County Council - Session - workshop

Good evening and welcome to the June 23rd, 2026 County Council Work Session at Fire Station 3. Tonight's meeting is in hybrid format with council, presenters, and public participation in person or on Zoom. Attendees can participate virtually by computer or other devices. Phone lines are also available. Public comment will be accepted at the beginning of the meeting on topics that are not on tonight's agenda. Comments on agenda items will be taken when that item is discussed during the meeting. Please limit comments to three minutes or as otherwise directed and state your name before making comments. During public comment, Ms. Madison will look for virtual attendees that use the raise your hand feature on Zoom or star nine on the phone line. Virtual commenters should include their name on Zoom so that they can be properly addressed. Comments should be addressed to the chair and should be focused on topic being considered. Our goal is to complete the meeting no later than 10 p.m. We will check our progress around 9 p.m. with this goal in mind. And the first item on the agenda is the opening roll call. Can the clerk please call for roll?

Councilor Regor?

Here.

Councilor Cole?

Here.

Councillor Haverman? Here. Councillor Herman? Here. Councillor Reidy?

I'm on Zoom.

Councillor Neil Clinton? Here. Councillor Hend? Here. We have five councillors in chambers with Chair Reidy and Councillor Hend remote.

Thank you very much. Let the record show that all seven councillors are present with two remote. The next item is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand as you are willing and able and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the statement regarding the closed session that we had earlier today at 4 o'clock. Is there a councilor interested in making the statement on the closed session?

I move that council approve the items on the consent agenda as presented and that the motions in the staff report be included for the record.

Thank you. Yeah, it's not. Go back and look at the closed session.

So we're looking for the closed session statement. That's okay. Thank you. Anybody?

Do you ever take that counselor have one? Thank you, Chair. The matters discussed in the closed sessions of County Council held on June 23rd, 2026, that began at 4.30 p.m., was limited only to the topics, actually started at 4 p.m., limited only to the topics specified in the notice of the closed session, and no action was taken on any matter in the closed session. We request this statement be included in the meeting minutes. Thank you both.

The next item on the agenda is public comment. So this section of the agenda is reserved for comments from the public on items that are not on tonight's agenda. Do any of the members, any of the public want to comment now? Okay. Ms. Madison, do you want to check and see if there are any members of the public on Zoom that want to comment?

Yes, I will. Madison Figueroa, you have your hand up, please. You should be able to unmute. Hello, can you hear me? Yes.

Awesome. Hello, my name is Madison Figueroa. I'm a college student at the University of New Mexico working with the Los Alamos Study Group, and I'm an officer for Albuquerque Students for Nuclear Disarmament. When people talk about my generation's future in New Mexico, they promise economic growth, jobs, and opportunities. But as someone from the generation that is supposed to inherit this future, I want to speak about what I see happening now. The continued expansion of the Los Alamos National Laboratory is making life much more difficult for many young individuals and working families across Northern New Mexico. Housing prices continue to rise in communities around the lab. Many students and families are being priced out of the places they grew up in and call home. For my generation, finding affordable housing is the start of a stable future, but it is feeling more and more out of reach. The traffic situation is also getting out of hand. Roads are becoming more and more congested because of people's need to commute to LANL. Communities are being forced to absorb the impacts of rapid growth without the infrastructure needed to support it. This affects quality of life and increases pollution. I am also concerned about the opportunities being created in New Mexico and who they are being created for. LANL attracts enormous amounts of funding, resources, and political attention. At the same time, younger generations struggle to find housing and stable career opportunities outside of New Mexico's nuclear weapon industry. The state of New Mexico should not be reliant on a single institution or an arms race for its economic future. The environmental impact of LANL's expansion cannot be ignored. More development, more traffic, more used resources, and more nuclear weapons will place additional pressure on New Mexico's water, land, and communities. These are important resources that my generation will depend on long after any current decisions are made. As a college student and as an individual who is constantly told that it is my responsibility to fix past wrongs, I am asking you to think about the future you are creating. My generation and the ones that come after deserve affordable housing, clean air and water, diverse economic opportunities, and a state that invests in our future rather than making it harder to build one. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Figueroa. Are there any other comments?

Vice Chair, I'm not seeing any other hands raised.

Thank you very much. The next item on the agenda, item five, is the approval of the agenda. Is there a counselor interested in making a motion on the agenda?

I move that we approve the agenda as presented.

Second. Who had that?

Thank you. Let's see. Is there any discussion on this agenda? Not seeing any. Can all those in favor please raise? I guess we need to have the clerk call the roll on that.

Councillor Cole?

Yes.

Councillor Rigor?

Yes.

Councillor Hend? Yes. Councilor have been yes. Councilor Herman yes, Councilor no Clinton, yes, Councilor ready.

Yes.

Motion passes 70.

Thank you let the record show the motion to approve the agenda passed unanimously. And the next item on the agenda is Presentations, Proclamations, and Recognitions. The first one, item 21136-26, Briefing Presentation to Council by Tim Foley, Chair of the Art in Public Places Advisory Board. Welcome.

Thank you. OK. Am I on now? Okay. So I'm here this evening to present you with some updates and some statuses on where we have been, where we are currently, and where we're going with the Art in Public Places Board. So if you would, next slide, please. So just so as a reminder for everybody, I'm going to kind of read this. But so through the Art in Public Places Fund, we advise the acquisition, installation, maintenance, and deaccessioning of some of the county-owned artwork, which is supported by the allocations from Capital Improvement Road Projects. Just to be clear, there is a substantial body of art in the county that the Art in Public Places Board doesn't oversee. A lot of the pieces at the library that you might see are not ours, but we try to maintain everything that we do own. There is some cross-talk between the collections from the various organizations in the county and ours, and we'll go into some of that in a little bit. But the goal that we have is to develop – so one thing that we have been working on is developing a formalized process. So when we first started – when I first started on the board, it was sort of an ad hoc decision-making process for what we procure. We had dialogue guidance that was sort of established by the county charter, but it wasn't really a laid-out process that sort of documented the decisions and the various points we've been making as we go through the decision-making process. So I, with the rest of the board, and Chelsea – who's here this evening, have been working on developing that process. And hopefully you folks find that helpful as we're going through making decisions for recommendations for you guys to vote on for approval. Next slide, please. Okay, so we have two pieces that were already commissioned prior to this. Those were commissioned under the former chair, Stephanie Hauser, who's here this evening. And one was the art at the Leisure Lagoon, which folks can go see now. It was commissioned a while ago. And then we had a donation that we oversaw. It is an acoustic. It was exhibited in the gallery at the library, the Step-Up Gallery. And then the artist chose to donate the piece because she liked the library so much and wanted to see her art exhibited there. And we were more than happy to accommodate that. Next slide. So more recently, we have done a few pieces. We at the bottom left hand, that's a piece that we had commissioned for the senior center. They were wanting to have an art piece that is actually sort of a sister piece to the piece that you might see in front of the library. As you walk up to the front side of the library, there's a gate there. This is a sister piece, sort of a common, you know. uh also works it has serves dual purpose uh in that the uh the senior center had a bunch of folks who were trying to get up on that patio and use it after hours and though this is a one-way gate that sort of prohibits that so it does double duty as security and art for the community We had the 25th anniversary for the Peak Center that we celebrated last year. We were kind of slow in getting the piece that we had sort of brought in for their 25th anniversary. But we did get it delivered this birthday. And as you can see there, there's a picture of it. And it was a joint effort between us and the board of Peak. And so that was a nice piece that we had put in. Sort of slightly different. I followed a different procedure. So in some cases, we put out a call for art where we specify what we'd like. And then we have a number of artists who respond and provide us with, you know, estimates as to what they would like to provide us. And in some cases, we go out into the community, find pieces that are in existence, and procure them for the location. And that was what we did with the Raven Dialogue. That was a piece that was in existence that we procured. Sometimes that's a more economically feasible approach. And one of the other things that we've been doing, especially as we're going through and procuring new pieces, whether it's a piece that's in existence or a commission piece, we are extensively questioning the community, sending out questionnaires. And we've had a pretty good feedback in a lot of those questionnaires, positive feedback. And it's also helping us with some of the decisions we're having to make as we go into de-sessioning pieces. Next slide, please. So speaking of deaccessioning, so one of the pieces that we have voted to recommend for deaccessioning is aquatic figures. And I believe you all have voted on that or... It's a piece that was at the pool. We felt it was the right time to deaccession it. It had suffered a pretty extensive damage over the years being at the pool. We had talked about trying to get an artist to come in and redo the piece, but that was sort of out of question given the permissions. And so we chose to have it covered, painted over. Another piece that we have deaccessioned is Split Infinity. It was a kinetic art. It sort of disassembled itself while it was on display. We contacted the art gallery that sold it to us, and they were willing to replace the piece at no cost as long as we returned the piece that had disassembled during display. So both those pieces should be out of the catalog of pieces for the Art in Public Places Board soon. Next slide, please. Two pieces that we are considering deaccessioning are Tranquility, and the reason I sort of bring these up is these are sort of community favorites. Tranquility, as you may know, it's in the pond. So it's quite a well-known piece for our collection. Being in the pond, it has suffered quite a bit of damage from the waterfowl that like to get on it and do their business. And so that is not made for that. And so it's rusting pretty substantively. The folks who do our maintenance on the art pieces that have told us that it's pretty much going to be a loss here in the next five years. And so as a consequence, we are considering taking it out of the collection. The plan would be, at least currently what we're discussing, is to take that piece out of the collection. and substitute it for another piece, bring that piece in. We probably have two or three years before it will become an eyesore, for lack of a better term. So we have some time to consider this and work through that process, but the intent is to remove that from the collection. Another piece that we're considering is Dino World. This is in the basement at the library. So as you come off of the stairwells in the basement, this painting of dinosaurs in prehistoric Los Alamos is there to be seen. It also has seen significant wear in its time there. It's well loved, but it's also starting to show cracking, and we feel that it probably will become a problem in short order. For this one, we have been having trouble contacting the artist about removing it. We'd like to return it to the artist if they'd like it, but we've not been able to get any feedback on that. So we're still trying to determine what we would do with it when we deaccession it. No plans to replace it with anything yet, but perhaps we can come up with something. Next slide, please. So one of the things that we're, I think, most happy about and maybe under consideration for a replacement for Dino World is the mosaic that we put up at the corner near the police department. The ribbon cutting was a week and a half ago, two weekends ago. We had the community participate in this. It started out as an art project that had been going to go on the wall at the golf course. uh and uh at the time the folks uh that we surveyed didn't really like what had been proposed but we liked what jay music the artist had sort of uh shown us and so we looked for alternate locations for the piece And as a consequence, we were able to come to the determination that we could put it up at the police department across the street from right next to the pond. And so, yeah, folks driving into work every morning can see this piece. And the nice thing was, is that Jay offered up to let the community participate in the assembly of the mosaic. And so on a Saturday, I think we had somewhere over 140 folks come in and do the assembly for the mosaic pieces. And then the subsequent weekend, Jay put it up, and it's been commissioned. And I think a lot of you folks were there. So, yeah. Next slide, please. And this is the ribbon cutting. So there you can see the mosaic and its final piece. If you haven't seen it already, I encourage you to go see it. It's right there, right next to the police station. Next slide, please. Okay, new board members. So we have one board position open on the board. It is currently unfilled. We had one applicant. We had to decline their application. I don't know how else to say that. They're a member of the Democratic Party, and we currently are full of members that are Democrats, registered Democrats. And so right now we are looking for an independent or a Republican. So if you know anyone who's interested in art, please encourage them. Next slide, please. And this is a list of things that we have that are coming up. I won't go into all of them, but leave it to say that we have a number of art pieces that we are working to bring into the collection over the course of the next several years. And I'll leave it at that for the time being and open the floor to questions.

Got any more slides?

No. Okay. There we go. Questions. Thank you.

I don't have a question, but I do have a comment. Last year I was on the board. I liaised for the board and you guys are incredibly busy. I'm extremely pleased with the process that you've put in place that's more organized. And it's something that you can pass on because you're right. The ad hoc part was really not workable.

Yeah.

So I just wanted to give you kudos on that. No, it's good to see you.

Thank you, counselor. Good to see you too.

Any other comments or questions? Any public comments on that? Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation. You guys are very busy.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is item 21592-26, the update on the citizen petition for the North Road and Urban Street intersection. Welcome.

Good evening, Chair and members of Council. I'll provide a brief introduction, then hand it over to Mr. Wilson as he'll run you through the presentation. As you're likely aware, on June 3rd, staff announced the implementation of an all-way or four-way stop at the intersection of North Road and Urban Street. This decision was made after careful analysis using the criteria set out in the manual of uniform traffic control devices which governs the placement of traffic devices pursuant to county code which also provides the operational responsibility of installing traffic devices to the county's traffic engineer. And that's Tim Walker-Foster who's joined with us behind us today. With all this information known to us and given council's desire to address this petition as soon as possible, the team had enough information to implement the four-way stop. Although traffic and accident data was used in the evaluation, including the pedestrian fatality experience at this location earlier this year, it was the physical characteristics of the intersection that eventually governed this decision. Mr. Wilson, I'll walk you through the analysis. And thank you, Madam Chair.

Good evening, members of the council. Keith Wilson, Deputy Public Works Director. And that was kind of the lead on the analysis that we went through in this process with the support of the other members of Public Works. Next slide, please, Linda. So just some quick background. This initiative was spurned with the unfortunate death of Mr. Easton on March 15th when he was hit in a crosswalk at this intersection. Subsequently, a citizen petition was submitted on March 25th to council, which council addressed on April 7th, and directed staff to investigate and research and return with a recommendation within 90 days. We quickly proceeded with the data collection the following week and through the rest of April, collecting various metrics such as traffic speeds, traffic volumes, turning movement counts and the like, and collecting data on the physical features of the intersection as well, which we'll run through. As Mr. Martinez mentioned, on June 3rd, we did implement They always stop. And just for reference, I'll be saying always stop through this presentation because that's the technical term in the manual and uniform traffic and things rather than a four-way stop. And then on June 4th, a presentation was given to the Transportation Board basically going through the bulk of what I'm going to present to you tonight and the reasons for the recommendation and implementation. And then obviously we're here this evening to present to council. Next slide, please, Linda. So looking at what was the existing conditions when we did the evaluation, Urban Street and North Road creates a crossroad, what we call a crossroad intersection. Urban Street is an east-west roadway with approximately 33 feet wide paved area. with the sidewalks on both sides of the street. North Road runs north-south and is about 40 feet wide, has a bike lane on the southern legs and also parking lanes. The stop control was only on the North Road approaches. Urban Street was basically free-flowing. There was also a cross-traffic-does-not-stop plaque under each of the stop signs to reinforce to drivers on North Road that... the urban street traffic was not stopping. Also more crosswalks on the east approach of Urban Street and across both approaches of North Road. Next slide, please. Other infrastructure at this intersection included the Atomic Transit Route 4 stops on the north road approaches, north and south. Buses on this route run every 30 minutes between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. Additionally, Los Alamos Public Schools Route 1 for middle school students It has a pickup spot on the northeast corner of the intersection, which has a pickup approximately at 8.13 a.m. During that time, we observed five to six students getting together in that corner waiting for the bus to come. And then in the afternoons, the bus stops on the northwest side by the atomic transit bus stop around about 4.01. During that drop-off, we observed three to four students exiting the bus. Next slide. Part of what we also looked at was kind of the snow and ice control measures and the safe routes to school. So the graphic on the left shows the snow and ice control, the priorities. Both urban and north are priority one streets, which means they get hit first during a snow event. We also talked to our crews who have experience in these areas, and this area is not one of those areas that's kind of on their watch list when we have the aftermath of snow events. Because of the exposure, there's really no shading in this area. The street pretty much is not a nice and concern. The graphic on the right hand side shows our safe route to school routes, and these are primarily used for snow plowing the sidewalks, but also shows that north and urban roads in this area are also identified as safe routes to school for the mountain elementary school.

