Council - workshop

Your life.

Well, good afternoon, everyone welcome to our city Council work session today is Monday, June 22nd. If you'll all join me will stand and offer a moment of silence for men and women of the military and are also are brave women and men from the police and fire department that protect our city 24 7, 365. If you'll join me in the pledge. I will start off with item one point one on our agenda, it's Mountain View medical presentation and I believe we have the CEO correct Patrick Sullivan come. I'm sorry. Shannon. That's her.

Thank you, Mary Council members, thank you for allowing me to be here today. It's an honor. As Mayor said, my name is Patrick Shannon, CEO for Mountain View Regional. I've been there for about a little over four months now, so I'm new to Las Cruces, and it's been very nice to be here, moved here. I bought a house here, so I'm here permanently. So I'll go ahead and start with the presentation. I wanted to show you guys a few things. Let's see. Oh, I clicked off. Is it the City of Las Cruces Community Benefit? There we go. All right. I'm remembering my days. Okay. So this is the agenda. Just to tell you a little bit more about Mountain View and the overview and what we've been doing at the hospital. I also want to give the community benefit report, which I think the council will find interesting in what Mountain View contributes to the economy. We'll go through our quality and patient safety information, access to care, the economic impact, and then Something that's very important to people in the community is what physicians are we trying to recruit to the area, and then our growth plans. This is our vision to make the healthcare experience exceptional for our patients, for the community, and each other. Simple vision statement, but something that is easy for our staff and physicians to remember. And then we have our new values and actions. values in action and so you'll see put the patient first work as a team own it always do the right thing never settle and then lead the way and so when we're giving like you know nominations for employee of the month uh in all of our meetings our board meetings and things that when we open up we tie in a story into one of these values in action and so that really kind of makes it resonate and with our employees These are our top five priorities. You'll see these are in order. We've put quality first. We've got then patient experience, the physician experience, the employee satisfaction or their engagement. If you're doing those first four things right, the cash flow will come after that. The financials will follow. We have made it a very important decision to put quality first at Mountain View. This is some of the things that we're recognized for, excellence in trauma, and I'll talk a little bit more on the next slide about Mountain View being a level three trauma facility. We're also certified in stroke, cardiac bariatric surgery, maternal and neonatal services for our babies. So to put things into perspective, so Mountain View opened in 2002. And now in 2025, I think we're at 24 years now this year. But you'll see that we were doing about 3,200 emergency room visits. And so we're up over 47,000 ER visits now. See the surgeries, 1,300 in a year. Now we're gonna probably do, we did over 12,000 surgeries in 25. We'll go past that number in 2026. And then you'll see the employees were up to almost 1,500 employees and then taxes paid started back then at 200,000 local taxes, now approaching over 35 million annually in taxes. You guys probably know better than me, but this is our main campus. We have five buildings in that spot. The main hospital is building number one. Number two is our outpatient pavilion. Building three is a large medical office building. That's where our urgent care center and our surgery center is located. a lot of doctors offices so a lot going on in that building building four is mainly where our primary care is the rio grande building and then building five is our pediatric or children's center so by the numbers we're licensed for 168 beds the hospital feels like it operates like a 300 bed facility with all the things that are going on with level 3 trauma and the like We have 32 emergency room beds, 23 intensive care unit beds, and I'll tell you those 23 beds stay busy. They are often full and a lot of times we're doing everything we can not to transfer out or decline patients. We have 14 operating rooms, seven primary care clinics, three urgent care centers. And one is adjacent to us in building three, as I mentioned earlier. And then we have two others in the community. And then a freestanding emergency room as well, in addition to our main ER. We have two cath labs. And then 11 specialty care clinics and then of course the outpatient surgery center that has four operating rooms and two procedure rooms in it as well. And that's a picture of members of our dynamic perioperative team. We have a fantastic surgical team. They do great work there in the OR. So a big announcement. I want to thank the mayor for coming out this past Friday. The hospital has achieved a leapfrog safety score of A. This is a huge thing. Only like 7% of the hospitals in the country achieve this, where one of two in the state of new mexico to have achieved an a um and the only one in the county um so a lot goes into this this is built day by day this isn't something that is done overnight it takes a while so hats off to our physicians our providers the nurses uh throughout the hospital that were every day on patient safety and a lot goes into this and to break it down a little bit you'll see preventable medical errors they look at hospital acquired infections medication safety and then safety protocols and clinical best practices so the organization that being leapfrog rates every hospital in the country, A to F. And so they pull this data and compare it to all the other hospitals. And so this is something that we're gonna work hard on to maintain and sustain because the county deserves this, the city deserves this. This is something that we're proud of and we wanna make sure that our patients have a great experience but a safe experience. So our community knows that most of the people in the community know that Mountain View is the only level 3 trauma in southern New Mexico. So we have a lot of patients coming into us. We have probably over 250 patients a month that are transferred into Mountain View from various areas outside of the county. We have an orthopedic trauma surgeon, Dr. Johnson, who's fantastic, and the entire orthopedic team. We have quite a few orthopedic surgeons, general surgery, trauma, trained trauma, acute level type general surgeons that help build this team. So we have rapid access. And the hospitals in surrounding areas transfer to us for that higher level of care. And so that is something that we'll continue to work on and sustain. There has been some recent discussion about the idea of Mountain View going to a level two trauma center. I think that will come in time. We have to make sure that we have certain things in place structurally and enough specialties. We'll have to build up our general surgery team to accommodate that. But our orthopedic trauma surgeon is asking for another orthopedic trauma surgeon to help him in that endeavor. So that's a good sign. A big part of it is having