Council - Regular Meeting

Your life.

All right.

Man, we got Aggie stuff today.

Well, good afternoon. Welcome to City Council. Today is Tuesday, September 8, 2026. It's approximately 1 p.m. I'm Mayor Eric Enriquez. Before we start, I want to mention that we have an ASL American Sign Language interpreter up front. 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 and Fire Department. as they keep our city safe 24 7 365. councilman coma if you lead us in the pledge We'll start with presentations and certificates.

Hello, everyone. Okay, here we go. First one today, we have a proclamation for Aggie Pride Day presented to Joe Fields. Anyone here for Aggie Pride Day? Come on down. I see we are being honored with the presence of Pistol Pete. I'm so excited. Well, for all of you, but obviously Pistol Pete. I have not done this in a while, clearly. Here we go. I know. Is that like stop already or? Okay. Whereas Las Cruces is the home of New Mexico State University, NMSU, and whereas as New Mexico's land grant institution, NMSU has been a cornerstone of education, culture, and athletic excellence in the region since 1888. And whereas New Mexico State Athletics has long been a source of pride and entertainment for the people of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County and is an important attraction that provides economic benefit to Las Cruces. And whereas the city recognizes the mutual benefits of strong support of NMSU programs. And whereas with the beginning of the fall 2026 semester, we urge the people of Las Cruces to take part in supporting the Aggies both in athletics and cultural events. as well as their academic endeavors throughout the school year. And whereas the city urges fans to pack Aggie Memorial Stadium on Saturday, September 26, when Lobo football comes to town. Also, the UNM is coming to town for women's soccer on the September 12. So also go to that. We will be there. For the Rio Grande rivalry to show that we are home to the best football team, the best fans, and the best city in the state. Now, therefore, we, the mayor and the city council of Las Cruces, New Mexico, do hereby proclaim Saturday, September 26th as Aggie Pride Day and encourage all citizens to show their support of the Aggies and wear their crimson each Friday.

Mayor, thank you. Thank you all for having us here on behalf of NMSU athletics. This is an incredible day. We have, obviously school has started up and there's a lot of exciting things and obviously UNM and the Lobos are rolling into town, boo, right? But we're just really, we're really grateful for all the support from the city. We're excited to get out and display and represent the Aggies the right way. And so thank you so much for having us.

OK, next we have Constitution Week presented to Beth Wallace. Beth? Beth, are anyone here? Oh, there we go. Beth and I called each other this morning and said, what are you wearing? I'm wearing red. Me too. Whereas the Constitution of the United States of America, the guardian of our liberties, embodies the principles of limited government in a republic dedicated to rule by law. And whereas September 7, 2026 marks the 239th anniversary of the framing of the Constitution of the United States by the Constitutional Convention, and whereas it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorable anniversary and to the patriotic celebrations which will commemorate it, and whereas public law 1950 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America designating September 17th through 23rd as Constitution Week. Now, therefore, we, the mayor and the City Council of Las Cruces, New Mexico, do hereby proclaim the week of September 17 through 23 as Constitution Week and ask our citizens to reaffirm the ideals of framers of the Constitution had in 1787 with vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through the guardian of our liberties.

On behalf of Daughters of the American Revolution and the citizens of our community, we thank you for this proclamation of Constitution Week. Thank you.

I think that's it.

Next on the agenda is departmental highlights, utilities.

Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Steve Perez, Deputy Director, Las Cruces Utilities. So I'm here to clear the air of any misinformation regarding several topics concerning EPA's lead in copper rule. The first one I want to talk a little about is prioritization of disadvantaged properties and mobile home parks. I think those have been some terms and subjects that have been spoken about at quite a few of these meetings. So first off, Disadvantaged, the term disadvantaged is not a definition per the lead and copper rule revisions or the lead and copper rule improvements per se. That term came directly from the New Mexico Finance Authority and was part of our funding application for work outside of the inventory. So I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. But that term was used in the application process. It is a definition that you can find if you Google it through the New Mexico Finance Authority. And as you would know, disadvantage is something that is a term used to classify communities for funding across the United States. However, it is not something that we're... basically is supposed to prioritize any of our work that we do in relation to this project. I think one of the things that's been referenced quite frequently is that our inspections needed to focus on customers who were disadvantaged. And that is not something that is a requirement per the lead and copper rule in general. Moving on, our current field strategy, our priority has been older areas, areas with many unknown service lines at the locations within those areas. And our inspection priority has also, it also comes down to customer inquiry. So when customers call me or someone in my department, and express concern for this initiative and what their service line materials are, I will immediately put them on a priority list and we will try to go out and inspect those customers' homes the same day. Otherwise, just going out into the community and inspecting homes that are according to census data term disadvantage or not, that hasn't been our main focus. When we've been out in the field, we've started at the oldest areas of town first. And I think inherently there is some crossover by inspecting in those older areas that we will come across areas that would be considered disadvantaged. So moving on, another topic that has frequently come up is us, Las Cruces Utilities, leaving out mobile home communities. These mobile home, from the service line inventory specifically. Mobile home communities, in the case of Las Cruces Utilities, from our perspective, they have master meters. And so the service line inventory has been based on data that Las Cruces Utilities has. And for a lot of customers, for instance, mobile home parks, they have master meters. And so what's beyond that master meter is not something that we had historically had information for, and specifically service lines. And so initially with a 2024 service line inventory, we were under the understanding that our responsibility for inventorying these service lines ended at those master meters. So when we go through our whole service line inventory, all of the addresses are for customers in our utilities database system, our customer database. And so we initially thought that we didn't deliberately leave out individual homes off of our service line inventory map online our understanding was that our responsibility had ended at those master meters for those businesses those businesses are our customers So moving forward, we came to find that since we've hired our third party consultant and we're preparing for the November 1, 2027 submittal of the updated inventory, we have found that we need to include all of those mobile homes that are part of those mobile home park businesses, right? and they are not our individual customers but in the eyes of the law of the lead and copper rule we need to account for every service line in our city whether it's if that specific location has a customer account so moving forward we will be doing that and that those will all be included in any updates that we put out for the public so when we update the service line inventory map Those mobile homes will be included in the inventory and they will be able to look up their service line status. As a quick reminder, we will not be submitting an inventory update available to the public until November, probably right around November 1st, maybe a little prior 2027. So moving on to the next topic that we've heard is inadequate is regarding our service line inspection methods. So our primary method of doing these inspections is conducting a visual inspection at the meter box. So this is something that is really the most feasible means of addressing this concern and seeing what people's service line materials are. And this is something that is widely accepted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the New Mexico Environment Department. And it may not be the method that all municipalities or water systems utilize. However, it is a great method and effective method for Las Cruces utilities because it is not feasible. I have to reiterate this. It's not feasible. And it's also not something that I don't think customers would want us to go to their yards and dig up their entire yard to see if the service line material is the same from the meter to their home. That would take an extravagant amount of money and time. the the thing that we can do to assure and it would also take access agreements right we'd have to have an access agreement to go on everybody's property so there's there's multiple factors there that uh keep us from excavating entire service lines on customers properties in entirety and so We go to the meter box and we don't simply go, walk up to the meter box, open it, look inside of it and go, oh, looks like those service lines are brass or plastic. No, that's not exactly what we do. We have to actually, our guys have to get down on their hands and knees and they have to dig below the surface of the soil. And if anybody wants to see the standards of what our meters and service connections look like, they can request to see those or call me and I'll be happy to explain and show you. But these inspectors go out, they dig below the soil line, they expose where the meter connects to the actual service line, and then they're required to take pictures of that material. And in looking, there is times when those materials can be copper, and it could be old copper pipes, right? And they can be mistaken for lead. I've had customers call me and say, Steve, I need you to send somebody out here. We're really worried. We think we have lead service lines. Okay, no problem. I'll get somebody out there as fast as possible. We get our inspectors out there. Lo and behold, they do a scratch test. They do a magnet test, and they're able to see, scratch away that scaling on the outside of the pipe from many years of... interacting with the soil and the moisture in that box, scratch away that scale, and guess what they see? It's copper. They see that copper color. It's not turquoise. It's not gray anymore. They're able to directly see that it was copper. They can put a magnet to it. Copper is not magnetic. It's not going to stick to that magnet. Magnet test excludes that it is not galvanized, right? It's a copper line. If it's plastic, that's pretty easy to discern in most cases. And still, I have to reiterate, we have not found a lead service line in Las Cruces to date. Have we found some galvanized lines? Yes, we have. And any re-inspections that we've had, because I've also heard that come up in some of these council meetings, some allegations about our re-inspections, the reason for that is because when my colleague was reviewing inspection reports and the pictures that go with some of those inspection reports, they saw that some of the ones that we were calling out galvanized There was no magnet. So what do we need to do to prove that the metal is galvanized? We need to put a magnet to it. And so initially, we had some inspectors that didn't have a lot of experience looking at these different materials. They went out. They were trained, of course. But they went out. They saw the material. They initially called it galvanized. We in the office were reviewing these reports. saw, hey, the magnet wasn't used. The protocol wasn't followed to the T, right? So we're going to send these guys back out to assure that we're classifying that material correctly. And if there was a case where somebody didn't know exactly what that was the second time out, hey, we're going to send somebody else with more experience, but we're going to make sure at the end of the day that we do the job that we're supposed to, and we're ensuring the integrity of these inspections the best we can, right, within our means. Potholing, so as I'm kind of going back to the bullet, so we do the scratch and magnet tests. So it's a visual inspection technique and a physical inspection technique. And I've had recent conversations with our third party consultant and with the New Mexico Environment Department, because we primarily interact with them. We don't really have a lot of interaction with the EPA. And they have confirmed that this is something that is being utilized across the nation and is that it's very feasible for utilities, water service providers to utilize this method. Reiterating this, I kind of touched on it a little bit, full-length excavations are not required per the EPA. We have not found any lead. Galvanized lines have been found. The galvanized classification, which has also come up previously, is under review by the third-party consultant because according to the EPA's definition of galvanized requirement replacement, you have to have lead upstream. And so all these galvanized service lines are on the customer side of the meter. and what's upstream of them, we have not found any of those lines to be led. Okay, another thing that we've commonly heard is allegations of falsification and fraud. There is no evidence of fabricated inspection reports, as we have heard and which I just explained. We've also had differences that customers or people putting in information requests have called us out on. And they reflect data reconciliation and corrections and follow-up site visits, which I was just mentioning. So also, reinspections, we've been conducting those as needed. Currently, I just wanted to let you all know, in case you hadn't heard previously, but we have basically put the inspections on a pause for the moment. We are still inspecting during routine operations, which is really the main requirement. We've gone above and beyond after the initial inventory submittal. where we inspected over 4,000 lines and now that we're working with our third party consultant, they're currently looking at our service line inventory and will basically delegate when we're gonna go back out or the third party is gonna go back out and start conducting inspections. But otherwise, right now, we're just inspecting schools and daycares and uh doing some of those reinspections that i previously mentioned and as far as the 15 million in funding to support inventory completion and replacements that's what it's for it's for us to complete our service line inventory and pay that third party consultant to help us achieve that and we're shooting to achieve that uh prior to the november 1st 2027 deadline and if we do find during that time while we're completing the inventory that there are lines that need to be replaced those funds will be allocated for service line replacements and that is all and would that all stand for any questions all right thank you steve you got it councillor harris you had a question

Yeah, I have a quick question. Um, thank you for that. That is all very good information. Um, and I think hopefully clears up a lot of things. Um, one thing I did want to clarify, um, is cause I've had meetings with people in the past and I've been under this impression too, that our responsibility ended at the meter roughly. Um, like you said, the customer account. So, um, You mentioned that we're going back and doing some inspections of service lines that are past the customer meter in some cases, you know, especially in the mobile home parks. So could you clarify what the consultant found that our responsibilities actually are in that regard?

