Council - workshop

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the city work session. Today is Monday, August 24th, 2026. It's approximately 1 p.m. 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 of the Las Cruces Police Department and Las Cruces Fire Department as they keep our city safe 24-7, 365.

Please join me in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, well good afternoon and we'll start with the agenda item 1.1 update from economic development partners.

Good afternoon, City Council. Selena Morales, Deputy Director for Economic Development. Today we have Downtown Las Cruces Partnership here to provide an update on the work they've been doing in support of our downtown businesses and community. DLCP is an important partner to the city and economic development in helping support downtown revitalization, business engagement, programming, and activities that continue to strengthen our downtown area. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Liana, and she'll walk you through their work, accomplishments, and efforts.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Council. My name is Liana Ingrisani, and I am with Main Street Las Cruces Arts and Cultural District. I am honored to be with you today presenting on behalf of our organization. A little bit about me. I am a wife, I am a mother, a small business owner, a personal trainer, a native New Yorker, a resident of Las Cruces, and I am the executive director of Main Street Las Cruces, formerly known as Downtown Las Cruces Partnership. I've been in this role a little over a year now and needless to say, it has been nothing short of a busy year. Our priorities have been rebuilding our image and strengthening our relationship with the downtown community and the city overall. Since moving here, I have watched downtown Las Cruces and Las Cruces as a city change and grow. I'm proud to be part of that evolution and I'm excited to share with you today what we've been working on as an organization. So in the last year, Main Street Las Cruces not only hired me, but six new board members with various backgrounds and expertise. So lots of transition in the last year, but as a team, we all share the same vision of what downtown can be. Downtown communities are truly the heartbeat of a city. They bring together businesses, residents, visitors, arts and culture, and community life. And as an accredited Main Street organization, it is our goal to strengthen that environment. Downtown Las Cruces is more than just a destination. It's a launch pad for dreams, where artists, business, and residents unite in a collaborative environment to experiment, grow, and push the boundaries of what is possible. So since we are a Main Street America accredited organization, we follow a four-point approach. So design, organization, promotion, economic vitality, These work in synergy to create meaningful and lasting change in communities. So for the state of downtown, there is a lot happening. We adopted the role of Bainsheet Las Cruces as the front door of the business ecosystem. More than 6,000 people working in the district, but as I was informed a couple weeks ago, it's probably closer to 10,000. We have millions of dollars in the TID with a strong calendar of events and activities go on downtown, including the weekly farmers and crafts market that happens on Wednesdays and Saturdays that Karen has carefully curated over the years. A monthly fine arts flea market that happens on Fridays once a month that is indigenous and women owned and operated. Visit Las Cruces puts on Mita, We have Zombie Walk and Chili Drop, and we've also seen capital improvements, including the Arts and Cultural District Lighting and Gateway Project and other city projects. We do have the largest arts and cultural district in New Mexico, and that gives us a real opportunity to use arts and culture as part of our economic development strategy. Our job is to help connect those creative assets with the broader downtown business ecosystem. Aside from our annual budget of $125,000, one of the many ways we support downtown businesses is by connecting them with funding and free technical assistance through Main Street New Mexico revitalization specialists. We received a $10,000 grant from Tourism Event Growth and Sustainability from the state for Chili Drop. We received a grant for New Mexico Resiliency Alliance for facade improvements for a restaurant that is housed in a historic building downtown. We assisted two businesses in the Renovate Main Street grant process, and the amount that we were able to receive for them was totaling around $40,000. And we also took the time to educate these business owners on the unique business incentives the city has to offer. We were also awarded $100,000 through the Creative Industries Arts and Cultural District pilot grant. This funding supports the El Camino Real heritage and art trail in the historic Mesquite neighborhood. We've been working in tandem with Las Esperanzas, Film Las Cruces, Economic Development, and Historical Preservation. We've hosted community engagement sessions, three stakeholder networking events, and focus groups to find out what the district residents and business owners hope for for the grant. uh... our most recent event that we hosted was the mural showcase we sent out an artist call in april and we received fourteen submissions for mural concepts uh... by four different artists we cross promoted a business a recently opened gallery in the mesquite neighborhood and local artist mural concepts we printed and we presented them in the gallery and we had people from the community come in and they were able to see the concepts The funds will also be used for murals and public art, wayfinding signage, historic plaques, cultural storytelling and marketing, and GIS mapping. And this is a great example about how art, history, and economic development can work together, and we're hoping to drive more foot traffic to the historic Mesquite neighborhood. Now I'd like to ask permission to have a testimonial from Martha Cruz from Lasas Bronzas. Thank you.

mayor and city council. By the way, my name is Martha Rodriguez. My email address is Cruz, so I think that's how she got confused. But anyway, we want to thank Main Street Las Cruces Arts and Cultural District for partnering with Las Esperanzas. Las Esperanzas is a volunteer organization that has existed in the Mesquite Historic District for over 26 years. This past year has further solidified the partnership that has existed between the two organizations for many, many years. Our partnership has continued to grow, and with the creation of the Arts and Cultural District especially, which includes part of the Mesquite Historic Neighborhood. This year, the two organizations look to highlight the original town side of Las Cruces, the Mesquite neighborhood, and the Camino Real, also found in the Mesquite neighborhood. Together, we have worked closely with neighbors and businesses to create artistic symbols in the neighborhood that will bring awareness to the rich culture that exists in Las Cruces. We will highlight this not only to Las Cruces visitors, but also to residents who may not be aware of the treasure that exists in our city. Thanks, Main Street Las Cruces, for all your hard work. Thank you.

Thank you, Martha. Liana Angersani again. Moving on to our grants and technical assistance, Taste of India is one example of what technical assistance can look like. We were able to help connect the business with resources to make improvements to their space. In this case, that included the flooring that we created a more durable surface that better supports the day-to-day needs of the restaurant's operations. We also connected the business owner to a revitalization specialist from New Mexico Main Street who specializes in the facade work of historic buildings. He provided insight and guidance during this process. Council, I do also have Sagar, the owner of Taste of India, here today. May he make a statement? Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. First of all, my name is Sagar. I'm the owner of Taste of India, a unique gift shop on Main Street. I have proudly owned Taste of India for the past four years. Over the last year, Main Street Last Cruises has taken time to understand my business goals and connect me with valuable resources, with Liana's guidance, I secured a renovate Main Street ground to repair our restaurant flooring, received assistance from a New Mexico Main Street revitalization specialist, and obtained funding for improvements to our historic building. When we opened Unique Gifts earlier this year, Main Street Las Cruces also helped promote our new business through videos, marketing, social media, advertising, and all that kind of stuff, and providing valuable exposure at a critical time. Their support has made a real difference for both of my business and has strengthened our downtown community as a whole. I am truly grateful for their partnership and commitment to helping local businesses succeed. Thank you, thank you guys.

Thank you. Liana Ingersani. Moving on to another example of technical assistance and our grants, we recently moved Dermaesthetics from Water Street onto Main Street proper, with assistance from New Mexico, excuse me, with assistance from Main Street Las Cruces to submit the application for the Renovate Main Street grant. They were able to renovate much of their interior, so this is what it looked like before Renovate Main Street, and this is what it looked like after. So they were able to renovate treatment rooms, bathrooms, and the reception area. And these are the kind of investments that help businesses grow while also improving the overall appearance of the district. We'd like to mention that we know that Renovate Main Street is a city-run economic development incentive. We are not taking ownership of these funds. We're just providing the education and assistance in the grant application process because we've been told it's been a little confusing. Moving on to our events, we host Zombie Walk at the end of October. We had 6,000 in attendance this last year, and since Zombie Walk is considered an arts and cultural district event, we found different ways to bring arts back into the event. We hosted a t-shirt design competition. Community members and artists were able to submit their interpretations of what zombies are using a local printing company. We selected the artwork and printed them on shirts and distributed them to the public for free during the Zombie Walk. The winner is actually a professor from NMSU. She submitted her design in honor of her late mother who loved zombie walk. And this was a great way to honor her. And it's another great example of building the meaningful connections between the businesses and with the downtown community. And this event was sponsored generously by New Sender Credit Union. Our event for New Year's Eve is Chili Drop. It's held on the plaza. We partner with New Mexico State's Engineering Aggie Innovation Studios, which is a student-led organization. And we fabricated a new chili this last year with 2,600 LED lights. And it's actually much lighter than the previous chili. We had about 6,000 people attend Chili Drop this year. We did see that the closure of restaurants and nightlife venues has had a ripple-down effect in our downtown for these particular type of events by reducing the entertainment options and the evening activity in the district. The event was also sponsored by Nusenda Credit Union and El Paso Electric. The Tourism Event Growth and Sustainability Grant, which gave us New Mexico True Recognition this last year for that event, we used the funds to create free red and green custom beanies that we handed out to the crowd for free, since the highlight of the event is to guess whether or not the illuminated chili will be red or green. Planet Fitness has purple foam fingers. We had red and green beans. We also hired Hutton Media Company to provide us with media content and branded video assets to be used for social media for years to come. And our downtown businesses generously donated $2,500 in raffle prizes. We were able to pull three names from that raffle. And this is a great example of local businesses investing in community events to bring more business back downtown. For our business spotlights for social media, we are expected to produce six business spotlights and free targeted ads. We've increased views year over year since 2022. We're also seeing more businesses participate and collaborate with us on social media, which increases the visibility for these businesses as well as introduces new clientele downtown. We are required to distribute a survey to, it's our annual downtown community survey, to 150 people. We reached 157 this year. We focused on downtown as a whole, but in this graph you'll see results for perceived safety, cleanliness, and overall appearance. The numbers show improvement from where we were in 2024, but they also help us identify where we still have work to do. So according to the survey results, we're still seeing residual loss from the business closures downtown that provided the entertainment and additional nightlife to the area. These businesses also increased activity and dwell time in the district. We're working with local real estate agents to stay informed about vacancies and to help connect businesses looking to locate or relocate downtown. We do know that safety, cleanliness, and slower weekday foot traffic are common challenges. So we have had discussions of gathering volunteers or NMSU students to help us clean up downtown either as an event or on a monthly basis once a month. I was down there recently and I did notice that Lions Club does go down there every third Thursday to clean up. The survey results also read that safety and cleanliness perception comes from the occasional trash downtown, as well as the dead trees and lack of plants, that's from the survey, and the unhoused population that congregate in that area from time to time. To increase the foot traffic during the weekdays, we've looked at creating an initiative for local businesses to offer discounts or specials to those employees who already work downtown in the district. As far as business activity, there has been a lot of movement. We've also seen businesses expand or relocate in the district. They've either outgrown their spaces or they need more space to expand their services. And we did take council's advice from last year and we followed up with businesses in a more timely manner to learn the reasoning of their departure so that way we can gather more information for the current businesses that are down there. The following slides will provide you with more information regarding the expectations of our contract and our deliverables. We work with an annual budget of $125,000, and we have additional funding specifically for the execution of Zombie Walk and Chili Drop. We have also remained active on social media. by promoting the businesses and events using monthly blog posts and social media stories we have a 62 repost rate for instagram for stories for the year and these are this is helping businesses cast a wider net to increase their tie their clientele and to bring more people downtown this year we acquired 112 000 in grant funding and 15 000 in sponsorships We regularly speak with downtown businesses about the business ecosystem. Myself and Bill Jensen, we go down, boots on the ground, and we speak to these business owners. We distribute business retention and expansion surveys as part of our contract, BR&Es. And then from the survey results, the downtown business community is generally stable. The business owners do remain optimistic about their businesses, and the majority either report stable or increasing sales. They're also telling us that they want to see more retail and entertainment downtown, which of course increases time spent downtown, which equals dollars spent downtown. And we understand that nothing works in isolation, and we are grateful for the collaborations and the partnerships that we've made over the last year. Each partnership brings something different to the table, whether it's expertise, promotion, exposure, community connections, or new opportunities for downtown. Last year, we rebranded to better align with New Mexico Main Street and Main Street America in our nonprofit's mission. While DLCP has served the community for over 20 years, we're entering a new chapter with a new executive director, new board members, and a renewed vision as Main Street Las Cruces. Over the last year, we've transitioned and rebuilt trust in our downtown community. We fostered the meaningful connections with our businesses and local organizations. And moving forward, we will continue to listen to our stakeholders, and we will build the partnerships we've cultivated. We want to continue to be the front door to that ecosystem downtown that brings businesses, arts, and culture together. And we want to create a safe, vibrant, welcoming space in our downtown that is economically strong. Downtown is resilient and has tremendous potential, and our business owners have learned to pivot in the face of adversity. I believe the foundation we've built puts us in a strong position for the future, and with continued investment and collaboration, a stronger downtown means stronger economic returns for the city. And we are grateful for the support from the Economic Development Department.

i'd like to thank you counsel i'd like to thank you mister mayor and mister mayor pro tem uh... for the opportunity to speak with you today and i am now available for your questions i thank you for the presentation any questions counselors uh... thank you and so you mentioned on slide seventeen eighteen uh... that you're reaching out more to uh... businesses who are relocating to see what why and I guess Do you have more more information on that kind of specifically like the space things because I've heard I've heard various stories about why people leave and and usually it's space Council you're speaking about the business that has exited downtown or you're speaking about businesses that are relocating within the downtown.

I

businesses that are exiting so you had a location on Main Street and you've left for one reason or another and then conversely it'd be interesting to know why why new businesses are locating there and what's the draw so for the most part from what we've seen from the exiting businesses there were issues with rent and ownership of the building that created qualms for the business owner and

he's decided to since leave so that's really that's really the draw that the space and and rent from what i've understood from like some of the new businesses like color me mine uh for example we have candle karma that just relocated that were that was in a space in las kina into a space within another space downtown in a gallery because they wanted to expand services so we're seeing a lot of that same thing with uh dermaesthetics who was on water street they expanded to another facility on main street proper because of the space so that they could offer more So it seems that our, like I said, our businesses are pivoting because they want to be able to provide more for the community downtown.

Cool, thanks.

You're welcome.

No other questions?

All right, well, thank you. Sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. No, I just was thinking of this.

Go ahead, Councillor Curran.