physicians that are willing to be a part of that. So that's great, great to see that. So the impact for Las Cruces in 2025, $239 million in total community benefit. Of that, $137 million in annual payroll, $35.5 million in taxes paid. We had 10 million in capital investments and then we've had over 600, excuse me, 610,000 patient encounters in 2025 and that continues to grow. So seeing a lot of patients in the year. To add to that, uncompensated care, we're a for-profit entity, but we do our fair share of uncompensated care, meaning charity as well, and that was in the neighborhood of $61 million for the year. Also providing access to our emergency care centers and in addressing social determinants of health as we partner with entities in the county and the city to address those issues. You guys probably know we have the Jars of Love campaign that we do every year. Last year, in 2025, we were able to get over 4,700 jars of peanut butter that are donated. This year, in 2026, we were over 6,713 jars collected. That is a great partnership with Casa de Peregrinos, and we continue to do this and support the community in that endeavor. Clinical excellence in cardiac and women's health. So with the cath lab, we're working on renovating our cath labs now one of them's in the process or soon to be in the process we've got the purchase order issued and we'll be changing out that cath lab here starting in the next month or two and then right after that we'll change out the second one and that is to provide that higher level of care and state-of-the-art equipment that the city deserves that our patients in the community deserve Also with that, our OBGYN services are very strong. We have five OBGYNs plus midwives that are delivering. So we do a lot of work, Dr. Reddy, Moolamala has done over a thousand robotic cases. We get lots of feedback on him from a GYN perspective using the DaVinci robot. We have two robots at Mountain View, but he's very skilled at that. And so we get feedback from surgeons in Texas and other states that send patients his way because of the quality of work that he does. And he's probably one of the busiest OBGYNs, not only in the state, but honestly in the country. So if you didn't know, we have a graduate medical education program. We have residents, physician residents. So residents are, these are physicians that have already gone through med school in their training to be, you know, and we have an internal medicine physician and we have 45 plus. I think that number is growing, and we also have a transitional year in an osteopathic neuromuscular medicine program. And those residents, once they finish with us, they're going into practice in other areas. We try to retain as many as we can here for Las Cruces, but it's a good feeder. And so we see them, we get to know the ones that are really strong and make approaches to them to keep them either as a hospitalist or perhaps even working in clinics or other areas. Some of them go on to be sub-specialized in cardiology, radiology, and other things of that nature. In fact, we had a graduating class two weeks ago We graduated 20 residents, and of that, five of them went into radiology, which is phenomenal because radiology is a difficult specialty to recruit now. The whole country is short on radiology. And so a lot of teleradiology is occurring where people are reading images from afar, But we need radiologists on the ground for procedures and things of that nature. And so it's good to see those guys getting back into it. We also have... a lot of engagement with the schools here in the city. We are open-armed and we welcome all the schools and programs to have students rotate through the hospital because we want to grow them, get them interested in healthcare, and hopefully they'll stay and work here in the community. We also have a nurse residency. So when they come out of nursing school and they come out with their degrees, when they come to us, we put them in another year residency after they've graduated nursing school. And that's just to strengthen their competency level, their competence to make sure that they feel good about what they're doing. And that has been very rewarding. We've been able to really train and retain nurses through this program. And I think that has also been a big part of the reason why we've been able to achieve a leapfrog score of A. So here's just a list. of new providers. We're in heavy recruiting mode from a physician standpoint. So the top two gentlemen, Dr. Richardson and Dr. Anin, are new cardiothoracic surgeons that have joined Dr. Dow. Dr. Dow will probably, sometime soon, he hasn't really committed to a date yet, but he will probably begin to retire at some point. But these two gentlemen are joining the team. An NA gets here, he's signed and will probably get here in August. Dr. Richardson is already here. And so we are putting a lot of resources into our cardiovascular program to be able to do hearts and vascular surgery here in Las Cruces. We've got cardiologists, vascular surgeons coming in. We've got foot and ankle surgeons, a lot of primary care as well. We know that primary care is needed. We track the amount, how long it takes to get an appointment with primary care physicians, and so we're gonna continue to add family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics to support the healthcare system. So future plans, we do need to expand our footprint. As I was telling you, 168 beds with our ICU of 23, many times full. And so what happens is our emergency room gets backed up as we're trying to get these patients into the hospital. And when the emergency room is backed up, it causes longer waits, which nobody likes, right, when they're in the emergency room. So we want to address that. so we're addressing it not only with staff and physicians but capacity and so we're looking to expand our footprint here in the new near future and we'll have additional information for that relatively soon and we want to make sure that we get with uh with the mayor and the city council about those plans uh we feel like probably adding another 60 plus beds are needed to accommodate the growth and the demand that we're seeing here in the hospital and that will also incorporate more ICU beds and a cardiovascular type ICU bed for more vascular work as well and when we look at the number of the types of patients that we're transferring out or declining because we cannot accommodate them. That's kind of driving this need for more growth from a footprint standpoint. Sleep lab is another one. We're probably going to end up doubling that capacity. Our physician, Dr. Claire, is extremely busy. And that sleep lab oftentimes has access way out, meaning when you need an appointment, it takes a while to get an appointment. So we want to get that rectified and grow that. We need to grow and renovate our neonatal intensive care unit with our babies. And so we're keeping smaller babies than before, and we'll continue to grow that so that moms and parents and family members don't have to travel so far when their loved ones are in a NICU, because when they're in a NICU, they're there for a while, right? And so we want to be able to accommodate those those babies here in Las Cruces. Then, like I mentioned, the cath lab, also putting resources into that and looking to recruit more interventional cardiologists there.