Counselors, Mayor? primarily so our responsibility is to inventory all of those lines but primarily at it's a one point inspection it's actually really two we look at the city side and the customer side however you're not required to inspect the entirety of that service line on the customer side. You don't even have to inspect, expose the whole service line on the city side. And we have standards to back the city side, utility standards that show that our material, typically from the meter to the main, is going to be one material. So if it's plastic, it's going to be plastic the whole way. The uncertainty lies on the customer side, and we're not responsible for inspecting that whole length. However, One of the lead and copper rule improvement regulations is that by the end of this whole thing, we'll be required to inspect a subset. So say like 20% of the total lines in our inventory will be subject to what they call validations. And validations will include a second point along the service line. So for those, they will have to potentially pothole or have another inspection method for a second point to show that it's the same material. All right, thanks. That's all I got. Anything else?

Yeah, Councilor Vancombe.

Thanks, Mayor. Thank you so much. Steve, I appreciate your presentation and some of the work you've been doing with educating the public about what's going on and making sure that people know who you are and can come to you directly for questions. Super curious, actually, and I'm surprised I hadn't asked this before. For the funds that were provided to the city for doing the inventory and potentially any replacements, let's say we find no need for replacements, and we don't end up use we don't use a totality of the 15 million what happens to those funds do they revert back yes that is correct okay thank you next we have pets of the week

Good afternoon mayor, members of council, and city leadership. My name is Jasmine Urena and I am the interim digital content specialist of the Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley. Our pets of the week from September 6th to the 12th are Buster Brown. He is a five-year-old neutered male who walks well on a leash. loves attention and gets along well with his kennel mates. We also have Mamas. She is a four-year-old spayed female who gets along with her kennel mates and loves getting pets and attention. Both pets of the week are available with no adoption fee. As with all of our adoptable animals, they are sterilized, microchipped and receive their appropriate vaccines for their age. I would like to highlight a few adoptable animals that are also looking for their forever homes. We have Skye, Sydney, Serafina, Gianna. Our adoption fee for dogs is $100. And then we also have some cats. We have Jelly, Twix, Dingle, and Kit Kat. And for cats, their adoption fee is $50. We have many more available for adoption, so we encourage the community to stop by the Animal Services Center during adoption hours or visit our website, ASCMV.org, to see who is currently available, including animals in foster care. We are focusing on our long-term residents and helping shine a little more attention on the animals who have been waiting the longest for their forever homes. We have Nayla that has been with us for 299 days. And we also have Raven Bird that's been with us 294 days. We also have Maui. They've been with us for 267 days. And Bonnie has been with us 237 days. These are community events for the month of September. We'll be at Farmer's Market on the 9th. September 12th, we'll be at Petco. And then the 16th, also at Farmer's Market. On the 19th, we'll be at Village Hardware, which is in Hatch. And then on the 23rd, we'll be at Farmer's Market, the 26th at PetSmart, and then the 30th at Farmer's Market. So we hope to see members of the community come out and support us. And then for anyone interested in adopting, fostering, volunteering, or simply learning more about animal services, please visit ASCMV.org. I've also included our social media platforms, so please follow us for updates, adoptable animals, events, and more. Thank you.

Mayor. Yes, Council Matisse. If I may.

Yes. Do you have some type of educational program? You know, I noticed that... Many people, and mostly that have a dog, and unfortunately they may be unhoused, they're walking the dogs in 98, 100 degree weather. Do you have some type of educational program or some kind of flyer that you could hand out to them? I mean, is there some way to, you know, I've stopped and I even spent some money for socks.

uh dog socks but it seems like there's quite a lot of uh dogs being walked in in the terrible heat have you noticed that or have you gotten burnt paws uh not that i know of but um i know i'll go ahead and let our my manager know about it to give some information out there because other than that we have like animal trainers um but not really just specifically on that but that's good to bring up thank you

Next on the agenda is conflict of interest. Does any member of the city council, city manager, or any member of the city staff have any known conflict of interest with any item on the agenda?

No.

None. None. None.

No. No conflict. Next is public participation. We'll allow up to three minutes, no pending litigation or items on the non-consent. Katrina will assist you and usher you to the podium, those that want to speak.

Mayor, City Council, I'm Liz Rodriguez Johnson. Today we call on the utilities director to stop trying to duck her responsibilities and tell us herself why she's directing her staff to misrepresent what is actually taking place within their department related to the federal lead in copper rule. The nonchalant characterization by the staffer she sent to the last meeting regarding the steps utility says it takes when carrying out water sampling for lead downplayed the actual risk involved. It coldly overlooked the fact that that a result above the action level, currently 15 parts per billion, clearly means there's lead coming out of that particular tap that EPA regards as too high. This is true regardless with the other samples in that neighborhood show. This means that your young child or grandchild is being put in danger from lead levels coming out of your tap, regardless what the 98th percentile calculation says about the other properties in your neighborhood. While utilities may not label it as exceedance, it is dangerous to the people drinking from that tap. Keep in mind there's no safe level of lead in drinking water. The staffer the director sent to speak for her also falsely stated that utilities personnel send notices to all customers regarding test results. The department's own documentation, which we brought to your attention at the May 4 meeting, shows in reality several examples of its failure to provide any notice whatsoever to property owners whose sampling results showed levels above EPA's action level. Thus, the utility staffer continues the department's practice of issuing statements which deceptively minimize the risk to public health and which give a false impression that the director and her staffers are doing a competent job. With respect to the Utilities Department violation of the total coliform testing requirements, the staffer referred to them at the last meeting as mere paperwork violations. Any genuine professional within the scientific, engineering, medical, legal, and aviation industries, for example, recognizes the critical importance of ensuring that every piece of information is assessed and recorded accurately. These professionals know that anyone who attempts to diminish errors as just paperwork violations is not credible and has no business being employed in those fields. Thus, the evidence grows that Las Cruces utilities requires a much better caliber of work. We need a new utilities director. Water drinkers in Las Cruces require a truthful, competent utilities director who openly acknowledges the facts and answers questions honestly about the actual nature and condition of all of the city piping and the quality of the water that flows through it. We can no longer tolerate a director who's unaccountable and hides behind her staffers. Thank you.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, folks here today, those watching online, I'm Lynn Maurer. I agree with my colleague Liz Rodriguez-Johnson that Las Cruces needs a new utilities director. We need a professional engineer with management experience who is honest, credible, competent, accountable, and committed to complying with all legal requirements. If the director wants to keep her job, here are four ways to partially redeem herself. to demonstrate that she is accountable to the citizens of las cruces the utilities director needs to answer fully in writing in english and spanish all questions related to the lead and copper rule we have set out since december 2024 a 21-month period this is the comprehensive list comprised of 78 questions and requests to date we've provided previous lists we have which have gone entirely unanswered to demonstrate that the director is honest and credible she must provide a thorough and factual explanation for each of the 36 so-called re-inspection reports close quote that claim piping is now no longer galvanized where galvanized piping had been previously found by utilities inspectors in addition this demonstration of honesty and credibility must include ceasing and desisting from all falsification of data within the department i understand it's very extensive including directions of staff to falsify and manipulate data. This also must include reinstatement of all correct data so that records and calculations are fully correct. To demonstrate competence, the director must get access agreements and immediately instruct staff inspectors to dig small trenches along the outside of every customer-owned water service line on all properties on both sides of Mesquite Street, both North and South Mesquite Street, to investigate for lead and or galvanized piping. Documentation for each of these diggings must be thorough and the results must be clear and explicit. Many of the inspection reports do not include photos. If even one inch of lead or galvanized piping is found, it must be documented on paper and by photographs. In addition, for any property where lead or galvanized piping is discovered that information must be recorded fully in the online inventory and the property owner must be immediately notified in english and spanish along with truthful and complete information about available financing options for pipe replacement and the city council must be fully notified To demonstrate that the director is trying to comply with all legal requirements, she needs to direct staff inspectors to inspect every single mobile home within the city and the findings be fully documented in writing and by photographs, then fully and correctly recorded in the online inventory and on the map, not waiting in 2027. Do it now. If you've done the inspection, then you can provide the information. if any lead or galvanized piping is found the property owner must be immediately notified in writing in english and spanish along with available financing options for pipe replacement and the city council must be notified if the utilities director wants to keep her job these four tasks are where she should stop thank you for this opportunity to speak

Good afternoon, Mayor Enriquez, city council members, leaders of our first responders, and other leaders of local government. My name is Jamison McDonnell, and I represent the Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico. I'm joined today by my colleagues from the Roadrunner Food Bank, as well as members and partners of our Dona Ana County's food security ecosystem. such as El Caldito and Taylorhood Farms. I also want to recognize Senator Soles and Cassandra Goddara for their support and advocacy of our work. First, thank you for the city's longstanding support of Roadrunner Food Bank. Your partnership has helped provide nutritious food to children, seniors, families throughout Las Cruces. The need for our services is significant and growing. About one in six New Mexicans face food insecurity. And across the 10 counties that serve by our Las Cruces-based southern New Mexico operation, approximately 115,000 people, or nearly 20% of the population, face food insecurity. Roadrunner has also experienced a nearly 30% cumulative increase in households seeking food assistance since 2025. To meet this growing demand, we recently moved our Las Cruces operation into a new warehouse at 2200 Entrada del Sol. So we have the warehouse, but we still need to make part of it cold. Right now our facility is much more better prepared to handle canned goods than things like milk and produce. A 2200 square foot freezer and increased cold storage capacity would allow Roadrunner and our partners to safely receive, preserve, and distribute more nutritious food. A connected cold chain could help make possible an estimated 4.5 million additional meal equivalents for New Mexican households. That is nearly one additional meal each week for every person facing food insecurity across the 10 county region that we serve, including and especially Las Cruces. This investment would strengthen the regional hunger relief network, support local growers, reduce food loss, and improve our ability to respond during emergencies. We invite each of you to visit the warehouse, meet our team, and see firsthand what this investment could make possible. Today, we respectfully request two actions. First, we ask the city to serve as the fiscal sponsor for our state capital outlay request. Second, we ask that this project be included in the city's ICIP this year. We are ready to work with the city staff to develop an accountable structure that meets state requirements and protects the city's interest. Thank you for your continued support, your leadership, and your consideration of these requests.