Thank you. To the idea of space and maximizing space versus minimizing space, I think we're working on implementing a sort of vacancy fee and having more robust conversations with commercial and residential spaces that are vacant across the city. I'm hoping that we can make sure that in that conversation you all might sort of, as our community development folks are working on the vacancy conversations, if that can be part of, because I would like us to focus on downtown and have as much space filled up as we possibly can, especially downtown, everywhere, but in particular downtown. So I'm hoping that we can,

engage you in that conversation and as you talk to more businesses that can be part of part of those conversations absolutely we'd love to be part of those conversations thank you okay i just want to say thank you you're absolutely right it is the heart of las cruces it is the core of las cruces working together with all the partners with the city you've all done a tremendous job and we look to continue that and keep it going forward for the city thank you thank you mr mayor thank you counselors

Thank you, Mayor Counselor Selena Morales again. Next, we'll have the Farmers and Craft Market of Las Cruces. The market has been a longstanding part of our downtown and continues to play an important role in bringing residents and visitors to Main Street while providing opportunities for local growers, artists, makers, and small businesses. With that, I'll hand it over to Karen from Farmers and Craft Market of Las Cruces.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members. I am Karen Bradshaw, and I manage the Farmers and Crafts Market of Las Cruces. There we go. All right. The market continues to be a supporter for our community where the SNAP and Double Up program is concerned. Also our WIC and our senior program. This past year, we actually redeemed through the senior program, which runs from July 1st through the middle of November, over $356,000 for our community. We do have a new program that is scheduled to launch come the beginning of September called Protein Plus. and it is a protein incentive that will allow 50% off of a protein purchase up to $20. Any customer that identifies as a low-income or food insecure may participate and the food items will include meat, poultry, tree nuts, fish, and eggs. Our general market information are Vendors have basically, the amount we have have remained the same. We have had some long-term vendors retire, which we were sad to see them go. But we are continuing to bring in new vendors. We have seen a slow, steady increase in customer attendance this past year. And our estimated Saturday morning attendance is now between 3,500 and 5,000 people who come on a Saturday morning. We continue to do the advertising through Rack Cards, our social media and website. Adams Radio comes down and does a remote several times a year. We advertise with New Mexico Magazine Adventure Guide, Southwest Contemporary. We are still registered with Taste the Tradition through NMDA. Let's see, on November 20th, 2025, at the fifth annual New Mexico Ground Golden Chili Award Program, we received a certificate of recognition for our work in the community. um it was the let's see and then in 2026 food and farms day on january 30th just a few months ago up in santa fe at the rotunda we received the good food for the new mexico awards celebrating farmers markets from farm to table the new mexico agriculture policy council and new mexico grown we were also recognized by the new mexico legislature um this past year the bulletins best we were the best attraction and we were a finalist for the best local market we offer market t-shirts and hats with our logo um ktal 101.5 the community radio does live broadcasts from the markets uh once a month with the local bands And KRWG does a live broadcast every spring and fall with us. Let's see. This year, yep, next one. American Farmland Trust. I bug you guys every year about this, and it's time to vote. This year's American Farmers Market celebration runs from August 1st till the end of September. We'd really like to be number one in the state again, plus number one in the southwest region. When I checked the numbers a little while ago, we had over 300 votes, but Winsboro, Texas is beating us. They have almost 1,500. Yeah, I know, Winsboro, Texas. But as you can see, there's the QR code. Remember to vote, please, if you haven't voted yet. We also were featured in the June 2026 publication of New Mexico Magazine this year. They did a fantastic article on the market, our farmers and the community. Special events. we love these and the costume contest last year we had over 25 entries with prizes for first second and third place along with a People's Choice Award that were provided by local businesses Jackie and Joey from Adams Radio were our judges and we will be doing that once again this year and it falls on Halloween So we're really excited about that. We will have obviously the Pet Costume Contest again. KTAL will also be doing a live from the market broadcast on the plaza stage. And we'll have the trick-or-treating with the kids among the market vendors. And then this past year, our Easter Egg Hunt birthday event. We distributed over 12,000 plastic eggs during the market. We had six golden egg prizes, 12 silver egg prizes, and 24 bronze. And we coordinated with Keep Las Cruces Beautiful to also make sure we celebrated Earth Day. We actually had recycle bins out for everybody to bring back their plastic eggs so we can use them again. So I have two great big huge boxes sitting in the office waiting for next year. And we actually, let's see, and then next year the market and Keep Las Cruces Beautiful will be working together again to celebrate Earth Day. We've already got KTL scheduled to broadcast live, and they will be providing a local band to entertain everybody. And then Christmas Eve market is scheduled once again. We had a blast last year, and we got it scheduled again for this year. We'll have Santa Claus and our vendors will be there on Main Street and downtown. And that's it, guys. Thank you. Any questions?

Thank you. Any questions? No. Mayor Protek.

Thank you, Mayor. Karen, thank you very much for putting your presentation together. And again, congratulations on the farmer's market. Always good feedback. We have friends from all over come visit, and so that's one of the destinations. We have friends internationally, primarily from Italy, and they love spending time at the market. So you had nonprofits on there. how that works and how people can table there. I went to an event this weekend. It was really wonderful. Young students who made pastries and dishes and whatnot. and then other students who had just amazing art, artwork. And so I don't know if there's a way to partner or if you do this already, but it'd be so neat to see.

Who are they affiliated with?

Alma de Arte.

Okay, that's not someone we actually have signed up with us. We do have certain regulations and policies where the market is concerned. But they're a nonprofit?

Yes.

Outreach? Okay. Then what they can do is actually email the office and let us know what they would like to do, and we will see what we can set up.

Perfect, perfect. Yeah, there are schools, and I don't know, I've not talked to them, I just, you know, you mentioned that, and I saw nonprofits, and I thought, you know what, these youngsters, it'd be great for them to get exposure somewhere out there.

We have a program with the Community Action Agency of Southern New Mexico, which is our Kids Can program. So that is something that if the kids want to, they can actually contact them and go through them. We recently, in the last year, we offered it also to NMSU art clubs to be able to come down and table with us as well. Unfortunately, they have not yet taken advantage of it, but we hope they will soon.

Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Karen.

All right. Thank you. And you got my vote.

Excellent. Appreciate it.

Yeah, next we have item 1.2, city strategic plan update. Chris Faber.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. Chris Faber, community development director for the record. Okay well that's opening up a quick introduction so we are here for the second of three work sessions regarding the strategic plan. The next one will be the end of September where we get a draft of the plan and can get feedback from council on the direction they would like to go. Today's work session, we'll kind of recap where we are to date, next steps in the process, and some feedback regarding the public outreach that we did a couple weeks ago. So I'm going to turn it over to Janelle and Brittany from Single Space Strategies to guide you through the rest of this process, and then we'll all be available for questions afterwards. So thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem and counselors. So good to be with you again. My name is Brittany Posse. I'm the vice president of data and research at Single Space Strategies, and we have the great privilege of working with you all on your updated strategic plan. As Chris said, we're here to sort of keep talking about the strategic plan. Today, we come armed with data from the public meetings that we had at the end of July, beginning of August. And I want to thank you all for participating in those. There's folks in the audience that were at those meetings, and we just had a really great time learning with and from you all. And so, you know, it's only been a couple of weeks, so we don't have all the data crunched, but we do have some top lines we'll be able to share and talk about how we sort of see that fitting into the discussion about the strategic plan. So just to remind us what we're doing, the strategic plan is the city's near-term roadmap for the next two to five years. Obviously, Elevate Las Cruces is the longer-term vision for the city, but the strategic plan sort of makes it more near-term. What do we do in the next two to five years to continue keeping us on track, set out by Elevate Las Cruces, and how do we deal with the current budget constraints and the current sort of things that are facing the city and you all now, and what does that sort of prioritization look like? So it will guide things like funding, staff capacity, services, capital investments. It'll help coordinate work across departments over the next couple of years. And my favorite part, define what progress looks like and how we measure it, how we know whether or not we've been successful implementing the strategic plan. So where we are in the process, so we started by really trying to understand the landscape. We did that really broad needs assessment. We met with you all, we met with city leadership, and we did a bunch of other data collection. That needs assessment allowed us to identify sort of the big questions, the key opportunities in this near-term time, the challenges, the strategic trade-offs. and then we went out and talked to the community about what they're seeing sort of like you know what they see is the big issues the trade-offs what should be prioritized in the next two to five years and so today here we are to refine the direction to sort of bring together what we found in the needs assessment versus what we heard not versus but with what we heard from the community and like what that means for what goes into the strategic plan then we will go away wherever we go to and build our strategic plan our strategic planning layer and put that together we will develop the strategic priorities the goals the recommendations the desired outcomes and then as chris said we will bring those back at the end of september and have another conversation about you know where did we get it right where did we get it wrong where do we need to tweak then in october we will uh flesh out that strategic plan with you know the the nitty-gritty the kpis the timelines things like that and then we'll be back in november to review and adopt the strategic plan so we are sort of still in in process uh and so we're on number four now refining the direction So again, today we are just here to mostly report back what we heard from the community. You all were there at a lot of those, but sort of like how we were able to put all of that together, how that input refines the themes from the needs assessment, which we talked about last time when we were here, and how the strategic plan is beginning to take shape. So how we engage the community over the last several weeks. We had a community survey out in the field. We had 331 people complete that survey. We had many more that answered at least some of the questions. we had five community meetings across the city uh 86 total attendees at those meetings we conducted actually it's five focus groups uh no sorry yeah it's four sorry four focus groups among business leaders community leaders and then we did two among young people And then we tabled at the farmer's market. Thank you, Karen, for letting us do that. That was a great time. And sorry, I should have mentioned this. We're going to have a full report coming out in the next couple of weeks. Again, these are just sort of the highlights and the top lines that we wanted to share with you today. So just a little note on how we're thinking about this input. We are really happy with the number of responses to the survey, but this is not a representative sample of all the people living in Las Cruces. Obviously, the survey skewed slightly older, more highly educated survey respondents were more likely to be homeowners than the general sort of resident of Las Cruces. Public meeting attendance also sort of seemed to skew the same way. uh... but you know we're able to sort of tease out patterns across you know all the types of engagement from the survey to the public meetings to the focus groups uh... and sort of start to tease out where there's those perspectives differ by group by council district by demographic and I think we are you know we feel fairly confident that we're able to say something about the folks who participated in the strategic planning process and you know what their priorities are we sort of see the needs assessment as a complement to that you know where we the sort of groups that were less represented, including renters, folks of color, folks whose primary language isn't English. So this is not the only source of data. This is a source of data that we're bringing all together to bear on the strategic plan. So the sort of big picture of what we found through this community engagement process, people really love Las Cruces. People love living here. And the things that they talked about most often across all of the modes of engagement were the community of Las Cruces, the culture, the natural environment, family connections, quality of life. Something we heard a whole lot is how it feels like a small town and how that's really important to folks. And then areas of opportunity included opportunity, more generally, opportunity, economic opportunity, opportunity to sort of stay and grow and thrive. We heard a lot about safety and well-being. We heard about infrastructure. We heard about needing more things to do, especially around young people, young families. We heard about affordability, and we heard a lot about city responsiveness. So sort of diving into this a little more, these are some of the top line results from the survey. So one of the questions that we asked folks is, where do you want to see progress in the next two to five years? And this was an open ended question. And we did this on purpose because we really didn't want to limit survey respondents to what we think might be important or what anybody else thinks might be important. We really wanted to hear where folks really wanted to see progress. And so we went in and then hand-coded each of those open-ended responses. And so what you'll see here, this is not going to add to 100 because any time somebody mentioned something, they were coded as having mentioned that. And so one response could have five or six codes. One response could have one code. So that's sort of the methodology of how we did that. Again, there'll be a fuller report that explains it more eloquently than I am doing in this moment. But you can see things that are not huge surprises. Almost a third of respondents mentioned addressing homelessness as a priority for progress in the next couple of years. Almost 30% mentioned safety in their neighborhood. About one in five mentioned transparency from city government. Another 12 mentioned road conditions. 8% mentioned programs for teens and kids. 8% mentioned affordable housing. These are the top six. The others will be in the report, but these were sort of the bigger buckets of things that we saw from the survey respondents. i know this is small you'll get this in the report but when we came here to talk about the needs assessment we talked about sort of some big trade-offs that we see in terms of what can be done in the next two to five years things about sort of like you know prioritizing investment in both resources in terms of money and staff and so we took those trade-offs to the public and what's really interesting is that Two sets of these trade-offs, there's like pretty clear consensus on, and the other three is a little bit, you know, folks are saying that they want a little bit more balance. So the first is sort of the trade-off between taking care of what the city already has and building or expanding new things. 70% of survey respondents said focus on taking care of what the city already has versus building and expanding new things. In terms of the trade-off between building more housing and making sure the city can keep up with growth, more survey respondents want the city to make sure that they can keep up with growth in the next couple of years versus building more housing. In terms of attracting new business versus growing local business, the survey suggests that folks really want to see a balance between those things. Also, in terms of focusing growth downtown versus growth and development in other areas of the city. And then the last trade-off that was sort of you know folks talked a lot about balance in is investing in law enforcement and emergency response versus investing in support systems that help prevent safety problems and actually this last one we heard a lot about you know folks talking about how these things have to go hand in hand that safety can't go without support services and support services need to be sort of backed up by safety. So that's something we're sort of wrestling with how to sort of write about in the strategic plan. But I think in a lot of places, the public's sort of input is aligned very well with the needs assessment and things we've heard from you all. So in terms of the focus groups, we thought it would be really important to do a deeper dive with community leaders in business, community leaders in sort of the nonprofit world, and with young people. And so we heard a lot of the same things from folks, but the specific things we heard in the focus groups with business leaders in specific are that you know business leaders are really looking for business friendly processes they talked a lot about sort of the permitting processes and sort of the difficulty navigating that they talked a lot about safety for the business community they talked about you know bringing in sort of larger employers and support for local business where have you heard that the last slide And they talked a lot too about opportunity for young people and the importance of making Las Cruces a place where young people have things to do, have economic opportunities. And so that's what they were really focused on. Community leaders talked to us a lot about jobs, about young people. They also talked about housing and healthcare and transportation and sort of how all of that works together right and they talked about you know the intersection between public safety and social supports and then the importance of non-partnership non-partner sorry non-profit partnerships and then funding operations so they talked and this is something you hear a lot from non-profits it's it's really hard to get funding for operations it's really easy to get funding for programs and so thinking about creative ways to help the non-profits in las cruces who are doing great work to continue to keep their doors open And then we had a great time with a bunch of young people who were just rowdy and full of ideas, and they talked to us a lot about wanting safe third spaces, you know, that's not just like home or school, more things to do. They talked a lot about parks and walkability, safety in parks. And then there were a lot of entrepreneurs among the young people that we talked to, and they talked about support for their small businesses and really wanting a voice in city decisions. okay then sort of moving to the public meeting results so we we did an exercise where we sort of had lots of issues around the room and we asked folks to tell us you know which of these issues are the most important for the city to tackle in the next two to five years which are the most urgent and what would you spend if you had a limited amount of funds what would you spend the city's money on And in terms of what's most important, homelessness far and away rose to the top there. Folks were also really interested in addressing parks and trails, jobs, environmental sustainability, and mental health in the next two to five years. In terms of urgency, the things that rose to the top were homelessness, affordable housing, environmental sustainability, mental health, water, and safety. And there's interesting overlap and departures between important and urgent, right? Like homelessness rising to the top on both is really important, but that water feels really urgent to folks. that this sort of safety aspect feels really urgent is I think important for us as we're thinking about the strategic plan. And then where folks would spend their money, we actually gave participants little money stickers in $10 increments and gave them $100 to spend to sort of like approximate the hard decisions you all have to make every day. And folks really wanted to invest in mental health and youth programs. Homelessness ended up third on this list. Environmental sustainability, affordable housing, and water. uh we also asked uh participants at the public meeting you know if we're wildly successful by 2030 what will you be proud of and this is just sort of uh the the themes that came up that residents would be proud if the city's safe and well maintained welcoming connected and prepared for the future families choose las cruces because it's safe affordable accessible with strong parks services and recreation Young people stay because they can build careers, afford a life, find community, and have things to do. And businesses invest because there's a skilled workforce, strong infrastructure, and a city that helps them succeed. So in terms of implications for the strategic plan, when we came here to talk about the needs assessment, we sort of like had a list of what was coming up for us in the needs assessment in terms of priorities. This is sort of our updated list based on public engagement that we're seeing sort of needs to be contemplated with the strategic plan. So housing diversity and supply, economic diversification and workforce retention, infrastructure and development readiness downtown and community vibrancy public safety and community well-being and organizational effectiveness and communication and then aligning priorities with resources so yeah just wanted to sort of you know you know we love to just talk to you and not just at you want to sort of hear if this is sort of reflective of of what you're hearing what you're hoping ends up in the strategic plan and of the things you know the sort of this is kind of the intersection of what we found in the needs assessment versus what we heard in the public engagement you know what's really RISING TO THE TOP FOR YOU ALL IN THESE ISSUE AREAS. YEAH. STAND FOR QUESTIONS? THOUGHTS?