Here's a list of all the specialists that we're recruiting.

We spent a lot of time know interviewing vetting bringing providers in to the community and so you know the main thing there is to have these specialties that we where we have gaps and to help grow the the mountain view system so that we can better accommodate the city and surrounding areas so in conclusion You know, Mountain View remains a cornerstone of Las Cruces, the economy and a vital safety net for the community. Our focus, as we mentioned, is to advance our cardiac care, cardiovascular, to retain the workforce and our GME is huge for us. I mean, I think that's something that we need to grow as well and grow our own doctors here. We work very closely with the Burrell College of Medicine from a medical student standpoint and have those medical students rotating through the hospital as well. And so that will help to improve the access to quality health care here in the city. So I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. I wanted to keep it as brief as possible. It will entertain any questions that you may have.

Well, thank you, Patrick. Thank you for coming today and sharing the information. And we also appreciate the partnership in the community. And once again, congratulations on earning the grade A. That's huge for you, your staff, everyone that works towards that, and for our community as well. Thank you. I'll see if any of the council have any questions. Councillor Harris?

thank you mayor and thank you for the presentation I got a couple questions the first is you know since you mentioned expanding the footprint and working with the city to do that are you open to well hopefully as we're looking to like redevelop the that East Loman plan area so you know hopefully are you guys open to Coordinating with the city and working with us to do like new traffic patterns and access Like those medians need to be landscaped and stuff and you know, are there some partnerships there?

Yeah, I would say absolutely. I know that our architects and engineers that we've been working with on the development. You know, I've been pushing them saying, hey, we need to get with the city and the county from an infrastructure standpoint. We're waiting for corporate level approval at the company level. And then that will give us the kind of green light at that point. But to answer your question, yes, absolutely. We would like to partner with you on that.

Cool, that'd be great. And then the next two questions are kind of related, so I'll ask them both. One is, on slide six, it looks like the ER visits increase at quite a bit greater rate than all of the other visits. And so I'm curious if you had any thoughts about why that is. And I think you also mentioned that you've been partnering with organizations to look at the social impacts, the non-medical impacts to health. And then the other part of that question is would you be willing to provide your financial assistance policy and the eligibility requirements specifically that governs how you provide the indigent care?