Thank you.

good afternoon mayor mayor pro tem and members of city council and leadership my name is cassandra gandara former mayor pro tem and founder of donna county resilience leaders a collective impact initiative dedicated to preventing adverse childhood experiences and strengthening families Through our food sector, we have convened community schools, small farmers, food distribution organizations, food pantries, soup kitchens and other partners to better understand our local food system and address the barriers residents face. In a region so rich in agriculture, we must ask, why are so many families still experiencing hunger? Our community data shows that the percentage of respondents reporting a need for food assistance services increased from 53% in 2019 to 59% in 2024. The percentage reporting difficulty assessing those services also increased from 33% to 41%. Affordability and fragmented coordination have contributed to this crisis. Our partners are working to change that. Through stronger relationships and shared planning, we have identified a major infrastructure gap, insufficient cold storage capacity. Without adequate refrigeration and freezer space, fresh produce and protein cannot be safely stored or distributed in sufficient quantities. Food grown locally may leave our region only to return at a higher price, while unusable food can be lost before reaching families. Roadrunner Foodbank's proposed Las Cruces freezer project would provide approximately 200 square feet of freezer space, along with the equipment, power upgrades, racking, and safety improvements needed to operate it. This initial $1 million investment could reduce food waste, strengthen local farms, expand access to nutritious food support emergency preparedness and help build a regional cold chain system today we respectfully ask the city council to place the southern new mexico cold chain infrastructure project on the city of las cruces icip list this year and prioritize the initial 1 million las cruces freezer investment this is more than a freezer It is essential infrastructure that will help food last longer, support our local farmers, and feed more families. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Efrain Tigueras. I'm the Vice President of Operations for Southern New Mexico for Roadrunner Food Bank. I've been here for the last two and a half years. Roadrunner has been serving New Mexico for over 47 years. For the last two and a half years, we have changed more intentionally to the Southern part of New Mexico, like my colleague just mentioned, our big need. But I wanted to give you a little background of what we've done the last two years. We increased the amount of food we have been distributing for Southern New Mexico. more than double the amount. For the history of the food bank, we've done a little bit low, below 12 million pounds. I can tell you, probably tell you for fiscal year 25, 26, we were at over 24 million pounds of food distributed to the southern part of New Mexico. As you can see here, the need to a cooler space to provide more food. I can tell you a big number of what we've done and as far as food going out to the communities and for the Dona Ana County, the Las Cruces is over 12 million pounds of food. We have 136 partner agencies throughout the 10 counties, but for Indiana, we have 34 partner agencies, which we provide 100% of the food. If it's not 100, it's 80% of the food that they distribute here at Las Cruces. All of it's for free for them to serve our communities. Our goal is to bring more healthier food to the communities, but also with partners that they mentioned, with farmers, local farmers, bringing food into our warehouse, but right now we're limited. We've done a lot for the last two years. The need is great. As we do the research and find the meal gap, even though the numbers are great, we're still missing that. to steal people suffering hunger in silence. Today, we're the voices of action on that. And I thank you for your support, and thank you for the future on this program.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the City Council. My name is Stephen Chavira, and I'm the Executive Director at El Caldito Soup Kitchen. I stand here before you today as a member of the Dona Ana Resilience Leaders Consortium and the Food Sector Program to reiterate what my colleagues have just mentioned. I serve every single day, serve hungry people, and as you well know, the need is getting greater and greater in our community. The access to nutritious food is important, not just for our clients, but for those people who we are not able to serve, the people that are in the community that still want to eat, that still want to have great food and a place to come and eat or have great meals brought to them. Along with my partners in this sector, there is always a need to be able to expand our services, to be able to get to the people that need our services. And thankful to the city, our city manager, the deputy city manager, and all the hard work that is going on through the team, we look forward to our new building being completed soon. But the reality is, is that that food need, is going to be there no matter what. As the progress gets made at Community Hope, the need for the food, my demand is growing even as we speak. So I would ask that you consider the request that Roadrunner Food Bank has put out to you and I would stand here in support of that request because as we look to trying to serve our clients, as we look to trying to create a wider footprint of who we can serve, as we identify potential clients to serve and service members, It's about the food. It's about having great food, having good food, having fresh protein, fresh produce, and not looking for shelf-stable products that are out there that don't need refrigeration. We need to have these types of services. Once we get our building built, our new refrigerator and freezer spaces will be bigger than what we've got now. But the need also, as I said, is continuing to grow. Please consider the request that's before you, and we will stand at the appropriate time to help provide any supportive material or information to help the process move further. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Deputy Chief. I'm a retired detective. I have to give them a little bit of respect over there. They're making me talk, and I'm kind of going to give you a firsthand as a truck driver. I started off once I retired. I'm sorry?

You just got to state your name for the record.

Oh, Rudy Sanchez. I knew that. After I retired, I went and got my CDL. I became a truck driver. I went over the road for two years. I was given the opportunity to come back into this city to be a truck driver for Roadrunner Food Bank. As a officer on the streets, I saw firsthand food insecurity. I saw the unhoused. I was able to see that, live that, and when I became a truck driver for the food bank, The day-to-day operations and how much we need this food locker or food freezer is tremendous. I would get up at four o'clock in the morning. I would drive a truck all the way to Nogales, Arizona. We'll pick up a truckload full of produce. I would drive that truck back all the way back to Las Cruces. We had a yard. We didn't have their warehouse. It was a yard, just a dirt lot. I would park the truck there. The next morning I would get up at 1.30 in the morning. I would drive that truck to Albuquerque where our corporate operations are. That truck would stay there overnight and it would get sorted out. The next morning at 1.30 again in the morning, I would go and pick up that truck again. That truck is sorted out with routes that we give out to all our partners down here. And that was Monday through Friday every day. And it took a toll. It took a toll not on myself, but it also took a toll on the families that we're trying to serve. They're waiting a couple of days just because we have to store our food in a freezer that we didn't have. So those two days, people didn't eat for those two days. And that was every single day. And not just myself, but we had 10 drivers that would do that. So I ask that you take into consideration the request that we have on getting our own freezer down here to serve more people in the city of Las Cruces and the 10 southern counties that we provide food. Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor, city councilors. I'm Bill Soles, a state senator representing mostly the East Mesa side of Las Cruces. Several weeks ago, I was very fortunate and got to go tour the new warehouses for Roadrunner Food Bank. And a couple of things struck me. First, the trucks are running outside because we have no cold storage for the food here in Las Cruces. That food gets stored in Albuquerque, comes down on the trucks, and the trucks run 24 hours a day to keep that food cold because there is no cold storage here. New Mexico is a very wealthy state, yet we have lots of our people who are food insecure, who are living on the edge, and Roadrunner Food Bank is the infrastructure that provides those meals for southern New Mexico. but we don't have the infrastructure to support what they do. After seeing their operation, I committed a million dollars of my capital outlay for this next year to help put in cold storage. And I'm working with the other local legislators to try and get at least one million more so that we can both have cool storage and freezer storage. So we don't have to send the food through Las Cruces to Albuquerque, store it, and then bring it back and run the trucks in order to make sure that our people in this area are not food insecure. With cuts from the federal government, the need for healthy, fresh produce just continues. Having local cold storage supports our local farmers when they have extra crop that they would like to donate. It supports our families. It supports the food infrastructure of southern New Mexico. We're a wealthy state. We can do better for our people here. What we're asking for is I cannot donate my capital outlay money to a nonprofit. It has to go through some government entity in order to hang the money on. What we're asking is for Las Cruces to put this project on the ICIP so that I can put the million dollars that I've pledged and other legislators can as well so that we can continue to work towards meeting the food needs for our communities. Thank you and thank you for what you do.

delilah leva for the record i'm a licensed cosmetologist and have lived and worked in las cruces for over 20 years while attending cosmetology school in here in las cruces in 2024 i experienced my first taste of fraud waste and abuse however i'm not the type to see a problem and just do nothing so i was determined to do something about it to help my industry I campaigned to fill our vacant board seats. I made social media posts encouraging those in the community to apply, and I communicated with the Office of the Governor to ensure appointments were being made. Our board went from operating at a capacity of three members for the past several years to now being filled with five members, four of which were new appointments. And I'm working to fill the remaining two vacant seats. I'm working with local legislators on bringing forth a bill to include manicurists and pedicurists and estheticians to have a seat on the board of barbers and cosmetologists. I've been working with the Department of Workforce Solutions on creating new apprenticeship roles. Now it currently allows for barbers, but we want to open it up to include cosmetologists, nail technicians, and estheticians to receive the same training opportunities. Since obtaining my licensure, I have worked with organizations such as Hardin de los Ninos and Finney Health to provide free haircuts to low-income and neurodivergent families in our community. The Elevate Las Cruces Community Development Plan for short-term work outlines to facilitate efforts between economic development partners and interested businesses to expand and promote the benefits of technical and vocational programs at area high schools. That's me. I want to open up beauty apprenticeship pathways here in Las Cruces, and I believe this council can help me bring that to fruition. Hairstylists and makeup artists will only strengthen your film industry expansion efforts. I enjoyed seeing Taste of India receive funding to revitalize their business. I would like to see more revitalization efforts along El Paseo, which is a major corridor between the convention center and downtown. I really like the idea brought up at the August TID meeting suggesting the old MRBDA building as a small business incubator. Council, please help me to protect students and help stylists and small businesses succeed in Las Cruces. Please point me in the right direction of someone who can help bring these ideas to meaningful action. with my last few seconds i'll quickly say the topic of data centers and mass surveillance have awoken something in the average citizen where they were once not interested in the political world around them they are now taking notice i myself being new to politics may not know all the right terms or steps but i do operate from my heart or using carino as the city would say