OKAY. THANK YOU.

Thank you, Mayor. Eric, if you could maybe just clarify something for me, and that is on your bullets, today I think you put the presentation will highlight priorities and seek council's direction on which areas should receive the greatest emphasis. That's what's going to happen today, right? Okay, so I'd like to see tiny homes. And that would take care of a lot of the homelessness and the supply, the housing supply. Do I get a consensus or do we each have to say the tiny homes is a priority? How does this work? Or, I mean, to just be bobbleheads up here. I mean, are we gonna make decisions on our priorities today? Because if we wait until September 14th, most of it's going to be drafted and done. So do you want those directions today?

I think what we're looking for is a direction to the consultants on your thoughts and your ideas so that there can be agreement, disagreement, but at this point giving some more direction into where we're going with the priorities and which ones we agree with and which ones we think. As you're saying, the next phases are going to be What are the activities? How do we break down a priority like homelessness? One of the things, and I agree with Council Matisse, maybe tiny homes as an option that we can put in our strategic plan and say that's one of the ways that we're dealing with homelessness. There's also mental health, there's substance abuse that create homelessness that we have to look out for other than just housing. So I think in these priorities, better paying jobs, things for our youth to do, which are the things that we agree that if we have a strategic plan for the city and we want to move forward, what are some of the thoughts and ideas going in that direction? Is that what you're looking for?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Continue.

So I'll start with that and then I'll hit the red button for more questions later.

Thanks. Thank you.

I'm sorry, Councilman Clark.

Yeah, I'll second the tiny homes thing, but I'd also like to see strategies. I think when we talked about tiny homes, it wasn't necessarily just that, it was ADUs, but I would have loved to seen sort of a strategy on seeing how we can implement that, say for seniors that don't wanna live necessarily by themselves, wanna live in somebody's backyard who can, are on fixed incomes, what does that look like in terms of ways that we can help and supplement some of that with some housing costs. I think I'd like to see stuff like that. I do have a quick question though. How were the young people sourced for this meeting?

So the comms team is here, and they can talk a little bit more about how the outreach went out. I know that they brought young people that were engaged in the teen night at the museum. So that's where a lot of them came from. And I think there was also an invitation sent out.

Mayor, Council McClure, Mandy Leatherwood, Communications. That was accurate. So we sent an invite to all teens that have interacted with our programs, developing youth leaders, who've come to Know Your City, some of those outreach things through our community engagement team. And then we also worked with Quality of Life, who brought over all of the teens for Teen Tuesday. I think from the invite, we got one, and then the rest of the kids were part of the Teen Tuesday night at the museums.

Thank you.

Councillor Hertz.

Thanks. So I guess if the question is like what three things on here would be priority things that I'm hearing in my district are housing diversity and supply economic diversification and workforce retention and you know making sure that we've got higher paying jobs reasons for people to stay and then just general community vibrancy which I think touches on the things that youth were interested in like safe third spaces economic diversity as well, and safety in our parks and stuff like that.

Thank you, Councillor.

Probably more later.

Councillor Bencomo.

thanks mayor thank you so much for all the work that you've done in engaging our community in this process and what will continue to come I'm looking forward to the report I think given that some of the things that sort of bubbled to the top often were around homelessness I obviously think it's important that we consider you know, pulling in all of the folks who work on those kinds of issues and really listen to the folks on the forefront of how we address this issue, including folks at the state level. I think, you know, if we really are, you know, wanting to urgently focus on that, I think we also should focus on the projects that we already have moving, like the potential of Paseos Verdes, that I actually think also goes hand in hand with supporting what growth can look like. I forgot what the language was for the two things, but the growing housing, but also maintaining growth. Sorry, if you put it up, I will be able to say that better. Yes, exactly, this first one. projects like Paseos Verdes that is in an infill area that has taken an already established housing project and revitalizing it, right? Like those are the kinds of things that I think our community would love to see us continue to invest in in a very serious way. So I want to lift that up as another part of the puzzle. I think if there was one solution that would fix homelessness, we would have already done it. And so obviously this is all the kinds of puzzle pieces in the way. One of the things that I heard in the District 4 meeting was in the conversation around young people and youth was somebody said, if I was a young person in this community and I heard the way people talked about young people, I wouldn't want to stay here either. And so I think shifting the narrative around how we talk about our young people, especially those involved in the justice system, I think is something that we should take very seriously. And if we want to really do things that keep our young people here, but not just keep them here, keep them entertained and fed and housed and educated, that we should absolutely be listening to what they're saying. And they are saying that they want safe third spaces. To me that feels like a pretty urgent thing as well. And then I think the conversation of safety, I would love to really explore more and like really pull the thread on what that means for a lot of people. I think in my, at least some of the things I heard in my community meeting were around pedestrian safety, which is something we're doing later today. But just really pulling the thread on safety and what people really specifically mean by that when they say, I want to feel safer in my neighborhood. So to me, those are some of the big takeaways and look forward to continuing this conversation with everybody. Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor, correct.

Sorry, can we go back to the one where we're supposed to be, thank you, sorry. I think I echo a lot of what's been said, but I also just wanna thank you guys for doing such a great job of integrating folks, and it was really interesting to hear what folks were thinking about in the community meeting, and the forced choices that you made folks have, which are very much like the forced choices that we have to make, right? Like, oh, you have to spend money, where do you spend it, how do you spend it, and I don't think that people were very comfortable in that, so, I'm happy to spread that difficult decision making to more people. So thank you for facilitating really great conversations I think in our meetings. I just first also wanna point out like, I also want to apologize for saying we shouldn't use the word infrastructure. Then you guys got rid of the word infrastructure very kindly. You spelled it out in different ways, and then it comes back to people want infrastructure. So my bad. I'm so sorry that I thought infrastructure was too daunting of a word. I take it back, and I'll keep using it. But I do think some of these questions are really part of our ongoing struggle. Some of these things are... such enormous community issues that the slice of the pie that the city has in them is miniscule or non-existent, right? Like I think about things like behavioral health, general healthcare related concerns that I think people also mentioned a lot. Things like, or things like water, which we distribute the water, but we have very little say in a lot of what decisions are made related to water in our community and how it's used. I think it's just, really powerful to see folks want the city to be active in these conversations, even if it's not something that we necessarily have always had a big piece of the pie in. So I really appreciate you teasing that out and getting folks to talk about things without the the, oh no, the city doesn't do that, right? Like that type of door closing I think is what people are often frustrated by when they come to us to say can you help our community and what ways can you? So I really appreciate you breaking down that barrier and helping us see that we're expected to do a lot of things, many of which are well beyond the scope of anything that we could possibly do. So to me, I think Seeing all of that, I think in a lot of these spaces, I hope that what we can do is find places where we have the best leverage with community organizations that are already doing this. So I think about public safety and community well-being. I think this is also true when it comes to housing. I think there are a lot of developers and other folks working on housing diversity and supply. And so I think those are two things that we have a really strong track record of collaboration and being the place where we support agencies that are doing these things and help fund those things in a programmatic, in an operational way, I think would be a great new venture for us to consider, as you mentioned. And then I think that the idea of economic diversification, this came through a lot stronger local businesses, better paying jobs, basically, not the rising tide lifting all boats, but folks having opportunity that they can really get into and I do think that the conversations that we had around this, my sense from community folks was really emphasizing local businesses and investing in the businesses that have invested in Las Cruces and so that was my sense from that and so I think economic diversification and workforce retention, I really hope that we can think about that in a way that supports um that supports young people that supports housing stability that supports public safety and community well-being so those are the three things that i think i agree are huge and only can we can only be successful if we just support if we significantly support community organizations that are doing that work or local businesses that are doing that work and so i hope those are some of the things that we can emphasize moving forward and i would also just say i think we suffered from Unfortunately, the ideas of transparency, really interesting, and I think water, to a lesser extent, really come from a parallel conversation that isn't actually our world of Project Jupiter, and I do think that folks are now expecting a very different kind of local government across the board, given the ways that decisions were made in that process. And so I think, I would like us to take note, but I also sort of see that in the greater context of our regional, the cultural moment that we're in, especially related to that, because I do think there's we have to do a lot of repair in that way. Arguably this session is part of that repair, right? Like this process is part of that repair and we're here to do that. So thank you again for doing that. And I think our understanding of the context and support of organizations that are working in these areas is really fundamental to our success, so thanks.

Thank you, Councillor, that's helpful.

Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you, Mayor, Councilors. Thank you, Chris, Brittany, Janelle, and please thank Angie for all the work that you have done and the many hours we've spent in our beautiful city in southern New Mexico. I know you're going to miss the food and the people, but northern New Mexico, it's okay, too. So we like them, too. So let me park a little bit. Well, let me start. Councilor Curran makes a great point on transparency. And wherever that ranked, I mean, I think that's a good learning lesson for all of us in government. And so the more transparent and to the best of our ability, the better we can help our residents and community. I agree with the economic diversity, the affordability issues, public safety, very important. I'd like to park a little bit on homelessness in housing. So homelessness has so many layers, the unhoused, so many layers to it. It's like a parfait, right? And so, so many things going on there. What's that? Or a hamburger, yes, whoever. Thank you, Councilor Bancomo. So many layers and so many reasons why residents risk homelessness or are homeless or near homeless. Some of it is housing, and I think the housing piece plays into that, the economic indicators. From the housing, I see the housing diversity, so I do agree that we need to look at things like infill housing, micro homes, or tiny homes as they're referred to, downtown area, bringing in lofts, bringing in condos so that people have options to get into homes. My son, who's an economics graduate, showed me where he's making five times as much as I did when I started. He showed me mathematically how it's going to be difficult for him to get into a home until he's about 38 or 39 years old. It was fascinating. And so when I look at the math, just plain numbers, I don't understand it, but when he took me through a timetable, I thought it was fascinating. So having options is important. And I wanna extend that a little bit. One of the things, and that might be a tactic, and so we'll go down there later, but what are we doing as a city government that increases the price of housing? Are there any policies, are there timelines that affect that, that add to the cost where it might be a $3,000, $4,000, $6,000 difference, which means a young adult or family or anybody has an issue getting into that home. And so I'd like to look at that. I mean, things I look at, for example, is developers where we have the opportunity because we just revised the code to look at it and work with it. But I look at things like, for the developers, we're requiring parks. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not. If we are creating more parks, is our staff ratio increasing with that? It's nice to have new parks, and parks are needed. Those third spaces are important. But if we don't have the staff in Parks and Rec or in Public Works to take care of that infrastructure, sorry, bad word, Councilor Curran, take care of that. those spaces, then how much progress have we made? So something to look at. Again, just in summary, housing, unhoused initiatives, and safety, and economic diversity would be my priorities. And again, thank you for your work on this. Thank you, Mayor.

And the Mayor pro tem gets the award for coming to the most meetings.

Ooh, thank you. Thank you.

Councilor Matisse?

Thank you. I would say in having my meeting with the district in Las Cruces High, about 90 people showed up, and you're asking what my district might want and what are the three priorities. I think the biggest concern that they voice to me is public safety. In other words, they just want safer neighborhoods, and they want to make sure that there's enough patrols from our police department, and that's why that has to be a priority. In supporting the police department and making sure there's sufficient academies and graduates and making sure that public safety stays the number one priority. On the housing issue, I think I basically took care of that. I think if we could build homes for less money, if you spend $20 million and you get 50 units, it'd be probably smarter to spend Maybe three or four million and get 100 units. So that's why I like to bring that up. It's just a matter of more bucks for the bank on the other thing that the. district 2 would like is the infrastructure the streets and and I'll have a question later on when we get to the traffic control but maybe I should bring it up right now I'd like to see those corridors built that we planned back in 2000 2005 it's one thing taking care of the streets, but when you put a lot of traffic on them, you're just going to be doing them, doing them, doing them. You're going to be doing them a lot more often, spending millions of dollars. And if you could build maybe more corridors to relieve traffic on Tellshore, relieve traffic I don't know what's happening with the Metro Drive, you know, if that $60 million is in our bank already. But if you could build roads, you know, like Missouri. Missouri's supposed to go up to Centennial High. And that would relieve a lot of traffic off Telsher as well. But we're not looking at those corridors like we should be to relieve traffic. We're just creating increases in population. And we are building more homes, and we've created another city called Sonoma on North Rise. And it's just building more traffic, and that traffic is just destroying our roads. So I like to see that infrastructure idea actually analyzed for future corridors. And I think economic development, most of the residents in District 2 are retired. It seems to be an older cohort of people. And of course, you have some of the university blended in. they like to see some better paying and bigger jobs, bigger companies attracted. And that's why I would like to see if we could look at the strategic plan that, and I'll bring this back later maybe as an adjustment to an ordinance and bring back money from land sales to go back to economic development. And because our housing, if we could, get the housing job done with spending less money, and then we would have more money maybe for economic development and go for those grants and that other things that we do for housing. Other than that, the youth programs are always on all of our minds. I mean, that's very important to me, the after school programs, the youth programs. And I think we have a cooperative feature with the Las Cruces Public Schools, maybe New Mexico State University, build those up. and may have more youth career programs, maybe more programs for apprenticeships for electricians, plumbers, home builders. Maybe we can make more effort to work with the organizations that were mentioned and have high schools bring back vocational education. That's all on my mind. That's what I'm thinking is why did I come back to this job? Only he knows. But I'd like to see some of those emphases made and maybe Jimmy Moreno could build all those new corridors. So I'll wait for it. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Harris.