Next slide.

So this one's a little kind of traffic engineering geeky. This is what we term as a turning movement count graphic. And it basically shows the volumes of traffic and pedestrian movements utilizing the intersection during peak periods. The numbers in the blue show the totals either for the intersection as a whole or each of the turning movements. I mean, each of the time periods. We looked at three different time periods, AM peak, which was 7.15 to 8.15. which basically coincides with school traffic going in and out. There really wasn't like a midday peak like we would see downtown. So the kind of the midday peak corresponded with the school pickup time, which was like 2 to 3 p.m., and then the p.m. peak was 5 to 6 p.m., although the 4 to 5 time period wasn't that far behind in actual traffic volumes. The overall kind of look at this intersection, the traffic volumes are more with, would not be a congestion concern if the intersection was turned to an always stop. They're well within the capacity limits for that type of intersection. Next slide. We also looked at the crash history. for this location. And we look back to January of 29th, from January of 2019 through March of 2025, which was kind of the current time period when we were doing this evaluation. During that time period, we identified eight crashes in total at this intersection. So just kind of just slightly over one per year. One of those unfortunately was a fatal to Mr. Easton Three were injury crashes and four were property damage crashes. The other seven were vehicle-on-vehicle crashes, and the predominant pattern was vehicles on North Road either... not stopping at the stop sign or stopping, but proceeding and having into a conflict with vehicles and urban roads. So basically like a T-bone crash. This crash type is one that could be corrected by an always stop type, installation. Weather did not seem to be an issue with any of the crashes, seven were in clear and dry conditions, one was in wet conditions, seven were in daylight, one in dark, and citation-wise, seven received stop sign violations. Next slide. Just on the crash data, we did take a broader look at the crash data, because I know when this was in front of council back in April, they asked, should we be looking further? So what we did is we looked at the crash data at the adjacent intersections around Urban Park. There really was no other crashes at any of the, there was like a couple of crashes adjacent intersections, but nothing that raised a concern. We also looked at speed data, and our primary concern for speed data was on urban street. So we set up radar detectors, and on the graphic, you can kind of see the zone where we were collecting the speed data. Ultimately, the metric we use is what's called 85%, so it basically says 85% of the vehicles were going at or below that speed. And that's what's deemed reasonable. So the 85th percentile was 27 and 28 mile an hour in Auburn. The speed limit's 25. So it's really not that bad. And the pace speed where the majority of vehicles were traveling was 19 to 28 mile an hour at both locations. We did have one outlier where They were observed going over 50 mile an hour. That turned out to be the same vehicle at both locations. And so that was definitely an outlier. I'm not sure what was going on there. But overall, the speeds were not a concern. And one of the metrics that shows enforcement and it ranks it as a low. So if PD was out there, they probably wouldn't catch too many people from a speeding standpoint. Next slide. The other piece that we looked at is what's called sight distance. So basically that's when you're at your stop sign and you look both ways for vehicles. What you create is a triangle, so where the driver would be at a certain height, and then they have to go at distance so that if a vehicle's traveling at 25 mile an hour, you need to be able to see them at such a distance for you to make that decision. So when we looked at the North North Road South approach or northbound approach, sorry there were no sight distance concerns that there was clear views to the left to the left and the right for the drivers. And just on the just know the red triangle is for 25 mile an hour. The blue dotted one is a 30 mile an hour, so we were kind of looking at that because our 85th percentile was above the 25. Next slide. On the southbound approach, we did the same evaluation. At the 25 mile an hour, technically, you do have good sight distance or you can meet the sight distance at 25 mile an hour. But as the little inset picture shows you, there's quite a lot of clutter if you're looking to the right. The roadway kind of goes up to the hill and there's some shrubs and different elements there. As I say, technically you do meet the site distance requirements, but it is kind of squirrelly looking up in that direction and we can address that later on. But to the to the left, there's no issues with site distance down the hill. Next slide. So all this data that we've collected, the manual on uniform traffic control devices provides what are called warrants to consider when you're evaluating for an all-way stop. You probably heard us talk about warrants in relation to traffic signals. These are a little more flexible. You have a little more leeway in these measures to see if you meet them or not. And there are five... warrants. The first one is the crash experience. We did not meet that crash experience, which requires five crashes in a 12-month period or six in a 36-month period, so we didn't actually technically meet those. The crash types are something that could be corrected by an always stop, but if we're looking just purely at the metrics that they're asking for, it is not met. The second warrant is the site distance. And basically what I was just discussing you, that looking to the right on the southbound approach on North Road is really on the margins and based on our judgment that it's something that we could justify meeting a warrant in the warrant analysis. The next warrant is a warrant C transition to a signal or a roundabout. That's essentially if you have a capacity issue and you're You don't have the money to do the infrastructure improvements to make a traffic signal or roundabout. You could use a all way stop as an interim, uh, measure get you through to until you do that full build at this point we're nowhere near justifying changing you know to a traffic signal around about this location from a traffic control standpoint for congestion so that's not met 1d is the eight hour volume so looking at over an eight hour period what your hourly volumes are uh that requires about 300 vehicles per hour we don't even have one hour meeting that threshold so we don't meet that And then there's the final one is kind of other factors. And one of the ones they say is if two roadways intersecting roadways have a similar classification or functionality. So in this case, both these roads are deemed collector roadways. So it's not like a collector and a residential street, like one of the neighboring streets, both these roads are what we deem collector roadways. So that's something that allows us to say that this warrant is met. The other justifications that we considered when we were looking at this, you know, the proximity to Tilburn Park and Mountain School, the high pedestrian volumes, we saw about 175 pedestrian crossings during the data collection period in one single day at this intersection. And then, as I mentioned before, the prominent crash type is something that could be corrected by an always stop. Next slide. And then when we were just kind of going through measuring up what we might want to do this location, we did do, we looked at two or three different concepts. One was what would we do if we maintained a two-way stop at this location? Kind of the obvious thing was we probably would do advanced stop signage to try and catch people's attention that there is a stop ahead. So we get away from those people going through it. And then maybe some painted medians on the urban street approaches just to kind of change that environment for them. We chose not to move forward with that concept. The second concept, next slide. Yeah, you moved already. is kind of like a basic, what would we need to do to just make this an always stop? So basically just adding signage on all four approaches and advanced stop signing. Next slide, Linda. But the ultimate concept that we made a recommendation to move forward with is kind of like a, A little more beefed up, always stop control. So basically adding always the stop signs on all four approaches, the advanced stop signage. And then at least for a period of time to get people aware that something's new, there's a sign that says new intersection way out ahead. I think it says, I can't remember exactly. Along with adding the painted medians, And the urban street approaches just to make that visual change to the drivers approaching stop bars and all four approaches and adding a crosswalk markings to the Western approach to urban trail. Next slide. So as Eric mentioned before, basically once we had accumulated all this data, there was a little group of us, including Public Works Director Martinez, Deputy County Manager Rael, the County Engineer Ulibarri, and Walker Foster, who's the Traffic Engineer and the Traffic and Streets Manager. We went through the data and we concurred with that last concept that I showed you. was a valid one for implementation. Based on what we had heard at previous presentations to the council on safety stuff, and the code that gives the authority to the traffic engineer to implement this stuff, we didn't feel a need that we needed to wait until we got to this presentation or to the TBOR presentation to get it implemented. So on June 3rd, our traffic crews, who are the awesomest bunch of guys ever, whatever we asked them, they get it done. So I want to give them a big shout out to them for getting this done and within about a week of us making the determination to move forward. So these pictures are just basically showing a quick view of some of the signage. The signs, some of the signs, this new traffic pattern ahead sign is not something that will be there permanently. We're anticipating, we'll monitor it, but after school starts, maybe the end of August, early September timeframe, Once everyone's had a chance to see what's going on, this sign will be removed. On the slide to the right there, you'll see there's a stop sign placed in that painted median. We don't anticipate that will remain after this kind of initial period and everyone's got used to it. Again, we're going to be monitoring the situation and making sure that everything's operating well before we make those removals. Next slide. The next steps, as I just talked about, the temporary signage, we're going to likely end August, early September. That stuff might be removed. We're continuing to monitor the operation of the intersection. We did, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, we set up our cameras. And just so we've got some video footage, I went through two or three hours of that video over the last few days. In general, everyone seems to be conforming. We have had PD out there doing some enforcement and actually caught some of that enforcement. I wouldn't, the people that they were enforcing on or providing warnings to, From the ones I viewed were more people rolling through the stop sign, not aggressively speeding through the stop signs. It's more, I don't know, somewhat typical behavior you see from sloppy drivers who don't want to come to a full stop. A California stop type thing. And then one exciting thing that came out of this through Manesh at Boomtown, he had been in contact with a gentleman called Scott Kelly, who's at the University of Nevada in Reno. And he's part of a team who's working on utilizing LiDAR detection, which is basically, I don't know, I can never describe it, but basically paints a picture with dots of what's going on. Instead of a video, you see lots of dots. And what you can do from that, you can extract a whole bunch of different information. And one of the things that we were working with, we did actually do an implementation of this intersection. We just got the study back, but it kind of shows you where there may be potential conflicts. So if a vehicle and a pedestrian are in the same space within a certain timeframe, kind of flags as a potential conflict, so this is something that's really exciting and we actually use this at the 20th and Center central intersection and then. would be through bike to work month with her a lot of feedback about the northbound on diamond approach to Canyon road, where the bike lane is kind of disappears and it's a shared. So we've actually used this. So we don't have the data results from that yet, but I'm kind of excited to see how that tool works in identifying. Ultimately, what this kind of shows is this is a type of tool that we may be moving forward. We can use proactively. We're not waiting for crashes to happen. If we hear concerns or we see concerns, we can set this device up and get data back and saying, oh, that's just a one-off or, oh, wow, we're lucky we don't have more crashes here and do that sort of stuff. So that's, I really appreciate Scott, Kelly, Manesh, us collaborating on this because this is something we've kind of been looking at, but this gave us an opportunity to really see that part of this tool. One other interesting little pieces here was they were able to track animal crossings. It wasn't many, it was like five, but it was able to show you where they were going. So this may have utility for us on time drive where we're trying to identify things. So that's something I would say could come out of this unfortunate situation. And we look forward to moving that forward. As I mentioned before, PD has done some enforcement. They give us some statistics. So far they've issued eight citations and multiple warnings for failure to stops. They continue to monitor it periodically to see what's going on. So we're working collaboratively on the data that they're collecting there and their observations, and we'll use that as we move forward. Next slide. And then when our traffic crews were out there going back and making sure things were hunky-dory, they came across this sign at Mountain Elementary, which is really appreciated. I don't know what feedback you folks have been having, but I don't think we've received any negative feedback on this directly to us. So we look forward to if people have observations and want to give us feedback, we're always welcome to that. But That's where we stand. And last slide. So we're open to any questions you may have.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Martinez. Great presentation. Does anybody have any questions?

I don't have questions, but I have comments. I actually sat in for Susie at your meeting yesterday. where I saw this presentation earlier and I just want to thank you again for being thorough. Taking your time compiling all the data because that's what was important to me was that we not rush, but we actually take our time and make an informed decision. So thank you.

Thank you.

Council happened.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Thanks so much for the thoroughness and the quality work and getting something done here. I did have a question about the warrants. There was five of them, two met, three not met. I'm just more curious in case we have other areas where we might need to take some measures Did you have to meet two of the warrants? And what would have happened if you had only met one or zero?

So if we had met one, that still would have given us... a positive direction to move forward. As I mentioned before, the always stop warrant has a little more flexibility. It does allow for what in the business is called engineering judgment. So even if, you know, some of these were like the sight distant one was marginal, but through a judgment, we said, well, you know, this is an issue because it's kind of a distraction trying to look through all the the shrubbery and stuff like that to see where you're going. And as I say, it was right on the margins. So it's not like a traffic signal warrant. There is some discretion and we have to document why we're making these decisions. And also that final other factors warrant, it's kind of open. It's not just to that collector, collector thing that it says, like these things or others. So again, we do have some discretion, but as we move forward, you know, I don't, it's, it's not something we will be jumping, everyone puts in a request. Oh, I want a four-way stop here. You know, we, we may do a first brush evaluation saying no or whatever, but there is some discretion there. And I don't know if Eric wants to add to that. given that he loved to respond to all those requests.

Thank you, Keith. So, yeah, I know judgment is kind of a flimsy word in kind of the context of it, but essentially what it means is that there's some data, there's some, you know, something known about it that would cause us to... want to install a four-way stop that to solve a problem so um we would take that kind of outlook in in anything we do when it comes to traffic control devices so um but thanks for the question that that is a good question unlike traffic signals this one's not so defined in traffic signals you do have to meet a threshold of of so many warrants to the warrant signal but um

Thank you. And so then do crosswalks kind of fall into this judgment category a little bit?

A little bit, but there's also data analysis involved with that as well.

That must be done. And so, you know, I wasn't sure what you meant by other factors. Now I understand that two similar arteries in this case are both kind of considered collectors, North Road and Urban. I was wondering if like proximity to a park or proximity to a, especially an elementary school, is a consideration in that other factors warrant category?

Councilor Haberman, it's not well-defined, but that's exactly what we looked at because there is high pedestrian activity that obviously is shown with the data because of the park, because of the school. So it leaves it a little bit wide open for interpretation, but that's exactly what we utilize to kind of determine that that's, hey, there's other factors here. and one was the vicinity of Parsons schools.

Great. Thank you again.

Thank you. Any other questions? Let me see there.

Well, thank you for doing it so quickly. That's fantastic. And now, is there any other vote we need from us? We're done, right? You just did it on the authority of the traffic engineer, right? And that's it? That's correct. And no other votes will be necessary? It's in place?

We're not asking for council action at this time, no. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's see, Councillor Wright, he has a question.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. First, I wanted to also thank Mr. Wilson and Mr. Martinez and Mr. Real and the crew for working on this so quickly and getting this done. I was curious. I don't imagine you saw the e-comment we got about the amount of traffic in the county, and it seems like they were quoting a maybe exaggerated number of additional vehicles, but certainly there is a bit more traffic. So I just wanted to point out that we had gotten a knee comment about that, about traffic in general. And so it sounds like with this LIDAR type system that you might be able to identify other areas that are problematic before, you know,

we have crashes or you know injuries so forth is that correct yeah the the lidar will be a tool that would help us identify not actual physical crashes but where there may be potential for crashes so i can basically can build show you a pattern of near what would but a better term, near misses, whether it's between vehicle and vehicles or vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, whatever. So that, you know, for every crash, there's probably, you know, I don't know, I'm just picking a number 10 near misses, for example. A lot of our county, we don't have the crash history. that leads us to say this is an issue. But maybe if you talk to people, they'll tell you, oh, every day I'm almost in a crash there. Well, this may be a tool that would allow us to quickly evaluate that. Is it just a perception or is there actually an issue there that we could correct any potential future crash situations? So that's kind of the exciting thing about that tool is it seems like we can relatively easily set it out, relatively easy to get a snapshot of data back from it that gives us some metrics that we can then evaluate and act on if needed.

Okay, then so the camera that was set up there to just look at the video. Sounds like I'm echoing in there. No, okay. It's just echoing on my end. That's even more difficult here. So I was curious about the camera you set up, because I know we've been getting some comments about the so-called flock cameras. So you're just reviewing the video to see the behavior of the people, and you're not evaluating any other data. Would there be anything visible on the video, like a license plate number?