Yeah, I think on the first question, ED growth or emergency room growth, I think that it's just something that many hospitals are seeing across the country. A lot of times, patients will go to the emergency room versus their primary care physician, so that's probably gonna outpace the surgical volumes and admissions. And in some of the admissions, we continue to see growth in admissions, but a lot of hospitals are seeing a decline and a shift to the outpatient setting as insurance companies and other entities are more involved in trying to keep the cost of healthcare down. But I think that growth in the emergency room also is part of when Mountain View added the second emergency room at the freestanding. And there's some thoughts about whether or not we should add another one or an urgent care center. We have three, but oftentimes the urgent care centers, you can only do so much. So if we did another freestanding emergency room, it could be something that could benefit the community. Just trying to determine where that might be. In terms of our like charity care work and things of that nature and our discounts. Yeah, absolutely And I can we have a new chief financial officer Doug Sassinger and he joined us from Lake Havasu, Arizona and Glad to have him. I think he's been with us like two or three weeks. So But I'll get with him

uh when i get back to the office yeah that's something i think that's something we can do okay yeah that would be that would be very much appreciated um and just for our knowledge benefit what's the difference between standalone emergency room and the one in the hospital they provide exactly the same services

Yeah, they're both same services, just at a different location. But when a patient has to be admitted, a lot of times we will have them transported through our main ER just to be looked at one more time before they go to the floor. Sometimes they can go straight to the floor, but oftentimes we'll have them just looked at just to make sure everything is okay. But by and large, now an urgent care center is different. It's kind of like in between that freestanding emergency room and a primary care physician's office. A little bit more urgent in nature than a primary care physician's office, but not emergent. But the freestanding allows us to provide a higher level of emergent care to the patient off campus in a location where they may not be able to get to the main hospital fast enough.

Yeah, okay. Thanks. That's all the questions I got Counselor current.

Thank you. Thanks for the presentation I'm curious. I know you sort of elude very Lightly alluded to this with the conversation about trauma being a trauma Center, but I know that lots of folks come here from other Areas outside of the sort of central part of Las Cruces. I'm curious if you all are working on kind of a plan for what if We continue on the trajectory. I think set between seven and nine Hospitals in rural New Mexico are gonna close in the next few years. It's anticipated I'm wondering if you all are Readying yourselves for that or if that's part of the conversations about trauma and I suspect there are a few other areas that you have that you're kind of the place that people come to and What impact that might have on your capacity to serve as that transition happens, which I think is as far as I know still happening just looming there in the next two years or something, but I don't know if you can talk a little bit about that or if you're if you That's not you're just hoping it doesn't happen, which I think is what everyone feels. I

No, I think that's a great point. I think that We can see it in our own numbers, the number of transfers increasing year over year, that number continues to climb. And so I think that's part of the reason why we see the need to expand our footprint at the main campus and can do so without adding a fifth level across the entire hospital. We can do some different things to increase the bed capacity. Mainly critical care. I mean, med-surg is gonna be an addition as well, but critical care is very important. We have a step-down unit where when patients come into the ICU, and the ICU, and let's say they get stabilized, we can step them down to our IMC unit that is 18 beds, but often that is full as well. So we have to address that. And to your point, if these areas across southern New Mexico continue to need a place to transfer to, we're going to have to get ready for that. And that's why we're planning this expansion to do so, in addition to adding the service lines. You mountain view has to continue to grow from. You know potentially could we become more of a tertiary type facility maybe down the road but we've got to start heading in that direction now and certainly sooner than later.

Thank you.

Councilman cheese.

Mr. Shannon, thank you for the presentation. It brings back memories when I did the groundbreaking as mayor for that hospital, I think with John, with Mr. Hummer. Yes, sir. You find that, you mentioned the specialties, and I noticed, I have a daughter in the medical field, and she says more specialties are coming in. because of the malpractice reform do you find that you're it's easier to be recruiting and even maybe um attracting more people that could handle the trauma and burn type facilities and when we have tragic happenings that's a great question i think that that definitely helps you know the um

The recent was House Bill 99 that passed. I mean that certainly is going to help with those conversations. Mountain View has also and I don't know about MMC, but we're starting to employ more, and I think we've had to do that, and so there's been, before, quite a few independent physicians. Those independent physicians have to tough it out on their own, but when they're part of the Mountain View organization and we employ them, we can help when it comes to med mal, medical malpractice, and I think that is, help to, maybe not alleviate, but ease their concerns. But also just really promoting Las Cruces and the area. I mean, it's a great place to live. People love it here once they come here. And I drive to work. It takes me 10 minutes to get to work. When I lived in Houston, it was an hour each way. I think it's it's important to sell all the great things about Las Cruces to these physicians and then as we continue that so yes if I have cardiovascular and I'm you know speaking to a pure vascular surgeon it's going to help that I have cardiovascular surgeons there at Mountain View to get that vascular surgeon to pay attention to us and vice versa and so if I tell or that have more interventional cardiology, or I have orthopedic trauma surgeons, you know, then I have more orthopedic surgeons that will want to come on board. So as you start to build it, it makes it a little bit easier, but I think that conversation around employing does help. Yeah.