Mayor, City Council, my name is Eddie Thomas. An enraged man in a car pulled up to a stoplight and shot more than 10 bullets into a truck with a man and his 11-year-old son inside. By the grace of God, they escaped serious injury. The man was struck by a bullet and his son was showered with broken glass, but both survived the unprovoked attack. The shooter and the man driving the truck did not know each other. This was simply a case of mindless misdirected road rage. Last month there was another incident where two individuals were seen shooting at each other. One man was injured. He survived. Last summer, at the corner of Solano and Spruce, a 14-year-old passenger riding in the backseat was killed in a road rage incident. In another incident, a bicycle thief pulled a gun on an officer at the Walmart on South Valley who gave chase. He died after a short exchange of gunfire with the police. He died over a bicycle. Then there is the Young Park incident, which will forever mark Las Cruces as a lawless little border town with a crime problem. Three lives were lost to mindless violence, all because one gang member didn't like the way the other gang looked at him. Let's not forget that 15 people were injured when the four gang members shot indiscriminately at the gathering, displaying a total disregard for human life. I have a question. How much longer will the 10-pin bowling alley remain as a monument to Las Cruces' first mass shooting? It's been like that for 30 years. Then there's the Village Inn on El Paseo Street. Judging by the architecture, it looks like it's been abandoned since 1960s. That would mean that it's been there for over 60 years. Do the math. Back down the street, turn right on Idaho, across from Salmon's Hardware, you'll see another boarded up building that's been there for years. This area has been designated as the Devil's Triangle number two. The first one on South Valley is where one of Las Cruz's finest, Jonah Hernandez, was murdered. Down the street from there, Stryker's Shooting World was broken into by a group of teenagers who stole two cars and used one of them to crash into the building to steal guns. Down the street from there, 11 cars were stolen from a car lot in one night. This city is out of control and we have the abandoned boarded up buildings as scars to prove it. When I first moved here, I was treated to the local headline of a man found kicking around the head of a man he had killed at Apodaca Park. Talk about bizarre. I have little faith that the culture of crime here will ever be reigned in. It's been baked in for more than 60 years. The lax laws and the liberal progressive city council don't help. It's not the land of enchantment. It's the badlands of New Mexico.

good afternoon mayor and members of the city council my name is brandon sprague i am a coach for several of the sports teams that my son participates in here in las cruces including baseball and soccer many people say that dealing with parents is the most challenging part of coaching but my experience has told me that the biggest challenge here in las cruces is simply finding a safe usable quality green space to play and practice on to put it simply there's just not enough of them In the few areas of the city that do provide safe, flat green space, teams are constantly competing for space. I invite you to drive by Soldados Park on a weeknight and see for yourself. It's often bursting at the seams. At other times, the entire green space may be reserved by one organization, even when only a portion of that space is actually being used, thus preventing other teams from practicing there. But the impetus for this discussion came from concern about the newest fields provided by the city of Las Cruces. I'm talking about the East Mesa fields. A few weeks ago, I was alerted that the conditions at the East Mesa fields are not great. And just Saturday, I walked by there, and I can attest that these fields are in terrible shape. These fields are less than two years old from when they were first used, that they are already in poor and some areas unsafe conditions. There are large areas of dirt and rocks, exposed sprinkler heads, patchy, uneven turf or no turf at all, just the grade upon which the sod was first installed. The Las Cruces soccer league begins their fall season this weekend and the 10 and 11 year old kids have fields that are not fit for use. It's a shame that all that money was spent and now two years later, the fields are in this disrepair. Now I can't pretend to know everything that has or hasn't been done to maintain the turf. And I recognize that maintaining athletic fields in this climate is not easy, but whatever's being done is clearly not enough. The Parks and Rec Department has indicated that the fields are in this state because of overuse, that people are trespassing over there and using the fields when they're not permitted to. And I imagine that there's a small kernel of truth to that. I think that they've not been properly maintained, but I think that there's definitely some trespassing that's going on. And I don't condone trespassing, but I think that this points to the bigger issue where teams don't have enough space and they're now looking for alternatives. I'm not asking for a miracle solution or a magic pill. I'm just asking that you take a serious look at this issue. I'm requesting that the athletic fields we already have be properly rehabilitated where necessary, and that the city prioritize creating additional flat screen spaces where youth teams can practice and play without competing with one another for space. I'm not sure what the solution pathways are, but I'm happy to help however I may. I'm volunteering my help however I can do that. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, City Council. My name's Jim Hurst. Last year, for the first Thursday in May, designated by Congress as National Day of Prayer, designated by humanist organizations as National Day of Reason. There were scheduling conflicts over the use of the front of the building, the area around the flag poles. My position is that religious meetings in public spaces are generally speaking unconstitutional because they represent an endorsement by the government for religion. They represent public investment into religion and the promotion of religion by government. That is what the Constitution attempts to forbid by saying Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. The use of this space by religious organizations, however informal, constitutes an establishment of religion. It should not be allowed. You guys don't need the courts. to pass a resolution that says we will not allow this space and the surrounding outside space to be used for religious services. It's just that simple. If there is to be a policy made about the use of this space, it ought to be made by elected officials, not by city staff. but by elected officials, and that's you guys. So I submit to you that religious services have no place in these facilities, that I as a citizen should not be imposed upon by a government that uses public facilities to promote religion. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Daniel Allen, and my concern today is Memorial Medical Center. Two years ago, the Attorney General launched an investigation into Memorial over allegations of denial of care. Whenever I've called about this, I'm told it's ongoing. Last time, they told me it would probably run into the next administration. And as you know, six months ago, the city and the county joined in litigation against him over a similar issue. Now, I'm not going to accuse Memorial of continuing to deny care to individuals who don't have insurance. They now have a much more subtle, more clever way of doing it. and that is by hollowing out the medical staff. Now, full disclosure, I was a practicing surgeon here for 40 years, so I know how it was and I know how it is. 30 years ago, we had four general surgeons on the staff taking call, four orthopedists, urologists, two ophthalmologists, two plastic surgeons, two neurosurgeons available 24-7 who would save your life when you had a head injury so you didn't have to go down to El Paso and die en route. And now you don't even have to go online and look up Memorial's staff directory to see what's happened. All you have to do is listen to the steady stream of helicopters going south. And that will tell you all you need to know. Now, you might think quite reasonably that it is the responsibility of the board of directors of the hospital to oversee the administration and keep them in line and ensure that the hospital provides needed services. However, you saw what happened under the previous administration with John Harris. The board was in a thrall to him and existed only to give the good housekeeping seal of approval to whatever it was that he wanted. Have things changed? Well, I doubt it because on the present board you have two physicians who have a financial relationship with the hospital and that is an obvious conflict of interest. and they cannot be relied upon to protect the community. You're going to have to do it. And the challenge for you is that while the Attorney General's investigation and while the litigation is ongoing, how are you going to ensure that Memorial continues or begins to discharge its obligations to the public? Thank you.

Tim Jenkins here. Today I speak directly to certain members on this dais that refuse to acknowledge the truth. A ribbon cutting ceremony does not make our city safe. A photo op does not solve an overdose. A smile in front of a camera does not answer a mother who is afraid to take her child to a park that my tax dollars paid for. While you sit here and discuss theories about homelessness, our police officers are out answering the call. While you discuss homelessness, our officers are out dealing with this mess as we speak. While you discuss addiction, our officers are out dealing with an overdose. While you sit here and address mental illness, our officers are the ones walking into a crisis right now as we speak. While you sit here and discuss how to defund our officers, they are the ones in the trenches and fighting the real battles day in and day out. Now let's talk about how it is so easy to come up with $5,000 to bring someone from Washington University to educate us, the public, on how homelessness is a housing issue. Is this a freaking joke? Washington, the armpit of the homeless. Really? $5,000 to educate us on what the problem is? While the people dealing with this problem day in and day out are telling you something different, but you refuse to listen. A house is not an addiction treatment. A house is not mental health treatment. A house is not a cure for fentanyl. A housing program is not sustainable for public safety. we the citizens of this community are watching we see the encampments we see the drugs we see the needles we see the overdoses we see the theft we see the vandalism and we witness our officers being stretched thinner and thinner we don't need another explanation we need results so here's my question how is it so easy to find money for another housing project and another consultant and another presentation, but it is virtually impossible to find money to support our officers who are in the battlefield day in and day out fighting to clean up our city from the mess that certain members on this dais have created. Joanna Bencomo, this city did not have these issues before you were elected. It is high time that the members of this dais that are standing as roadblocks in this community be removed immediately so this city can begin to heal from the pure evil that roams in the very chambers we stand in today. And as for our officers, God bless them with courage and strength and patience to fight for the good of our community. We thank them for their selfless service and dedication to this city. God bless and protect every last one of them. Thank you.

Next on the agenda is to read a closed meeting statement. Las Cruces City Council met in closed meeting on September 8, 2026 at 10 a.m. The following were in attendance. Councilor McClure, Councilor Harris, Councilor Coran, Councilor Bencomo, Mayor Pro Tem Munoz, and Mayor Enriquez. City Manager, Iconi Timopayao. City Attorney, Henry Becker. City Attorney, Brad Douglas. City Clerk, Christine Rivera. And outside council, Chris DeFilippo. Items that were discussed, litigation regarding George Alberto Lopez versus the City of Las Cruces, which is closed to pursuant to New Mexico State Statute 1978. And then also was discussed pending or threatened litigation regarding Brandon Barron versus City of Las Cruces, which is closed pursuant to New Mexico State Statute 1978. The meeting adjourned at 12.11 PM. Next is the acceptance of agenda, and we're gonna have to remove 7.3 if I could get a, not remove, yeah, move it from the consent to discussion, because there's been some changes, and with those changes, we want to update the packets and get the proper information. So if I could get a motion and a second for 7.3. So motion, second.

This is on the motion to accept the agenda as presented with removal of item 7.3 for discussion. Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz? Yes. Mayor?

Yes.

Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. My name is Cynthia Lamillo, CIP Manager, and today I have a couple- Hold on, hold on.

Yes.

Yeah.

Now we'll start out with item 7.3.

I hope to approve.

Second. Okay, go ahead.

Thank you. Again, Cynthia Lamillo with CIP, and today I have a couple of CIP amendments for you. There are two type of amendments in this proposal. One is to reflect a recently approved grant and a few others to reflect the funds that they currently have available. The first project is for the Las Alturas water tank and booster station improvement. This project in your packet inadvertently had a wrong number. This project has three type of funding sources, a grant, a loan, and a match. And the grant inadvertently was entered as $1,722,000 instead of $1,772,000. So we were short by $50,000. So this amendment corrects the correct amount from grant again this whole grant was approved by council at the last city council meeting and this amendment is to reflect those funds into this specific project which is a tank water and booster station improvement Then we have the projects that need an amendment to reflect the funding that they have available. First, we have the fire station equipment. This amendment is to bring in one million for this project. This project also triggers a budget adjustment. When the CAP was adopted this May, We had intentions of paying the two ambulances that were acquired with these funds, but there was a delay on that. So we're hoping to get those two ambulances fairly soon, and then we're going to continue paying any pending invoices. So we need to bring in those funds into fiscal year 27. The rest of the three projects that we have here, Casa Linda, Co-op March, and Municipal Arterial Program, we're just adjusting the funds that they have available. Casa Linda's moving forward, and hopefully they will begin construction in December. the two bottom line items are matches for um for two grants the co-op match is actually for the local government road fund so this project will be related to the lowman street the municipal arterial program will be used for the amateur hawk project These four amendments are for annual CIP programs. So these are programs that every year receive some funding. So we have the payment condition index improvements, roadway maintenance program, street lighting and traffic signal maintenance, and transportation system modernization. Again, these are annual programs and every year they get a little bit of funding so they can complete any of the smaller projects that they have pending. These are a smaller set of cleanup amendments. We have airport improvements, pavement maintenance and equipment, senior program equipment enrolling stock, and the Munson Center renovations. The last two amendments is just to clearly define the purpose of the funds. So the reduction is to show that the funds moving from Munson and moving into senior program is because they're going to be used for vehicles for the Munson Center. So we're just adjusting the funds that they have remaining or that they have available in order to move forward. So those are all of the amendments that we have for the CAP. Again, the amendment was to reflect the typo that we had in the utilities grant. So with this, we have adjusted the correct amount. That reflects what council approved at the last council meeting.