Yeah, the quality of these videos, we couldn't make it a license plate. At best, we might be able to say it's a Ford F-150 or something like that and a color, but there's no personal information being collected with that data. And the LiDAR is completely, doesn't pick up any identifiers, basically picking up the trajectory of the pedestrian, not the vehicle. It's not getting any identifiable information.

It's anonymized already. Okay, so that's good. So I think that's maybe something worth clarifying with the public a little bit, I guess, since we have some of these other different kinds of cameras out there. So then I was also wondering, so when we do... development, sometimes we do a traffic study. So that seems more likely directly address the comment we got tonight about, you know, more cars and and so certainly, you know, the roadways are evaluated for safety if we're adding a development. And maybe they're interested in a community little effective adding cars in the county. So I just wanted to just make that as a comment, just I think we're evaluating that at least to some extent, right? Is that correct?

That is correct. Generally, if it's a large enough development, we'll require them to do a traffic impact study. And basically, they're looking at all the metrics pretty much that I presented tonight, the existing traffic volumes, their projected traffic volumes in the future, site distance, geometric design, crash histories, and things like that, so that that is evaluated the impact of that development on the road network, at least in an adjacent factor to where that development is going in. And depending on how big development, the scope of that traffic impact analysis expands.

Right. For example, in North Mesa with the potential school property, looked at Diamond Drive.

The study was, yeah, the study was completed. We looked at all the way along Diamond Drive for the North Mesa housing study. So we pulled data, existing data and did projections and they did kind of that analysis for that full corridor.

So, and then just lastly, I think I want to pass along. So I did hear a very positive comment from someone who lives in the neighborhood. So that's much appreciated by them. And they also reminded me about the crossing there over to Pueblo complex. I think we had been kind of looking at that because there's a bus stop there on either side. So I was just want to mention that and I because I think you are. It is on the things that you're currently or it's in the pedestrian master plan and to figure out some maybe better way for people get across diamond.

Councilor, we recently did the data collection there. So now that I'm done with this, that's my next task is to look at that crossing and review the traffic data, the pedestrian crossing data, and all the metrics that we would look at for a mid-brook crossing and make a redetermination whether it needs a higher level of intervention than it has now.

And I'll add one more. I'll add one more thing to that concert is that we're also looking at the location of our bus stops to evaluate that those bus stop locations do make sense as far as where. Crossing locations exist or maybe do not exist so that's another thing that we've test after to look at as well.

Okay, well thanks again very much for all the work and presentation.

Thank you. Are there any public comments? Come on up. Thank you.

And state your name.

Jill DeHaven. I live about two blocks from this intersection. And where I have seen vast improvements since this four-way stop went up is you have parents that park on both sides of North to take their kids to school, whether it's in the middle of the day or whatever. So it causes that whole intersection to not have sight because you've got kids walking out, you've got cars you can't see behind, and people were trying to rapidly get through the intersection, whether they had a stop sign or not. So thank you very much for putting this up because I would say at least a dozen near misses have happened at that intersection that don't show up because You're down almost one lane for most of the day in the school. So big applause for this.

Thank you, Mr. Haven. Any other public comment?

Thank you for adding the four-way stop.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Madison, are there any comments online?

Let me check. If you need to make public comment, please raise your hand.

Chair, I'm not seeing any hands raised. Thank you. Again, thank you very much for the update. We appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you.

Great. Next item on the agenda, item 21612-26, is an update on county housing projects, programs, and activities from Mr. Dan Osborne, Housing and Special Projects Manager. Welcome.

Good evening, Madam Chair, Council. Again, Dan Osborne, Housing Special Projects Manager. I'm happy to be here tonight. Happy to be here tonight and get some updates on some of the projects that we're working on and hopefully show some progress. And with that, next slide, please. I'll run through some of these early slides a little bit quicker because many of these will be familiar to the council and to the community, but we do have a plan for the future. And we start that with our umbrella documents, like our comprehensive land use plan, our downtown master plans, the North Mesa study that we've recently completed, in addition to the affordable housing plan that we adopted in the fall of 2024. Next slide, please. And the takeaway is we've been working on this for a long time. We have made the decision in our community to really concentrate housing in some of our prime locations in our downtown districts, in areas that we can massage some of that gentle density into those areas without having too big an impact on the larger community. And the affordable housing plan is really the document that gives us that direction and provides those actionable items that we can then work from to implement. Essentially, the plan went through a process. We worked with the New Mexico Housing Finance Authority to get that plan approved, and it complies with the Affordable Housing Act. And it tells us to get to that vibrant economic community, we need to build some more housing. And the plan justifies us being able to go up to about 120% AMI. AMI is the area median income. I'll talk about that a little bit more here in a couple of slides. Next slide, please. We have a more robust AMI chart that goes all the way down to 30% AMI up to about 150% AMI. I kind of condensed it for this meeting to just focus on the work that we're really working on, and that's increasing the housing for the missing middle. So the chart shows from 60% AMI, which is kind of that lower end of missing middle, up to about 120% AMI. And it's really the focus of what our affordable housing plan has directed us to do. We also have worked below 60% AMI. Those would be the low-income housing tax credit projects. like the recently completed Canyon Walk Apartments and the Bluff Senior Apartments. So we do still participate in those AMI ranges. But I did want to bring... Talk about a couple of things just so we understand a little bit more about those AMIs. In Los Alamos, we have very high AMIs compared to the rest of the state. 60% AMI is about $70,000. 100% AMI in our community. We just updated these in May. The current administration was a little bit late getting us those numbers, but we have made those updates. 100% AMI in Los Alamos for a single person is about $120,000 and about $170,000 for a family for a four-person household. So we have quite a range. So the range is from about 70% to 60% AMI up to about $140,000 for an individual. And about 100K for 60% AMI for a household of four up to about $205,000. So that's kind of that range that we're participating in with our affordable housing plan. Next slide, please. And what this will require is that we bring additional diverse housing options, especially the missing middle, so that 70 to 140K per single or 100 to 205K for a family of four. And we're going to set some of that housing aside for those targeted incomes, and we're going to do that through deed restrictions. I'll also talk a little bit more about that as we go. So we're hitting the low and the moderate income and really helping those households out by holding those prices down through deed restrictions. We also provide down payment assistance and home loans and home rehabilitation loans through our partner, the Santa Fe Community Housing Trust. Next slide, please. Overall, we need about 1,300 new units just to meet the status quo. That means that we're not really going to make much progress on stabilizing housing costs or bringing housing costs down. And really, that's what we want to do is start to stabilize for the housing costs and prices to stabilize and to not drive them down, but have them stabilize. And hopefully then, you know, through time, incomes catch back up with current housing prices. And there's a little bit of relief in the community for that. To get to that, though, we will need. So that's just if we say the 1300 to get to where we're actually satisfying housing demand and creating that stability and economic development, we need to get to about 2400 units. And we think that's doable. And I'll demonstrate that as we go. Next slide, please. So as we kind of talked about, we talked about some of those past plans, that comp plan, that downtown master plan, and many of these images should look familiar to council and to the community. These are pulled right out of some of our previous plans. So what we're looking at here is starting to increase density in our downtown districts, the town site, also the White Rock Town Center, and really starting to bring some verticality into those areas in the neighborhoods. and then coupling that with some really nice urban form where we have walkable streets, sidewalks, cafes, ground floor retail with some higher density residential above. Next slide, please. And this just kind of, you know, it feels very daunting and like that's a big change, but in our downtown districts, we really feel like we can pull that density in in a very mindful way and massage it in in a way that's not going to be overbearing or in any way change the character of our downtown. In fact, we think we can continue to bring that additional density in and create some new amenities, some new things for the community, and really bring some vibrancy into those downtown districts. And this is just sort of giving cross sections of what those buildings would look like in those districts. And they typically range from four to seven stories with some ground floor residential. And we're really integrating in quality of life, and invigorating some urban living into our downtown districts. Next slide. And really what that means is we start to sort of shift from what the dominant land use patterns that we've had in Los Alamos. Most of the town site is 10 dwelling units per acre or less. And in White Rock, it tends to be a little bit less than that with Pajarito Acres and some of those larger developments where it's closer to five to seven dwelling units per acre. the graphic on the right hand side sort of shows what that looks like the upper left of that graphic sort of dispersed single family homes on larger lots and really what plan is is indicating is in some of those denser areas closer to downtown we really need to get into the 10 to 15 dwelling units per acre to start to affect affordability, to start to create more of market and economic development in those areas. And it's kind of that middle bracket there. So it's showing a little bit denser, still a lot of open space, and it's really that missing middle housing that you see in a lot of the more vibrant neighborhoods and communities across the country. It's also one of the bigger areas that we're seeing investment from the development community. And these will, like I said, will typically be targeted to our downtown districts or adjacent lands, both in town site and in White Rock. Next slide, please. And then if there are no questions on that, I'll go ahead and just jump into some of the projects we're working on. Okay, next slide. So we kind of kicked this off to build some of that organizational capacity and affordability with the acquisition, our partnership, public-private partnership between the county and the 93 departments, where we purchased deed restrictions on 87 studio units. So it's a private developer who came in, wanted to reinvest in the community and upgrade some of these departments. We participated then by providing some donation under our affordable housing plan to cap the deed restriction, to cap rents on those through deed restrictions. So for the next 20 years, those units will be at 45 percent AMI or less. And what does that mean in real terms? In real terms right now, 45% AMI would be about $1,300 a month unit. And for the first seven years, we've artificially capped that below 45% AMI. So currently that's about $945 a month. So it's about a $400 savings. And so for the first... Through the first seven years, we've capped it even lower at that, about 33% AMI. And then in year eight, they will be able to bump up to 45% AMI, but we'll still be well below what the market rate would be for those units. And as we've done the reporting and work with work with our development partner on that. We actually found a number of units for being occupied by people, typically lab employees, who are making in excess of $200,000, $250,000. So we really feel like we're headed in the right direction. We're getting those units back into making them available for folks who really need those units at those AMIs. So I think that this has been a successful project. Maybe some learnings that we would have, we might If we were to do a similar project, we might actually bump up that AMI to 50 or 55%, just because it gives us a little bit more wiggle room with teachers, firefighters, police, emergency responders, some of those. We're at about 10% vacancy, which is about what we would expect. Might like to see that be a little bit lower, but we're working through those, and we're very happy with the project so far. We also have some rehabilitation funding that we provided for that project, making some ADA improvements. We've also finished the transformer and electric upgrades to the buildings, and that's going to allow us to go off of the old boiler system and to an all-electric unit with many splits that will include both air conditioning and heating, where previously there was no air conditioning. So we're starting to see some real improvements in addition with some of the money that we spent on these projects. Next slide, please. And this is on vote. So that was one of the smaller projects that we've been working on for the county investment. The Coyote Mesa, the former A8A parcel out on DP Road. This is on the more ambitious side. This is a fairly aggressive project that's moving fairly quickly. And the overview is it's so down off a DP road kind of where the bluffs and can you walk apartments are just just south of that we've got a county owned property almost 30 acres that we put out for solicitation for development that resulted in 380 new units comprised of 1, 2, 3 bedroom units. of that 100, 380 units, 120 of those units will be permanently deed restricted between 60 and 100% AMI with an average of 80% AMI. Since this approval, since the county approved this, we've also been working with the state to further deed restrict 98 additional units 120% AMI or less. And the state, through the Office of Workforce Solutions, has provided another almost $1 million to the project to hold those rents down through time. Additionally, we've got the Canyon Rim Trail connections, other amenities that we'll be working in there. There will be a community room with a pool, some things like that. So it'll be a very nice development with some very high-end amenities, including a parking garage with units wrapped. But what does this mean as far as rents? So for the one-, two-, and three-bedroom for somebody making 60% AMI, so we've got some units set aside for 45% AMI, so we're kind of going into that next tranche of AMIs. For a one-bedroom, 60% AMI will be about $1,500 a month. Two-bedroom would be about $1,900 a month. And a three-bedroom would be about $2,500 a month. And those increase up through the different AMIs. With 100% AMI, one bedroom being about $2,800, a two bedroom about $3,400, and a three bedroom almost $4,000. And I know that seems like a lot of money because it is. How does that compare to what we might see in the private market where there would be no deed restrictions or limits on that? Some of the other two, two-bedroom, two-bath units that we've seen on the market recently are north of $4,400. So you're talking $4,600 up to about $5,000 for those units on the private market. So we do feel like we have additionally put a cap on these that we're feeling pretty good about and will help hold those rent prices down in perpetuity. So in this one, it will be forever for the life of the project that those units will be available at those AMIs. Yeah, so a total of 218 deed-restricted units in this project. Next slide, please. This is kind of what it looks like. So we've got DP Road kind of goes down the backbone of the ridge out there. You can see the existing canyon walk apartments on the left there kind of where the cursor is, and then the existing Bluffs apartment right there in the middle. On the west end of the project will be the bulk of the apartment units with wraparound parking, parking garage. So there'll be a structured parking garage there. And then as you go down a little bit, you've got the pivot point, sort of where you come into the project. That's where the community building will be. And then going down the Mesa, there'll be some smaller flat apartments and some townhomes at the end. And the 60 to 80, 60 to 100% AMI unit will be integrated throughout the project. So it won't be like they'll all be in one wing. They'll be throughout the entire project. As a new unit comes available wherever it is, the next person in that AMI tranche would get access to that unit. And then you can see also the connections to the Canyon Rim Trail and some of the other internal trails and amenities. Next slide, please. And I talked a little bit about development timeline and I'm going to take a little bit of a step back here and talk a little bit more broadly about the project in general. Just so everybody understands sort of the time effort and work and the number of different folks that are working to bring these projects to the county. So we did our initial solicitation. So $200 million project, $150 million of that is construction, and then the rest are soft costs, finance costs, things like that. Counties put in $7.5 million of our money to acquire the 120 deed restrictions. The other $5 million from the state gets the additional 98 for that 218 total. And then we can expect through the GRT construction costs to recoup about eight and a half million dollars in GRT as the as the project gets built through time. So even though we are putting some money on the table, we will also be getting some money back through construction and materials and some of those things as we move forward. Next slide, please. So essentially, that last slide, I'm just going to kind of walk you through all of the different steps and points that have happened since we started this conversation back in July of 2024 when we made the solicitation available. We basically wrote a solicitation. It's very similar to an RFP. We put it out to a national development community and solicited for a project specifically like this or what they felt was the best project they could provide to the county under the terms of the solicitation. We had a pre-proposal site meeting. We reviewed all of those proposals. We had four proposals came in. I think we interviewed three different proposals. We had in-person team interviews. So those teams, we invited them in to kind of walk us through what they were offering the county. That took from July to November. And then in November, we selected Servitas as the preferred developer for project. And what that kicked off was a little less than a year of some pretty tough negotiations where we talked through the site plan. We talked through the affordability and the legal structure, the financing terms, and all of those sort of business points that we sort of outlined originally in the solicitation. We had to take that from concept to reality. We did a lot of work with the attorney's office. Mr. Leapheart, it is always very appreciated as we work through this because I'm the ideas guy and he's the we got to put this into business terms that work the county guy. But we got there and we brought that to the county. I GOT THAT DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT BACK FRONT OF EVERYBODY IN NOVEMBER OF 2025 SO LESS THAN A YEAR LATER WE HAD THE DEAL TERM THE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT THAT WAS THEN APPROVED I THINK THE EFFECTIVE DATE WAS A LITTLE BIT EARLIER THAN THIS BUT WE GOT THAT THROUGH AND THAT KICKED THAT KIND OF KICKED OFF ANOTHER WHOLE NOTHER SET OF WORK THE THING GOES INTO IT WE'VE ALREADY TALKED ABOUT THE GRANT FUNDING SO THAT GLIDE PLEASE Once we got the deal terms and the development agreement, that then kicked off a bunch of other project milestones, due diligence, historic document review. We got the title and all the work done so we could set up the financial, the clothing on the land. That includes site surveys. It includes site cleanup, where I started Buggin Public Works and DPU to go get their stuff off the site. They were very accommodating. In about a three-week period, we were able to get a lot of the materials piles and some of our old equipment off of the site and got that prepped over for the land transfer. We also had a number of conversations around the insurable interest that included the state of New Mexico. We were unfortunately not able to come to terms with them for them to provide the insurance for the project, and so we will be going to the private market for that, but we are confident and feel good about the pricing around that uh and then that really kicked off us being able to take that next step once we know what those final costs were to be able to dive into the final design the pricing of materials and labor uh in addition to getting the all of those construction documents uh finalized and with that uh i think tonight on the consent agenda you um vacated a bunch of old easements that were out there. So we cleaned up the easements because with those easements on the property, we can't get to financial close if there's anything that could cause an issue with the financing. So we've gotten those cleaned up. That was working with DPU, James Martinez and his crew really did that work for us. So we appreciate that work. And then we've had some other surprises because it's almost we were digging in the ground. And I'm happy to report that part of that historic document review included looking at the old septic system, the old water lines, the old sewer systems that were out there when there was the old mobile home park out there. And we had a very good overview of what was out there. LANL has been very helpful to us. Not everything is where we thought it was going to be, and not everything where we thought it was going to be was what we thought it was going to be. So we did have to take a pause a couple of weeks ago when we found some old copper water lines, some old steel gas lines, and some happily not asbestos clay sewer lines. We got LANL involved. We've been working with them on and off over the last few months. We tested it. It all came back clean, and we were moving forward. So you've seen some work going on out there. That's largely what that work has been, verifying what we thought was out there, finding new things that are out there, and making sure that they're clean and we can move forward. And again, our peers at LANL have been very helpful through that. We meet with them regularly. regularly, monthly, sometimes weekly, depending on what we're finding. We're moving forward. And all of that is to say that we have a lot of folks working on a lot of different things. And these are very big projects with lots of moving parts. And one of the things that we talked about last time is my job is really just a series of problem solving on small issues before they become big issues. And with that, it's Use this update in July. We anticipate that we will have building permit construction drawings completed. We did a page by page turn of the 50% design drawings last week. We should have those queued up and ready for symbol on July 15th that will then kick us off once we get building permit in hand. As you know, we have very quick turnaround times on this, and we don't expect this to be any different than any other project. And that will queue us up for building permit hopefully in September, which then I'm sorry, in August, which then queues us up for late September, early, late August, early September bond issuance. Once those bonds are issued, then the real work starts and we'll hopefully start seeing some dirt moving in October. And with that next slide, please. the North Mesa transportation and utilities study. We recently went to, had a joint meeting with the school board and county council, and this is all good news. We continue to build on the North Mesa study that we did back in 2020 that was really proof of concept. We know that we can get somewhere between 210 and 360 units up there, and we just needed to verify that we had enough water and sewer capacity to be able to do that. Next slide, please. Essentially, we need to upsize the purple, orange, and pink lines to get those right sized to make sure there are no sort of downstream impacts to water users on North Mesa. Many of those projects are already in capital improvements budgets. We also have both CIP and ICIP funding requests for those. So as these projects move forward and become more real, we will be continuing to chip away and get the infrastructure right sized, just like we did on DP Road tick off development on DP Road. We'll be looking at those projects over the next little bit. Next slide. Same analysis for the sewer up there. We're happy to say both water and sewer capacity. We have plenty of capacity of plants. We have a water portfolio that will support this. We have water and sewer production capacity to be able to support this. And we'll be chipping away at that over the next little bit. Next slide, please. This just kind of breaks down some of those rough costs. The upper, the total CIP project costs that $2.8 million. Those will be things that the county works on over the next little bit. And then the onsite subdivision costs, which is the bigger number, that $11 million, that's really the onsite costs of the development. In the case of Arbolada, developer will be taking care of that. That's a market rate project. We won't have a hand in that. So we can kind of take that off of the table. And then the other $7.3 million, that would be something if we do move forward with a project on North Mesa, that would be an affordable housing project on North Mesa. That might be some areas where the county would be able to participate with some of that funding to get the infrastructure into the ground and support some affordability on the North Mesa project. The nice thing is now we know we have feasibility. We know what it's going to cost. And now we can engage the school district and a potential public private partner with some good numbers and work out what that scope of a project might look like. And we would anticipate that happening in the next little bit. But there's a lot of work still to come on that and no commitments have been made for the development of that parcel at this time. Next slide, please. And then I want to switch from county supported projects to sort of what's happening on private residential development. This is an area that we've also seen some exciting movement over the last year and a half or two years. Next slide. And we'll start with the 20th and Trinity redevelopment. This is 20th Street, which is adjacent kind of kitty corner from Ashley Pond, another county-owned parcel. that we sort of right-sized the utilities, we cleaned up the street, we got the old buildings off the site, right-sized the water, sewer, gas, electric, that kind of thing, and then made this available to the development community. Again, we went through a solicitation process for this. We had multiple solicitation respondents to that, and then we went through a scoring and selection process, brought it back to council, and signed a development agreement with a developer out of Santa Fe who also has national exposure. This project will bring in between 240 and 280 one, two, and three bedroom units. These will be market rate units. So these will be on that higher end of the income spectrum. In addition to the missing middle, we also do need and have demand for some of those higher end market rate units. This project will address that. It will also bring about 25,000 square feet of retail commercial. So kind of that third space that we're talking about into our downtown. Those are areas where there might be a restaurant, a bar, a gym. You know, a place where you might go after work or go hang out, have a meal with your family, those kind of things. It'll be an amenity to the residents living in this development. This wall, the county is participating in some of the infrastructure improvements adjacent to the intersection. And that would include signalizing 20th and Trinity there, defining the crosswalk and punching through Canyon Rim Trail. These have all been agreed to in the development agreement. Developer will be doing this work on behalf of the county with some county participation. the project is moving along kind of on schedule. Like I said, we got the development agreement done about a year, year and a half ago. And since then, we've been doing the due diligence work. We've done all of the historic documents. We've transferred those to the development partner. We've been out there doing the geotech. So you've seen folks out there post-holing. We're also right now, The development partner is working with the county so we can stage the 20, the Trinity Street improvements there. So you'll see some things that are going on on the site that are not necessarily development related, but are also not holding up any of the development. Now that we've got the geotech taken care of, we know sort of what's under the ground. While we're doing the design work on this site, we're going to let the county go ahead and use the property so we can stage for the improvement on Trinity. But now that the geotech is complete, we have some of that site work done. That allows us then to go into the design. So they're starting to do the design work, the cost estimates, some of that work that will then lead into the entitlements, which we anticipate will be on track for the fall. which is what we had outlined in the development agreement. Once we get through the entitlements, the site plan, planning commission consideration, and hopefully approval, that then leads us right into the building permit. And at that time, that's when we would have the project closing, and we're hoping that that could happen as soon as Q1, 2027. So we still have a few things. This one being a private development partner, we have a little less robust role in this, but we do stay in touch with the developer on a monthly call to make sure that everything is moving forward, offer assistance in any way that we can to keep the project moving. And then next slide. And then just some of the original renderings. These are not the final design that will come at site plan, but this is sort of the block and massing sort of the idea of the six stories there, the canyon reset backs and starting to create some of that third base with the on street retail commercial space. You've got the urban street connection going through on the right hand side of that photo there that would then tie in from Ashley Pond urban trail. INTO THE URBAN TRAIL ON THIS AND THEN TRANSITION INTO THE CANYON TRAIL. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. AND AGAIN, LOTS OF NICE AMENITIES IN THIS. THIS WILL BE A HIGHER-END MARKET RATE WITH SOME TREMENDOUS CANYON VIEWS. NEXT SLIDE. Many of you, so transitioning up onto North Mesa, we've got the Arbolada site. It's been a long time, long time local ownership, recently transferred to a developer out of Albuquerque, Titan Development. They've done a lot of stuff in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. They're very interested in doing more work in Los Alamos. They purchased this property and are doing a build-to-rent multifamily cottage unit on two-thirds of the property, 114 units. That's kind of that area on the site plan there that's in color. So essentially it'll be row homes, sort of what we have on the south side of Trinity. I just lost the name of them, but sort of across from the Justice Center and back in that neighborhood in there, very similar to that. These will start out as rental units for rent, rental units. And then on the remainder of the balance of the property, the other one third of the property, there will be 23 single family detached lots that will then just be single family for sale market rent homes that they will also build on.

