in with us and we can make sure that they're moving through this process uh... written determination must explain the reason for granting the exemption so again working with them through the process to document why an exemption is being requested And exemptions do not prevent the city from taking nuisance or health or safety enforcement action. So they could be working through the process, but if the property is still a public safety issue, they would still be required to mitigate those while they are going through either building permits or trying to sell it or whatever it is they might be doing. And there is an appeals process if they don't agree with the determination, and that can take them all the way up to district court. A lot of information, so open for discussion, suggestions, recommendations, so I stand for questions. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Chris.

Thank you for this, this is really exciting. This has been a thing that I've been bugging you about I feel like forever, so I really appreciate you, your really work, this is very detailed and takes a lot of effort, so I appreciate the work that you've put into thinking about this and considering it and all of the different uh... issues related to it so i have a few specific questions and then also more generals kind of hope that you can guide us through what timeline would look like at the end but my more specific questions are related directly to The fair market value, in particular I'm thinking about commercial properties where I think fair market value or the rent, I think it's pretty hard for folks to determine that and I expect that this might cause a slight calibration in that market over time, like if this conversation is happening and folks are starting to feel like they need to actually get their spaces filled, it might change where fair market rent is. I guess my question related to that is one, I would like to see that percentage go down a little bit. I would say 120%, and that's in part because I think the market, I don't know, but I'm curious what the market is right now. I do think that having many empty commercial spaces, some of which have been neglected, has led to an inflated market, I would argue, that commercial folks are struggling through. that's not a requirement but I do wonder do you have folks who are assessing this how is this done and also I acknowledge that all of these things take money and time that it sounds like you have already invested a lot of money and time into this seems like an extra layer of expertise and time that that might be required of city staff so I'm curious if the Expected fees are going to go back into the nuisance abatement program or how the the staff how we're gonna up staff to Make sure that we can do be doing these intent. It seems like very labor-intensive work all of these things together And this seems like a type of work that we've not I don't know that we're necessarily doing actively now so I'm curious if you can talk about that, what made you decide on this and what that will mean for staff who are working in these areas like in terms of extra labor and inputs that you might need as a department.

sorry nope mayor counselor crane yeah really good question it is going to be labor intensive for sure especially to get this off the ground um you know some of this was just kind of looking at what other communities have done and sort of coming up with something that we thought would be um fair i think certainly going from 130 to 120 would be a reasonable amount i think we were you know We do have resources through the Land Management Department and Economic Development. We do work closely with commercial brokers. So we do have access to some of this data and so a lot of this would sort of be a determination of what the local market based on what we're seeing already out there is sort of, so if we're seeing, for example, a vacant commercial property that's listed for a million dollars and then another one comes on board and it's very similar and they're trying to list it for two million dollars, There's comparables out there to say okay based on what we're seeing. This is probably not You know a fair amount so so we could definitely look at making that adjustment Off the top of my head and I'll put Henry on the spot because he looks like he's really Diving in on this. I think we proposed the money to go back into net I don't know that it's specifically in the ordinance But the idea was that over a period of time that potentially, you know Nat and this or through these funds It could sort of become self-sufficient. I don't know that it would ever pay for the staff and all that side of things, but maybe some of the other ancillary costs that go along with it, it could ultimately offset some of those. But I think that would be the recommendation at those funds. In theory, that amount could sort of be the budget for NAP moving forward. You know, we have money coming out of the Telshore Fund this year. My hope was that as we ramp up efforts on this, the amount of money that we actually need will go down over a period of time. And so that as we get a handle on it, it's not such a huge amount right now. We've been doing a lot of boarding and securing properties. We've been doing some actual property cleanup that's really been needed. But again, over time, we're hoping that the amount of money that the city has to put into that would be going down instead of staying at the same level or increasing.