Councillor Ben Cobb.

Hi thank you so much for coming here today as a health care partner that's it's very important for us to to be in this kind of relationship with you so I appreciate it and welcome to Las Cruces.

Thank you.

I'm curious about actually going off of Councillor Coren's question. You know we've been I've been seeing some news across the state about some hospitals in northern New Mexico making some serious cuts to you know like Medicaid, Advantage programs and things like that. I'm curious about the impact of the big beautiful bill on Mountain View particularly if you're starting to see some of those impacts on major slashing from federal funding and how you think you'll cushion that or what kind of conversations we should be in in order to prepare for perhaps even more uninsured folks in Las Cruces or the county.

Yeah, great question. Putting things into perspective, you know, I'm coming from Texas, and so I find that the HDAA program with New Mexico is better than the program that Texas has. We call that the alphabet...

Thank you for saying that, everybody. Just clip that, put that somewhere. Just kidding.

Yeah, we call that the alphabet soup in Texas, but it was... a lot of programs very convoluted difficult to manage um i feel that the state here new mexico is supporting the hospitals in a good way now the the rural transformation funding uh the hospitals in las cruces may or may not qualify because of the size of the county but there are portions of Dona Ana County that may qualify, so it's still kind of up in the air. But other hospitals in New Mexico will definitely benefit in that endeavor. And we have two sister facilities, one in Carlsbad and one in Roswell, and they're gonna benefit from those programs. The HDAA supplemental funding from the state is a good one. I would characterize it as a good program. We have to manage it and make sure that we're hitting all the quality metrics and the key performance indicators that are in place, and that puts the onus on hospitals to make sure they're doing a good job providing good care, safe care. And so we're up for that challenge. And I think from that standpoint, it's good for the community for hospitals to be able to take care of patients. But I know the landscape is always changing, and that's something that we continue to stay close to to make sure that we can adjust as necessary. And that's one thing. Mountain View has been, it does well. It's an organization that is able to put things into place to make sure that it succeeds. um because we have to have a hospital that can succeed and and do the things that are necessary in this county i would say mmc is probably in a similar boat not the same boat so i think las cruces has strong health care as it relates to the hospital and the physicians we just need to bring in more specialties into the community

i don't know if i answered your question yeah no thank you i i think you're right that the landscape is sort of just always changing yeah so i appreciate that in the open flows of communication as we enter some of these harder um times for folks and obviously in the entire state but certainly in dona county we have a high percentage of uninsured and uninsured folks so those are always important conversations I did want to ask you a little bit of a tougher question. This is before your time, I want to caveat that, but it was on top of mind as I was thinking about today's work session. I know that last year Mountain View settled with some patients who had brought a lawsuit around the Patient Debt Collection Protection Act. I'm wondering if you're familiar with that and what kind of practices Mountain View has implemented to ensure that folks who are underinsured or lack insurance aren't falling into this debt trap.

Actually, I'm not familiar with that one, but I will definitely follow up on it. And that may speak to, so patient debt collection, is that what you're saying?

Yeah. Okay, yeah.

Just a brief answer on that. Thank you.

That actually happened before my time as well. My name's- And just make sure you say your name. Sure, Stephanie Guadian, the marketing director at the hospital. But the actual collection part happened from our parent company. And so that practice has since changed. So that won't be happening again.

Thank you. Love those kinds of answers. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Stephanie.

Thanks again.

Yeah.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor. Mayor, City Councilors, Mr. Shannon, thank you for the presentation. You mentioned partnership, and I'd like to ask you what we can do to help, and you might have the answer now or later, but the trajectory is just, it's gonna be incredible, incredible growth, and there's an incredible need here in our community. I'm glad that you are, seems like you're vested in our community already. I've seen you, can't believe it's been four months. I've seen you out and about at different events and gatherings. I'm glad you purchased a home instead of leasing one. It shows that you're staying here. I understand that one of your children is interested in NMSU, like an update on that as well. We can just get you a library card, and then you're legit Las Cruces. So welcome to Las Cruces.

Thank you.

But think about the plan. As some of my colleagues have mentioned, there are needs, there's growth, and our residents need services. So when it comes to partnership, let us know whether it's today, some ideas, or some ideas in the future, how we can help.

thank you very much I appreciate that yeah I think timeline wise if if we receive final approval from our corporate board we could you know maybe looking to break ground early spring of 27 with a two-year build but during that process obviously we'll be in close coordination with you guys and yeah would definitely be open-minded about partnering And so no luck yet with my stepson. I'm trying to get him to, he's a rodeo guy, he's a healer. I'm trying to get him into the university, but we'll see.