Excuse me, are you referring to the Century Bank project? No, I'm sorry. This is a different one.

This is the North Mesa project. So this would be just south and east of the school district property on North Mesa.

Oh, I thought you were joking. First you said south of Trinity.

Oh, I'm sorry. South of San I. I'm sorry.

South of San Ildefons. You're talking about what I'm sorry said now.

Yes, we're talking. I'm sorry. This is south of San I on North Mesa, just south of the school district property.

Okay. Yeah, so this is the view graph you want up, Arbolada, right?

This is Arbolada. I'm sorry if I misspoke. This is Arbolada, to be clear. Yes. So exciting. You've seen them. They're actually out there doing grading and grubbing now. We anticipate that they will have... their full permits to start doing their infrastructure. They've got their full entitlements, and we'll have their escrow agreements in place later this week, which will allow them to start putting pipe in the ground, and then their financial close will come shortly after that, in which case we'll see units coming up later this fall. So we'll see vertical construction yet this year. Next slide, please. Okay. And then in White Rock, we have the Sherwood Rounds. I believe we have some representatives of Sherwood Rounds in the audience. So perhaps they can offer some, if there are any questions later, they can offer some comments on that. But 29 multifamily residential lots with Twilight Homes, also a regional builder where we've worked to realign the Longview Road through there. The county's been participating in the realignment of Longview, which is allowing some of the kickoff of this project. But we're very excited that 29 multifamily lots, these will also be for sale ownership lots in a row home configuration. three plexes and six plexes, I believe. And I don't have a timeframe when these will be coming out of the ground, but we do believe it'll be sooner sometime yet this year or early next year. Next slide, please. And then just some other upcoming projects we're working on kind of in the background. We've talked a lot about the 2400 Diamond single-family affordable detached house we're working on with Habitat for Humanity. We've had... A few things we're working on on that project, and that's mainly to get our deed restriction to work in the development agreement to work with the Habitat for Humanity model. We have worked with their attorney extensively to get that across the finish line. We have provided our comments back and come to a general understanding on business terms. Their attorney is finalizing the development agreement. From their perspective, we'll be sending that back that we can do our final review and then get that back in front of council, hopefully in the next couple of months. Habitat for Humanity is a great partner. We're excited to work with them. They do move a little bit slow because they work under a executive director and board of directors model. So any of the decisions that go through, anything that we work out with the executive director also needs to go back through their board. And that just adds a little bit of time. But we've had a couple of productive meetings where we've met with board members and the executive director, and that seems to be helping move the project forward. SO WE HOPE TO HAVE A LITTLE BIT MORE INFORMATION IN THAT AND HOPEFULLY GET THAT BACK IN FRONT OF COUNCIL YET IN 2026. And then 3,600 Trinity. So back here in the town site, just as you're going into the Hills apartment complex, we've got the recently realigned 35th and Trinity intersection. I'm sorry, yeah, 36th and Trinity intersection there. We've got a small county-owned parcel that we're working with. We've had a couple of early discussions with some affordable housing providers who are looking to do duplexes on this site. It would be four for sale units, so two duplexes. And these we are targeting one unit for 30% AMI, one unit for 50% AMI, one unit for 8% AMI, and one unit for 120% AMI. This could also include a state grant fund of $1.5 million to help offset the project cost and to permanently keep those for sale prices at that level in perpetuity. So if you bought 30% AMI and you were ready to sell, you would get a little bit of equity out of the sale of the house. And then we would be able to, again, flip that to the next buyer at 30% AMI. But we're very early in these discussions I have a couple of providers who have some interest in this. We'll again hopefully be bringing this back to council in the next handful of months with a little bit tighter deal and a little bit better understanding of how exactly the deal points would work. But we're very excited and we're working not only with a group of developers, but also having some early discussions with the state to help fund that project. Next slide, please. And then continuing on sort of some of the special projects part of my role. additional county only land on DP road. This is the a 16 parcel. So this is just directly north of Coyote Mesa sort of where we've done some of the other infrastructure improvements over the last few years. But we've we've actually taken this property and looked at what our county needs. What are some of the community needs and what are some of the future commercial retail needs of the community and essentially So over on the far left-hand side, which would be the west side, you sort of see the green box there. That's immediately adjacent to the Bluffs. That's where the entry road to the new Coyote Mesa would be and where the Bluffs apartments are, just kind of by way of reference. We'd be looking at sort of memorializing the small temporary parking lot that's out there now. We would be making some improvements to that and then also potentially having space for a bus stop and bus turnaround on DP Road that would serve not only the needs of the residents out there, but some of the businesses that would be there. Moving east across the property, you have the three red boxes. Those would be commercial properties, about 1.6 acres, about a little over a half acre in size that would be available for sale or solicitation to somebody who would be looking to develop a small business out there. Or you could buy one or perhaps all three of those lots, depending on what the needs of the business are. And then sort of the middle light blue is the other existing parking lot that's out there. We would sort of be formalizing that parking lot again in support of the existing businesses on DP Road. So they have areas for their customers to park. It seems to be fairly successful. And we did do some limited and direct outreach. We didn't do a big neighborhood meeting or anything. We just went out and talked to the businesses individually and said, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? Are these working or are these not working? And we got that feedback with adjacent property owners and adjacent businesses that they like those two parking lots. So we've kind of massaged those and worked those in to keep that amenity and resource out there available. The middle section there is the yellow area. It is an additional two and a half acres that we would make available. It could be appropriate for storage type uses, whether that's mini storage or RV storage, you know, any of that kind of community need that we have for all the things that we have as residents and a limited supply of mini storage and RV storage. So that would be another one where we can either solicit for some sort of partner to do that, or the county might be able to develop that on behalf of the community. But a lot of different opportunities there. We sort of did a... broad concept that we then dove deep into, and we did sort of proof of concept to put, you know, 250 to 350 storage units on there, and perhaps 250 storage units with another 50 or 60 RV parking spots. And then we sort of backed that out to sort of get to the general plan that you see here. So we do know that proof of concept, it can support those kinds of uses on there with some additional development. And then on the far east side, you see the blue. And that's really another three, almost three and a half acres that we've set aside specifically for county needs, county use, public works, Department of Public Utilities, where they would have a place to store equipment, materials, supplies. They'd be able to crib pipe out there. They'd be able to put road base. And there would be a little bit of room, additional room, that if we had contractors who were needing some space for their supplies during There are construction projects that they're working on on behalf of the county. They would also have a place to put some of that material. So we're trying to better utilize that property out there and kind of clean it up, make it available not only to the county, but then also to some of those community needs. Next slide please. Next slide. And then just kind of the ongoing regional partnerships we have. I work a lot with Danielle Duran, our intergovernmental liaison manager, in addition to direct outreach that I do with Santa Fe County, the Hocana Land Trust, City of Española, Rio Arriba. in addition to the Pueblos. I don't meet with them monthly, but I do meet with them. I try to reach out to them quarterly and often meet as projects come up. We do a lot of kind of cross-pollinization. They see a lot of the work that we're doing. We go out there and kind of talk about the process, how we implement these things in our community and continue to have those conversations. Next slide. And one that I can report back on, it's in very initial phases. It's with the O'Connell Land Trust, with some of the water improvements that you're seeing down through that corridor, it's going to bring water and some sewer and some different things that will help kick off some development in that area. The O'Connell Land Trust has started an initiative working with us as a partner at the table, Santa Fe County as well, looking at building. They've got a 235 acre site that they would be looking to do 124 single family detached condo home sites because this is on The land trust land probably wouldn't be in ownership. You wouldn't own the land, but you might be able to own or lease house. It's kind of a modification of a mortgage. It's more common on some of the tribal lands, but it's something that we're starting to have some initial conversation on what that might look like. So there would be an opportunity for ownership on those in addition to some condos and different things that would go into a similar model. We're still kind of working through if those would be for rent or for purchase. It would just be a little bit different model for purchase than a standard, you know, standard deed where you would own the land on your own, it would actually be an underlying land lease on the ownership of those units. So we're still kind of working through how that would look. But it is an exciting regional partnership and one that's got some traction and some big support from Los Alamos County initially, in addition to the city of Santa Fe and being able to provide water, sewer, those kinds of things to the property. Next slide. And then this is kind of just an overview of sort of where we're at and where we're going. The green is the potential. So those are all of the projects that have been through an entitlements process with the county. Those include things, the Hills Canyon Walk, the Bluffs, Mirador, Coyote Mesa, 20th Street. Some of those projects that we're talking about, we have in the Hopper that have been through an entitlements process. So we have quite a lot of units, 1600 on the books that have been through an entitlement process and have now a by-right ability to build. Of those, we've brought about 372 of those to market. They're open and available. That's largely the Hills, Canyon Walk, and the Bluffs. In the condo for sale unit, that's that next group over. That's largely the Arkansas Place. They had 44 units approved originally. They have five of those complete. We do have conversations with them that are looking to... finalize some new investment in that project and hopefully get that moving again. They've had some conversations with our building department to be able to pick up sort of where they left off with a new group of investors. So hopefully we'll see some more movement on that in the next few months as well. The next little group over the mixed use neighborhoods. That's largely the potential that we see in North Mesa and Arbolada. And those are, again, projects that we're hoping to see come online. And Arbolada, as we talked about, is approved and ready to move forward. And we'll see that number, that zero rise pretty quickly, starting later this fall and into next year. Single family for sale. Again, this is largely the Mirador project that we've seen come online down here in White Rock over the last few years. In addition to the Habitat for Humanity, the Trinity site, Arbolada, Sherwood Rounds. Ponderosa, some of those. And of those that we have on the books, we've got about 126 that have been completed. So we have seen some progress there. We might like to see that single family for sale number go up a little bit, but that's where we're also the most limited with land. So we'll see that sort of move a little bit slower through time. All that is to say that 2400 number that we're hoping to get you to start to stabilize, stabilize market prices and to really start to have an effect on availability of housing stock and meeting the needs of a growing community. That 2400 number, we've got about 2300 units on market. on the books, and we've got about 500 of those built and finished. Looking back to kind of 2017, 2020, when we really started doing a lot of this work, most of the new units were then approved in 22, 23, 24, and now we're starting to see those units in 25, 26, and 27 starting to come online. And with that, I'd be happy to stand for any questions. I guess we do have a couple more. One last piece. The new housing tools coming online. This is very exciting. Hopefully, if anybody's taken a look at the housing webpage recently, it's a little bit more welcoming. I've been working a lot with Dave Kruger, the new PIO. He's given me the keys to the car of housing, not to the whole website. But we're starting to really make some inroads there and do a little bit of redesign. You'll be able to go to the web page now, click on each of these different projects. We'll have then a menu that drops down that will be able to tell you a little bit more about each of those projects, sort of the status. Is it a county project? Is it a private development? Where's that in the development process? How many units? What type of units? So you'll really be able to scroll through there in real time, and we'll be able to keep that up a little bit later. A little bit more up to date, and it'll be a live document that'll be available to the community. Next slide. Okay, I'm running out of steam, so we'll go through these last ones quick. Market outlook, higher for longer. Interest rates are still a little bit higher than we'd all like to see, and they stayed higher than we anticipated that they would. And this is leading to a chronic locked-in effect. Folks that got those low, low interest rates back in COVID times, a lot of them are sitting on those low interest rates, and it's keeping them from maybe, making a different market choice or moving into a different type of house or to move or relocate some of those things. Um, uh, there's been modest volume in, um, home sales. Uh, buyers are starting, uh, to adapt. They understand that we've got kind of this locked in higher for longer, uh, persistently higher interest rates, but folks are starting to move. We're starting to see some new homes come into the market, and we're hoping to see some new units come online both nationally in addition to the existing movement we're seeing in the market, some additional new units that will help move some of the mixed emotion in the number of units that are being sold across the country. As far as new construction and hurdles, as folks are starting to funnel into new construction, there are still the issues with those locked-in effect and the higher interest rates. But we are starting to see some movement in that, and we do continue to see labor shortages. Finance costs remain high. Material costs are high. and labor shortages in addition. So there are still some strong headwinds, but we are working to help alleviate those. One example of that is with material costs for like the AAA project. The county is working with them on the long lead time long lead time items like the transformers. They actually, we will be able to provide those to the project. So we have those in stock and ready to go. And then we're working on a state grant for about 650K to purchase additional transformers that will then go back into our stock. So there's no net loss to anybody. The state will be able to provide some of the funding for that, but we'll be able to keep those projects moving forward as we move forward. But it is starting to become a little bit more of a buyer's market. We're starting to see some concession on home sales. Prices are slowly starting to stabilize because of some of those higher interest rates. But we are hopeful that we continue to be in high demand. And the reason for that, next slide. Even though we do have these national headwinds, we feel that we are exceptionally well positioned because of our strategic alignment with our land use and affordable housing plans and policies. Combine that with our rapid review timelines, high functioning building departments. DPU Public Works, just as I reiterated, being able to provide some of those long lead time items and our commitment to our development partners. We really do feel that Los Alamos continues to be a resilient, efficient, and welcoming environment for developers and businesses seeking to invest and build here. I think you'll see a little bit more of that later on when we start talking about some of the LIDA and the MRA projects we also have coming online. And with that, I will stand for questions.