Thank you. And that's part of why I am very excited about this, because the reality is these vacant properties are taxing us. We are being depleted as a community for a myriad of reasons that these properties are sitting empty, creating hazards, not productively contributing to our GRT or our housing needs or our economic development, our neighborhood vibrancy that we just spent a bunch of time talking to. And so we are, as a city, we've been steadily working harder and harder to try to address that kind of blight in the way that many of these represent or just in terms of securing properties that might otherwise not require securing or visiting or sort of that kind of input from the city. So I think I'm really excited about this because I do want this to be something that we have the staff and resources to to be working on and that we're investing in this as we understand it to be and if that means investing the money that's coming in back into that to support it. I wanna make sure that it's well supported and not something that we're adding to the plates of a bunch of folks without some amount of kind of thinking about the staff and income and recognizing that the reason that we're doing this is because on the balance sheet, these are debits to our city's coffers, if we think about it in a holistic way. So I really appreciate this model for shifting that to a credit to our coffers, or potentially doing that. So then the last part of my question is, I imagine that there's kind of an, like all of these, there's like a year of, hey, just so you know, your property will be listed as this and I think this sounds like something that you all have already been doing so I'm wondering if you can just give a timeline of if we pass this at a certain time the assessments it sounds like in May is when those would go out what would that look like in terms of the time when we're actually seeing a change roughly again in how landlords of vacant spaces are viewing that as you know if they have to account for the carrying costs or if they have to change and have something happening in their space.

Mayor, Councilor Crenn, that's a great question. And if we move forward from here, I would like to bring this forward for adoption this summer with the idea that we could spend a good portion of this year building out that online infrastructure and have that in place before we go live and then doing all that outreach to all of the actual property owners. Similar to the short-term rental, there's gonna be a heavy lift up front. A lot of them, we're still struggling to identify who that legal property owner is, so there's gonna be a portion of that that we have to deal with. But I would guess that once we get stuff built out so that the website's ready to go, so that we have those tools that people can start registering or applying for exemptions with, you know it's going to take a good part of the rest of this calendar year and probably well let's probably say fiscal year to get all that notification out there in that in that education the good thing that uh... i've been really impressed with with the staff that's been out there doing this is that i didn't think when we came to this work session that we were going to have a hand on exactly how many properties we were having to i figured from here forward we'd have to really start digging into it but we you know we have identified a lot of that so we know exactly kind of similar to the short-term run where we have that that early database now we can reach out to them and start that engagement so we're not having to do so much research just to identify someone and then send them a letter so it's again there's going to be a lot of work there but i feel like we've done a lot more than i thought we were going to have accomplished at this point in time but it's probably going to take several months you know until we can reach everybody and there's going to be a time where they don't respond and so then we have to kind of follow up with them and and you know make sure they're aware of what's going on and some of that public education so it is going to take time for sure but i think it's important for us to get this ordinance passed so we can get that process started sooner rather than later so you know within a couple years we have a firm sense of accountability for all these properties i hope that was what you were looking for an answer on.

Thank you, it is, and really, I think, like the timeline starts now, right? Folks are hearing that we are paying attention to it, that you all have done this work to identify those places. I think, I'm hopeful that even that initiation of the timeline, and I would urge us to move forward as quickly as we can in passing this, and keeping moving, I hope, that we're able to, so I'll say next, January of 2028 maybe we'll start to see some movement and that's No, that's like a couple weeks away So so I'm gonna put that in my mind to come back and sort of have this conversation again So I hope that we can Plan a future conversation to see where this is going what folks are hearing what what kinds of things are coming up? But thank you.

I appreciate that and I think I think Henry did you have something you were gonna weigh in with? Sure

Councilor Korn, mayors wanted to add two things to, I think I wanted to make sure I answered a couple of your questions. One, you asked whether or not the funding that comes out of this for the registration fees would go back into the program. Chris is correct, they would. I thought that was in the ordinance, but apparently went unstated. So we can add that to make it explicit, so we will do that. That was the first thing I wanted to respond to you about. The second thing I wanted to respond to you about was about how fast we can move on this program. And so I want to reset the view. Remember that a property doesn't get in any way adversely affected by this ordinance until it's already been vacant for two years. And you can determine that based on information available on day one that this is effective. But for many properties, it will be difficult to assess until over time we have collected evidence. So I don't expect necessarily that this will be something like a pell-mell, all the city, all the time type of thing. We're going to be slowly looking at. all the buildings in the city and to see which ones need the most help first. And I just want to echo Chris and say that staff has been really exemplary in taking a lead and trying to identify the right properties.