Thanks. I guess going back to the document itself and what I'm hoping to see out of it. It's the strategic plan. But what I think I'm hearing questions about is like, well, We want to improve maintenance of roads, water, mobility, and existing neighborhoods. And these things sound like strategies. But I think better paying jobs, that's a goal, but not a strategy to get a better paying job. Um, and so I, I guess I'm not, you know, it is the strategic plan, not the tactical plan. And so I think we're probably not expecting like you should pass an ordinance that says this, this, and this, and that will solve this problem. Um, but just kind of reminding myself and you all and members of the public that like this document isn't going to spell out exactly what we want to do. But at the same time, we want guidance. Out of this report, I hope to be able to read it and be able to readily see, here are some things that we want to do as a city, and here are the policy implications of how do we get there. So that's what I got. Thanks.

Council Member McToy.

I'm wondering too how much it's going to scaffold on Elevate and some of the things that we haven't gotten to and hashtag COVID always a thing right now. But for example, the tiny homes conversation was in Elevate specifically to do sort of programmatically, what does that look like? And it never happened. So yeah, we might not have direct like ordinance equals solution. But going back and even doing a review of where we stopped might be helpful and where we kind of let go of some things that we have been looking at for years. Thank you.

Absolutely. And Mr. Mayor, if I could respond to, yeah. The strategic plan is supposed to be a tactical document. The performance indicators that end up in the strategic plan will end up in Invisio and will be tracked across the two to five years. And we definitely are planning on scaffolding off of Elevate. And part of that ended up in the needs assessment, our sort of first pass at like, you know, where we stopped and sort of what needs to happen in the next two to five years to stay on track. So, yes, that's our intention. We don't want to just come up here and say, like, solve homelessness. You know, we want this to be actionable, implementable, measurable. And so that's our goal. And that's what you'll start to see from us in early September to review ahead of the work session so we can really sort of start to dig in on that.

Okay, thank you. Now this is, for me, I have to share, it's exciting, it's great, because what we're trying to do is create a plan, have some kind of strategy so that we can align the priorities and the resources. And I think, like, where you're talking about what's important and what's urgent, that we can start focusing on those things. And you've gotten input from a lot of people from different districts and from the department and from council myself and i think this is good it's just digging in a little deeper like when we talk about housing you know is it is it affordable housing is it attainable housing are we talking about filling a homeless need are we talking about filling those that Well, if you go to what I say, like what's our present day look, is our average median wage household is 56,000. You compare that to El Paso, they're 59,000. you know, what can we do? What can we do to improve? When we start talking about economic development, when you start talking about better paying jobs, when we get a shot of how many houses are available for sale, how many apartment complexes are available for rent, all of those things that we take a snapshot also and gather the evidence so that we can say, here we are, here's the input, and then here's the direction. but also public works. I know they have all the evidence on the streets, the dates, the future dates, maintenance, repair, completely redone. All of those things I think are important in the strategic plan so we can you know again prioritize and see what's realistic what really is important and what's urgent but this is exciting there's a lot more work to do but you've gotten some uh... information here some direction you know let's keep moving forward and let's let's come up with a good strategic plan for our city

All right, just to wrap it up, as promised, we will send you a draft for review on September 14th. By September 28th, we'll come together and have another, I hope, robust discussion about those goals and priorities. Mid-October, you'll see the finalized plan and be able to give us feedback on that, and then we're hoping to have an adoption meeting in November.

All right, thank you. Thank you. Next is item 1.3, traffic calming. Jimmy Moreno and Lieutenant Austin.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, good afternoon. My name is Jimmy Moreno. I'm the Interim Public Works Director. I'm here today to discuss traffic calming along with LCPD in a joint presentation. Okay, traffic calming. So the objective of traffic calming is to slow vehicle speeds, discourage cut through traffic, improve safety and quality of life for all road users across different street types. We've all heard of the three E's of traffic calming, which are still important today. We've actually added another E lately and that's evaluation which is very important as we move through these both engineering enforcement and education we want to always evaluate our initiatives to make sure they're working and pivot and adjust as necessary. Okay our current traffic calming policy for arterial and non-residential collector is to balance conflicting demands. We have to balance calming versus traffic flow. The arterials are our main corridors for traffic within the city of Las Cruces, so we have to always balance that along with safety. We try to use a safe system design with that. We also use non-physical measures But the important thing is planning and design. Any changes that we make, we want to make sure that we properly design and incorporate safe systems. We also use signal timing, enforcement technologies, et cetera, on these corridors. In addition, on those corridors, we also want to protect emergency response. So we do not want to put in any vertical measures, which would impede any emergency response for that. uh... the other program that we have the other policy is what's known as our neighborhood traffic calming program this is for our residential streets uh... and we do have some proposed changes uh... within our neighborhood traffic calming program for the council to to uh... to give direction on uh... this is mainly for speed and cut through traffic on these corridors Currently we have a community lead or a community driven consensus where we have petitions for initiation and implementation. So we get with residents, they initiate a petition. Once we have a certain threshold, then we initiate the traffic calming procedures and policies. We would like to actually change that in our current presentation. So this will include physical measures, both vertical and horizontal mitigation measures. Vertical measures are what you see like speed tables, speed humps, speed cushions, where there's a vertical deflection that tends to calm traffic. Horizontal mitigation techniques are more traffic circles, horizontal impediments that we put, chicanes, bull bouts, that sort of physical measure to actually calm traffic. So the current concerns that we have with our current policy for our neighborhood traffic calming program is the high engagement thresholds. We have an initial petition which is at 75% approval requirement to actually get the process started. This is a very high threshold. for that initiative and so sometimes it can create frustration with residents that are seeing issues. Also it's an impediment to staff actually trying to do some either pilot programs or initiatives that public works fields are necessary along a certain corridor. uh... also there's a multi-stage consensus that's required so in essence there's two thresholds we have an initial seventy five percent uh... approval requirement And then later on in the process, we also have a majority where we get residents to say, hey, we've evaluated this. It meets the needs for, let's say, a speed table. And then we still have to get a 51% threshold in addition to the 75% threshold. So it can create kind of a feedback loop where we have some hindrances in implementing some of these measures. Also, targeted resources allocation. So what happens in our current system is that the interventions are only looking at peak speeding criteria. There's other safety criteria that we would like to look into and should be looking into, and so we just don't want to look at speed. We actually want to look at other safety factors as part of this program. And then there's an extended review timeline that adds additional layers of time to this and with limited resources it can impact those measures. So this is a comparison of what we're proposing for the neighborhood traffic calming program. So if you look at the If you look at the old path on the left, there's initial petition, there's multiple engineering studies that may have to occur, there's committee review, public hearings, and then final neighborhood election ballot. This is where the 51% happens. After that, then it's approved for construction depending on the petition, on the outcome of the petition. So our new streamlined path, what we're proposing is to take a look at geometry and operation pre-screen filters and I'll have another slide to explain that. But what it does is looks at filters that we can kick roads out that may not be good candidates for these type of measures. So we can look at that ahead of time. Staff can take a look at that and not have to wait for a petition that somebody gets through to actually start implementing this. And then we put the initial petition, but we're dropping the threshold from 75% to 51%. So all we are requiring is a simple majority. If everybody is on that roadway, if a majority of people want that measure and for us to take a look at it, then we can get into our matrix to actually determine what tier or level that it meets. There's a 100-point prioritization matrix, and I'll get into what that is. But then at that point, then we can move into the data-driven action tier, where no ballots required, staff would implement that, and it goes into construction based on available budget, if we have the resources. So the pre-screen filters that I mentioned earlier, there's a few geometry and operational filters that would remove a road from contention on this. One of them is the tangent length, 250 feet in length. Horizontal curve if we have a radius that's less than 300 feet. Longitudinal slope exceeds 8% and all these are physical barriers that actually reduce, have their own inherent traffic calming. And then the other one is operational. So if there's a segment that's an active primary route for emergency service vehicles or a designated heavy truck route, we would want to single those separately. Okay, so this is the traffic calming prioritization matrix set at 100 points, total possible points. You can see the different four factors that contribute to those points. So we have speed, which is 40 points. We have pedestrian risk, which is 30 points, traffic volume, 20 points, and crash history, 10 points. So you can still see that speed is a large contributing factor, but it adds in some other safety factors that would help to add in the additional safety issues that we possibly can see within the roadway. You can see this is broken up into a little bit more detail in terms of the speed profile, how those points are allocated. So you could see that anything greater than eight miles an hour, we give 40 points, which is the maximum points. Before on the original, on our current neighborhood traffic calming program, the threshold was 10 miles per hour. So if anything exceeded 10 miles per hour, then at that point it would trigger the possible inclusion in terms of adding some traffic calming. We've lowered that threshold for the maximum points and then had other thresholds that would give it some points to the overall total. You can see also pedestrian risk factors as well. And depending on the risk factors, so if there's sidewalks missing, there's additional points there, which adds to the safety, adds to a risk factor. If it's within a designated school zone park or a senior facility, that's another risk layer there. Or sidewalks are missing on one side of the roadway. So you can see the different tiers of points that are added. Same thing with traffic volume, higher the traffic volume, more risk associated with that, so there's more points. And then crash history as well. So if there's more cases of an actual documented crashes, we can add that to the point system. here's the three tiers that that are a result of the total points so if we take a look at the total points if that is less than 30 it ends up being tier one and these are or factors so if you look at tier two between a total score between 30 and 65 or speed within the range of five to nine over the speed limit. And then you have a tier three, which is the highest risk, which is a total score greater than 65 or an overage of greater than 10 miles an hour. So if we take a look at this and either one of those factors can kick us into that tier level. So if you have pure speed, it would kick you in that tier level. So if traffic, if the speed is excessively high, that would put it there. But if it's not excessively high, however you have the other risk factors, it can still get you within that next tier. So this allows other risk factors to contribute to the overall score and put it in the correct tier. You can see some of the lower priority on tier one. focus more on radar enforcement, neighborhood education, maybe some signage, yard signage, that sort of thing. Tier 2, temporary speed mitigation where we can look at maybe pilot programs, things like that. And then also we can, this is where the evaluation happens, we can take a look at it in 12 months and if we're seeing that the speeds are unmitigated or the points are not unmitigated then we can push it over into the permanent installation. Same thing with Tier 3, it's a higher risk so at that one it's fast-tracked based off of our budget, available budget resources and we can actually put some mitigating factors or mitigations, traffic calming mitigations into it. This is just to show a process summary on a funnel of how roadways would be in the traffic calming program. So it would start with initial contact, whether it's a resident or council or staff. We would take a look at that geometric checklist, make sure it doesn't meet any of those specific issues with it, we'd kick it over to the petition once we got a simple majority of residents that want to move this forward. Then at that point we can do some studies, further studies to see, and then we can use the matrix to actually quantify what those points are and see what tier it falls into. And then from there, based on the tier it falls into, then it would be eligible for field deployment. Okay, so these are some of the proposed process benefits that we would see. It's more efficient than our current process. It's transparent. It's very readily, I mean, you can see how the points are added up and how we got to those tiers. It reduces roadblocks for implementation, pun intended. No final petitions, so you don't have to have that second petition. You only have to have that first petition. And then it lowers it from 75% to a simple majority. Also, we have the correct tools for mitigation. So we can use temporary tools for moderate speeding, and then we can save the permanent construction for the higher priority street. So that way we can look at those tiers and spend resources targetedly to where the higher priority areas are. Okay, next I'll invite Lieutenant Austin to discuss traffic from the PDP.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. Sorry, Jimmy, could we ask questions now? I just feel like this is highly technical, and perhaps the next portion could be really different, and I feel like I'm gonna forget everything Jimmy just said.

Yeah, no, that'll be good. Okay, thank you. If anyone has questions at this time, we can go ahead, Councillor Vancomo.

Okay, thank you. I just feel like they're potentially very different, so I would appreciate the opportunity to ask you some questions, Jimmy. Sure. Thank you. Okay, just a couple here. On page six, when you're talking about the filter, I'm also wondering if, so let's say, you get to the filters and essentially it doesn't qualify, then what? I think rejection feels disheartening to the residents that put something forth to saying, I see a problem in my neighborhood, but you're telling me it doesn't qualify, so then what? So that we don't just leave them at, sorry, we can't do anything.

mayor comes a big almost so very good question uh... so it actually doesn't just get kicked out so in essence if we take a look at that matrix it would just fall under the the tier one uh... so because the speed and everything else isn't there we can take a look at that now staff can override that so let's say that traffic engineer traffic administrator if they see an issue or some other issues with the roadway site conditions that would would change that case uh as as staff they can override the they have the option within this process to actually take a look at it in more depth okay yes that's perfect i think putting that in tier one does work and talking to those residents about that um those reasons is good can you talk a little bit more about what neighborhood education looks like uh... mayor councilman come also the neighborhood education would be uh... distributing flyers we also there's also um... uh... we can put up uh... speed monitoring uh... devices that actually educates uh... residents within their own within their own uh... uh... street on what speeds their they're actively driving a lot of people Typically, drivers will underestimate their own speed. They think they're always driving slower. You know, vehicles are made very quiet nowadays. It's very easy to speed, especially with hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles. That tends to happen. So when you actually put that speed monitoring, residents are able to have that instant feedback and know what that speed is.

uh... also signage to display you know that there's kids in this neighborhood that additional materials to be able to educate residents great thank you for that on and then i was thinking also on as part of on twelve i think what you talked about is sort of the whole thing right now is the petition process as homeowner or is it resident and i would like for us to encourage us to do residents versus

homeowners if there's a renter on that street i would argue that person is impacted a lot more than a homeowner who doesn't live there mayor customer como currently as it stands right now is the is the is the home owner so it's whoever homes homes uh excuse me whoever owns the home uh we can look into that and see what the ramifications are in terms of modifying that process

I understand why it would be homeowner. I just, again, I think the person who lives there in that moment is the mostly impacted person. And I think it tends to leave out a lot of, we just finished a conversation about how hard it is to actually own a home. And so if someone's a renter and they've lived in that neighborhood for a very long time, they deserve to have a voice too. It's sort of just my only encouragement piece there. Jimmy, right now, do you have any, can you give us a tier three example?

I'll turn the question over to Mr. Suguli, who's our traffic administrator. He can answer a little bit more of the technical background.

Before he goes then, maybe this is for you. What is currently the budget of this traffic calming program?