Thank you, Mr. Osborne. Wow. That's a lot of information. Who would like to start with questions?

It's always good to see you. You always bring so much stuff. Sorry. Having said that, it's a good thing, though. Having said that, how is construction being impacted now? Because I'm thinking that that's just a shortage across the country. How is it affecting us here?

I can only speak to the projects that I'm actively involved in. I know that, again, we have strong headwinds. We know that there are challenges across the nation in land labor and financing. There are a variety of structural reasons for that. There are also a lot of positives that we're looking at. We have a good development partner with Servitas. We've already been out to market with both our pricing and our contractors. We have Moss Construction lined up. They're already starting to do their pricing. We're finalizing all of that. They're lining up all of their contractors and their employees. A lot of the employees will live off the Hill. They'll, they will be down at cities of gold. They will be in different rentals. You know, some, some hopefully locally, many will be off the Hill, but they're already making moves to get those units locked up to make sure that they have places for their contractors to stay. It is an ongoing process. CHALLENGE. THAT'S A LITTLE BIT MORE ON THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SIDE. WE DO CONTINUE TO HAVE A LOT OF WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT THROUGH SOME OF OUR RDC, OUR OTHER REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATIONS. I THINK THAT MIGHT BE A FOCUS THAT WE'LL START TO SEE EVEN HERE, EVEN MORE IN LOS ALAMOS. WE HAVE MAKERSPACE. WE HAVE A LOT OF DIFFERENT GROUPS THAT ARE WORKING ON THAT, LACDC, OF COURSE, UNMLA, AS WE TRY TO REBUILD THAT MUSCLE FOR CONTRACTORS, FOR CONSTRUCTION, FOR THE LABOR MARKET. and really make that an exciting and viable profession again. And we are starting to see a lot of that happening now, but we're in early days of that. But we will continue to see that trickle through as these projects come on board. And there is just a reality that the more you do, the more resources will sort of build it and they will come. We're starting to show that we've got Arbolada off the ground. We're getting the Coyote Mesa project off the ground. That in and of itself attracts additional development and additional contractors and folks that will mobilize into the region, if not specifically into our projects. Thank you.

I have maybe one more. I wrote so much in this paper, I can't find my third one. That's all I have.

Other questions?

Do you know how many vacant homes there are in Los Alamos and White Rock?

I have an educated guess, but I don't have a good number. But it would be A couple hundred potentially. Say again? A couple hundred. A couple hundred.

Has there been any, do you know if there's any other communities that have done anything to incentivize occupying those homes in some way?

Madam Chair, Councilor Cole, I am aware of different programs throughout the nation, and I have worked on some specific programs in my time in Colorado where you can target communities essentially create an incentive program where you could, one of the specific ones is a housing helps. It's where you say, hey, put out almost like a solicitation. You say, we're going to bring a program off the ground that says, if you have a vacant home, we will give you market rate to rent that house out to a family, or we will provide some additional funding to be able to do improvements to the home, to upgrade the home, to bring it into compliance if there's some reason that they're not wanting to put that into productive use. Or even to just help, hey, we, you know, here are a list of rental companies in Los Alamos that would be able to help you rent your home. So there are a number of different programs that we could look at that could help sort of, again, that's one of those muscles. where you just need to sort of exercise that, help people understand that they do have an economic incentive to perhaps put that house into an economic use by making it a rental property. Housing helps is one. There's rental assistance programs that we could get off the ground. to say if you wanted to rent the house, we would actually pay above market rate for some period of time to help you get additional funding to get the work done or to hire a management company to help you get that off of the ground. And then those phase out. So for the first six months, we might be able to help with some additional rents to do that. But we have to keep in mind that it has to all be under the auspice of the affordable housing plan. So we would have to book that within months sort of the AMI limits of our plan, which would be that up to 120% AMI. But there are programs that we could look at to start to design and incentivize a similar program. Okay.

Speaking of AMI, who determines AMI and how is it determined? Do you know?

It is a very complicated formula that I wouldn't be able to very well articulate, but ultimately it is set by HUD as they look at national standards. They look at national trends, and then they boil that down to different regions and boil that down to different metropolitan areas, and then they correct it for local areas. We get those numbers. Those numbers are then published by HUD. Those are sent to Housing New Mexico. Housing New Mexico publishes those typically April, March, April of every year, we then take those numbers and they have a corrected by county then of the AMI charts. We then take that number and build out our AMI table.

So our AMI is based on pretty much Los Alamos County. It is correct. Is it based on the people that live here or the people that work here? The income of?

It is based on the folks that live here through the American Community Home Survey census data.

Okay.

And do you know how we compare to Santa Fe? Just out of curiosity? We're about 120K less on average across the AMIs. So we're at about 120. There are probably about 100. I think the state of New Mexico is 65, 70. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

Go right ahead, Councillor Hepburn.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Osborne. That was very comprehensive and I think right on target for getting us all updated. I guess my one takeaway I have is there's a lot of balls in the air and a lot of them seem like they could really come to fruition. They're not just pie in the sky. So I find that really encouraging and a positive opportunity A positive accomplishment from my vantage point. I do have a question about the bar graph at the end where you show the potential number of homes is just under 2,400 and the completed is just around 500. I think you said the completed includes the bluffs. You had one across the street on DP Road. That name just escaped me. The Bluffs and? Canyon Walk. Thank you. And I think? Mirador. Possibly? Mirador.

And maybe the hills? Yes.

Okay. Then does the potential include the final phase of Mirador? Yes. Okay, good. And then the potential includes all the other projects that you talked about tonight, including North Mesa? Yes.

We do have a placeholder in there for North Mesa, yes. And it does also include things like Ponderosa Estates and some of those. So there are some that we know that there are some known challenges that we continue to work on. So the potential is a really good number, but we know that it's not necessarily 100% realistic. And that's where we're really working beyond the county. On the ones that we can support, we're all in. And as property owners see us working with other developers, we're hoping that that then will encourage more development on some of these other areas. So it does include Ponderosa. It includes Cañada Bonita. Some of those other projects that have been approved and are development ready, whether or not the financing is in place, whether or not the utilities are quite where they need to be. Those are all things that we can help with. We can provide some expertise where we might be able to provide some guidance on.

And Cañada Bonita, that's the one on Canyon Road, the old Boy Scout. Yes, the old Boy Scout, 160 units and some retail. Yeah. So if you took out Cañada Bonita, Ponderosa Estates, and North Mesa, do you have a rough idea, Dan, Mr. Osborne, of like, does that 2,400 go down to like 1,200 units?

It's not that much. Ponderosa would be about 48 units. With Kenyatta Bonita, that's 200. Take out North Mesa. So you're looking at somewhere between 400 and 600 units?

Taken out. Taken out. It's a real number. So you're down to like 1,800 or 1,900, something like that. So then if you assume two and a half people per household, we're looking at maybe two people per population increase of roughly 5,000. Mm-hmm. which I think is something that we talked about several years ago when you were presenting the affordable housing plan. And I think that as at least current council or prior council decided that that was a reasonable number, that if the feasibility studies in infrastructure improvements in the schools could support all that, that that would then help our community of Los Alamos achieve all of our other goals like, you know, downtown revitalization for both White Rock and Los Alamos and more vibrancy. And for me, more young people moving in. So you've got a growing community, not a, withering community for me. And I just so believe you, I so agree with you on the activity being its activity, just more activity, more retail being filled, more restaurants being filled, more people here to support those businesses, become volunteers, participate in our workforce. And I agree with you that once you get some construction started and ground broken, then other developers can get maybe some economies of scale. and see that this is a hopeful environment to invest in. So I think it's just really important that we see success in these first ones out of the chute, and I'm just really glad you're working on that. So thanks very much.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Reker?

Thank you, Chair. Yeah, so there was a picture on page 31. I was trying to understand which is your DP road feasibility study. And you had the the RV park proof of concept. What is that? Is that storing RVs you mean? Or is that actual living in RVs?

It would be for RV storage, RV storage.

Where is it on the colors? I can't follow the can't figure out the colors, it would sort of be the yellow section right there in the middle. So that's the county lay-down yard?

The blue on the far right-hand side would be the county lay-down yard.

And then the yellow is community storage? Is that what you mean?

Yeah, we're just kind of calling it a general community storage that could be a solicitation for mini storage, it could be a solicitation for RV storage, something that would not be habitable.

Okay, so that's going to be... Okay. So when you say RV storage concept at the bottom, you're talking about going into the yellow area or...

I'm sorry, I did not touch on the RV proof of concept. That is a different project that's across the street from the airport. There's a there's a industrially owned county parcel, we don't really have that we're not far enough down that feasibility study to have any graphics for that. But we are working with Bohannon Houston, BHI, one of our on call contractors. to start to see if there is any feasibility to do an RV, kind of what we're calling an extended stay RV park, where you might be able to, something like Roadrunner in Puaque, where you'd be able to come bring your RV, live there for some shorter term, three months, six months.

A lot of lab employees are doing that. Yeah.

We know that a lot of lab employees are already doing that, just employees in general. But we are looking at a proof of concept for that. But we know that that's a little bit further down the road. It's a much bigger project. It has implications with Highway 502, New Mexico 502 coming into town. But we are starting to get some just rough order of magnitude to understand how much of the site is actually available for development. It's a fairly small amount, but we do think that we could get somewhere.

So you're talking about south of the airport and south of the highway? Yes, just immediately. That little strip of land before it goes off the cliff.

Yeah, that was transferred by the lab.