Okay, let us know how we can help. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

All right, again, thank you. Thank you for taking the time and joining us and providing the information. We appreciate all that you do for our community. Thank you, Mayor.

It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Next is agenda item 1.2, it's the Opioid Settlement Funds. Wes Smith.

I'm going to use a script this time so that I don't use any trite expressions.

Sorry. I've never heard you say something trite that wasn't awesome, so just go with it.

Awesome or be really excited about it?

I was excited about it, so please don't edit those out.

All right. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council. My name is Wes Smith. I'm a case manager with the Las Cruces Fire Department and designee to help guide our efforts surrounding the opioid settlement funds. Today, I'm presenting an overview of the city's opioid settlement expenditures in progress to date and answer any questions you all might have. Today we will briefly be covering the background on the national settlement agreements, the core strategies, goals, settings, and populations that have been selected, prevention programs funded to date, treatment and recovery programs funded, and finally anticipated next steps. To ground our discussion, I want to start with federal data tools we use. HIDA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program, and the OD Map Overdose Mapping System help us understand regional overdose trends, including both fatal and non-fatal events. These tools are extremely valuable. They confirm what our local responders already know. Overdoses continue to affect our community in significant ways, and a coordinated strategy is essential. Over the next series of slides, you'll see a 10-year visualization of overdose activity across our region. What these heat maps make clear is that we are not dealing with isolated or sporadic incidents. Each year shows sustained and sometimes intensifying activity. This long-term trend underscores why the city's careful stewardship of opioid settlement funds is not only justified, but critical. These maps help us identify pockets of heightened need. guiding how we target programs geographically. The city is estimated to receive just over $9.8 million through 2038. As of June 2026, we have received about $3.8 million. These funds come from settlements with distributors, manufacturers, and retailers, and their use is governed very specifically by the agreement to ensure they address opioid-related harm. Importantly, these dollars are highly structured. The settlement agreement requires that spending directly address opioid-related harms, ensuring funds cannot drift toward unrelated budget needs. This structure gives us both accountability and protection as we plan long-term strategies. All expenditures must align with the allowable uses in Exhibit E of the National Settlement Agreement. This includes a set of strategies, goals, settings, and target populations that ensure we invest in evidence-based and community-focused approaches. The city and county, with guidance from the Opioid Settlement Advisory Council, have jointly selected several core strategies, including medication-assisted treatment, warm handoff and recovery services, prevention programming, and improved data collection and reporting. These strategies reflect a balanced approach, supporting individuals actively struggling with substance use, while also investing in upstream prevention for youth and families. Our goals reflect a full continuum of care. They include expanding access to medication for opioid use disorder, improving early identification through universal screening, integrating harm reduction services, strengthening transitions of care, preventing youth opioid use, expanding naloxone access, and ensuring transparency through robust data reporting. These goals keep our investments aligned with long-term health outcomes rather than short-term fixes. Across these slides, you'll see the priority settings and populations we focused on. We target emergency departments, the community, primary care, residential treatment, first responders, child welfare and schools. Populations include those who overdose, youth at risk, people in withdrawal, justice-involved residents, pregnant and postpartum women and families, rural communities, older adults, and people living with substance use disorders. Council approved a two-year funding cycle representing 30% of the total anticipated distribution, about $2.9 million. Of this, 327,000 would go toward data collection, reporting, and evaluation. 60%, or 1.6 million, would support treatment. 40%, or 1 million, would support prevention, leaving the city $864,000 in remaining balance plus future annual distributions. Combined city and county investments total $7.3 million, with the city contributing $2.9 million and Oneonta County investing $4.3 million toward aligned strategies in this initial funding cycle. This joint strategy avoids duplication, maximizes regional impact, and assures services complement rather than compete with each other. This table shows how funds are distributed across prevention and treatment. Council approved 60% expended toward treatment and recovery and 40% toward prevention. Prevention totals approximately $930,000 with investments in LCPD program, Las Cruces Police Department programming, Las Cruces Public Schools social emotional learning programs, and the Dona Ana County Resilience Leaders. Treatment recovery totals $1.4 million with significant investments in naloxone distribution, ideal option, and porcelain health. Evaluation and administrative support bring the grand total to $2.7 million. The following slides will expand on these expenses. The Las Cruces Police Department's initial prevention investment funded the Keep It Real curriculum at three elementary schools, reaching 263 students. Four officers have already been trained and four more will train this July. More expansion is expected in the coming years. The fall 2026 curriculum will include a pre and post test to gauge performance. This is an excellent example of opioid settlement funds being used to expand services and leverage other funds for continued program growth. The fire department has purchased 300 naloxone lure jet syringes that can be administered IM, sub-Q, IO, or intradasal via an atomizer. 600 boxes of Narcan were purchased. 42 cases of 12 are provided to LCPD. They are going through roughly two cases per month. This is significant because LCPD is often the first on scene at overdose calls. The LCFD light program was given eight cases. The light inventory is used for Narcan lead behind and replenishment officers reserved after administration in the field. This work ensures life-saving medication is always available for first responders and for families who may face an overdose emergency. Las Cruces Public Schools received $356,000 to expand social-emotional learning. This funded second step curriculum for more than 6,000 learners and over 2,000 completed lessons, showing an increase in attendance. Navigate, I think it's Navigate 360, included over 10,000 behavior intervention lessons, nearly 24,000 intervention lessons, and 219 mental health lessons, which are all key tools in youth prevention. These investments support long-term prevention by building resilience and protective factors in youth. A notice of funding opportunity was published in the fall of 2025. The city received proposals from 15 different agencies providing treatment, recovery, and prevention programs. To assure fair and competitive funding, proposals were scored using a 100-point rubric with two city staff, two county staff, and one OSAC member evaluating the proposals, covering program design, organizational capacity, outcomes, budget, and cost effectiveness and formatting. Three service providers have been awarded funding effective July 1st, 2026. Dona Ana County Resilience Leaders, $399,904 for a trauma-informed family support center. Ideal Option, $1.1 million for deflection and intensive case management. And Porchlight Health, $245,915 for on-demand medication-assisted treatment. Pivot evaluation has been contracted by the city and county for joint evaluation. In the spirit of ongoing collaboration and open communication as a cornerstone of this work, maintaining this connection will strengthen our efforts to maximize the impact of opioid settlement funds for the community. Evaluation occurs in two phases. Year one focuses on process. Did the program do what it committed to do? Year two assesses outcomes, including intended and any additional impacts. Okay, our next steps include hiring a full-time grant development and compliance specialist. Ongoing reporting with the City of Las Cruces transparency and accountability website that will provide live updates of expenditures in an easy-to-consume format. The EERP model for detailed transactions was approved June 15th, 2026 and is being moved into production. This work in progress has been in effect through revenue reporting and will be a great asset to governmental reporting. The relationship between the city and county will further enhance the relationship with the community by partnering with a third party pivot evaluation. And finally, the city and county are continuing the conversation with assistance from the Opioid Settlement Advisory Council, local stakeholders, and community members to best prepare for the next round of expenditures to present to council. And that will take questions.