So we have $500,000 as part of the GRT. And so that will be, that's our current budget that we have for this.

Thank you. All right.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilor Vancomo. The tier three, there's several example. One of the example is Fairbank, and then also another one is Las Cruces, recently reinstalled, and then also Griggs. That three location meet the over 10 mile the threshold and then in terms of the the operation budget that jimmy mentioned with the 500 000 that's dedicated for the temporary traffic device and we have about 26 000 for the permanent and then also the traffic study okay thank you i appreciate that those are all my questions for now

Yeah, and just for the record, that was our traffic engineer, Suguli, just for documentation. Thank you, sir. Council Member Matisse.

Jimmy, I have a situation on Don Roja. And I agree with Councilman Bencomo. Most of those homes are rentals. They're not homeowners. And there's five or six renters living in each of those little condos on Rosia and apartments. But the majority of that road is the Hilton, the Garden Hilton, and that's where the curves start, up to the 7-Eleven store. And that's where the speed, that's where I get most of the complaints from, is in those curves. So how do you get 51% when there's just not that many residents, and then what we could do to slow those cars down in those curves?

Mayor, Councilor Matisse, I'll turn it over to Su Gu again.

Thank you.

Mayor and Councilor Matisse, so when we prepare our petition, we look at the Dona Ana County record. FIGURED IT OUT WHO IS THE ACTUALLY OWNER. SO THERE'S TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF OWNER. THE OWNER FOR THE HOME AND THE OWNER FOR THE LAND OR BUSINESS. SO THAT IS AN EXAMPLE. WE DETERMINE WHAT IS THE AFFECTED AREA. SO THAT SPECIFIC LOCATION IF WE RECEIVE ANY PETITION REQUEST. then pretty much we're gonna extend all the way to the university, identify the older land or the business owner up to the terrace because that's the all non-residential area and once passed at the terrace to the north then we're going to start to looking at the actual owner of the home and then contact every single you know the uh owner and then get the information and then get their signature that is how we determine it thank you thank you counselor correct

Thank you, and thank you for bringing this and thinking about this. I know we've had many conversations about this over time. I would also just like to add to the idea of the petitions, to be frank. I would much rather face calls from people complaining about speed bumps than the people saying that their children are going to be run over, which are very, very common calls that I get. So if we're going to go in a direction, I would ask that we go in the most minimal neighborhood. So definitely renters should count. I also feel like the idea of pedestrian risk, that as a variable, I think understanding if there is a safe crossing location might be something that I would hope to be represented in that. That is, is this a series of streets that have no crosswalks anywhere, so everyone who is walking along them is going to be crossing in a dangerous, or a riskier situation, so I'm not sure how to include that as one of the variables, but I would ask that the idea that we minimize the need for petition collection because I think this has been the source of so much frustration of residents who go and get the as every single person that they can possibly talk to and still they nothing happens and they feel like we're Giving them bureaucratic hurdles. So so I hope we can include renters as well as Homeowners the people who have lived there for even a small amount of time, right? They deserve to be safe on the streets, and I don't think that these things really have an effect on home value, if that's the idea behind homeowners. If anything, I suspect a lot of people are happy to have a speed bump or something on their street. And then the second part is understanding pedestrian risk. If there's a long stretch of places where people cannot cross the street in a safe way, I would hope that that would be something that could be considered as part of those variables. And then the... The last part would be in understanding where we're going. I do think there are many, I can name the streets, at least some of the streets in my district where folks have gotten those petitions. They worked really hard to get them. If there's a way that we can consider the work that's been done or consider the data that people have done in organizing their neighbors around this, When we do implement it, rather than having them start from scratch again, I would ask that we consider doing something like that. If they went to all that trouble and got a bunch of petitions the first time around, that we count that as the 50% or whatever it is, if we have that data, which I think we do have some of that data. So that would be my last ask for how we might consider some additions to this. I appreciate that you're trying to make something objective that is us complaining to you all the time. And that is a deeply subjective conversation, and I get it. And I also think that when we're talking about safety, we have to embrace the latitude that comes with people's subjective perception of what safety is. And this is one of those areas that I think we have to sort of account for that a little bit. And so I appreciate you all listening, participating with me. literally talking to the media about how this process works. And I look forward to us moving forward to something that's a little bit more responsive to neighborhoods. So thank you.

Councillor Harris.

Um, thanks. So, yeah, I, I also echo the desire to make the petition process as low a barrier to entry as possible. I mean, we're talking about speed bumps, which have almost no effect on, you know, people's long-term well could have a very large effect on somebody's long-term health if it's successful. Um, but you know, this, if you're living in a neighborhood and you're like, man, people drive really fast through here and my kids aren't safe, I'm not safe out here. That should be a very low barrier to entry Likewise the work that's been previously done. There's a neighborhood in my district who has been asking like well we there was a speed study that was supposed to be done last year and the city handed out a petition to somebody and It's gone, you know, maybe that person took it and didn't go collect it or whatever But in the meantime everyone else in the neighborhood is like hey, what's going on? We heard there was something And so being able to pick up those projects I think is very important. I had a specific question on the permanence and revisiting things after 12 months, which I think was on slide 10, yeah. So just to be clear, if something's in tier two and we go and install a temporary speed bump, those rubber ones or whatever, And then in 12 months, we go back and say, oh, look, speeds are lower. This has worked. Just to be clear, we're not going to pull out the temporary speed bumps and be like, well, the problem's solved. We're going to pull these out, and everything's good. So I just want to clarify that. It may upgrade to permanent if speeds remain unmitigated.

mayor cancer harris uh... we'd actually if it's actually working now we would not remove that we're going to actually consider putting that as a permanent installation so that's actually goes uh... with all the pilot uh... installation so if we are doing temporary installations one of the way that's part of it or p is evaluate see if it's working and if we see that it is working uh... then we definitely wanna permanent, you know, make it permanent. If we see that it's not working, then we can look at different initiatives and move forward with that. Either putting a permanent one in, in addition to other measures as well.

Okay, that's what I thought. I just wanted to get it on the record. And then, I guess, way back to the beginning, you know, on slide two with the three E's, You know, we've got our engineering, enforcement, and education, and we're about to hear about enforcement. I've got my vulnerable road users pen here, so I know about education. But I guess my comment is that engineering here should be a much bigger circle of this, right? And I think that's something that's well understood. And there's maybe a limited... ability for us to do stuff. It's very expensive to do stuff in existing neighborhoods. But certainly for new neighborhoods, decisions that are made today are there for 30, 40 years. And so I just want to make sure that we're understanding that. And if we need to make changes in the code or whatever, to make sure that we're not designing neighborhoods that people are going to speed through and arterials that people are going to speed through going forward. I think we've made some pretty bad mistakes in town. I think a lot of people would agree. For decades, this isn't necessarily a recent problem. Right, this isn't your fault necessarily. Necessarily.

um but anyway just just wanted to comment on that thanks mayor counselor and that is correct the the engineering is the backbone of this and so we already have the tools in place with current code and current code revision uh to make sure that we're looking at all of those on on our initial on our design of any new roadways new corridors uh whether it's you know development driven or internal we already have those uh that framework in place

Excellent, that's great to hear and I'm really encouraged by the thought that's gone into this and it sounds like a much more streamlined process.

Councilor McClure.

Thank you for this. I think we've all been kind of waiting to see where this would go I was really hoping that Elks would get dropped because I hear about that one a lot. I know Becky has to What I wanted to also stress is similar to councilman como is yeah residents look in different ways and And also, what I don't hear here is our bike community. I know they're in the audience. Somebody could petition to say, we feel unsafe riding our bikes for a commute. We're using this specifically to get to one place to another. What does it look like to create safety for them as well? I'd love to hear that in this kind of presentation. But also, other stakeholders that may not look necessarily like a homeowner, a Las Esperanzas has complained about Loman for years, you know, that they're speeding there, we all kind of know that. What does it look like for them to start a petition? They might not be directly infected, but they know that it's a safety issue. It changes the perception of how they feel. So I'd like to open this up a little bit beyond just what that looks like in people who live in that area, but also use that area for commute, use that area for business, use that area perhaps as a third space, whatever that looks like as they're just walking by. We have installed, we've said downtown is important. We decided to put barriers up that protect people who walk downtown. Are there other areas that could use that to make people feel safer, to create that third space so they could be there without having to consume anything? They're meeting their neighbors, and they're feeling safer doing that. Those are the kind of projects I'd like to see, too, if we can do that in Tier 3. So thank you.

Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you, Sue, for putting this together. So I want to add my voice to look at renters as residents and also I think the biking aspect, recycling aspect, is very important. My wife feels safe twice a year to bike in Italy, and she will not bike here in Las Cruces. So things to look at. The other piece is, I want to go back to the petition, maybe page 12. So I think it's aspirational to have 71% participation or drop that and change it to 51%. That's aspirational. When you look at reality, though, if you're looking at owners who are out of state or owners in general, there's lots going on. I don't know if they'll have the time or make the time to do that. roughly 16, maybe 18% of people vote in municipal elections. That's it. So maybe instead of having a speed bump in your process, pun intended, maybe you look at a 15% threshold or a different way to look at a petition. Is there a different way to get that input? Because I would think that, I mean, my assumption is that In the process before, you had two petitions, and that slowed you down. In the process you're recommending now, you still have a petition at 51%, and that could slow you down. So I would recommend, just look at that and see if there's another way to get input where you get enough mass where you say, okay, well, 15 or... whatever the number is or a public hearing, that gets you the input you're looking for from a community perspective, but it also moves you further versus having your team, your staff trying to get that and residents trying to get the petition signed. Make sense? The other piece with that is that As you get that feedback, I trust you as subject matter experts. So maybe that was the purpose of the 71% or the 51% petition signatures that you wanted to get. But you know what's working or what's not from an engineering perspective as well. You get some public input and look at your expertise as engineers and say, okay, this... uh i want to use infrastructure but i don't uh the way it's laid out um is is not safe or not going to work out there's a different way i just think that 71 is a lot you know i hear about you know traffic people going 90 miles 100 miles an hour down sonoma or roadrunner And I don't know that you could get 71% of people to fill out that petition. I just don't think so. But I don't know. I could be wrong. It just will make that process a whole lot longer. So I would say re-look at that. And I would be supportive of a different way of doing that. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you, Sue. Appreciate it.

Councilman Matisse, Jimmy, maybe you could share with me your your cooperation and comments from when we were doing this when I was mayor, we had a lot of pushback and he was kind of a nice chief, but he had he was very. Outspoken and they did not like speed bumps. I mean, the ambulances, the fire department, you know, they they were worried about. TIME DELIVERY, I GUESS, GETTING TO A FIRE OR GETTING TO A PERSON THAT'S HAVING A HEART ATTACK. DO YOU STILL HAVE THAT PROBLEM OR ARE THESE MODERN SPEED BUMPS BETTER DESIGNED TO ALLEVIATE THAT TYPE OF WORRY AND CONCERN?

MAYOR, COUNCILOR, WITH THE NEWER DESIGNS WITH SPEED TABLES AND SPEED CUSHIONS, THEY'RE LESS IMPACTFUL. YOU DON'T HAVE THAT SHORT vertical deflection in such a short distance. So you get less impact on vehicles. Yes, so it still acts as traffic calming, but you don't get that hard impact in addition. And yes, we are getting less negative feedback on those as well.

Okay, thank you, Jimmy.

Yeah, thank you, Jimmy. And yeah, I was gonna bring that up, thank you. So it's not only the time to respond, but also the damage to the apparatus. And that's always been a concern of the fire department. So just making sure that they're labeled and fire department is well aware of where the speed humps and speed bumps are at. But now I appreciate you because this is this is really just one of those things that I look at that It's not just to satisfy the complaint, but it's to come up with solutions So so thank you and Public Works and traffic. The other thing is taking into account traffic volume Do you take that into account with and I'm talking more of residential? We know the Roadrunner the Sonoma the Elks and all of those we know that that there are individuals going at a high rate of speed and that needs to be addressed but in other residents, it's like do we take into account the traffic volume and see what other things can be done, such as what we'll get to next, enforcement, but are you taking that into account?

Mayor, yes. Traffic volume is one of the other safety factors that's going into the matrix.