Yeah.

uh for industrial and other uh similar uses and uh that type of use would uh fit within that category um and so we've we've just done some some very initial look uh initial uh study to see if that would be available uh for that type of use and none of that is showing on this map yeah yeah we don't we don't have any maps i'm sorry for the confusion on that yeah thank you thank you uh let's see counselor righty has a question

Yeah, thank you, Chair. I'd like to ask a couple questions. So first of all, I wanted to check in on, so this is great. Really appreciate the presentation, all the work that went into putting this together. As was already indicated, this is a lot of information. Is there going to be a strategy for helping to communicate this out to the public? So breaking it up into some more you know, manageable pieces, you know, different kinds of projects, because it seems like this is a question that comes up. I mean, the website's nice. That's good. We can refer people to that, but also people might get more interested by, you know, seeing, you know, some articles or interviews about things that are going on. And so that was the first question I had. So have you thought about how to basically get this information out on what people will likely be seeing, because I know people have asked on Facebook what's going on on North Mesa, on the Herbalata property. So now they can go look, but I think getting more information would be good.

Madam Chair, Councilor Righty, definitely we're looking to use the website, the revamp website as a primary vehicle to be able to get that information out where somebody would just be able to click on Arbolada and sort of see the status of what's happening out there. And that's something that we'll be, as I said, we'll be rolling out over the next few weeks and months to get that and keep that updated. I think we would all be open to any sort of additional engagement with the media or press releases that to be able to push this information out.

Okay. I think that'd be really helpful. So if we can figure out a way to get some more information out. So yeah, the completed number is what, about the 500 number. And I was looking at even in the staff report, it looked like it was, I mean, I counted up the, maybe it was seven to 800 units. And so these are, some of these are studio or small apartments. So they're not all gonna have 2.5 people or vehicles, but in the next few years, we're gonna likely see more units put on the market than in the last seven years by a substantial number. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Well, that's why I think it might be important to get some, there's different angles on the story. So I think to just, even those numbers, because I think even the, because we've had the number of, you know, units built and it was averaging what 30 to 50 per year. And we're looking at, making that maybe 10 times higher, maybe not quite 10, but five. I mean, so that's a lot of development. So I just think that people will be seeing it, so it makes sense to make sure that people are aware of what's happening, what's been planned. So I think that's just more of a comment than a question. So, and I think then, I think you heard the discussion earlier that we had one of the comment about, so now I can see where someone came up with 5,000 number based on your last slide, right? 5,000 more vehicles, potentially, if you have 2,500-ish units and you multiply by two. Well, this almost tends to have a lot of vehicles per dwelling unit. more than some other communities. So maybe that's a little bit high. So I think also maybe understanding the concern and what studies have we done? How do we know that we have the right infrastructure? Because I think that's another aspect that might be worth highlighting that may not be obvious to people. And then something else that occurred to me is that there's obviously also a tie in to the comprehensive plan updates that we're looking at making. And do you know if we've gotten any feedback yet on things like parking requirements, density, and having less rules for accessory dwelling units. I'll put those three items as maybe other things that could lead to more density as well, in addition to the projects you identified.

Chair Herman, Councilor Reidy, Thank you for the comments. And certainly within the comprehensive land use plan, we're still pretty early in that process. We've recently completed the first survey, which led to sort of a couple of different scenarios, sort of a a more slower, lower growth, medium growth, and a higher growth, and sort of trying to gauge public opinion on that. Right now, it feels like we're sort of falling into that medium growth category, but we'll know more. The second survey just recently went out, so we should continue to get a little bit more data around that. Certainly in the stakeholder groups that I have attended and been a part of, and part of the technical review committee, the AU's parking and density have all been parts of those conversations. An ADU program is something that we, you know, another one of those programs that would be, we would be able to roll out and look at with direction from the council and, you know, certainly after the comp plan is wrapped up, that would hopefully give us sort of that direction to do that and then be a deliverable out of that plan. I don't know that there have been as many specific discussions on things like parking yet, but I know that those are questions that they're asking and would anticipate they will make some recommendations as we move forward with the comp plan process. And then all of those would become implementation items for future code rewrites, things like that.

So when you're having the discussions about medium growth, what does that mean in terms of do you give a range of of additional people or dwelling units or rate of additional people or dwelling units?

Again, I'm getting a little bit over my skis here as I'm not sort of uh leading the comprehensive plan update process uh but but my my involvement the involvement that i've had so far it is exactly that they're sort of you know giving some different scenarios but like those pictures that we saw in uh early in the slideshow hey here's some photos of downtowns uh would you like your community to look like this this or this uh and it's really sort of leaning on sort of some of the things that we already have in our existing plans seem to be where folks are really sort of pointed. They like the idea of the vibrancy in our downtown. They like the idea of bringing some additional density in that 10 to 15 dwelling units. And it's really sort of lining up nicely with the affordable housing plan, it would seem at this point. that we really hit that target in that plan, that if we do the additional density in the right locations, it's something that would bring some vibrancy to the community and would be supported by the community. There may be some additional questions on if there are other places there would be some additional density, but I don't know that we're at that point yet in the comp plan process.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Hausenbarn.

Thank you. Any other counselor questions? Great. Is there any public comment? Ms. Madison, would you check to see if there's anyone wanting to make a comment online?

I will. If you'd like to make a public comment, please raise your hand. Chair, I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Thank you. Mr. Osborne, thank you very much for the update. We appreciate your time. Madam Chair, Council, thank you. all right moving along um item 21709 what's that you want to take a break okay um i uh move that we go ahead and recess for 10 minutes and take a break

How's that?

All right. Moving along. Item 21709-26, briefing on the Foxtail Flats groundbreaking and construction status from Philo Shelton, Utilities Manager.

Thank you, Chair. And I also have Ben Ulbrich online. that he was planning to run through the presentation. I'm here to back him up because he's calling in remotely. Oh, great. Thank you. So I think can we just test if Ben can be heard?

This is Ben. Mic check.

It's working.

Great. Well, thank you for the introduction, Philo. I'll take it away. If we can go to the next slide. So the groundbreaking for Foxtail Flats project was held on May 14th, 2006. This is a slide showing the introductory poster, one of several that was provided at the event by the developer, D.E. Shah Renewable Investments. That shows an illustration of, or actually not an illustration, but an actual drone's eye view of the adjacent and fully operational San Juan solar project, which is a similarly sized, slightly larger 200 megawatt PV system that is being used to supply PNMs loads. And you can see some smaller photos of some historical tribal and the groundbreaking for the project that San Juan solar project. Next slide, please. Just for reference, so we can see where we're talking about, this is a map showing where the groundbreaking took place. And you'll notice that that red star is where it is. To give you some sense of scale, the city of Farmington is on the lower right corner. And in the middle left side is the San Juan generating station, now hopefully nearing completion of decommissioning within the next year or two. Next slide, please. Project overview. This shows a project timeline provided by the developer of where we're at, as well as historical background on how the site was selected. It is adjacent, as I said, to the San Juan Jittering Station, and it will actually tie into the same power transmission infrastructure that was built out for that project and reuses some of the existing substation equipment that served the San Juan Generating Station. That's a good location. That's part of the reason why we selected this to participate in this project just over two years ago. You can see on the bottom of the timeline there, January and February of 2024 is when this project, the contract, that development was underway in discussions. March 2024 is when the PPA, our purchase agreement for the photovoltaic energy and the energy storage agreement, the ESA, were signed off both by the recommendation from the Board of Public Utilities, PPU, and with the County Council approval. Moving forward, we see the August 2025 completion of permitting, key milestone along the development process, the May 2026 groundbreaking event. And then as we look forward to just about one year from now, we anticipate full commercial operation. Next slide, please. This is another poster that was provided by the developer at the groundbreaking. It's a nice juxtaposition of what the past was and what we see for the future. The top photo is showing the stack implosion, bringing down the four main stacks for the four generating units, coal-fired generating units at the San Juan Generating Station. And below that is a rendering, or actually the actual photo of a San Juan solar project, which it will have a slightly different layout, but it will be a similar large array, a collection of PV arrays spread across approximately 1,000 acres to the northeast of San Juan solar. Next slide, please. Here's a project schedule, a high-level project schedule showing where we were and where we're heading. Let's look at the bottom half here, and you can see where we're really at. At the end of April was the financial close and full notice to proceed for the project. So this was a key milestone for the developer, meaning they had secured all project financing at this point, and they were ready to go pedal to the metal. And they have started that. So in May of 2026, last month, they started site mobilization. The groundbreaking was on the 14th. Philo, myself, and board member, let's see. Why am I forgetting which? Help me out, Philo. Which board member was it? Heavner went with us. Yes. So board member Heavner went to the groundbreaking. A good event. Many, many people, stakeholders, and involved parties and spoke. And we were quite pleased to see that the year was already at that point substantial progress in the mobilizing equipment and starting construction activities. There was roadways had been graded. There was dust control in place, multiple on-site water storage tanks for dust control and construction work. Heavy equipment was on site, bulldozers, over a dozen pile drivers, which are the key part of installing the racking, piles and racking for the PV arrays and for the battery systems and all the electrical wiring. So we're quite happy to see that. It was all going, getting laid down, piles of piles ready to go. And then looking down, we have two more milestones that we're looking at. As I mentioned, April of next year, we anticipate having 50% of the PV generation available to us coming online, followed by mid-June, 100% of the PV generation and 100% of the battery capacity. Next slide, please. the developer does provide us with quarterly status updates uh formal quarterly status updates and so we received one on june 4th that construction status update is attached to this agenda item as attachment b but i wanted to hit some of the high points here the as i mentioned construction activities are ongoing and accelerating quickly And to date, the following has been completed for the solar project. They have completely finished all clearing, grubbing, and mowing. The PVLA down yard has been installed. The stormwater pollution prevention plan installation of items to deal with that, such as culverts under roadways, swales, and that sort of thing is at 13%. Road subgrade for road installation is at 48%. Grading is at 48%. The pile survey is at 25%. And they even have 2% of the, again, this is almost three weeks ago, they had 2% of the piles already being installed. Next slide, please. I did want to touch on how we're going to be using the electrical energy that's going to be generated by this facility. The bulk of it will go towards Los Alamos Power Pool serving county businesses and residences. And most of it will go to Los Alamos National Laboratory as they are approximately 80% of the Power Pool's total load on average. And a good portion of it will go to Sandia National Laboratory and Kirtland Air Force Base as well. and the any balance that we have which will vary depending on the time of year obviously we'll have more energy generated in the summer less in the winter however our load during the daytime in the summer due to heating cooling of the hot weather is higher so it uses a lot of that regardless so we have forecasted load growth coming up with the laboratory and electrification in the as well as large nodes from potential supercomputing facilities and data centers, AI data center with a lab charge. That's expected to use additional energy. And if we have any additional energy on top of our local need, that will be sold to market through one of our avenues that's open to us either longer term or shorter term. Next slide, please. Or is that the end of it? That's the end of it. Oh, that's the end of it. That's the end. All right.

Yes.

Well, I did want to keep it brief. I wanted to hit the high points. So I think I've got that. But I'd be happy to stand for any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Ulbrich. Do Councillors have any questions or comments? Okay, great. Are there any public comments? Is there anyone online?

Chair, I'm not seeing any hands raised.

OK. Well, thank you very much for the briefing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have item 218-28-26, possible action to suspend council rules for the work session. Is there a councillor interested in making a motion to suspend council rules for the work session I?

Move that council suspend their procedural rules for this work session June 23 2026 so that formal action may be taken second Thank you, we have a motion by councillor Neal Clinton in a second by councillor Cole is there any discussion I?

Not seeing any discussion can the clerk please call the roll.

Counselor Herman yes. Counselor have been yes. Counselor call yes. Counselor rigor yes. Counselor no claim yes. Counselor writing.

Yes.

Counselor hand. Motion passes seven and zero.

Thank you. Let the record show the motion to suspend council rules for the work session passed unanimously. Next, we have public comment for items on the consent agenda. Do any members of the public present want to comment now? Ms. Madison, is there anyone on Zoom that would like to comment?

Chair, I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Thank you. On to the consent agenda. Is there a councillor interested in making a motion for the consent agenda?

I move that council approve the items on the consent agenda as presented and that the motions in the staff reports be included for the record.

Second.

Thank you. We have a motion by Councillor Cole and a second by Councillor Neal Clinton. Is there any discussion? Yes, Chair.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to clarify something with item G related to the drone show contract for 4th of July. Is that okay, if I ask about that? I just wanted to be clear that the $522,000 contract is for a seven-year term, is that correct?

Councillor Heiderman, this is Catherine Hudsmith.

um it is the increase for the total year seven year contract for the for sky elements great and i know tonight what's under consideration is the an amendment to the contract but just kind of in context i wanted to make sure that people understood that i think mr styron is coming up too uh chair and council that is correct it's just the additional 51 000 for the additional drawing show this year

Because we're in a drought stage, we wanted to continue to have 30 minutes of show and this is how we mitigated it by doing this and adding it to the contract.

Wonderful. And then does that kind of mean based on that when I looked at the table is that we're committing to a drone show every year and then depending on whether it's a drought year or not and fireworks are allowed or not, we might augment it and then amend as necessary? Is that how one could read that?

Chair and Councillor, that does give us the option to come back to you if in succeeding years we have the same issue, we can bring this back. We went to drones because we were starting to see this to become a more frequent occurrence that we had some fire issues or we had fires surrounding us and it would be ill-advised for us to participate in those events. So this gives us the flexibility to keep the traditional fireworks show and mitigate it with the drone show, which is a scientific community we should have been doing a long time ago.

Yeah. Wonderful. Just wanted to confirm that. Thanks a million. Looking forward to it.

Yes, thank you. Is there any other discussion? Okay. Can the clerk please call the roll?

Councilor Neil Clinton? Yes. Councilor Hand? Yes. Councilor Herman? Yes. Councilor Wrighty?

Yes.

Councilor Rigor? Councilor Haviman? Sorry. Yes. Councilor Cole?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0. Thank you. Let the record show.

Did I vote? I was going to vote, but did you say my name? I'm just voting yes. I didn't hear my name.

I did. I just wasn't sure.

OK. OK. Thank you. Let the record show the motion to approve the consent agenda passed unanimously. All right. On to business. Item 21803-26, Introduction and Discussion of the Local Economic Development Act, or LIDA, Public Participation Agreement, High Level Terms for the 1735 Central Avenue Redevelopment Project, also known as the former C.B. Fox Building. And County Manager Laurent will be.

Thank you, Chair and Council, and I will just introduce the topic and then turn it over to Mr. Phil Gursky, who will tell you about the project. But as far as the LIDA high-level terms, we've been working for quite a while on this idea of supporting redevelopment in the downtown areas based on our downtown master plans and based on a history of community surveys that say we really want to see more revitalization happen in our activity in our downtowns. The CB Fox building has been vacant for several years and we've been working to participate from a perspective of return economic development in the form of gross receipts tax on an $18 million construction renovation project. It's going to renovate the existing building. It's also going to have retail storefronts that will generate operational or sales gross receipts tax, food that's going to also generate gross receipts tax, and then a hotel which would generate lodgers tax for those days. And in addition to that, because it's a vacant building, it's also generating jobs. It is a group of folks that are listed out. Then Mr. Gursky will explain that. So it is a kind of a partnership, development partnership that's put together for this proposal. But for the county, what it would mean is a LIDA loan and a grant. And LIDA is Local Economic Development Act. And it would be $4 million of a grant to help fund the project and make it pencil. And then it's 2 million of a 0% loan that will be paid back in years 7 through 10 or?

4 through 10.