All right, thank you, Cynthia. Any questions? Councilor Harris.

Sorry, just a quick question. What was the airport reduction about? That was pretty significant.

Yes. This is a mixture of projects. So they would like to do some pavement maintenance projects. They also want to purchase some heavy equipment. Last I talked to the airport, I think they wanted a Kubota, which is just part of maintenance equipment. So this is one of those that it's a flexible project because they want to make sure that they have the funds available to spend as things come up.

Okay, so we're not taking $5 million away from the airport. That's just what they plan to spend.

Yes, and yes. And given that the fiscal year closed, this is what the project actually has available to continue moving forward.

Yep, makes sense. Thanks. That's all I got.

Okay, thank you. Christine.

We need to do an amendment to her exhibit for the typo.

Yeah, I guess I'll move to approve the amendment as presented.

I second.

This is on the motion to amend resolution 27-037 to change the typo for the utilities grant. Councillor McClure. Yes. Councillor Matisse. Yes. Councillor Harris. Yes. Councillor Bencomo. Yes. Councillor Curran. Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent and Mayor.

Yes.

And then this is to approve the resolution as amended. Councillor McClure?

Yes.

Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent, and Mayor?

Yes. Next is I don't make point one it's a public hearing required so the public hearing. Is now open at 2.23 PM. Sir anyone here for or against the issuance of the liquor license. A public hearing is now closed 2.23 PM.

Move to approve.

Second.

Go ahead Adam.

Thank you, Mayor. Adam Ochoa, Community Development, for the record. Before you, we have a proposed liquor license for the Lake Holmes Winery and Bistro located at 1720 Avenue La Mesilla, pursuant to New Mexico State statute. Application has been submitted to the state for approval of what is called a winegrower liquor license, known as number BLA000020646. The ABC of the state of New Mexico did send preliminary approval to the city on July 15th of this year. This review was sent out to all reviewing parties within the city and no reviewing staff identified any outstanding issues with the proposed application. Showing the look homes here, you can see it's Avenue of Mesilla, pretty close to what is the city limits and what would be the village limits, if you will, of Mesilla there. So with that, your option is one, to vote yes and approve the proposed winegrower liquor license, or two, to vote no and deny the proposed liquor license. The ABC will be notified of the vote and will continue through the application process through the state. I stand for questions.

Thank you, Adam. Any questions? Say no. Kristi?

This is on the motion to approve resolution 27-038. Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent, and Mayor?

Yes. Next is item 8.2, resolution number 27-039, resolution amending the resolution 25-129 for the small business storefront repair program.

Move to approve.

Second.

Good afternoon, mayor and councilors. Selena Morales, deputy director for economic development. Today I bring an amendment to the small business storefront repair grant. The goal of this amendment is to broaden the program and provide additional opportunities for businesses to access the remaining ARPA funding. Here's the program overview. It was established in 2023 using ARPA funding. Up to $400,000 were allocated to support eligible small businesses. We originally provided up to $2,500 per storefront damage incident, and we increased that to $5,000 per incident in 2025, and also allowed businesses to apply for multiple incidents. As you know, ARPA funds must be fully expended by December 31st, and we've done a significant amount of marketing to be able to promote this program and connect eligible businesses with assistance before that deadline. The proposed changes, we are asking to increase the maximum award from $5,000 to $10,000 per incident. And we are also asking for a new preventative safety and security measures. Similar to the two safety improvement programs that we've implemented in both MRAs, we're hoping to broaden this to citywide for up to $10,000 per eligible business as a one-time award. And purchases must comply with applicable federal ARPA requirements. Eligible safety improvements, similar again to the safety improvement program that's in the MRAs. This will include security cameras including doorbells, locks, windows, outdoor lighting, fencing and fence coverings. Improvements must be approved prior to purchase or installation. Eligible businesses must be within city limits, hold a city business license, be open and actively operating, submit required documentations. We will be accepting applications until funds are exhausted or till December 31st, whichever occurs first. And I suggest everyone go online for the full eligibility requirements. The requested council action is to expand opportunities to assist local small businesses, utilize remaining available ARPA funding within the program period, to increase the storefront repair assistance to $10,000 per eligible incident, and add up to $10,000 for preventative safety and security improvements. Here are council options, and I stand for questions.

All right, thank you, Solino. Any questions? Seeing none, Christine?

This is on the motion to approve resolution 27-039. Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent and mayor.

Yes.

Thank you.

Next is item 8.3 resolution number 27 dash 0, 4, 0 resolution authorizing city of Las Cruces to accept grant awards for the housing neighborhood services move to approve second.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Councilors, City staff and community members. My name is Gabriela Pratt and I'm the City's Grant Manager in the Financial Services Department. Today, I bring before you a resolution to approve a budget adjustment request for two grants awarded to the City Manager's Office Housing and Neighborhood Services Program. The first grant was awarded to CMO's Housing and Neighborhood Services Program by the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solution in the amount of $20,000. This award is being used to send up a cooling center adjacent to the Mesilla Valley Community of Hope Resource Campus. Oh, too bad. The second award is made to Housing and Neighborhood Services Program as well from the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions in the amount of $2,837,000. These funds will allow the city to purchase a lot of 629, 6.29 acres on which the Royal Crossing subdivision will be constructed. The project will deliver 90 units of affordable housing and the target are families living at or below 60% of the area median income. Here are your council options, and I stand for questions. Natalie Green, Housing and Neighborhood Development Administrator is also present to answer more detailed questions about the projects. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Curran.

Thank you, thank you for your presentation. This is sort of germane to a number of things that seem to be coming up today, but when we get pass-through money, as this is, in some version of it, capital outlay, through some other grants that are funded through the governor's office, things like that, typically they're used on city property, right? So both of these properties are city-owned?

Yes.

Or will become city-owned and then will remain city-owned? Yes.

I'm sorry, I mean.

No, I'm curious if there's a time limit or how that works. And so I say this because I think it's important to note that this is money that we're getting to invest in city assets to make sure that we are able to continue providing the services that we're providing, right? So how long does, for instance, the space, even though it's pass-through money, how long does the space at Royal Crossing belong to us?

So, per Natalie's information, that purchase is scheduled to close by the end of 2026, sometime in December.

And then we would be leasing it back to the owners of the development, is that, or sorry, just, I'm sort of trying to get to a few questions that came up in prior discussions today, thank you.

Good afternoon mayor Council current so we haven't finished negotiating with the developers, so we could do a ground lease back to them, which is the likely scenario and that'll provide some tax abatement that will support the the affordability of the project, we could also do a donation or a sale, but most likely it'll be a ground lease.

okay thank you thanks i was just wanted to get some clarity on how that pass-through money goes and what kind of assets we're acquiring or not so thanks saying no other christine

This is on the motion to approve Resolution 27-040. Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent and Mayor.

Yes. Next is item 8.4, resolution number 27-041, approving 1,350,000 housing trusts and loan agreement for the Paseos Verde phase one.

Move to approve.

Second.

Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. My name is Jan Larbach with Housing and Neighborhood Services. Somehow I just lost my talking points. Hold on. Excuse me, I apologize for that. The resolution before you seeks to approve an affordable housing loan agreement for Paseos Verdes phase one development. In December of 2024, resolution 25071 approved a pre-commitment of $1.35 million for the project subject to the project receiving a low income housing tax credit award from Housing New Mexico. The complex will be located at 905 Campo Street, which is directly west of the Mesilla Valley Public Housing Authority properties. And the first phase will have 80 units for households earning up to 60% of area median income. There's a specific number of units set aside for households below 30% and also below 50% of area median income levels, with 20 units also set aside for veterans. This is the first phase of a repositioning project for the 36 older public housing units located at San Pedro Place, allowing those residents at San Pedro Place to be relocated. They can relocate at Paseos Verdes. And that will open up the whole entire area for future redevelopment that is in the planning stages. The city's, as the project was awarded LIHTC funding, the approval of the 1.35 million loan agreement provides for all funding to be in place for a financial closing for the development with anticipated construction to begin this fall. The loan to developer is a 20-year, 3% interest residual receipts loan, and the city will be filing a mortgage and security instrument against the property, as well as a land use restriction agreement against the property. And these will secure the city's investment in the property and also provide for the affordability period for the project to remain affordable. It's important to note that the 1.35 in investment leverages an additional $22 million investment in our community. And the resolution here also seeks to approve park and impact fee waivers that would be assessed on the project. As Mesilla Valley Public Housing Authority is a certified as a qualified grantee, The impact fee waivers are approved under the state's affordable housing act and under the city's affordable housing general oversight ordinance. If the waivers, the waivers will reduce costs and benefit all residents of the development and if approved and approved fee waiver agreement will be executed and filed against the property. And it's also noted that this project is a catalytic project for the MRA near Valley View Park. We always like to share our funding, our capital stack funding hamburger with you all, showing the different sources of funding it takes compiled together to put this project, get it to construction and get it operating with the total cost of just over 23,400,000. Here's a vicinity map of the subject property on the left highlighted in yellow. That's where phase one will go. And then on the right hand side is a depiction of the buildings. There's two different buildings, one with 20 units and one with 60. The call outs there are for shade structures, landscaping, bicycle paths, bicycle lockups, et cetera. And with that, you have your standard council options and I stand for questions.

Thank you, Jan. Any questions? Yes, Councilor Matisse.

Ms. Lauterbach, could you tell me what was San Pedro Place? Maybe you can tell me more about.

San Pedro Place, I'll try and get a picture of it for you. Don't have, sorry. It's the older public housing units on site. If you'll look right in here, these are the 36 public housing units. They're all duplexes located on that property, and it's all called San Pedro Place.

And they'll be abandoned? Everyone in there will be relocated to the new facility?

Yes, Mayor and Councillor Matisse, that is the plan.