Council Member Como.

Thank you, Chris and team. I'm very excited for us to be here. I feel like last time we talked, I was like, June? That's so far away, and now it's June. So sometimes time moves very fast, and sometimes it doesn't, because I have deeply cared about this issue since... 2021 when then codes officer who's here in the back now works in community development. I'd just been recently elected, took me around the neighborhood, around District 4. We walked into a house that I probably should not have walked into. I felt like asbestos in my nose for a week. And so sometimes good things take a long time. But I really am glad that we are here. And I feel like since we've started having public conversations about this, I've already seen movement out in the community. Like people kind of really stepping up to the plate and figuring things out before this gets enacted. So I've already started seeing signs, Chris, and I really just want to commend you and your team for getting us here and all the work in the past few months. I'm curious, I'm just going to go down in order of the way I took notes. I'm not trying to be pessimistic or not trust the process, but I am curious, what is going to prevent someone just putting up a for sale sign, and saying, see, I'm doing it, and not actually answering the phone if somebody's interested, or cleaning up the property in order to make it actually ready for sale, you know, make it so that somebody wants to buy the property. I'm curious if you've given thought to that and how we'll navigate that.

Mayor Councilman come oh yeah that is a great question and again that's something that is going to you know be the responsibility of staff to stay on and so in your example let's just say it's not a nuisance property it's just a property that's been vacant could potentially become a nuisance if it continues to go that route and they do just put a for sale sign in the yard for the sake of it. They would need to, and again, it'd be on staff to make sure we're following up, but they would need to apply for the exemption portion of it. If they don't apply, it's up to us to make sure that we've, it's a property that's been identified that we go out and say, Hey, we noticed that you are not on our registry, but your house is vacant. You're saying it's. you know for sale it's a you can apply for this exemption get them through that process then it's going to be up to staff to follow up and after twelve months if nothing's happened we go back out and find out what's going on if we get a sense that that's what they're doing we don't have to honor that exemption anymore so again we're we're creating a lot of processes that do put a lot of work on city staff but i i do believe that's what we're here to do so it's just a matter of keeping all this documentation in line and being proactive when we when we go out there and take care of it so i'm sure there will be times when stuff like that happens and there'll probably be times where it slips through the cracks but until we get a good handle on it and it will take time because as you saw there's so many properties right now um yeah it's it's going to be a lot of a lot of work for staff but that's how we would try and make sure things like that are not happening frequently

I'm, yes, I'm glad to hear you say that there is a process for all of that, and I think maybe just at first it'll feel like a lot, but once I think you all get in the groove, I think it'll be good. Can you walk me through how you landed on 24 months of, I think it was commercial properties from certificate of occupancy?

Sure, so I think the 24 months we were probably, that's probably, well, the commercial, think it would apply to both really and what we were trying to do was make sure that we didn't put something in place that was gonna make say a new home and Metro Verde become you know a problem or have to be on this registry and that's why we were looking some of the data to see how quickly real estate property sells there's a lot more of that information specific to residential so we felt comfortable with the 24 months when it comes to residential i'll be honest on the commercial that is going to be a challenge because i frequently talk with uh... property owners or the you know the responsible uh... brokers for the commercial properties and a lot of them have stayed on the market for a lot longer than that some of those are factors that are better sort of out of their control and that's where we're going to have to kind of work with them to find out if there's circumstances you're just really beyond what they can do so it just felt like a good place to start for both commercial and residential and giving us the flexibility of every 12 months applying for an exemption if they are in good faith trying to sell it or if there's other reasons why it can't that that seemed like a good opportunity for us there there's a particular commercial property that I've been a little passionate about seeing it get redeveloped and I'm constantly emailing the owner and the contractor to make sure. In this example, I would say your exemption is up because I know you're just kind of not operating in good faith. So I think just having those communications And I've been trying to stay personally on a lot of the commercial stuff just because it ties so closely to the MRAs and it's so important and anything that we can do from the NAT side that's gonna help Elizabeth's team doing the MRA stuff. I feel like that's a good place for us to work together. But a lot of it's just gonna be knowing those properties and knowing the circumstances on which they are still vacant.