4 through 10. Thank you. And so the county will receive that money back, but the benefit to the developer is they save on paying interest if they were to get that loan as part of their project financing. The way there is collateral on this project, I did not include that in the staff report, but it is in the form of the county will escrow the money during construction. Once they get a certificate of occupancy, we release the money and we will have equity in the improved building in the amount of the elite alone. And then so with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Gersky.

Good evening. Thank you, Chair Herman and Councillors. I think tonight we were just really been asked to give you a much just bigger, broader overview of it. The specific terms will be coming to you, I think, in the not too distant future of the actual PPA, the participation agreement, the actual terms. But we're here just to give you a rough idea of what it is we're looking to do and how we view what this can do for Los Alamos. The development group we have is actually a combination of several developments. It includes Matt Miles, who is the current owner of the building. I think you know him as also the person behind Natural Grocers. and a number of other buildings here. He lives in Colorado, but has a long-term relationship with Los Alamos. And also Steve Miskiewicz, he's from Chicago. We have a number of projects that we're working on here in Los Alamos. And behind me are Jill DeHaven, who is both the broker for Collier's and our person for marketing development and all of the things related to all of the retail kind of space that we have, as well as being a participant of the project. And we also have then Bob, Bob Heiser and Steve Osborne, who are the architects from Studio Southwest. They have done great work for us in the past, and we think this is a really impressive reuse of an interesting old building, we'll put it that way. So to take a look at it, could you go to the next slide? This is just kind of a nice view of what this is actually gonna look like when we're done. We're trying to return it, if you go to the next slide, We're taking a shot at, this is actually a photo from 1952. We know that because the movie on the marquee there is from 1952 with Jimmy Stewart. I think it's, what is it, Carbine McBride, something like the guy who invented the carbine. So what we're looking to do is to remove some of the extraneous kinds of things that have been added to the front of the building. It has a kind of a triangular entrance now and it has some metal mansards and angular kind of stuff that we don't think really celebrates what this was when it was done. So if you go to the next slide. We're looking to create something that's actually useful on many different veins. So while I have all of this slide here, I think we'll just briefly go through that the first floor represents pretty much all public space uses. The food hall and performance, private dining and the public and private meetings are all part of what was the old movie theater section, the back section. So that's all on the first floor going to be an open space that includes multiple uses, daytime food hall uses, as well as nighttime performance venue. You'll have a stage, we'll have We'll be working with promoters and other folks to bring in the kind of acts that we don't get in Los Alamos at all. There are singer-songwriter, comedians, there are whole ranges of people who come through the state all the time, and we have very few, if any, opportunities to host them, and this will allow a food and drink kind of atmosphere, so we're really looking forward to being able to provide something that's really not available. The public and private meetings are, uh if anybody remembers the store it's open the back where the shoes where the shoe section used to be well that will actually be a private dining room that can be closed off for use lunchtime night time seven days a week for business meetings receptions you know all kinds of different private kinds of uses uh why don't you go to the next slide because i think it'll give us the best When you look at the photo there, what is green on the whole back section is all the open portion of what the food hall is going to be. And even the salmon colored stuff on the left side below, the lower section, yes, that's actually also open kiosks. There'll be about a half dozen retail kiosks for private retailers. So they'll be able to have a significantly more affordable opportunity for retail sales with a high volume group of people coming through on a daily basis. So that's one of the ways that we hope to be able to provide multiple opportunities for smaller retailers and lower cost. Now, this is not a cheap building to redo. It's a very expensive building to redo, and we are going to be charging market-type rates. But we've designed small spaces, both the brick and mortar spaces on Central that open onto it, the kiosk spaces that we have, as well as if you look at the upper right, there's something that says Amazon lockers on it. That actually will also be a New Mexico true type. New Mexico and local regional products, probably Pueblo goods, other kinds of ones, as well as souvenir things. But it's designed to give people who are not interested in getting a retail location a big exposure area where they'd be able to sell, whether they're food products, crafts products, other kinds of things, that they'll will be able to find shelf space for a wide range of people who are looking to be able to get better exposure for their products. And for people who are looking, I know I can always go over there and get, it's a little bit like if you grew up here, it will be a little bit like the Chaleco shop from a long time ago, which was owned by Ed Grothis, who was also the Black Hole So our objective for the first floor is to have really all public space, retail, open, and we're looking to have A lot of opportunities. The food hall itself will be open for lunch times in higher volumes for meetings. The second space that you see on the bottom of the screen, that will actually have a fold down out of the roof separation so you could have meetings for 75 people. And even with the private dining room and that 75, they're still seating for more than 100. In the front, the right side will have a wide range of food spaces, kiosks. It's not a big enough place for us to have lots of independent vendors like a food market space. We'll have to do all of that kind of food work ourselves, which is all done in the kitchen space that's in the upper right-hand section. But that space will also have a bakery cafe for just a little in and out. space and it'll also be the place with loading spaces out front on three or four spaces on the section central it's not heavily used those will be loading spaces and it'll be the grab and go location when people order online they'll be able to just go in and pick up their stuff everything will all be prepaid for and it also be the the place for stopping and unloading to register for the hotel so that kind of brings us to the second floor next side please The second floor will be a 20 unit boutique hotel. If you can see and read the sizes of it, you realize that those are very large hotel rooms. They're running in the 400 to 500 square foot spaces, lots of space, lots of amenities, lots of light. Oh, I will note that like one of my personal favorites is the back movie theater portion does not have any windows. So we have worked out the mechanics and hopefully the costs to put in round porthole windows, three foot porthole windows in every one of those hotel rooms with a kind of a swiveling center pivoting opening window. For engineering purposes, round is much better than rectangular. So anyway, we're looking to have, units that will have unique experiences. And this is not a low end, this is really a high end hotel to meet the demands for lots of people who stay for the lab and they charge the lab tons of money to go stay in Santa Fe and come back and forth. do the food will we think there's certainly a market in los alamos for 20 of those kind of units for family to stay for unions weddings performers who come so we think this one will be very successful and it will be a very upscale of stated one i think the one thing to note is that the upper right hand corner the three suites those are actually going to be built on top of the what was the children's store and they will actually have all have patios onto central avenue On the ones on the left side, all those long rows of windows will be retained. So those will be very big, bright windowed areas. So there'll be a lot of variance between the kind of rooms in these ones. And we're very confident that the demand exists here for that. And from just a pure entertainment, next slide, please. We're going to be putting a rooftop bar with outdoor seating at the third floor level, which is going to leave fantastic views. The total occupancy there is about 100. We'd do more, but we'd have to have yet another staircase going down. We have two staircases going down, but with more than 100, we'd have to have three separate staircases going down in addition to the elevator. But I think that's the kind of size. The entire indoor space, which is on the lower part of that one, it looks like it's segmented, but it's actually all open. The entire upper section is openable glass, so it'll be an inside, outside. The right side of the enclosed area will be glass. So when you come out of the elevator, you're going to see nothing but views and glass and open space. And because it is New Mexico and because summertime rains, we'll have a cupola or pergola kind of structure that have retracting roof section so that we're able to schedule nighttime, daytime and nighttime events during the summer, spring areas when weather is a little less predictable. really impossible to schedule anything with it so it'll be both fully out to the the openings it's going to be the kind of place where when friday night concerts were there this is a place to come and go and because because it is a hotel we will be operating basically 24 7. um every one of the uh food venues will be open at some point every day and breakfast and lunch for hotel guests in the little bakery cafe, and I'm pretty sure there'll be a lot of cranky regulars who will find that's a good place to go. The third floor bar and restaurant will open probably in the late afternoon and stay open until around 11. And then the food court is really for lunch, but then in the evenings it'll be available for for either closed dinner in the private rooms or it will be, depending on the size of the events, we can open up to an attendance of 250 or more or drop it down to something more like 100 depending on what we expect. And it's certainly a place for reunions and weddings and birthday bashes and things like that where there's not too many options where you can have a private private room, private entity. So our idea is that people will find this as a celebratory kind of place to do that and we have a wide range of food that we'll have and a wide range of options. At this point I'll let you know that we are partnering with one of the major restaurant operators in Albuquerque, the Rosslers who own the Seasons and Savoy and a number of other ones who are just excellent operators, known them for a long time, and we're very pleased to have them help us do what we want to do. So I think that really covers what we're really just trying to show you. This basically gives you the view of our daytime interpretation of what it looked like in 1952. this is what we're going to try to create. They bumped out in the early 90s, they bumped out that space, but we're going to turn that back into glass-fronted space like it had before, which were retails. They were just retail stores with doors and openings. So we're going to really look at doing the same thing. And then in front of the cafe, we want to have seating on a regular basis outside. And I think then that We really believe this will be a transformational project for Central Avenue and for really the downtown area. It's gonna return reasons for people to be downtown from midday through the evening, seven days a week. If you go to the next slide, But kind of listing these are kinds of things that we think maybe are gonna be opportunities that because of the seven day a week, they'll be open all the time. There'll be foot traffic, nighttime traffic, performance traffic. There'll be the place for people to go, come or go after concerts, after different events. We'll still be open for dinner up on the rooftop. And even during the winter, it'll have 40 indoor seats with a big glass lookout if it's snowing. or whatever, as well as propane heaters, that kind of thing for multi, nine months out of the year, 10 months out of the year, you'll be able to go inside and outside. And I think we definitely want to reiterate that although these are going to be market rate retail kinds of spaces, there's probably going to be a dozen retail spaces that are smaller that are feasible for local retailers it's not that we're going to we're going to do everything we can to have qualified local people and but it's certainly part we're also looking for a constructive mix there are a lot of things that help us make this be a successful project but we've been listening for a long time about what the demand parameters are for people trying to find new retail space. This will be brand new, completely redone space, small spaces where I think they can afford the monthly ones and we'll help them with tenant improvements. We'll work with LACDC and Main Street and the county to help find mechanisms for local people who are working for that. that we'll be able to find them places that they've always wanted to find in the highest traffic, highest density kind of area in town. We've been working with the laboratory on both delivery capacity as well as looking at how we can improve the traffic scheduling that will enable more people who work at the lab to leave their cars, come downtown on circulators, The food court can be something that they go to very quick. So the opportunity is you get your food fairly quickly, you eat, and it'll give you time to either shop at the retailers that we have or run errands or do other things downtown, which will get many more people downtown. And we think it'll help everybody in the downtown area. It's rather a critical mass. We think that the relationship to Bathtub Row and the other things that are at the other end of Central Park Square will connect very well to this. And then it's a straight walking to the outdoor concerts and projected future development on south of Trinity on 20th Street. Just creating the walkways that actually are exhibited in the master plan. It's done because that's the way it ended up working for us, but that's basically That's basically what we're looking for. At the bottom of this list, you can see the things that are measurable for the PPA. I think they're very important that we're able to produce somewhere in the neighborhood of a half million dollars of new tax revenue a year from the building and 25, initially 25 full-time equivalent people in a hotel, restaurant kind of one, that's probably somewhere between 50 and 60 people who will have jobs. We're starting from today on the program to have the kinds of people you have to have training, you have to have pipelines, you have to be very concerned about being able to get the people you need to work there. Part of what some of the other projects that I work with with my partners include workforce housing here in town. and new housing down in White Rock. So we're looking to have the kind of spaces we need for people to do what we think all businesses are going to need. And obviously, being the owners and the developers of them, we can reserve what we need. But that for us is the real crux of this basic one, is the activity will be good activity. And we feel like this can become a central hub. We're happy to be available for headquartering all kinds of sporting and other events, all kinds of things that require registrations. We'll have an indoor space that we can use whenever we have, when Science Fest, other ones are there, we can headquarter the information spaces and stuff. So people will have, always know that they can come do there and then have community kind of participation whenever we have community events, indoor options for weather, but also giving opportunities for people to do things that are a little less, that are more sensitive to being outdoors. This gives an opportunity to work with people to have the same kinds of things. So from our perspective, we think that the designs that Studio Southwest have done are creative and innovative. And we think that when you see the projects and how they work, They're gonna be both beautiful and functional, and we hope that this is something that is a credit to both the town, I'm somebody who was born and raised here, and I'm happy to see life bring be brought back to this stretch of Central and particularly to the Clement and Benner for those of us before even before us Spears in 1953. 1952 this was built as a movie theater with office space and retail in the front. It lasted as a movie theater only about a year until they built the movie theater over at Central Park Square. But it then became a department store by the end of 1953. And by 1959, it was Clement and Benner until Dave Fox bought it from the retiring George Benner in 1979 and operated it until basically 2019 and so it's been five six years since this building has been open it's such a solidly built building that it's maintained itself very well matt has maintained all of the important functions roofing systems and all that so we feel like it's going to be an exciting project with a lot of opportunity I think that I have some additional elevational drawings and other things, but I don't think we really have to do them. We go before planning and zoning for the site plan, approval in the first meeting in July that they have. If you want to see much greater details with the site plan and the elevation ones and the other things we're doing, parking analysis, all those wildly exciting things, that will be available shortly. I think we've already done the application. The Interior Design Review Committee has already been through this one, and I believe we'll start the building notifications shortly for that process. And we've worked, I have to say, it's a real pleasure to be able to have worked with Manager Laurent and the rest of the staff on what is a very complicated project. It's a multi-leveled financing. It's been a structural it had structural complexities but the process has been you know has been smooth and i think that the interests that everybody's looking for are the kinds are aligned with all of our comprehensive and strategic and master plans so we think that what we provided is something that people have been asking for for a very long time it will take two years from now, 18 months to two years from now, depending on the actual construction schedule, before we can get the vast majority of the building open. But that's working on a pretty hardy and constructive schedule. So with that, we'd be happy to answer any questions from any of the people we have. I couldn't see well enough to see whether both Steve Miskiewicz and Matt might be online, but I can't see that far on participants in these days.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Gursky. It's very exciting. Do we have questions from councillors? Go ahead.

So you have this section here on the financing, and do you want to talk about that a little bit? Are you going to... It says $4.27 million. of gross receipts tax? You have a breakdown of where that number comes from?

Yeah, Chair Herman, Councilor Rieger. There's gonna be larger tax too, right? It wasn't our plan to have an extensive discussion about it, but the 4.27 million is a non-increasing amount based on what our initial estimates of revenues are from a combination of gross receipts tax LODGERS TAX AND A SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASED PROPERTY TAXES FROM REDEVELOPMENT OF THE BUILDING, WHICH WILL APPROXIMATE $450,000 TO $500,000 A YEAR INITIALLY, THE $4.27 MILLION comes from that being the 10-year term of the program. As I'm sure the Councillors are familiar with the LITA, there are performance metrics that are tied to the kind of community benefit, and one of them is that we'll be generating tax revenues in the first year of construction, revenues will be, I'm not looking at it, above $400,000 for the gross receipts just for the construction in the years of the construction period. And then four to 500 and increasing, presumably increasing between inflation rate increases and increased revenue levels, those numbers will go up over time. But very conservatively, if we didn't increase our pro forma, which is fairly conservative, it's not as well as we think it can perform, there would be about between four and five.

But you're saying the total amount, 4.27, is all the different taxes, not just the GRT? That's right.

Those are all the different taxes, and those are just the percent that comes back to the county.

And you don't want to do a breakdown of that now, but you may talk about that later.

I think it would be more constructive to talk about that later because we have, I mean, it all fits into the PPA. I think I'd like to.

And the $4 million grant, are you expecting that's upfront?

That, yes, that money will be, well, as Manager LaRonde explained, that money will be available to us when we finish redevelopment. So it's going to be in an escrow during the construction period and until we have the certificate of occupancy, it's our responsibility to finance all of the costs of the project.