And then the 36 units, what will eventually be done with those?

Eventually those units will be demolished and then new phases of development will go into that site.

And then is there a timeframe for when they'll be demolished or are we looking at 2030, 2035? No, I'm kidding.

Mayor and Councilor Matisse, I'm not sure if we have an exact timeframe. They'll have to get the funding put together.

Okay, Chris is smiling over there. Okay, so we just have a plan to take those abandoned buildings and clean that up and remove that and demolish it, okay. Yes, sir. And is that in a plan, is it in the general plan, strategic plan, or is it in black and white somewhere that I could look up?

Mayor and Councilor Matisse, I have Natalie here, but yes, it is a plan.

Okay.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Natalie Green, for the record. Councilor Matisse, we do have a site plan. So we've actually partnered the Housing Authority with Thomas Development, the developer of Padrina Senior Apartments. And so they will have a site plan We're still refining some of the parking on it because I need to meet with quality of life. I want to make sure that we are helping address some of the parking needs that they have. And as soon as I get there, OK, I can share the preliminary site plan with you. We are working on phase two. It is priority project for this next sort of legislative session round of funding out of the Office of Housing. So we do anticipate phase two moving much faster than phase one.

And I am reading that, is there any general fund money going toward the project?

Mister mayor Councilman T so the primary primarily the loan is funded out of capital outlay it's about $1.2 million dollars and there's a $100,000 remaining we do have some of it budgeted at a job general fund but will likely take the bulk of it from general obligation months.

OK and then on the did you say the housing is that the sea Valley housing. That will be doing that plan.

Correct. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Matisse, Mesilla Valley Public Housing Authority is a quasi-governmental organization, and so they will be the owner-developer of this property.

Are they the same ones that, when I first came aboard, were with Project Hope? Is that the same authority?

Correct the housing authority owns properties all across the city, including desert hope. But it is not a permanent supportive housing project like that as I hope it's a it's a difficult to remember that okay, thank you, thank you very much.

But now. On of these homes that are on some that are what what year where they built the you have the

Oh, good question. Mr. Mayor, likely it was the 1950s, 1960s. They're still in pretty good shape for being 50 plus years old, but they definitely are undersized. I'd have to go back to the phase one. We had them tested for asbestos and lead, and I'll have to go back and look at that report, but.

Yeah, because it's the same issue universities going through with coal village. These are older structures that need to be upgraded. And then the lot size, how many units per lot, this is a good plan to get more, as you would say, bang for your buck. That looks good. I just didn't know what year those were built and how much would really go into remodeling or reconstructing or rebuilding as opposed to demolish and build new.

Mr. Mayor, this is a great demonstration project to showcase realized Las Cruces. So we are taking almost, I think it's nine acres that houses 32 units. And after we're said and done closer to 200 units. So it's a great way to showcase the flexibility that council put into realized Las Cruces.

Okay, that was it. Thanks. No, see none. Christine.

This is on the motion to approve Resolution 27-041. Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse?

Yes.

Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent and Mayer?

Yes. Next is item 8.5, resolution number 27-042, resolution approving the purchase approximately 6.49 acres of land.

Move to approve.

Second. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of council, Natalie Green for the record. The resolution before you is a land acquisition for lots 23, 24, and 25 of the Royal Crossing subdivision. The acquisition is being funded by a grant from the state of New Mexico, which you just recently approved. The purchase price that was negotiated was 2.8 million. The current appraised value is at 3.1 million. The purchase is an assignment from Enriched Communities LLC. They're the ones who hold the purchase agreement with the original owner. Again, the acquisition is made up of three parcels that totals about 6.49 acres. The city will be the owner of all three parcels. We did get some early appraisals earlier in the year before any of the major sales occurred. So they came in much lower. But now that several of the parcels have sold nearby, the comps are much better. So we are below appraised value. The resolution approves an exclusive partnership with Enriched Communities and Tierra del Sol as the developer for a period of three years. During these three years, they are required to at least submit one application for a low-income housing tax credit. We're shooting for this 2027, which would be a 9% competitive application. um if they're unable to secure low-income housing tax credit within that three-year window then we could pursue other developers or other development opportunities and the city's affordable housing land bank will retain ownership until that deal is negotiated whether it be a long-term land lease or a donation for the affordable housing complex this is a vicinity map the three parcels are just north of apodaca park And then south of up here is Main Street and Solano. And then 3 Cross is hospital. And then there's a large single family development going in. And then there's some commercial retail. So it'll have good approximate location to both grocery stores, medical care, and park amenities. This is the preliminary conceptual. They've changed it a little bit since the last rendition. They're still working through this. The qualified allocation plan just came out, so it's in public comment period, and that outlines the scoring. So the scoring is not set yet, but what we're leaning to is a senior multifamily housing complex that scores higher this year, and then they're still working through the unit count. they may split it into two phases the first is likely going to be between 70 and 90 units and then we'll see what's left for the rest of the property and another project and then these are some of the renditions or conceptual renditions of what the property would look like so it's meant to integrate with the rest of the the rural crossing subdivision And with that, you have your standard council options, and I stand for questions.

Thank you, Natalie. Councilor McComb.

Thanks. Thanks so much, Natalie. I'm curious if this project, if you know if this will be the first project in this development.

Mr. Mayor, Councillor Bencomo, I can ask Jake, but we're hoping to be the first. There may be another commercial one that beats us out the door, but I'll defer to the real estate professional if he doesn't mind.

Thank you. I hope I'm not making you divulge any secrets. I won't divulge any secrets. Okay. That's a bummer. Then never mind.

Mayor of City Council, Jake Redfern with NAI First Valley. It could potentially be the first project. Doesn't mean it will. We have sold... Approximately 30 acres to the west are sorry east of the hospital and to the south of the hospital to other developers primarily looking at single family residential with some medical office to benefit the hospital there how quickly they'll do that they said quickly but I don't know how quickly that is and we do have some retail tenants up front but still ongoing negotiations or under contract or some stage of deals.

Okay, thank you. And, you know, I just asked, obviously, this, we've been talking about this corner for such a long time, and it has such, you know, high potential for being something really important other than just, you know, a pile of dirt, and so I'm very excited, but I want to make sure that, you know, we're out front, and, you know, we're addressing a need, and... we're at this very important piece of property and that there's development that's that's coming after um hopefully hopefully soon so i'm glad to hear that there is movement on that front thank you counselor correct

Thank you. And this is sort of less of a question, more of a comment, as politicians love. But I guess I just sort of want to say, take a moment to appreciate. I think that in the past, there was a rush to, develop this area in a way that was going to lead to not the most, I don't think, this was prior to all of us being on council, not the most thoughtful approach to development, perhaps in a different model of how cities might grow up and how we do things. I think that discussion was very heated at the time, and folks, there was a lot of pain and anguish in the discussion of this space, and I think I really appreciate you, Natalie, for thinking about dynamic ways to address this using public-private partnerships and the development process that's been happening. I just want to say thinking about how the community benefits from development in every conversation, and this was a TID conversation that we had before, that a different council had before, is really powerful, and I think that this is a result of that kind of Speaking up on behalf of what can be and what can serve community in a development that's happening and I just really appreciate you all Sticking with it and advocating and getting to this place And so I also just want to acknowledge that in the past there have been discussions about this area that I don't think I think if they had been if they had proceeded with the rapidity that they were threatened to proceed at we wouldn't be here doing this uh having this conversation and making sure that we're building up housing in places where there's also commercial development so thank you i i just want to appreciate that and acknowledge that this is kind of the result of a fraught past and and i appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into this plan and partnership that you all are working on so thank you

Okay, thanks. Jay had a question for you. Like with all the land that you have available there for commercial and all, what are the biggest challenges? You know, we're looking at our strategic plan and trying to enhance economic development. What are some of the challenges that you see in trying to sell some of that property and try to recruit businesses to Las Cruces?

Yeah, good question, Mayor, City Council. I think some of the biggest challenges are behind us, to your point, Councilor Caron. I had documents, some of my first emails were from 2011 on this property. So I've been affiliated in some form or fashion, mostly just as the real estate broker for 15 years. So I was there day one, meeting with residents, and it's been a long process. I think we're on our fourth iteration of ownership of this 75 acres that doesn't include three crosses, hospital and MLB next door. So it's been a long time. And that's been the biggest challenge. We've had a lot of interest in this development over those years, but we weren't at the point where we are now where we can sell parcels. We had to go through the development process at the city that took a couple years to get to where we are today, where we have the roads in, utilities in. We have it graded. It kind of had a black eye, if you will, for five or six years because we were trying to sell it and pitch it for other owners, and we weren't at a point where we could actually say, What we were telling them we could do, we couldn't do. We couldn't sell parcels off. It hadn't been master planned. It hadn't been approved. And so that was probably some of the biggest challenges for this particular property. You know, the development process, and I've talked to many of you guys about it, it can be a challenge. It's costly. You know, we're millions and millions of dollars into this property without selling anything to get to the point where we're at, which is a challenge for sure. whenever the city council at the time put in the complete street ordinance, which I understand the rationale for it, it did create challenges for developments like this where you have seven to $10 million of a lift just to start selling property or leasing property. Certainly the biggest challenge, obviously the DOT didn't help us much doing the construction there in the middle of our master plan approval, so that was definitely a big hiccup. But we're finally at a point where you guys will start seeing some good development here. I think you guys will find some good users. I know the gentleman doing the single family stuff in the back that transfers into MOB. He's a great developer. He'll do a good job back there. He's kind of got an eye towards the senior housing type single family stuff that correlates with the hospital and some of the medical services in the immediate area. The retail stuff mayor is starting to finally, I could tell people, yes, we can sell it to you. Yes, we can build something for you. Yes, we can lease it to you, what have you. So we have quite a bit of traction on the stuff along Main Street. So, but I appreciate the question.

All right, thank you.