Okay, thanks. Next, Lieutenant Austin.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor of Potomac Council. It's a pleasure to have you guys and thank you for hanging in there with us this long. Coming up, one of the things that I oversee is traffic and kind of give you a highlight of what is our current strategy and how is it working out. Currently, we use crash data to direct our resources and perform targeted enforcement. Recently, we started to conduct joint coordinated efforts with the New Mexico State Police and NMSU. In other ways, how we try to also leverage grant funding for additional enforcement to include STEP, NDWI, and Buckle Up. Recently within the past year, one of the other things that we talk about is some of our resources and our personnel. We did an amendment and we expanded the use of our police services to allow them to take enforcement action post-crash. That would allow more officers to be freed up to also do some of the specific areas or problems that we're having to do targeted enforcement. And also our coordination between Public Works and Traffic Engineering. So part of traffic's responsibility is to conduct traffic studies. We do this in a variety of forms. Some of them are the stalker radar boxes. You may see some pole-mounted graphics. You may hear me refer to them as PMGs. Our speed trailers that also have a PMG, and then most recently we utilized the Urban SDK, which is a cell phone telemetry technology. Essentially, if your car has in-car play, any type of navigation, or if your cell phone is connected to any type of navigation system, this allows us to track speed. In addition, we'll work with our intel section to look at heat maps. This is just, I think, a little bit easier on the eye to identify some of the most problematic areas that we're having with crashes. And in addition, when we look at this, I don't think any one traffic study piece of equipment is perfect. And so I tend to utilize the UNM NMDOT report. I think it has a lot of data, but in itself it is not perfect either. For some of the reasons, it will include some data that we generally do not target. I-25 is generally handled by New Mexico State Police. NMSU is handled by NMSU PD. So it can tend to inflate some of the numbers as opposed to what we're seeing. So this is just one metric. What you have before you is the density of all crashes in Las Cruces for 23 and 24. We can continue to see that we're having problems at Lomontel Shore area. It's continued to be a problem. I'll go to the next slide for you. In 2025, we don't have the UNM report yet. So this is just an example of something that we are doing internally to track crashes where we have a breakdown if the crash results in an injury, non-injury, or if it's a hit and run. And in 2026, this is what our heat map is looking like. So I'll do a comparison for you. And what we're seeing from 2023 to current is we continue to have the same problems in the same areas. And we're not having, I guess it's not resolving itself in some of these intersections. And so what have we done as far as the Las Cruces Police Department? Well, as far as our enforcement action over the past three years have steadily increased. our citations have steadily increased when we look at our data now i want to make the distinction because somebody will pull up the unm report and say the numbers are off cody let's see you're right but this is uh specifically related to our lcpd tracks this is where we input all of our crash information so this is our data from 2023 to 2026 so far with our current strategy and how we've been implementing it our crashes are going down And we're seeing that from 3,800 to 2025, we're at 3,500. So a reduction of about 300 total crashes. I'll direct your attention to the bottom fatal crashes from 2023 to now have also gone down. But one of the main things in here is our crashes involving injury have slowly ticked up. And so why that is, I can't tell you. I can't tell you if it's vehicle design. I can't tell you if it's roadway. I can't tell you if it's monetary. But what we're seeing is that crashes with injury have gone up. And so that's where I will direct the traffic officers to say we are going to do target enforcement in the highest areas for crashes involving injury. And we're going to try to reduce that. So our proposed improvement strategy, I think we've had good results with our coordinated efforts with NMSP and NMSU. I think it brings a higher sense of visibility for our enforcement actions. If somebody sees just one person pulled over with one cop, they're like, oh, they got them. But then if they see us with 10 people, they're like, oh, I better slow down. They have an operation. And I think that we have a better result. It also helps with our resources. We can borrow from them, and I think that we have a better result. Some of the education you guys spoke about earlier, some of the things that we've tried to do is the social media awareness. We try to engage with the community as far as where they express concern in certain areas and try to reach out. One of our PIOs has recently said she wants to do like a traffic tip Tuesday and basically kind of go over some common issues that come up. How do we enter a roundabout? Who has the right of way? And do more of an educational video, which I agree with. And then the last part is automated enforcement through the Safe Traffic Operations Program. This is something that the city has already tried, and I really wanna go over it, talk about some of the areas I think that we didn't get it right, but then also look at some of the surrounding areas and some of the results that they've had. So what is automated enforcement? So if an officer like myself pulls you over today and you receive a citation, it's a criminal citation or a traffic citation. Citations are issued to the driver, except if it's a parking violation, and the case is heard by a municipal judge or a magistrate judge who determines guilt or innocence. The standard of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. Convictions can result in fines or jail time. Violations are reported to NVD, and failure to pay fines or appear in court cause an arrest warrant to be issued, and the driver's license could be suspended. The civil citation, or through automated enforcement, citations are issued to the registered owner. Being the RO, if the person who was cited for speeding or a red light violation says that they were not the driver, they can nominate the actual offender who transfers the citation to that person. The cases are heard by an appointed hearing officer. The hearing officer determines whether the driver or owner is liable or not. The standard of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, so 51%. Persons found liable are fined $100, the violations cannot be reported to MVD, and failure to pay fines or appeal at hearing can result in an arrest warrant, it will not, I'm sorry, cannot result in an arrest warrant, nor can the violator's license be suspended. So I think it's a fair way of doing business. So this isn't something new, and I think I touched on that earlier. City Council on September 15, 2008, had passed the Safe Traffic Operations Program, or STOP. In September 22, 2008, the city entered into an agreement with Red Flix. On January 5, 2009, City Council amended the STOP ordinance, adding a judicial education fee and a court automation fee of $6 to be sent to the state treasurer. So these are the four locations, and I'm gonna tell you, this was a hassle to go through. As we get through, I'll kind of break it down for you, but the main locations were Main and Solano, Avenue de Mesilla and Valley, Loma and Walnut, and also Loma and Teleshore. Some of these locations came on at different points and different times, so trying to mine the data or to go through it was a little difficult. February 28, 2009, warning letters for violators were mailed. March 30, 2009, LCPD began issuing citations. So these are just like, if you have a pen and paper, if you want to write down some key dates, it'll help later. So in April 2009, the eastbound cameras of Loma and Teleshore go active, preceded by a 30-day warning period. On June 15, 2009, the city amended the stop ordinance in response to state law. They capped the fine amount at $100, and 50% goes to the state, and a hearing officer is appointed by district court. On March 10, 2010, the New Mexico State Transportation Commission enacts a new policy restricting photo enforcement on state roadways and gives CLC, City of Las Cruces, 60 days to comply. You'll see here the westbound cameras at Loma del Sol Shore go active almost a year later, April 2010. On May 12th of 2010, Main and Solano Cameras go inactive in compliance with the Commission Policy 70. And May 18th, 2010, the southbound lanes only at Avenue de Messiaen Valley go inactive in compliance with the Commission Policy. When we look through, it says that our contract went till 2014, but the data that I have went to 2012, so I don't show it going all the way to 2014. So what is policy 70 and what happened? This is where the state essentially came in and they said that they have the authority to restrict or completely prohibit the use of red light and speed cameras, including mobile enforcement vehicles in the right of ways of the transportation system under their jurisdiction. I don't disagree with how they implemented that policy. I think what they are doing is they're saying that we need to have some data behind it and this isn't purely enforcement but it's safety related. So the NMDLT policy is proposing a standardized data-driven approval process for automated speed cameras requests on state highways. The objective is to ensure the cameras are installed where they will provide a measurable safety benefit rather than primarily serving as an enforcement tool. The policy also creates a consistent review process as requests continue to increase. So looking at some of the roadways that we looked at earlier, Main and Solano, that main corridor, continues to be a problem. So this is something that we have to say, okay, if we were going to look and do some type of automated enforcement, we would have to comply with the NMDLT policy. So below is just a summary breakdown. The front end is on us. We as a local agency have to submit an application, provide roadway traffic crash information, demonstrate the 80th percentile for speed, is at least five miles per hour over, verify the roadway has a level of service of safety or loss, rating three or four, and demonstrate that at least 25% of the crashes are speed related. NMDOT reviews and approves the request, camera is installed and operated at an approved location, after which we have to conduct a one-year before and after study to document the effectiveness. This proposed policy represents a shift from approving camera requests on a case-by-case basis to a standardized objective and performance-based approval process centered on measurable safety outcomes rather than enforcement alone. So I'm gonna give you some graphs here coming up, but this was when we went through our traffic files, one of the only pages that we had that can kind of break down what our results were when we had it. So for the layman man like myself, as I look at this, I say, well, heck, citations were up to 3,300 around May 2009, and they steadily went down. And you would say, well, that worked. And I don't necessarily see that this way, because if you remember, we talked about all the dates of different intersections that were coming up and offline at different points. And so if I look at that and I see a reduction of citations, that could be because, well, if I had four locations and two are down, well, now I'm only reporting on two. And so the best representation that I could give, and as we pulled this data, was I could say that all four are generally up around May of 2009, and that we had around 3,300 citations issued that month. The column on the right, is the collection rate from those that were cited for violation. So you're seeing about 71%. As you go down we know around May 2010 we started having some of those intersections that were pulled offline to be in compliance with that policy 70. So in this area I can say this is when all four systems were up and we generally saw a decrease in the citations. So generally we would say that we're getting compliance. People are not speeding, we're not having red lights and so we're having less citations that are being issued. Now, this was one that we went back and forth because the data, it gets wonky here. It gets a little wild and I think part of this, I'll do my best to explain it. I put in the top left corner, this camera was inactive as of May 12th, 2010. So what I did is I got with our Intel staff and I said, I wanna know what all of our traffic crashes were before we had the cameras. So we went from 05 to 08. Now, this is a total number of crashes. To try to represent this data as best as possible, you have 2005, 06, and 07. We said all the crashes that happened for the month of January across all three years are going to be plotted, and so on for the rest of the month. So that's a combination of those three years worth of data for every month. When you look at this, we can say that in 2005, 2008, we had a pretty good peak in total crashes around April. And then it comes back down. But we're getting inconsistent results. I think part of this is because it was only operational for a short time. And so if you look in our date range from 2009 to 2012, it's including two years where we weren't actually enforcing the red lights or the speed cameras. And so as I look at this, what that tells me is inconsistent enforcement does not prove long-term results. Again, this is some of the same data. I promise you it's going to get better. But when we look at this, 5-12-2010, it goes off. One can look at this and say, well, your non-injury crashes and your injury crashes, there's no definitive result. We can't see a true pattern here. And again, I refer back to it of we only did enforcement for one year, and so I think it shows enforcement has to be long-term. This is Avenida de Mesilla and Valley. The southbound lane went inactive on 5-18-2010, so there was still northbound that was still active at this point. Again, the total crashes are a combination of the cluster from 2005 to 2008, the total amount of crashes for those three years for every month. And then we can go into... At the Amnesia Valley, your non-injury crashes and your crashes with injury. Again, this one I think shows that we're having mixed results across it because if we only have one site that's active and one site that's not, we're not getting a meaningful result. but it starts to clear up when I look at Loma Natal Shore. Even with Loma Natal Shore, we had eastbound that was activated in 2009, and westbound that was finally activated in April 2010. This is where I start to see a trend, or we can start to distinguish between the two with a little bit more data available. So in this case, the total crashes we can see tended to trend in a downward motion with it. When I look at the Loma Natal Shore non-injury crashes, one could look at this and say, well, the speed cameras created more accidents, and I don't see it that way. When we look at the total crashes, we saw the downward trend. And when we look at this, we're saying, I can't prevent all crashes, but if I have a crash at the intersection, it's less likely to have injury. And so that's the primary focus. If there's going to be a crash, I'd much rather not have injury than have it. One of the most consistent locations that we never really had a hiccup was Loman and Walnut. Overall, I think this data shows that throughout the duration, we tended to have less crashes at the intersection with the red light and speed cameras here. And when we look at Loman and Walnut for the non-injuries versus the injuries, we are seeing that there is a significant decline in the accidents that result in injury. So since 2009 to 2012, there's been advancements in technologies. I will say that the fixed pull option is still needed or a fixed location for anything with a red light camera. They do have handhelds, they have trailers, and they have transportable or battery plug-in. But if we went with that option, it would only be for speed. It doesn't have the necessary items to actually track the tires going across the intersection for a red light.

So this would just be speed only.

When you go through some of the data, we looked at ours and you could say it was hard to discern on some locations with the equipment being pulled on or pulled offline. So when we look at the United States Department of Transportation and even PERF and some of our other items that we refer to, we do see that there's a meaningful reduction with speed cameras. I think it's safe to say that speed is the leading cause of fatalities. The faster we go, the harder we hit something, the more likelihood for injury. One of the biggest metropolitans or the biggest metropolitan area is Albuquerque. So I looked to them and their data, and this was shared with me from one of the engineers from NMDOT. Speed safety cameras in Albuquerque, they have 26 cameras, and out of the 26, 20 cameras saw a decrease in driver speed exceeding the posted speed limit by 10 miles per hour with a decreasing range of around 55% to 96%. They had 20 of the cameras saw a decrease in average driver speed, ranging from half a mile an hour to about nine miles per hour. Some of the additional programming data. Since their range that they used, May 25th of 2022 to March 1st, 2026, they issued over 632,000 citations, and their collection rate is around 45%. Drivers with one citation is about three quarters of it, and drivers with two or more citations, it's around 22%. Some of their results, as we're looking at it, I provided you with a pamphlet that gives a bigger breakdown that was submitted to NMDOT back in April. But consistently, what you will see is that the speed enforcement cameras or red light cameras is going to slow down traffic. In this case, you saw that driver speed was changed by 73%, which is effective. And Bernalillo recently implemented this. And as far as from May 2025 to March 2026, their total number of citations have steadily decreased. Why I wanted to highlight Bernalillo County is they started a trend that NMDOT has talked about in some of their commission meetings to where they started offering violators with community service as an option instead of payment to the vendor. And so when I look at this items to consider, we fully understand a lot of the community's concerns surrounding surveillance and technology and cameras that are pointed at them. So I think in any decision that we go from here is transparency is key and also the location in which we identify it. This technology has the ability to be put in neighborhoods, but I don't think people want it there. I would try to target more of our main corridors that we have seen through those heat maps of consistent problems along Lowman Corridor, the main corridor, and try to bring a sense of calm there on those main areas. Other items to consider would be the speed limit ranges for the enforcement. That could be set to us, and I would ultimately defer to you if you want it five, if you want it 10 miles an hour above the posted speed limit for the enforcement action. Other things is we are taking picture of the rear of the vehicle. This technology is not forward-facing. It doesn't take a picture of the driver, but once we take this picture, what's the duration of time that we're going to keep that photo for retention purposes? And I do strongly agree with how Bernalillo implemented the community service definition, but I think we would have to have a broader discussion as far as what does our definition of community service look like and who would we sign off with them going and doing that work and where at. And other than that, that'll be the end of the presentation. I'll stand for questions.

Thank you, Lieutenant. Council Harris.

Um, yeah, thanks for the presentation. Um, this is a lot to think about. Um, so, so I'm glad to bring it up. Um, I guess Going back to engineering a little bit, we see the heat maps unchanged for years. And so we've come to this point of, well, maybe we do some automated enforcement here again, because like you said, we tried that with mixed results. And I guess my question is, You know, if we do have a problem with places where your 85 percentile speed is five miles an hour or more over the speed limit, why is the road designed so poorly that that is the case? You know, the thing here on Coors, I'm not surprised anybody drives 163 miles an hour on Coors. Anybody who's driven on that understands exactly why you wouldn't drive 163 miles an hour there. So why are we at this point, other than it being cheap to basically free to the city and just offloading our design decisions off onto somebody else? Why do this and not some other horizontal intervention?

Mayor, Councilor Harris, I don't disagree. And our conversations, I told them, when I look at the three E's, I see engineering at the number one. I think if we miss the mark on engineering, then we go to education and then ultimately enforcement. Why are we doing it? I think that when we look at our city compared to somewhere like Real Rancho, we're an older city, and there's a lot of infrastructure and roadway redesign that costs a lot of money. And with our resources that we have, one, this is no cost to the city. It's $0 to the taxpayer. It's violated or funded. It could bring a sense of calm. I think the data shows pretty clear that speed is reduced People do slow down and it's going to reduce the likelihood of injury in the crash. We can reduce the speed I'm with you with a permanent solution, but I think that is more Down the road and as far as today we can have a more meaningful impact Okay, that's fair Councilman Como

Thank you. Okay, I don't know how this is gonna come out. Maybe it might be jumbled thoughts. I think the tension that I'm feeling is that the largest focus for both engineering and enforcement tend to be the higher volume intersections, right? Which is fair, but to your point, then we must do something drastic if the enforcement is just not working. The tension that I'm feeling, though, is that often what I hear from constituents isn't about Lowman and Telshore. It's about Aspen Road, right, off of Valley. It's about Hoagland, off of Alameda. It's about the more residential areas where people are seeing an increase. Maybe it's the heat that's making people drive faster. I don't know. But everywhere, people are driving faster, not just on large, non-residential roads. But then we're saying that non-residential roads or residential roads might not even meet the threshold for traffic calming and might end up at tier one, which would require more education and enforcement. But what I'm hearing from you is that automated speed readers are not necessarily for neighborhood residential streets, right? So I feel like I'm feeling a lot of tension around how we approach this issue. And I think there's also this question about what gets more funding is enforcement. So then how do we navigate these very difficult conversations around funding, number one, but number two, how we approach the problem that we, and sure, maybe it's qualitative data that we're hearing directly from the constituents and not necessarily the quantitative stuff that we're getting from these crazy graphs, respectfully. So, see, I told you it was gonna be jumbled thoughts. Do you have any, anybody have any response to what I'm saying? Or a translator, I don't know.