Okay, thank you. That actually helps address another question because I saw that you had an appeal every 12 months, but then you had also said that, for example, residential homes are selling, it's about six to nine months, but that's helpful. I do feel like you've baked in a lot of, oh, 60 to 90 days? Oh, I thought you said six to nine months.

No, no, some of the data, and even through the local brokers, that's actually on the high end. Houses are kind of moving a little quicker than that, but we felt... Quite honestly, if things start getting to where they're sitting on the market for over a year, there's sort of larger systemic issues that are at play there. But by and large, it looks like houses are turning over pretty quickly. So I put that 60 to 90 day window is kind of what the far end of what we're seeing currently, which still gives you almost two full years really to move that house, yeah.

I genuinely feel like this is so well thought out. This is so intentional and well thought out. And I'm also wondering if it does lean a lot more on the leniency side. And the only reason I have, I want to be able to be good actors in this. feel like there are some neighborhoods who, quite frankly, have wanted resolution on some of these properties for much longer, for a long time. A year, two years, more than that. And some neighborhoods, like around MacArthur, much longer than that. And so, I think for me, you know, I don't know, Chris. Again, I feel like this is so well thought out. I also just keep thinking like, okay, we have to wait two more years now for folks in the MacArthur neighborhood, even though they've been waiting for five, 10 years for resolution. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts around that.

Mayor, Councilor Bencomo, I do, and this is one that I've kind of struggled with from when we sort of first discussed this probably almost two years ago. What I was trying to guard against doing was unintentionally creating like a, I wanna say a poor tax, right? I didn't wanna create a situation where somebody knows they have a vacant property, but they don't have the resources to actually deal with it. So trying to balance those situations from those where we just know the property owner is just not being responsible. So in that context, I probably did lean a little bit more towards the leniency side of things to make sure that we're not creating conditions where somebody, one of the first phone calls I made last summer just going through some of the early nap properties there was a lady who who i called and they had a house that her grandfather had owned and doesn't have a roof or any windows and she i actually i think she ended up calling the city manager's office because she thought i was threatening to like come take her home and it's and i don't want those situations out there where somebody wants to do something but they legitimately don't have the resources to do it so erring on the side where we're we're giving as much flexibility those situations while still holding the other you know property owners responsible so that that's kind of my thought process that was sort of what went into the amounts we recommended I'd be open to you know if you thought those were fair amounts it's not the amounts actually Chris I think the amounts are super fair for both of these it for me was more about the timing and the clock so one of the things that's interesting is that we do have really good data so while we wouldn't have to go out right away you know and say the clock starts two years from now we can go back in and find out if they've had utilities on in that place anytime in the last few years so if we find out that you haven't had any active utilities for three years technically you're in violation of this ordinance and so you would have time to sort of get that property up to speed so we can start holding property owners accountable as soon as this ordinance is in place, which is one of the reasons why I didn't do similar to the short-term rental where it was like it goes into effect in January, but you have six months to kind of sort it out. We have the data to go in and say your property's been vacant for a long time. It would be incumbent on that owner to come back and prove to us that that information isn't accurate. So I don't think we really have to wait the two years. I think we can start moving the needle rather quickly.

That's very helpful, Chris. Thank you. I appreciate that. For me, this was never about profit. This was never about a revenue stream. This was never about punishing people. It's about accountability and ensuring people are taking some initiative in their situation, whether they're trying to and they don't have the resources or they're not trying at all, creating some incentive and some initiative for resolution in a neighborhood that All the neighborhoods deserve it. And then also trying to prevent future properties from becoming nuisances. So I appreciate that. Thank you. The last thing I will say is I do think it's important. I think on 10, Chris, you had what is not covered, government-owned properties. I do feel like there's a little bit of rules for the but not for me situation. So I'm curious about at least for us, and then obviously other government entities like if the county owns property in the city or the schools, that we also have a very clear plan for any properties we may own that are old, dilapidated, or lots. Have you had conversations about this with the team or internal folks?