Councillor Matisse. I have a few questions for you. You know, you may not, it's kind of a loaded question, so you may not want to answer it or you might want to avoid it. But when these companies come in, how is our permitting department, I mean, do you hear that it moves quickly and smoothly and seamless?

mayor city council's tough question uh that is a load i know that's a loaded question and you may not be able to answer it because you're just selling the land no we're involved in the development side of things more and more as each day and years go by um i will tell you there's some really helpful people on your city staff extremely helpful people um i will tell you also kind of speaking out both sides of my mouth sometimes it can be a little unpredictable I think one of the biggest challenges I see, and I do mostly retail brokering, so whether it's a Dutch Bros or Starbucks, is there is a challenge, and I wouldn't say it's just unique to our jurisdiction, in that a lot of out-of-town corporations like that hire out-of-town architects, engineers that don't know our city staff, that don't know our city code very well. And so by the time they call me and say, hey, I got a problem down there, they're way past the problem. They should have been crying uncle months ago. And I don't know the solution to that. I guess I'm bringing you a problem, and I hate doing that without a solution. But it is certainly a problem that gets brought up over and over again. I will tell you, and some of this is city, and some of this is just the nature of post-COVID life, development costs are extraordinary. We talk about housing costs, and you guys hear it up here on your guys' perch all the time. Median average price of a house in Las Cruces, $340,000. That's a big number for Las Cruces. but it's a product of development costs, cost of supplies. It's not a housing builder, you know, gouging anybody. It's not a developer doing commercial real estate using any different metrics than they did pre-COVID. So that's one of our biggest challenges is I get bids back all the time on utilities. road work, sidewalks, you name it. And it's just out of this world. We used to be able to build buildings, for example, pre-COVID for 125, 150 bucks a square foot for like an office building, like an Edward Jones or something like that. That's 350 today. you know six years just in six years it's been up that much and so our lease rates have to go high and then businesses have a hard time paying the lease rate you know people are complaining at us and it's not always the cause of that so i think some more future conversations though to your point um between developers and continued conversations i know we've had them in the past to understand where those pitfalls are at the city where the challenges are because there are challenges uh for sure i don't want to discount that um but i think there's also other challenges that really aren't in your guys's control that are you know concerned to me in the market

No, I think you made a good point there, and that's where sometimes we just lack conversations, just sitting down and working out the quicker, better solutions. And I really want to give kudos to Chris. I think he's brought that about, that we have better conversations. any companies that call me and said they were having a little bit of a challenge, they've been resolved.

Chris is one of the most helpful people down here. I don't want to name Chris because there's a lot of them. Natalie, there's a lot of people I can name. No, there's quite a lot.

I just go with the top guy. All right. Hey, thank you.

All right, Christine.

This is on the motion to approve Resolution 27-042. Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent. And Mayor?

Yes. Next is...

It's not a first reading.

Yeah, 8.6. Council bill number 27-006, ordinance number 3122, approving a 10-year lease agreement between the City of Las Cruces and Explorer Academy.

Move to approve.

Second, and happy to see you.

Thank you, Councilor Curran. All right, we're ready. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of City Council. My name is Isaac. I'm with Economic Development. And the ordinance before you is a lease agreement between the City of Las Cruces and Explorer Academy. Here's a vicinity map of the .79 acre parcel that is located in the Las Cruces Flood Control Dam. As you can see on the vicinity map, it's located on the Tal Shore and Spruce intersection, which is located right kind of in the middle of this photo. And the property encompasses .79 acres. The initial lease will be for 10 years with the option to renew for two additional five-year terms. The annual rent will be $12,240 with the annual increase of 2%. The leasee is also responsible for all maintenance, repair, and upkeep of the lease premise. The use for this parcel is gonna be for the playground that serves the Public Charter School Explorer Academy. And here are your standard council options, and I stand for questions, and we also have Alexis Black from Explorer Academy to answer any questions regarding the charter school as well.

All right, thank you, Isaac. Any questions? No, see, Christine?

This is on the motion to approve ordinance 3122. Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse? Yes. Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Councillor Curran? Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent. And Mayor?

Yes. Next is item 8.7, council bill number 27-007, ordinance number 3123. This ordinance to amend section 19-131 of the Las Cruces Municipal Code 1997 regarding construction, repair, and demolition hours. Move to approve.

Second.

good afternoon mayor city council chris favor with community development uh so today we are going to walk through a proposal to make a slight modification to the construction hours in las cruces and to add some additional language that gives public works director and It gives the public works director and the community development director a little bit more flexibility when working with contractors. So currently the hours are 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. year-round. What we're proposing is from May 1st through the end of September to go from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., let them start a little bit earlier, and because the days are longer, let construction work a little bit later into the evening. Like I said that we've added some language that provides clear standards for residents contractors and staff Some things that can be enforced But really what we're trying to do is just balance the needs of the construction industry with some of the hotter weather that we're seeing And some of the other challenges that the construction industry is seeing with other commercial development or residential development in the area There's also language in there that clarifies working outside the established hours, conditions when that can happen, and then also spelling out that if there is a need to do some sort of inspections with the project, that those would need to be coordinated with availability of either community development staff or public work staff or utility staff or perhaps park staff as well. So those are your four options. I stand for questions. Thank you.

thank you chris counselor correct thank you thank you for bringing this forward and i i i guess my first question is i i think Probably. I'm curious what prompted this. I mean, I know what prompted it, climate change, people working till they die. I understand the bigger context of this. But I'm curious what requests you're having. Because to be honest, 6 AM doesn't actually seem early enough for me, although I understand community members. And so I'm curious what prompted this. And then if there's a way that you can talk about, I would love an approach that really sort of makes it so that workers do not have to be in the hottest parts of the day in whatever way that can. And so I would like for the discretion to be pretty liberal in that until there's a reason to call it back, which I think is what you're alluding to in this. But I'm curious. Do you get this type of requests? What kind of projects are they that they're working on? Because the State Department of Transportation will work overnight, right? So they don't seem to have to abide by this, I infer. But I understand why they do that. So I'm curious if you can talk about where these requests come from and the discretion or the sort of defaults position of you all when this comes up. Sure.

Mayor, Councilor Cran, great question. We've heard for a while questions about whether we could change some of the hours. But I would think a lot of this conversation actually originates when it comes to pouring concrete in the summer hours, just because the hotter it gets, the faster it dries. That's where a lot of this sort of originates trying to balance because a lot of this is commercial, excuse me, residential when it's commercial stuff. It's easier to deal with because typically there's not a lot of residential. And even though the current language of the code doesn't allow, like, the public works director or community development or anything else to. go in and give them the authority to do that, which we're adding now. We typically work on these projects one-off, like Suspara was just doing something a couple weeks ago. They needed to get in there early to pour concrete. Situations like that, we just kind of like, okay. But this sort of gives us a little bit more flexibility to officially do that. really what a lot of this is is where we're seeing a lot of the residential development up in in your district and potentially others down the road so what ideally what i would like to see is if we know that a that a builder is going to go into an area where the houses aren't right there like maybe it's new streets starting from stress you know from scratch and like a new subdivision we could have a little bit more flexibility if the early hours are not going to bother the local residents where we would like to be able to enforce those hours if there's houses where they're working on, say, one side of the street, but the other side of the street already has houses. So we would like them to be cognizant of residents that are still living on that street. So I think part of this is sort of a two-step process. amend this language to give us a little bit more flexibility and then work closer with the builders to say okay what projects are you working on where are they at where can we be a little bit more more flexible in the hours to get them out there earlier when it's not going to be a burden to the residents so that's kind of how i'd like to see this as being sort of the first step

Thank you, I appreciate that. And I guess I would issue a few sort of things. That is, if you move into a development with empty spots, you should know sometime you're gonna experience construction noise. I would hope folks know that. But I would also argue, I think, I understand that folks want comfort and noise is an issue. I think it's pretty finite in the case of the kinds of noise that happen, but I would also say, comfort versus life, right? Like if this is about having people work during peak heat hours versus being able to work more comfortably and not be putting their lives at risk for jobs. because it's noisy, I think I would just ask for a strong discretion toward workers' safety in that context. And thank you for telling me about the concrete, because I didn't even think of that as a variable. That wasn't one of the variables that I was thinking of, but it makes total sense. So thank you for that, but I would ask that the workers' safety be the highest priority in the decision-making process. Thanks.

Council Member Como.

Thank you. Thanks, Chris. You know, I've only had a couple of residents reach out to me about issues concerning complaints, really, regarding construction crews working outside of the required hours. I don't know if us changing those hours will help remedy those complaints. I mean, it will because they'll be lawful. It won't because I think People don't always appreciate that kind of noise, especially perhaps not in newer neighborhoods, but I think in already established neighborhoods. So I do think, I wonder if there's... going to be a process Chris for when if we need to revisit this at any point in the future I hear you on obviously on worker safety I hope that I you know a resolution like this isn't going to unfortunately improve worker pay worker many things but I am nervous Chris that this will that this will attract, reasonably so, neighbors who may have issues with construction starting at 6 a.m. and maybe going to 8 p.m. I'm just curious if you're ready for those conversations.

Mayor Councilman come oh yeah we get them quite frequently I will also say that codes has been a big help in sort of tampering a lot or tamping down a lot of the after hours work whether it's early in the morning or late at night they've been very responsive in fact. we had a project just the other day where they asked if they could pour concrete early I said yes I let codes know and the concrete company still called me and wanted to make sure that they were good to move forward because codes has been getting out there and sort of enforcing that where that may have not been a priority because of manpower issues in the past so I think working with codes they can sort of enforce these things a little bit more and then just having those conversations with with those residents it's

it's not going to stop the complaints but i think it gives us a little more flexibility to kind of deal with the residents and the builders at the same time thank you well as the most helpful person in city hall i have full trust that you'll have i thought that was the city clerk but that's about city clerk of the state so sorry for you thank you all right christy

This is on the motion to approve ordinance 3123. Councillor McClure. Yes. Councillor Matisse. Yes. Councillor Harris. Yes. Councillor Bencomo. Yes. Councillor Curran. Yes. Councillor Munoz is absent and Mayor.

Yes. Next is board appointments, there are none. So then we'll move to notice of proposed ordinance. Council bill number 27-008, ordinance number 3124, an ordinance approving zoning map amendment for LIU Light Industrial Urban to commercial retail. Bring it forward.

next we'll go to city council member board reports and comments council mcclure thank you mayor i'll keep it relatively quick because my voice is going but i wanted to highlight that next week we're having our evening work session at 6 p.m here in council chambers doing youth advisory council and gun violence initiative we really want youth and families to come out we also have casa de peregrinos Joining us to give out some fruits and vegetables and I'm looking forward to kind of a rousing discussion. Hopefully also just a side note that Just given the last couple of days I just want to say for myself that I don't think that New Mexico needs a rebrand and it doesn't matter what anybody with a sharpie says Thanks Thank You councilman chase

Thank you, Mary. Just a few things. I just want to share with the council that had a meeting with New Mexico State University social department, social studies department, and they're real interested. And I think Connie is planning a future meeting that the strategic planners and the consultants will meet with them and maybe they could partake. and give their take on youth programs and what's needed both in career training, apprenticeships for trades, and other ideas that they had. It was very fruitful. There was about three or four social workers at the meeting, and I believe Dr. Ted Lenzo, and they all had really good input. just want to thank them if anyone's listening I don't know how many people listen to this council meeting I think it's gone up to three or four but if they're listening I really appreciate their attendance I'd like to also maybe Jimmy Moreno there's I don't know who's doing the work at Franco Pape and the Center, but we're getting some people calling me, particularly Dr. Lee Webb is his name, and if you could find out when that project will be completed. I guess many of the seniors attending the Franco-Papin Community Center for lunch use walkers. And if you have parking issues and parking too far away, they just can't make that particular walk. So they like to know when that parking lot would be done. And someone said it will be gravel. And I'm wondering, will it be smooth, that pavement, eventually? Or right now, I guess it's just gravel with some liquid material being... You know, I hope it's not gravel, you know, with wheelchairs and walkers and things like that. Thanks.