Mayor, Councillor Picomo, I feel like I understand what you're saying. And we do have those community members in the residential areas that are reaching out for help. Overall, it's a resource allocation issue on my end. And I can tell you I have seven traffic motor officers. And when I'm looking at the data, I look at a speed complaint or where I know crashes are occurring. And if I know where crashes are occurring, specifically crashes with injury, I tend to direct my resources there to try to minimize those crashes. On the back end, those residents suffer because my resources are allocated somewhere else. This will help me with my resource allocation to where I can put the automated enforcement on those busier corridors, and it's working 24-7. It's not a person. And then I can put those officers back in the neighborhood for some of their concerns, and at least let them know that they're being heard instead of feeling dismissed. I don't know if that answers your question.

Yeah, I mean, I think I hear you right on the, like, how expensive it is to completely read do an intersection, right? We just had the Alameda-Hokland meeting the other day where I would hear from people, yeah, yeah, do whatever, but can you get some enforcement on my street? I swear I heard that consistently at the meeting. And people are talking about, you know, West Madrid or Townsend Terrace, which transparency I live on, or some of the other smaller streets, right? And so I think it's... I think that's also part of our education on like how some of this works. But I guess I want us to encourage us to think about investing more funds in traffic calming measures that are either temporary, can turn long term, so that we can just see less traffic, right? Because if we're gonna go to an intersection where we're seeing a lot of crashes, essentially then we are being reactive again right as opposed to being in places where we're hearing that people are speeding where we can be preventative so i don't know that i actually just proposed any solutions and possibly more problems which i hate to do but um i just i'm sitting with this tension and wondering how we can um dig more on this before we make ultimate solutions counselor current

Thank you, and thank you for bringing this and these graphs, which I also, I mean, my job, day job is literally interpreting graphs like that, and I am completely perplexed, but I think, I really appreciate your work on navigating them, so thank you for doing that and navigating spotty data, which is something I would pin for our ongoing discussion. We shouldn't do that again. Like, turn them on, turn them off. make, do things that don't comply with state law, like I hope we can get our ducks in a row before we end up in a similar situation as before. First off, I would just volunteer for the District 5 roundabout bad driver video if you need a bad driver. You and Selina, if you need someone to do the roundabout poorly, I, in your in your video, I volunteer for that because that is, as you know, a topic of hot conversation in District Five. So please, yes, I support the online outreach to talk about how to go through a roundabout. But more concretely, I just wanna sort of be transparent and say that I really appreciate you bringing this because I have been hearing from folks from across the spectrum of places that want all of, yes and to all of this, right? Yes and neighborhood traffic calming, yes and safer streets for bikes and pedestrians, yes, and people to drive better generally, which is nebulous, and again, I agree. We're dealing with the function of many years of engineering where we weren't thinking about cars going really fast and whatever else is contributing to people driving extremely, with higher carelessness, I think, although some of your data doesn't necessarily show that. I think I have thanks to you for sharing a lot of this data along the way as we've been having these conversations and also some of the cycling advocates and folks who I hope we can hear from later in this conversation and hearing from folks in Albuquerque who do feel like this is a really concrete positive solution and that there are fewer crashes. There is a reduction in speed. I really just want to support this, thinking about this as one of the yes ands. I know that there are issues related to putting more cameras in our community, I understand that and acknowledge it, but I also know that we can't just keep saying like, oh yeah, Lomond and Walnut is a death trap, right? We can't, in good conscience, do that, and I think we've all been here and see that in the data. I would ask that we think about the way that we're doing this, that it's not structured toward making a revenue generation process. This is about safety, and I think that's what the state law says, and I think that's what you've oriented this in, that it's grounded in objective data, that we're using a company that is the least problematic of the companies that produce this. I think that was also part of the problem with the prior one that was, I think we might have gotten into a contract situation that I hope that we would not get ourselves into again in this in this situation but um i hope so i hope that when this comes forward or if this comes forward or continues moving those are some of the things that can be more more specific and thought out so um i agree that the community service option is great i don't know how functionally that would work in our in our current system so if that is a possibility um i i think we should consider it but i think uh If it came forward, I would like to know where our pilot projects will be and then also have a plan for continuing it for at least enough time to be able to look at some data to understand, to have the data that we use to establish that aligned with whatever data we're collecting and be able to track that over time so that we don't end up with you having to make these graphs of years of data that feels like I don't know what to infer from it. I hope we can have that all lined up along with the state laws and the best practices of the places that have done it that know what companies are the best at this. And so I just want to thank you again for taking this into consideration, having this conversation, and really approaching it with the most scholarly and thoughtful ways of thinking and hearing from folks in the way that you did that. And also, I just hope that we can keep considering all of the things. Yes, engineering changes. Yes, infrastructure, spending money on infrastructure and changing those intersections. and understanding that equitable enforcement that makes it safe on the roads is a positive step towards safety. So thank you. I appreciate it. We've had these conversations for over a year, so I really appreciate you doing this very deep dive into this and bringing it forward. So thank you.

And just one point of clarification I didn't touch on before. When we looked at the totals, when you start looking at the breakdown after the totals, these are the averages across those three years. So those aren't necessarily totals. So if you're looking at the math and you're like, that doesn't math up, you'd be correct. Because when you look at the totals overall for each month, as we broke it down from here, these are the averages. So just want to throw that little tidbit in there for you.

Thank you. Are you saying that it's not a death trap or it is a death trap? You can just call me out if I'm saying the wrong thing. think uh we're on the same page that's one of the things that i okay i forgot to mention in the presentation at the beginning so if uh somebody's checking the math like that doesn't add up okay then i will stand by my my assertion and say that it's based on those graphs even though i didn't necessarily get that from that initial thank you thank you councillor mccullough thank you uh

As someone who, at about 7.45 in the morning, always sits at Main and Samaritan, if you're going one way, Camino Real at the other, and watches literally every morning somebody speed through a red light. And having told my mom, for the love of Pete, just pause before you go through a red light, because invariably, at Spruce, you're going to see that happen too, Spruce and Trevis. Those are the very real mitigation factors you have to do as somebody living in Las Cruces. So you have those experiences, and then you have a constituent come and say, Spitz, it's terrible. They're going real fast. You know what I'm talking about. And I'm like, yes. I sit there with my son's soccer team. They are hauling butt. And then you come with the data, and you're like, but they're not. They're actually driving slower. And you think, oh. Okay, because I could have sworn to that they were going really fast. And I think we're working in tandem with that infrastructure. Spitz in specific, whoa, that's a hard one. Oh my gosh. We're relying on the developer and a future that we're trying to create with a bunch of different ideas here that we're saying, you know that you want to have that park as something that's important. Create a speed table there. And from what I understand, that's a conversation we can have, something we can hopefully enforce in some sort of way, not with the police, but with our ability to say that's what we need there, because we're building something that's walkable in the community. So I definitely understand that tension, too, but I know that in having conversations, I'm hoping I'm not giving away anything that you also expressed a love of roundabouts that we talked about. So not to spoil it, but I also have a question, though, about the community service, which I think is a good idea. But I'm wondering who manages that. And then I'm hoping we can do something that's more experiential. Partially because I love the idea that we're working to give our, oh this is terrible, our bus drivers a crash course in what it feels like to be a pedestrian, to be a bicyclist who has a bus coming at them faster than they would like. What does it feel like? So if we could have a community service that isn't necessarily, I'm gonna need you to watch a very boring PowerPoint and have you feel like you've done a bad thing. experience what your speeding actually does to people, right? What does it feel like to feel unsafe in that moment? Because that's what you're creating for others in your city. So I guess that's a question and also just an idea.

Mayor, Councilor McClure, that's a good question. The company that is with BCSO is a company called Ultimate. They are the ones that ultimately will keep track of the hours of the person and ensuring that they have their fulfillment of the community service. The locations in which we choose to have them do that can vary. So it's not a burden on us or a city staff. It's ultimately on the company themselves to manage and keep track of that.

So then I would propose that we, if we can figure out to give a little bit more situations where that community service isn't, we're picking up trash. And I know that's always not necessarily the first go-to, but what does that look like in our community when you do these behaviors and what happens, right? You're gonna change how people drive and not for the better. You're going to say, I want to get across because I want to get to Main and Solano. I would rather wait there because at 745, it's backing up all the way up to Samaritan. And you're like, oh, there goes another one. And so I'm definitely afraid of sending my kiddo, who's going to start driving in like two years, and I have to give her these tips and tricks I don't feel like we should. So that's my rant for the day.

Thank you.

Councillor Pinkomo.

Thank you. Thanks again. I wanted to ask you about the mobile options. I'm curious. Obviously, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sort of hearing you say the most effective of these technologies is the consistent kind. So if it's mobile, it might not be consistent. But I'm curious to hear from you a little bit more about the mobile options. Because I'm wondering if some of the mobile options could be the options for the more residential areas and also understanding that I want to make sure that when we if we do this and we deploy them in residential areas that it's an equitable way that it's a way that we've said 51 of you know that maybe it goes through like a petition process as well um but i'm just curious to hear from you on your thoughts on some of the mobile technologies

Mayor, Council Pecomo, I'm not against it. When I looked at the fixed poll, that will allow me to do red light and speed, do both. A lot of the other technologies, we cannot do the red light portion. It would only be speed. If I was going to decide between the options that they have, I would likely go with the transportable one. One, it's a heavier option, and two, we've had other issues with some of our other speed trailers with damage, people stealing batteries, damaging the solar panels, and it creates a little bit more work and more cost. And so if I was going to do this not at an intersection but to focus on speed, I would tend to go towards the transportable battery and plug-in one. The duration of time, We can work with the company, but anywhere that we would put it, I would want a long-term location to be set there. There is fixed cost associated with this, so the company would have to go out, move it, set it up, calibrate it, make sure that it's at the right direction. And then from there, it would be in place for as long as we saw that there was meaningful change. We can move those around. I do appreciate that option, but understanding I'm losing out on the red light capability.

Right, right, right. And I think, to me, that's an okay sort of sacrifice, again, because it would be residential areas where the problem generally wouldn't be at a light, right? It would generally just be within a neighborhood. So I guess I would be interested in pursuing this as an option and perhaps, you know, there's just a couple or whatever at first because I just feel like I'm trying to address the issues that i'm hearing right like uh... legends west for example and similarly i've experienced more things as as cancer mcclure was saying with spitz that well we did a traffic enforcement there and yeah they're actually driving an average of miles slower than that yet when i'm hearing from residents it's a really big problem and so i'm wondering if like a transportable like this uh... if you don't have the capacity of an actual person stops there and enforcing some speeding that something like this would be an option for a place like legends west neighborhood um and then maybe we put it in the petition like there's a petition process right because you're right like maybe some neighbors are like absolutely not that's weird and i don't want that in my neighborhood or maybe people have already organized a neighborhood and have brought issues to their counselor or to staff and said we we are desperate we want something here uh... i would like to see what this option could look like moving forward and then i do appreciate sort of you talking preemptively about surveillance uh... because that is a conversations were up were obviously having right now with a lp ours and use showing the difference between some of those uh... the data collection of i'm assuming would be a little bit different given that It's a traffic citation, and the data would have to be kept until a case is finished.

Are you asking as far as on the civil side if they're issued a citation? Yeah. So if somebody's issued a citation through this program, a civil citation, they could appeal it and go to a judiciary hearing. Ultimately, if they don't go for the judiciary hearing, the company would ultimately send them to collections on this. And in some of the past data that we looked at, there was... I would say our numbers, a lot more people tended to pay the citation compared to what we see with our counterparts. Compared to Santa Fe, Santa Fe was seen around 52%. Last time I spoke to them, Albuquerque is at a 45%. And ultimately, they're sent to collections. We don't keep track of that, the company who ultimately issues citation does.

Okay. Yeah, this is an interesting thing I think we should probably further explore as well with legal. Thanks again.

Councillor McClure.

Full admission, as somebody who, before I became a counselor, rented one of the speed things to sit outside my house, and I sat on my porch and had a beer and watched people, I thought it was great. Does that program still exist? Can people rent that? I know we're using a lot of them, but I think having that agency to be like, I know, and I hate to say it too, but I put cones out when my kids are playing in the front yard. Because I get people go, what is happening? The best part is that they went and utilities dug up the road and we had a bump for a while. Oh, that was the best. That was another porch sitting incident that I really enjoyed. So does that program still exist is my question.

Mayor, Councilor McClure, I'm unaware of that program. I don't know if Chief could speak to it. What I can tell you is whenever we do these traffic studies, we're more than willing to share the information. We can share the data with you. Once we went to the urban SDK technology, which is the cell phone telemetry, we compared that with speed tubes and also our own radar trailers to see if it was off and to see if we were going to get mixed results. And ultimately, the data was pretty consistent. What I would offer to the public is anytime that they request a traffic study be done, we're more than willing to share that information with them. I hope that answers your question.

Chief, did you want to add anything or anything else?