All right. Thank you, Wes. See if anyone has questions. Councillor Harris.

Thanks Mayor and thanks Wes. This was great to learn in depth about all this stuff. My quick question is the previous slide with the grant development person. Is that somebody who's like only gonna be focusing on compliance for this project or since it's a grant development are we also looking at related grants and funding to supplement the program?

Good afternoon, Mayor, city councilors. Councilor Harris, yes, the grant development specialist will be embedded within the grants program in finance. And that person will be not just working on this particular project, but looking for complementary funding to continue and increase the services provided, not only through the grant, but also through the city.

Okay, yeah, thanks.

Any other questions? Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you, Mayor, City Councilors. Wes, thank you for putting this information together. I believe it was page or slide 28. I'm glad that you put this in here. I think when, given the amount of funds available and the good they could do for our community, it's important to measure. So I appreciate the you and your team providing results and outcomes. Is it, are you gonna just do it in year one, year two, or will there be like a six month or an intermediate, you know, some sort of a update or readout in between those milestone dates?

I think the contract with Pivot Evaluation was every six months they would have a formal report. But we will be, so we intend to have like monthly data coming in from the providers. And they like the different contracts like with Las Cruces public schools like that's more like a quarterly update but information from LCPD the fire department these are like daily conversations but Yeah, and then the I really want to direct our attention to the website where well This is where we want to publish those that data, but we also want to have live account of Expenditures as they come in this is Awesome. Sorry, I'm really excited about the Los Cruces website, accountability website. I probably should have put on this presentation, but it'll be a great opportunity to have live updates as they come in and where they're going for treatment, recovery, prevention programming.

Wonderful, wonderful. Thanks for providing that, and thank you, Mary. Looking forward to the results.

Council Cora.