Mayor, Councilor Batiste, Jimmy Moreno with Public Works, Interim Public Works Director. So we're doing a cape seal, which is a chip seal, followed by a micro surface over that. So it's an additional layer. And then we will also be restriping that parking lot as well. So it will not be left gravel.

Okay, and do you have a timeframe?

At this point, we're doing it in stages, so part of it's gonna be done internally with internal forces to be doing the chip seal, and then later on, we'll get a contractor to do the microsurface, and then we'll have to stripe it at the very end. So we're looking at at least a couple months, but at any point, it'll be traversable.

Okay, maybe by Thanksgiving, so they can have their Thanksgiving meals.

Correct.

Okay, appreciate it. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you very much. I was going to bring up, I discussed this with the city manager about getting a clarity on a consensus for tiny homes. I was gonna ask for a show of hands, but it looks like all hands are not aboard, so I'll just bring it up at a future meeting on the tiny homes. I thought it was clear, but maybe not. On the strategic plan, not only is the university going to give some input in a future meeting, but I'd like to see maybe an extension. Maybe I can get a number. Is anyone here representing the strategic plan that we know the number of respondents? You know, how many responded to the survey totally? And not counting repeaters, repeat offense, not offense, but repeat voters.

Mr. Mayor, Councilor Matisse. So there were 331 respondents, unique respondents on the survey. In the meetings, I think we had a total of 83. And I think somewhere around, I think about 10, as the consultants were trying to pull the data for us, were people that had signed on at other meetings as well. So probably somewhere around 80, about 73 unique actual visits in person, plus the unique surveys.

And it's just asking my colleagues and council if maybe we ought to go out. I see the El Paso electric bill had a QR code that took you to the website. And in 2026, I think we could have had a QR code that could have just taken us to the survey. So there was a layer there and I helped a couple of neighbors navigate it. I'm thinking that that's not a good number out of 113,000 residents and so I'd like to see maybe an extension for the strategic plan or another shot at getting some surveys out both the electric bill in a better way and then

maybe in our utility bills as well so just just a suggestion and if it goes flat that's fine mr mayor matisse real quick just so the we'll have a draft online at the end of this month after we do the next work session that will be another opportunity for the comment for the public to comment on that so i'll work with communications to make sure we get that message out to the community that this is their opportunity to publicly comment on the draft that has been presented to council. That allows us to keep our deadline of getting this adopted by December, which is when the current one expires. So that next step will be part of the process already.

When that draft goes out, Chris, will it have any different type of approach or using a different meet, or will we just get the same 300 to 400 people? I guess 600's not bad out of 113,000, but will it be the same efforts?

The smear comes from a TCI will work with communications to try and get the word out through all the various channels that we have available to us and hopefully we can get more than the previous amount and hopefully different voices as well.

Thank you. Thank you man.

Thank you. Councillor Harris.

Thanks Mayor. So I have a handful of things I'll try to be brief. First, I mentioned it last time, but continuing to work with the city manager and our policy analysts on a comprehensive surveillance ordinance that kind of governs how we purchase surveillance technology in the city and make sure that it's fair to the people who need it for the capabilities and transparent to the public and not misused. So hope to see that in a work session soonish. The other thing I do support, if we can work with Roadrunner Food Bank, I think being able to support their pass-through funding for their freezers in some way is an interesting thing, and I hope that we can work on that. I'd also like to preemptively thank all the residents in the community for their patience on the upcoming spruce and Telshore and Traviz project. That's going to be a huge project. And hopefully it'll solve some issues. And I'd also like to thank the communications department for their work with Public Works to put out the video that described what's going to happen in very simple terms. I talked to many people over the weekend who had seen the video and were concerned about the timeline of the project. but what we were doing made sense, so I think that was very helpful to do. Finally, it's a shame Nicole's not here, but she and her community outreach team graciously let me tag along with them a couple weeks ago. And we went around and delivered some lunches to folks and brought a couple folks to the cooling center at Community of Hope. And I got to talk to them and really get to know the jobs that they're doing and what they need. And really what what I came out of there that I wanted to report is that what they need is rental assistance to help people stay in their homes and not go homeless in the first place. And that that at the moment is the most urgent and perhaps helpful thing that we can do for those organizations and that population that really need the assistance. So. just something else for us to look at um and yeah thanks thanks to all the folks and soup kitchen and um sorry last thing i should announce is the district 3 community meeting is tonight so come out to conley elementary at six and uh and we'll be there in the cafeteria and looking forward to talk with everyone thanks thank you councilman

Thanks, Mayor. I didn't have anything today, but I do feel compelled to say something, not in defense of, but just to uplift the trust and confidence that at least I have in our staff, especially our utility staff. I think until we end personal attacks at the podium during public comment, I know First Amendment rights or whatever, but personal attacks I think go too far. I do think it's incumbent upon us as elected officials to highlight the good work that many of our staff do and I think Utilities for what it's worth so many of our blue-collar workers it's very thankless job and That department does incredible work all across our community. We were definitely notice it if they were gone and I have the utmost trust and confidence in the administrative staff at utilities. Even when we disagree on things, as someone who's on the board of the utilities board, even when I disagree with staff or even members of the commission, we can keep it respectful and I still know that I have trust and confidence in the competence, especially in the competence intelligence and commitment to the work that utilities staff, all the way from administrative level down to every gas technician. I just wanted to lift that up. I think it's been clear to me that the goalpost of some quote unquote advocates on the issue of lead and copper have just been moving the goalpost now to where they're calling for the resignation of a very competent and trustworthy director. So I just wanted to lift that up because I think we should do that. Honestly, it's our responsibility when personal attacks are allowed here, and I want to make sure that folks like Adrian and Steve and others feel supported in the good work that they're doing. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you and thanks for bringing that up councilman go because I was thinking the same thing I've always shared that when we have problems we have an environmental problem we have a process problem we have a people problem. They started out coming to our public participation with an environmental and a process problem utilities has already addressed those issues have done presentations have sent out literature in English and in Spanish, and now it's gotten down to the problem is people. And so now they start attacking the people. And you're absolutely correct. Utilities is doing a great job. They come forward, they present. And the regulatory component that our utilities has to go through on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, to make sure that our people are safe and the drinking water we have is tremendous. And kudos go to them for all the work that they do. So thank you for bringing it up. And I just want to piggyback on that and say you're absolutely correct. Utilities is doing a tremendous job. It's just... a certain couple of individuals that now have gone from an environmental to a process to a people problem. with that I just want to give some shout outs and some kudos we hosted the New Mexico Municipal League and it was tremendous so visit Las Cruces city manager his office and all the staff all the individuals that helped out with hosting that got nothing but compliments it was a great event where there was some Information and inspiration that took place one of the keynote speakers talked on about about dignity and that's something that we all need to look at as Everyone in our community our state in our nation Dignity was was a huge word that mr. Shriver's presentation was on that was very impactful and Also, last week I attended the Governor's Economic Development Conference that was in Albuquerque and just want to share. It's always great. There's always a strategic plan. There's always an investment plan. The state is moving in a good direction because we have money. When you have $75 billion in savings and $4 billion of new money coming, and there there is no reason not to be optimistic so just want to share that with you that there is money there uh we heard it from a senator earlier saying that there is money we do have money so uh let's see if we can get it down to the southern part of new mexico Shout out to NMSU again. I appreciate them coming today and also a great win for the football team on Saturday. Mesilla Park Elementary had a celebration on Friday for 50 years that they were in that building. Mesilla Park Elementary has been around for 117 years but in the existing building was 50 years so they had a celebration for that and That was great to see their PTO, their students, their teachers and staff come together and celebrate 50 years of existence in that building. And also, there was an international baseball tournament. It was ages 40 to 60 year olds of individuals playing baseball in Las Cruces during the Labor Day weekend. What was unique and exciting about this was nine of the teams were from Mexico. One from El Paso, one from Sunland, and one from Las Cruces. But they came down, they spent the weekend here in Las Cruces and had a great time and enjoyed competing and playing baseball here. And six of our different fields, Apalaca Park was one, Donyana, and a few others that they had the tournament. Really exciting for them. So that's what I wanted to share. And with that, I'll turn it over to the city manager.

Thank you, Mayor Enriquez and City Council. City Manager, just a few announcements. I appreciate the words that were shared about Adrian Widmer and our utilities staff. They do an excellent job and I appreciate the hard work. that they're doing to move the work forward when it comes to lead and copper and disseminating accurate information. Our staff will continue to do that, not only here, but we have interviews set up with local media and regional media to get the word out. And so I appreciate staff working hard on it to make sure that we get Again, the accurate and appropriate information out, and I just want to thank Adrian's and Dominique's work on that, and Steve, thank you for your work on that. Additionally, as some have mentioned, and Mayor, New Mexico League came to our town and Las Cruces showed out Thank you to those that ran point to visit Las Cruces team Rochelle and to the team and to all the departments and to Annette and Amber making it happen along with facilities our public works team and Parks and Rec and honestly, I'm gonna There's so many departments and individuals that helped with this, but thank you. Heard nothing but compliments. Again, as many on the dais had heard, Las Cruces, again, showed out very well. So thank you to our team members moving the needle on that. Last but not least, I would like to share a helpful reminder as staff we do our best to hold the line and sometimes the the line is the line so when it comes to when it comes to getting projects approved to to the state, the DFA department holds a line on getting projects to them that are on the ICIP project. So in order to get on the ICIP project for this upcoming legislative session, they tell us that we should have submitted our ICIP list to them July 1st. So just wanted to make you aware of that. And so if we miss that July 1st, the line that DFA has told us is once we approve the budget next year in May of 27, typically that's when we approve our budget, then we can approve the CIP project, then that can be our ICIP that we take to the state deadline July 1st in 27, which will then come for the upcoming legislative session. The caveat to that is we'll look in the state and see if there's any flexibility there. If there is, we'll come back. Christine is preparing a work session for you for the priorities on November 9th, and we'll give you an update because if there is any flexibility, you can have the decision as council to add that as well. So just wanted to let you know what's coming up. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I'll look for a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn.

This is on the motion to adjourn the meeting. Councillor McClure? Yes. Councillor Matisse?

Go Aggies, yes.

Councillor Harris? Yes. Councillor Bencomo? Yes. Women's soccer Saturday, don't forget. Go Aggies. Councillor Curran and Munoz are absent, and Mayor?

Yes.