Thank you, Mayor. Councilor McClure, Jeremy Stewart, police chief, for the record. I have other things, Mayor, I don't know if now is the time just to clarify, but to Councilor McClure's question, I want to say that was through potentially streets. That was not through the police department. We own our own trailers that we use to address problem areas. But on the data specifically a lot of times what I think happens is people will see somebody flying down their street And it doesn't matter to them if that's one out of a thousand cars and to be fair It only takes one person driving like it needed to cause a tragedy So when we look at we're looking at averages we can see high speeds low speeds so we can see all the time someone's going 60 or above in a residential or whatever the number is but a lot of times we're looking at the average because we have to have some metric to prioritize with our limited resources and so it can skew it because the perception if you're seeing people going really fast in a residential that's that's the reality even though the average might be below our threshold if that makes sense okay um thank you lieutenant austin's done a great job i Our history kind of skews our perspective on this a little bit. Automated enforcement, if you look across jurisdictions, tends to be very effective if done right. There's always trade-offs to everything. I think we did not do it well here. At the time, the company we used was one of the only companies out there. Now there's a lot more competition, which I think has made the options better. Technology's advanced a lot as well. But just in the administration, because a lot of the issues we had with Redflex was how they administered their part of it and just didn't do a good job. One point that I want to make is that the funds that are collected pay for the program. Well, half of it goes to the state, to the general fund. The rest of it goes to pay for the program. And anything above that has to be used by state law and city orders for traffic safety and education enforcement. So it's not like we can make a lot of money to buy cool uniforms or whatever. It has to be used to go back into making the roadways safer. So anything above what the program costs. Already talked about how that the data is really important to drive decision-making for where we would place cameras in my opinion and with the neighborhoods I agree with you councilman coma like I had that same tension because I Have seven motor officers seven traffic officers. There's 501 miles of roadway. I believe somewhere around there It's it's hard to make the impact you want to make so we tend to go the places that we can make the biggest impact that had the highest number of crashes in the highest number of injury crashes But the neighborhoods is where a lot of the complaints come from. One of the benefits of this technology is we can use this to focus on those areas, the highest number of crashes, and that frees up time for the motor officers to get in the neighborhoods more often. And when it comes to the movable option, I'm not against it. The balance is always making sure we're still using some type of objective metric, because if we place one in Legends West, and they're the only one in the city, or maybe two places that have this, You have a lot of upset people getting tickets for no one else's and then there's always the question is is it equitable in the sense that this is this neighborhood has a higher proportion of people are Hispanic or below the poverty line when in fact we are trying to use you know the amount of people speeding or traffic crashes as the metric. I like the idea you brought up about maybe using this as part or including it in the traffic calming program where it's the same. It becomes one option. If we get the petitions and it signals, they can look at it as one option to consider for one of these transportable that goes in for six months or whatever the time is, probably several months at a minimum, two to three months minimum. But it doesn't have to be permanent either. But it just gives them another option to use. And it still would show that the majority of residents support it before we did it. So I do like that. Thank you.

Councillor Harris. Thanks. Yeah, I'd like to also echo councilman como about like speed by if we if there's a trade-off between speed and speed and red light like i think speed is the bigger problem in general uh... and would would target areas that have not necessarily intersections like roadrunner for instance you know there's not been nobody can run the red light at the crosswalk in front of the school because there's not a red light there Speed there is a huge issue. Speed's a huge issue between intersections where people still cross. So I think that feels to me like it gets more bang for the buck, obviously. There's the crash data. And then I think we also, well, to the administration point, since I'm the guy who brings this up all the time, is Just bringing up that we're hiring an outside company to do this. I don't know that the technology exists for us to do it in-house, but if this works out and it's a very long-term thing, bringing that in might be desirable. In the short term, I agree. This thing exists. You can just buy it and put it out, and it works for better or worse. But then also, I think this might be a good segue into future conversations about speed limits in general. I've heard calls for a blanket ordinance that says, on any unmarked roadway, the speed limit is 25, which I don't believe is the case at the moment. and and just kind of policy-wise you know giving guidance that we prioritize safety over speed and throughput um and maybe if you guys have some input into that um i think that's a broader conversation to have in the future um but maybe it would also help reduce the the tension between like well we want to get people from one side of town to the other side of town as fast as possible And so we're going to increase, so we're going to design things so that you can drive 45 miles an hour and save four minutes. Except that when you go back to the slide, like that will kill 90% of people in that kind of accident. So I just wanted to bring up that that might be an interesting future conversation.

Councilor Harris, I'll call up Sugu Lee to come up and talk about some of the speed limits and even challenges with trying to change them.

Mayor and Councilor Harris, I want to just clarify the statutory speed limit for unmarked road. It is a 30, not the 25. I want to just clarify. So changing from 30 to the 25 mile per hour, it's going to make a significant impact. So for example, we have a limited budget, and then at this moment, about one or two street meet the 10 mile per over threshold, and we still spending significant money and time to do the traffic study, but if we end up to lower the speed limit from 30 to the 25 mile per hour, then I would say almost 75% of the petition, it will meet the threshold. So that's reason, in order to align with the state, the stature, we have to be a little bit careful about the lowering the speed limit, and then if you need more of the information, I can provide more information through the city manager's office later. Thank you, sir.

Well, for me, I just want to say that I totally support this. I agree with it whether it's a pilot or however. We just talked about strategic planning. We talked about what's important, what's urgent, and aligning our priorities and resources. We're lacking in funding for engineering, we're lacking in resources for staffing, but we still have the crashes, we still have the speeders, we still have the fatalities, we still have the injuries, so we have to do something. If we're serious about public safety and we wanna make this community safe, I think this is the best approach to move in that direction. The heat map is already there, so that identifies the locations. It's not targeting any area or anyone. It's where the evidence is there that accidents are occurring, fatalities are occurring, and we need to do something to make this place safer as far as traffic and traffic calming. So I think it all fits with our strategic planning if it's urgent. It's important and we should be doing things like this So I would be in full favor of this lieutenant Austin when you talk about the questions the duration the speed I I would just follow like what are the best practices out there? What are some of the best practices? Is it five is it ten miles above do we retain it for six months a year a year? And then again, we talk about taxing our resources. I know where you're coming from, Council Harris. I agree with you. Why can't we do it in-house? Well, then we might be taxing IT. They don't have the capabilities, and then now we're taxing another resource. So this is readily available. It's out there. We should be moving in this direction. So that's where I'm at with this. I don't know if you already have some data on best practices

Mayor, thank you for the question. Speaking with them, some of the other departments have set it at 10 miles an hour, so at 11 is where they're setting their tolerance at. For the retention, they're going with 30 days unless the person is asking for a judiciary hearing. Then they will normally refer back to the IPRA guidelines of three years for retention policy. If if it would be council's wish for something less or something more that's where we take the input But that's generally the plan I have going forward of keeping it around that time frame Yeah, I would think that

you know that's reasonable and then when you look at the collection rate it's less than fifty percent so it's like you can only do so much with it so but but it's out there to enforce and to change the behavior for drivers so uh... are we all in favor that they bring this forward as a resolution or an ordinance and come forward as a even if it's we can discuss whether we wanted a pilot or we wanna look at how we do that

Mayor and also the changes to the neighborhood traffic calming Also, bring those forward.

What do you mean?

I assume those though needs to come to us for a vote or no Jimmy mayor come serve and como know I already took your your guidance and we have Public Works doesn't need any further action from from council. Thank you for that guidance

And I say bring it forward because number one, we do wanna be transparent, we do wanna identify locations, we wanna let the community know what law enforcement is doing, what engineering is doing, so that'll be great. But I think there's some members in the audience that would like to say anything.

Thank you, I'm George Pearson. I'm vice president of Velocruces, which is the bicycle pedestrian advocacy organization. I'm partly disappointed that we haven't had the Vision Zero conversation yet. I would hope that the council would come forward with the Vision Zero resolution and really look to all modes of transportation. These are two important things that we talked about today, traffic calming, and the enforcement aspect. We had some discussion about reducing the speed limits. Speed is what kills, so anything we can do, these are all steps to help reduce the speed limit. The default speed limit in unmarked roadways is currently 30 miles an hour, that matches state law. Albuquerque has reduced theirs to 25 miles an hour, so it's not an impossible thing, and I think it's a correct step. I think we should also evaluate just the speed limits on the different roadways. We've got some roads where the speed limit jumps up and down over the length of the road. Why do we have any roads in the surface roadways that have a speed limit faster than 35 miles an hour within the city limits? If we had a consistent speed limit, that would help tell everybody that speed is an important factor. And 35 miles an hour, if you're going faster than 35 miles an hour, you're screwing up. So just calm down. You really don't save any time when you speed to your destination. 30 or 90 seconds doesn't make, isn't worth somebody's life. On the traffic calming comments I had, you called out pedestrian. Well, I would say active transportation. Yes, let's look at the bicyclists as part of the endangered population, the vulnerable road users. On the enforcement, yes, we need this program. You can put traffic officers out there. They can issue their tickets. When they go away, the speed limit, the offenders will return. It's just a temporary whack-a-mole situation. We put up some permanent speed safety cameras. We're gonna help reduce the problem, which is speeding. We need to follow the guidelines that the State Transportation Commission is looking, because we want to put them on some of those state roadways, Main Street, so they're gonna look for data. We need to follow the data, and then we can use that same process for other locations in the city. Because that comes to an equity issue. We don't want to target any particular areas based on anything except for safety. And as far as community service, that should be a part of the component to be able to pay off a ticket. Maybe send them to Mano a Mano and have them work four or eight hours or something to pay off a ticket. I think that covers everything that I have to say. Thank you.

Okay, thank you George.

Mr. Mayor, Councilors, my name is Donald Wilson. I'm the current president of Bellacruces. We're a bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organization. And I'm the current vice president of Vulnerable Road Users of New Mexico. That's a mouthful. I'm just thrilled that you're having this discussion today. This is something that as advocates we've been asking the city to take on head-on. I need to echo what George said, a little disappointed. It seems like we're piecemealing this issue. We've been asking the city for two years now for the City Council to make a resolution that in the city of Las Cruces, The residents of Las Cruces shouldn't be dying on the roads owned by the city of Las Cruces. This would be a vision zero statement where the city council would say, we want zero road user deaths. Now that's pedestrians, cyclists, wheelchair drivers, car drivers. It is a long-term goal. It's not something we're asking to happen tomorrow. But by setting a vision zero target, everybody knows that that's what we're shooting for. So we're gonna request that again. We're gonna keep requesting that until we get that. We'd be happy to have a work session like this, fellow Cruces can come forward, vulnerable Rojas can come forward, we can talk about best practices. This is not a new idea. There are countries that are decades ahead of us. There are cities that are decades ahead of Las Cruces. If we want Las Cruces to be the city that you all saw in that strategic plan of a city that's friendly, a city that's accessible, a city that's walkable, a city where a teenager that wants to go somewhere can get there safely without having to be driven there, These are things we need to take on now. We can start things now that will eventually pay fruits down the way. So we're happy to continue to be part of that conversation. I do want to echo what George said about the opportunity for some kind of community service. We can tell you through our Earn a Bike program, there are many agencies in Las Cruces that benefit greatly from community service. El Caldito, they're constantly putting out calls for more volunteers. Casa de Peregrinos is constantly putting out calls for more volunteer hours. The hours are out there, the community is out there. It would give people that alternative as a way if they can't pay the fine. I'm a little surprised at the 48% payment rate. Wow, that's pretty sad when you think about it. But I guess since it's a civil penalty, Some of those harsher things are not available. That just surprised me. Anyway, Velocruces, vulnerable road users in Mexico, we're happy to work with the city. We'd be delighted to have a work session that talks more about Vision Zero and and how Vision Zero can create a bigger structure for this conversation. Enforcement, education, we can talk a lot more about the education piece. Engineering, those are all part of it. Equity is a part of it. And this is a model that a lot of cities have taken on, and we're just happy to be a partner with the city in making this happen. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor, if I may give some kudos to Jimmy. The material that Mr. Moreno handed out has an entire topic on Vision Zero. Zero is our goal, and I think your material, Jimmy, says the safe system approach aims to eliminate total and serious injuries for all road users. It's a roadmap to get to zero. And thank you, Mr. Moreno.

Mayor, City Council, thank you all for being here. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I greatly appreciate all of the presentations that I saw here today. It made me very proud to see the things that are happening with regards to farmer's market and the other great things that are happening in terms of creating events for Las Cruces that we're all enjoying. I think that's awesome. It makes me proud to be born and raised in Las Cruces.

Ma'am, could you state your name for the record?

Yes, I'm Andrea O'Gean. I am a board member for Vela Crucis. I'm also the person that runs the Everybody Rides with Grace program, adaptive cycle program. We gift adaptive cycles to people with disabilities. In addition to that, I'm a member of the MPO Active Transportation Advisory Committee, and I've very recently been employed by Safe Routes to Schools, and I'm Grace's mom. I'm also a mother who has two kids, 15 and 16, who are going to be taking driver's ed as soon as marching season is over. And so we've been looking at vehicles for them, and we're looking at vehicles that can keep them safe. And so that means grandma and grandpa can't pass on grandma's old truck. I also have the problem because they don't have those safety features to keep them safe. And so I also have concerns about having to explain to them that a green light doesn't mean go. A green light means you have to stop and wait and see if anybody is running that light. So there are lots of things that I'm concerned about When I came here today, I thought I was talking about that I was going to be supporting flock cameras What I've found out is that there are many different kinds of cameras being used in our city and I am definitely for using those cameras for traffic control means speed kills people and so i want them to slow down and you know i want us all to um observe the laws and we don't have enough law enforcement officers that can do that so yes i am for that because i didn't know what all these cameras are used for i'm it makes me it's very clear to me that Other people in our community do not know what cameras are being used, what they're used for, how the data is collected, who has access to the data, any of those things. So I will say that there was a discussion that opened on Las Cruces Community Watch on August 6th, where people were bringing the flock camera issue up. It would be useful to maybe look at that information. One of the things people were talking about is what is the contract between the city of Las Cruces and Flock? What does the contract say? And with regards to transparency, as people have brought forth today, those are questions that the community has, and it would be a great opportunity for the city to show that these are what the things are used for. What else? Oh, the social media, and especially the Traffic Tuesday. That's something that Velo's been talking about for a long time. So we would love to partner in any way and support that initiative. Social media is very important. Safe Routes to Schools educates students that are going to one day become drivers that are cognizant and aware of pedestrians and cyclists. And so starting with people that use social media, that's how we get our information. I think that's a great tool, and it doesn't cost a lot of money. I can't think of anything else to say, but Grace would like to speak today.

Can you say your name first, and then change? Jimmy, you want to lower it?

Yes, sir.

Oh, that's cool. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Grace Holguin. I'm a teacher for Safe Routes to Schools. I be teaching a lot of kids doing bike programs involved. I'm very sorry, I'm really nervous right now. Sorry. Safety first, cars slowing down, and safe lives.

Thank you, Grace.

You're welcome.

That was the last item on the agenda. Just real quick, Sue, could you come up to the podium? I don't know if you know this answer off the top of your head, but how many traffic lights do we have in the city of Las Cruces?

We have 130 traffic lights, sir.

He would know that. And four-way stop intersections? Unfortunately, I don't know, sir. Okay.

But I know the street light, we have 16,800 street lights. And then we have about the 17,000 stop signs and all the signs. But I want to correct the one of the answer, the Councilor Vancomo, when I, the answer about the tier three, I accidentally give a wrong name at the very first one. Actually, it's a fairway. Yeah. Sorry. Okay.

No, I just wanted to say kudos to Sue Lee and all the work he does because if you look at the amount of lights we have, the speed limits we have, the traffic we have, the intersections we have, and I get caught up sometimes getting to a red light and I always say, come on, Sue. I'm blaming it on him. But then I stop and think, when you look at all the traffic and the intersections and everything we have in this town, it's because of his traffic engineering and control. Otherwise, we'd have total chaos. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. We discussed that today, and we're gonna move in that direction. But, Sue, thank you for all that you do for this city, and keep up the good work. Thank you, sir. I'll look for a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn. Second.

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

Yes.