Thank you again. This may not be something that you can answer, but I have a vague recollection that one of the many companies that had to pay into the opioid, overarching opioid settlement funds, basically said they would pay in Narcan. Does anyone else remember this conversation? Maybe I'm making it up. I swear that happened in one of our discussions. One of those companies was going to, because they didn't have enough cash or something, but they had piles of Narcan, they were just gonna give municipalities piles of Narcan. But if you're making that face and everyone else is making that face, I doubt I doubt my memory. I swear that someone, that was one of the company's resolutions instead of money. But I guess we're not getting that. If you're making that face, then never mind. But I was just going to say, if we do, I hope that the way that we're distributing it now can be the model so that it can go really quickly and it doesn't have to have any discussion about how that happens. If we just get a box of Narcan showing up at Brad Douglas's office, I guess, is where it would...

would appear probably so anyway um thank you sorry I'll get it out there yeah thank you so much Wes and I see some members of the advisory council here thank you all of you for your work so far I am so sorry I don't know if I missed this Wes did you show us the amount that has gone out and the amount of dollars that are still unused

don't think you did right so this is just a report on the two-year funding cycle of the 2.9 million that we approved in like nine months ago okay um but so that the most I think, yeah, this is the best I've got, 2.9 million with 864,000 remaining. Any annual distributions that may be coming out and if there's any additional settlements that may be pending.

Yes, thank you, I appreciate that. And then I did wanna raise, I didn't wanna leave this hanging because I think it's important to keep a very good line of communication open. We did receive a letter from the Opioid Settlement Advisory Council from May naming some concerns. I wondered if you could touch on that or if members of the committee wanted to touch on that. As we think about next steps, I want us to be in lockstep with each other because obviously these dollars are... monumentally important obviously the map you showed us the stakes are really high and this amount of money is not going to it's still not enough for the damage that they've caused our communities right but I but this opportunity is incredible and I think I want us to be able to be on the same page and aligned with each other so it does anybody do you want to speak on this letter or let me pull it so I can make sure I can Or members of the committee as well, Wes, if, you know, it did seem like they came from the whole council. Maybe not.

I don't see Ned Rubin, who may be the best.

Um.

Yep.

Hi my name is Athena Huckabee I am the special project manager with Dona Ana County I'm in charge of our opioid settlement funds no members of the well Tanika Gonzalez is here who is a member of the OSAC but she was not involved in the writing of the letter specifically I think and Wes has a copy of the letter here but specifically I think it was mostly about that city and county continuing to work together and have good communication and reminding city of the purpose of the OSAC, which is to advise city and county about best practices and their recommendations for how they believe those funding should be used. So there had been a little bit of a gap in communication because of staff changeover here at the city and I think we're back, Things are moving very well, so I don't think that's anything particularly of concern. One member of the OSAC did have specific concerns about the Keeping It Real program, and that that was not a recommended funding expenditure through the OSAC. However, that's entirely up to the city how you choose to spend your funds.

Okay, thank you. Well, I didn't want this to go unacknowledged, so I know folks are putting in volunteer time on this committee, so I wanted to make sure to lift that up, and if there's concerns, that I hope they continue to be raised. So thank you very much. Do you think that covered? Sure. Great.

So there were some things that the city recommended outside of what OSAC recommended, which was like funding in schools. That would include the social-emotional learning programs, the Navigate 360 and the other curriculum, and the Keep It Real program. Those were programs that the city recommended. outside of the, when we're talking about the settings of populations, that was outside of the OSEC recommendations.

Councillor Harris.

Thanks, I guess as a follow up to that, Can you speak a little bit to why those programs are being done in elementary schools and if there are thoughts about extending it? As a former graduate of DARE, which was a long time ago, to be fair, I wonder if those programs would be more appropriate in middle school or high school or all three. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Thank you sergeant says that that's for me to answer so the the the keep it real curriculum which is owned by dare LLC is a evidence based program sponsored by Sam so. And it's targeted at that grade level and teaches them. Like. healthy decision-making habits appropriate for that grade level. And I can't recall, and I don't have a representative from the Las Cruces public schools to expand on the social-emotional learning programs, but it's a similar approach for prevention.

Chief Daniels? Mayor, Councilor Harris, just to add, the Keeping It Real program is actually designed through the entire spectrum of school. So they have different recommendations. I think this was our first year getting started with the Keeping It Real program. And so we didn't, a lot of it's just the ability or the scope of what we can accomplish with only few officers being trained in that first year. So I'm assuming as capacity increases, we'll obviously take a look at what services can be provided through that program across that entire age spectrum.

Thank you, Chief. Well, seeing no other questions. Thank you, Wes. We appreciate it, all the work you put in and the update. Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Okay, with that, I'll look for a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn.

Second. This is on the motion to adjourn the work session. Councillor McClure is absent. Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz? Yes. And Mayor?

Yes.