I had this conversation with David Cedillo right before this meeting started about our properties that would qualify as NAP properties. And so I would say similarly to what we did and realized regarding historic preservation and properties that the city owns now having to follow that process, I would have no problem saying that as far as city properties go, we should, you know.

Lead it by example.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about the rest of those. I'll leave that to Henry if county and federal properties and state properties, how that would work. In terms of city-owned properties, like I said, we did it with historic preservation. We could certainly make that change for city-owned properties.

Yeah, I just don't necessarily agree that none, like are not covered government-owned properties. Henry, so maybe we should try to think about how we approach our other partners in the government sector on being good leaders on this. So thank you, I appreciate it.

Councilor Harris.

Thanks, Mayor, and thanks, Chris and Henry. I also think that this is great. I'm very excited to see it. There's a lot of vacant commercial properties, especially in District 3, that have been vacant for a long time. And I think you can probably hit the ground running on those. I also agree that government buildings, we need to do something about. There's a certain government building close proximity to this one, which is a NAT problem. And also, on the for sale amount, the market rates, I would also be in favor of dropping it to 120% or even lower than that. I have personal experience looking at the commercial market, and some landlords were like, we want X and we'll accept no less, and the landlords whose spaces were actually full were like, we will take 50% of that. So determining the market rate, I think, That's a harder thing. I acknowledge that that's a harder thing to get data on in commercial, and I hope that by doing this and kind of the city actually being serious and finding those rates that we do see a recalibration. And 130%... I also don't want it to become an inflationary thing. Like, well, in order to not have this fee, I'm just going to post it for the market rate plus 130%. And then everyone does that. And then that has this inflationary cycle. So I'd be happy to see that be lower. And otherwise, yeah, I think all my other questions were answered. So thanks.

Councillor Matisse.

Thank you vote this ordinance is a long time coming You know, I've seen the abandoned buildings and the blight, you know, it has grown over the last 15 17 years and so when you build a new city like North rise You know, I call that the other city because what happens is in the older part of the city the this happens, you know businesses go out of business and they just leave an abandoned building and The weeds grow, I've seen that on El Paseo. So with that said, I think you ought to remove the exemption for government buildings. I think you're too lenient. In other words, just put the government buildings back in there. Because there's some buildings that our gracious county owns that You know, they need some wake-up calls on taking care of it and the grounds and the weeds and the way it looks. I would just remove that exemption for government buildings. I think the market value, I think that's a good point, that maybe it should be at 110, 120%. I don't think you want to go too low, but maybe a little bit lower. The other thing, have you worked, you and Henry worked with the county assessor at all? Have you met with them and sat with the county assessor?

Mayor, Councilor Matisse, no. Other than just we rely on their data for everything that we do, but in terms of actually sitting down with them, to this point we have not. But again, their data is kind of the backbone to all the stuff that we do, so we're very familiar with all the information they make available to us.

Okay, I spent some time talking to Karen, and they have their professional appraisers, and we have private appraisers as well. I think what might be happening too is that maybe you could work with them. I don't know if you have any authority or what we could suggest it, but A lot of property owners, and I sometimes was guilty of this, if you don't take care of your property, the value goes down, and therefore your property tax goes down. And so we have a lot of that because if you can only pay $3,000 a year on a piece of property instead of four and five, it really helps to let it depreciate. So maybe we could work with the county assessor and with the collaboration, collaborate with our fines and maybe they need to do something as well. that these properties need to be kept up. You know, we have businesses come in, whether it's a chicken place or others, and then a big franchise, and you know that, Chris, when they leave it, they don't care. I mean, that building just becomes, you know, they're done with their depreciation, they just let it fall apart, they let the weeds grow, and maybe we could do something at the beginning You know, it's good to get a child when they're in first and second grade and vocabulary and train them well and teach them well. Same thing with these business owners coming in. Maybe we need to get them at the beginning. Maybe we need to tell them that, you know, if you're in business for five years, 10 years, 15, that when you sell the business, maybe somehow link this ordinance with the sale of their business. so that they take care of it when they abandon it. And maybe that'd be less work for you and staff, because then you don't have to go in. They'll know right from the beginning, yeah, we're gonna build a business here, but we want to bring back that landscaping and that property the original way that it was when we built this building. And your numbers just shocked me. this is quite a number of buildings that you have to handle and address so thank you for your effort and thank you for bringing this ordinance up it's well needed thank you both and the staff

Mr. Mayor, Councilman Teese, I would just add that I do agree that this information could be a relevant data point for the county as they move forward and do property tax assessment. That could be something that's factored in. So once this is up and running, we can certainly meet with them and find out a way that we can share this information with them for their ongoing efforts.

All right, thanks, Chris. Not only to you, but to the team, thank you. We're looking at cleaning up the city, we're looking at revitalization, and this is a step forward. I know it's a long time coming, because the NAT, I believe, originated, maybe under a different name, but still the same acronym, back in 2018. So what I can say, we're great at identifying but now it's time and I thank you and the team for taking the action and the process to get through. And I'm sure there's gonna be some other things that come up and probably some funding requirements and maybe we can look at some incentives to help individuals due to hardships and cases like that. So now this is good. I also agree that government-owned property, we need to lead by example. And so I would say that if we're going to call out our residents, we better call out ourselves as well. And I guess the other thing is the It's like I'm glad there's a due process and there's an appeal process. That's very important. We're dealing with people's properties and there's a lot of exceptions. Who makes the call on the exceptions?

Mr. Mayor, Council, that's probably going to be a collaboration between Kevin Doyle, who's the building official for the NAT, and myself. We would probably evaluate all those. Some of them will be probably pretty simple to determine, but there may be some that are going to require a little bit more evaluation. So I think at least initially... you know, and ultimately it'll probably be something that we bring up to our weekly NAB meeting and have those conversations, but I think ultimately it'll be our decision as to what really truly qualifies as an exemption and what does not. So that's how I envision it to start anyway.

Okay, so a recommendation, just a thought, something that you can think about would, if it comes to those appeals on the process or the fees and before it gets to any courts, is maybe utilizing the Planning and Zoning Commission as maybe an option for property owners to go before them and be their case in the event you can't come to an agreement with them at first. You would be the first line, but then that could be another if they want to continue to appeal. You've got that commission as maybe something that you could utilize.

The other thing is the...

because of time, is there a fast track process? Like a house, a property that's maybe damaged due to fire and then becomes an unsafe property in the city that's maybe ruined and dilapidated that we don't have to go through the whole process that it be deemed unsafe and go through what I would call a fast track process?

Mr. Mayor, Council, yeah, and we've had a few of those that fire department has, the fire chief has, you know, red-tagged and used the facility or the processes under the fire code to help us condemn and move those processes. So we work together on some of those. And unfortunately, most of the fires we've seen recently have been NAP properties. So we definitely see the... The issue there between the properties that are identified as public safety and the need to get them dealt with expeditiously so definitely I mean that's the process that I would rely on if we had to go to sort of an emergency expedited route for a situation like that we would we would use those tools that are in some of the code already.

Yeah, and I would think that's something that may be in the ordinance, that language could be there so that it's all combined and all together in the event that something like that happens. It's part of the NAT program and you already have a system and a process in place that if a situation like that comes up that's a facility that's not only damaged by fire but deemed ruined and dilapidated that could be unsafe to the community, we'd want to address that as soon as possible.

Certainly. Thank you, Mayor.

But again, I just want to say thank you. There's a long time coming, and this is where we get started. We'll see where the momentum goes. But I can guarantee you there's going to be some funding, and there's going to be some incentives, and there's going to be some other things that are going to come in the future if we really want to do this and be effective and efficient with where we're headed. So thank you all.

Thank you, everyone.

All right. Thanks again. And I think that's it. Looking for a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn.

Second.

On the motion to adjourn the meeting, Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent. And Mayor?

Yes.