Madam Chair, Councillor Rieger, I'll just clarify that we'll put it in an escrow account so that for the purpose of the project, they know that county has put that money aside for this purpose and it is available. That helps their financing and other project flow, financial flow better. But because the amount of the loan and the grant together exceeds the current, what we could use the current property as collateral, This was a negotiation between the property owner of what would work with them that once the project is improved, they would have the room in the value of the improved property to provide that collateral. So that's why there's a delay in us making it available. There are other ways to do it. This is just what we negotiated would work for both the county and for the developer.

And you don't want to do the simple thing like a GRT refund?

Chair Herman, Councillor Rieger, I think you're talking about like maybe some applying for some sort of like tax rebate or something and there would be steps we would have to have a tax district and other things in place to be able to offer that tool. Right now, we would, this property is not an MRA. This property is not within the MRA and even within the MRA.

I mean, it's what they do in Clovis. It's very simple but, you know.

If we had an MRA or within the MRA areas which this project is not in the MRA, the next project you'll hear about is. the county could consider creating a tax district in the future to offer some of those incentives but remember it's based on its ability to generate that tax so that's going to be a limiting factor still if we go down that route in the future

Okay, well, we'll see more details later, I guess. Thank you.

Yes. And just one, Councillor, one other note is obviously on the community benefit side, somewhere between $1,250,000 to $2 million a year will be generated in employee costs for everybody but the outside, all the retail employees are not included within that figure. So all of the activity generated, and we're not counting secondary retail sales from the from other projects within the building other than that are not controlled by us. So there'll be a lot more activity and those performance metrics should generate something in the range of, I think in our PPA, we've listed it as six times the amount of the grant or about $20 million in production, which includes all of the kind of employee funds that are being generated. I mean, these are formulas that are used for calculation of the metrics standardly in all the projects they do. So rather than cover those now, when you have it in front of you, we can cover every one of the specifics. But the idea is that the $4 million will have many times the amount of the $4 million returned over the course of the 10 years and onward from there. Actually, our projections are that we'll return the $4 million in employee and tax benefits in the first three years.

Yeah, right now that's generating zero GRT and zero lodgers. That's right.

Right now there's nothing being generated until there's a complete redevelopment of it.

Yeah, well, thank you.

Yeah.

Other questions? Councillor Rathen.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Gerski. Well, as someone who worked at Clement and Benner in high school, I couldn't be more excited. Well, parking, did you kind of envision parking being behind the building, like on Deacon Street?

Chair Herman, Councillor Herman, the parking for that entire block is owned in a parking corporation, which is all of the people in all the buildings on the block. There is a very detailed parking analysis that's part of the site plan approval. But under the current requirements, the entire block needs around 200 spaces, and there are about 315 spaces. just in the parking lots they have. In our experience and looking at it using drones and checking on lunchtimes and other ones, there typically are more than 100 spaces even at lunchtime. And clearly parking here is only an issue for like 11.30 to one o'clock from Monday through Thursday. Since half the lab is out on Fridays, it's not a general one. So we don't believe that this is going to be a difficult problem. The parking spaces to the east are actually very effective for us because we're much further to the east from the main front parking lot that's at 20th and Central and fills up quickly as well as the west side of the back parking lot are currently what you see filled up at lunchtime. Our opportunity is there's plenty of space to do that in the existing ones and our analysis covers a lot, covers all of these ones. It's a building by building, use by use analysis. And we're quite confident that for those lunchtime hours, they'll still be adequate parking. And for the rest of the time, it's greatly available for any high density events we have, there's essentially nobody parking them.

That's outstanding. That's what I was hoping. Well, my only beef is that it's going to take so long. But actually, if it's really two years, that's not too shabby. So personally, I'm super excited.

It's a long process. It's a difficult process to tear out the second floor mezzanine, which we have to basically tear that out completely on the backside and rebuild new floors, soundproof floors and walls for the hotel. So we're starting from scratch in the back there. And creating a fully open space takes construction and other issues that are complicated and take a fair amount of time. We could be months on the volumes of renovation, things that have to come out of there as it is. It'll take us a long time. So that's probably the biggest factor. We don't get to start from scratch. We have to get back down to scratch.

I think people will be so excited to see anything happening there and And I think there's the quantitative benefits in terms of the fiscal returns, but I just think the quality of life and aesthetic benefits and just how people feel about their downtown people who live here, people who visit. It's just, I think it's tremendous. So thank you so much for the time you've all been putting into this. I think it's huge.

Thank you.

I agree with you on the transformational part.

We hope that this will do what we are expecting it will do. Chair Herman?

Thank you. Any other questions?

I actually don't have a question. It's more of a comment. This is visionary, ambitious, and innovative. I'm excited about it because I do think that it will revitalize and be sort of the hub for which everyone else can come. I didn't see a poll anywhere.

Chairman, Councilor Neal Clinton, There's only so many things we can put on the roof. What we can do and what we plan on doing is having relationships with the spa around the corner from us, with the fitness center, and with the county pool for both the recreational and uses. And we will have as we're doing with one or two other projects we will have e-bikes and we may even have small the new small electric cars so that our visitors and guests can get to the places they're looking for and that's one of the things that a hotel like this will have concierge to make those things available and they're all largely within two or three minutes driving time or four or five minutes writing time depending on how well you pick up small EV bike riding. So we've taken into consideration what amenities we don't have right on site. And our biggest problem with the pool is we don't have an indoor location and it's really not feasible to build a pool unless we have a really successful indoor location where we have it. So from that.

That's my only issue. Other than that, I love it. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions from Council? Great. Is there any public comment? Is there anyone online that would like to comment?

Let me check. If you'd like to make public comment, please raise your hand. Chair, I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Thank you for checking. Mr. Gursky, thank you so much for being here for this introduction and discussion. It's very exciting.

It is our pleasure and it's a thrill to be getting this going. Just as a kid who grew up here, this is really exciting to put this stuff back in place. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, next up. We have number 21829-26, Introduction and Discussion on the Local Economic Development Act, or LIDA, Public Participation Agreement, High-Level Terms for the Rock Redevelopment Project, a.k.a. former Time Out Pizza Building.

I'll kick it off, Chair, if that's okay. Thank you very much. Turn it over to Ms. Lovato. So similarly to the one we just heard, this is the White Rock. downtown redevelopment project that we're very excited to partner with Ms. Lovato on. And it is also a LIDA project. This project is within the MRA district for White Rock. And this is probably one of two participation agreements or agreements you're going to see. But this is the start of a LIDA or this is the LIDA one where it's the idea of a zero interest $868,000 loan over 10 years, which is 80% of the current appraised value. So the collateral will be the value of the property. The county will be the mortgage holder for that property as it gets redeveloped and increases value because of that redevelopment. And similarly, it is creating both GRT based on construction, based on sales, and also it is creating jobs. So with that, I will turn it over to Ms. Levata.

Hello. So I'm not... Didn't have all my little slides prepared, but that's OK. I'm going to kind of do this on the fly, so that's all right. I love this project, and so it's going to be easy for me to talk about it. This is my partner, Timoteo Martinez, on this. We've been working on this project for about three years. It's been a minute, but here we are. If you scroll down a little bit, I want to just tell you a little bit about the space that we're developing. Much like the project that you just heard, we really want to make this a hub, a meeting ground for White Rock. White Rock is in desperate need of it. It's across the street from here, as you can see. It's a great central location right off Highway 4. We have about 21,000 vehicles that drive it every day. And we have about 250,000 people from Bandelier that come on that road. And so it's a perfect spot to have a gathering, a meeting point. With this, we are going to have, I really also wanted to help create a space not just for us, but for other entrepreneurs. I'm really thought about other small businesses and how to grow the area and grow other people like me, like-minded people like me. So with that, we do have the laundromat and micro laundromat. presently found out is what it's called, and a bar that we will be running and the gaming area, which we've gotten a lot of feedback from local teams also. So we're going to have little areas for all ages there. Plus, we are going to be renting out a spot for a local yogurt shop. We will be having vending machines where I will also ask for local vendors to go ahead and put their stuff on consignment in the vending machines. And then we'll also have a local pop-up market spot inside the building to where local vendors will be able to sign up daily. And if somebody wants to do their baked goods one day or jewelry the next day, they can. So I really wanted to have like a kind of community meeting space where people can help grow their businesses as well. I'm not very good with food, but of course everybody needs it. And so we will have a space for four food trucks on the outside of the building. And so that way people can have their choice of different food options. And we really wanted to make the outdoor space very vibrant and exciting. So if we go to the next slide, you can kind of give a bird's eye view of what we envision with the architects. I've been working with Vega architects on this project, and they've done some great renderings of what the space is going to look like. There are some pictures up across the way too so we're getting the community excited about that we introduced them at the look at the chamber fest this year uh which we helped host host and so yeah if you look at you can see we really want to do like an indoor outdoor kind of feel uh give it really a central place for you know the community come to one thing that our community has a problem with is retail leakage and i'm hoping that this spot kind of helps with that people are going off the hill they're spending their money off the hill this way you know we would like to try to keep some of them on the hill give them some more amenities give them some more options on the hill for shopping and dining and entertainment I know one of the main reasons LANL is having a hard time keeping their employees is there's not enough commercial amenities, there's not enough dining options, and I feel like this can help with that. So with this project, we really feel like it's It's giving back to the community all around. We will also have some modern amenities with the laundromat. We'll have some EV chargers on site. Also an ice machine, so kind of also caters to the RV park across the way with that. um i think that will be helpful for you know the community here as well so that's kind of my little project in a nutshell here's another kind of picture of the inside kind of looking out and looking in so very exciting um do we have any counselor questions Mr. Councilor Rieger? I do have one quick comment. We are still in the process of working on the PPA and getting all negotiated. So that's still not all ironed out. But we're working on those terms still. Thank you.

I was going to ask you about the financial terms. OK. Right. How many people can you have inside, or does that include outside?

So the occupancy is about 84, I believe, now inside, but then, of course, a lot more outside.

There's a bunch of space there that's unused, like between the parking lot and the... The state highway. It's like 50 feet or I don't know how many feet it is. I'm sorry.

Part of the project is also asking the county for an encroachment since you all, the county owns part of that property between the asphalt and the sidewalk for the state's property. I'm asking for also some encroachment on that to use that space.

50 feet or 30 feet or what is it?

I believe the first one was 30 feet for the first iteration. We were asking for a smaller space, see how it grows and what is needed. And then with the MRA, we may ask for encroach more, just depending on.

Ms. Madison, if you go to the first visual image after the floor plan. I think that's the best one to show it so right you see where the food trucks are just behind where the twinkle light outdoors area is there's a paved area. In front of that that is all within the county right of way that paved area those food trucks are actually the food trucks are in it as well it's. The inside edge of the food trucks are kind of where the infrastructure stops, if I recall correctly.

Right. The food trucks will be on our property, but yes. Right on the outside edge of it.

I think the fence in this picture is where the food, where the property ends and the county land starts.

No, the fence should be on, I think this rendering shows it on, the fence is actually on county property.

Yes, that rendering does show the encroachment that we're asking for.

It is showing the encroachment, but you're only asking for like 10 feet or something?

correct there's a lot of space there there is there is and uh with i am meeting with some more architects uh with los alamos main street to try to see if maybe maybe improving that um like i said this has been you know about a year that we've done this and and you know getting more feedback and getting more interaction uh from the community they are thinking you know maybe what if we put a volleyball court or what if we put something else on there and so there's little ideas that we can still improve with and and be able to offer more for the community there as well right now that's all weeds right right it's just it's just weeds yep so the ants a lot of ants yes we're gonna yes uh

So you're visioning this as some space, a little strip of county land you want to borrow or put like tables?

Yes, tables and chairs and games maybe outside, maybe a little kid playground, sandbox, something.

All portable things that can be removed?

Correct. Everything will be temporary in that space. Yes and there's also a utility easement that goes through that section and so everything that we put on there will not including the lights and whatnot will be temporary and be able to be moved in case we ever have to do any work on that.

And then your your food trucks are all going to be on The site of your property.

Correct. They'll be parked on our property while they're doing business. We may have to have some finagling to be able to get them in and out, maybe having they might, but if not, we'll have it to where we'll be able to move our stuff out of the way and they can get in and out.

And then inside is just the service of drinks and tables for people to sit at?

There will also be a yogurt shop inside and laundry and the pop-up shop. Yes.

Oh, this just sounds great. Yeah. And you're not, don't want to talk too much about the numbers right now because you're still going over that with, all right. Yes. Well, thank you very much. This looks like a great project and I appreciate you coming in.

Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Other questions and comments?

Councillor Cole I just want to say thanks for sticking around this late for To give this presentation really appreciate it, and I'm looking forward to this too as well. Thank you. No problem.

Thank you Any other councillor questions or comments Any public comment Is there anyone online that would like to comment

Looks like there is. Thank you. Ms. Shin, you should be able to unmute. Please state your full name and limit your comments to three minutes.

I'm Lisa Shin and I'm at 637 47th Street. And, you know, with both of these projects, it does look really exciting and it does bring a lot of hope to the community. But I guess the concerns I have are one that, you know, we already have so many empty storefronts and we already have currently many restaurants that are kind of on the verge of closing down. And both of these projects, they anticipate a workforce that we do not currently have. You know, there are restaurants that just don't, they have such a hard time finding staff and finding employees to work the hours that are necessary. And I know that there was one a few times where like the restaurant literally had to close down because the employees didn't show up. So, I mean, I'm just wondering, both of these projects kind of anticipate this like workforce and to really make it viable. And I'm just not seeing that we really have that. The other concern I have is that if this was really viable, then why are both of these investors not taking out a bank loan? Like for the timeout project, why not get a $900,000 loan from the bank? And like with Philip Gursky, why does he not ask the bank for a $4 million loan and then a $2 million loan. I guess I just kind of feel like, um, why are they not going through like normal channels? Why is it, why is it public funds? Like why is it $4 million free money for the CB Fox? And then on both of these interests, you know, interest-free 10 year loans. And I'm, I'm worried that, um, like in a normal bank situation, um, you have to come up with a profit and loss statement. You have to come up with tax returns and a viable business plan. And I'm wondering if maybe both of these scenarios really don't have that. I'm worried that what if the project doesn't generate the GRT revenues that are anticipated? What if the project fails in five years? What if the projects fail to generate the new jobs? And so I guess I'm just kind of worried that the public is on the hook for possible failures for both scenarios. And that kind of bothers me. And also, remember, we have Sala Event Center that does many of the functions that this new CB Fox building is supposed to do. And I don't want to use public funds to compete with someone like, or someone like Ellen Sainz. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Shin. Are there any other comments online, Ms. Madison?

Chair, I'm not seeing any other hands raised.

Thank you very much. I just want to say thank you. This is very exciting. Oh, there is one more. Thank you.

The last minute hand. Okay. Ms. Connolly, you should be able to unmute. Please state your full name and limit your comments to three minutes.

Certainly. Thank you, Chair. I would like to respond to these wonderful presentations. I am, so my name is Jacqueline Connolly. I work with Los Alamos Main Street and Creative District, and we are familiar with both developers for these projects. We've worked most closely with Janet Lovato, who has participated in our Business Accelerator program, and has really impressed us with her willingness to collaborate. We've hosted our White Rock Farmer's Market program on her property, and she has figured out time and time again how to activate a property and host food trucks and other types of vendors who are able to provide their own staffing and I have every confidence that this project will actually be quite the game changer for the White Rock community in particular as well as Los Alamos as a whole. I think that I just would like to lend our support and our appreciation for Los Alamos County to be working so closely with these projects to ensure that our community can have the resources and amenities that it needs. We've waited for a long time for the private sector to be able to resolve some of these issues with vacant properties, and we can see very clearly that In many cases, especially in current times with costs of construction and access to financing much reduced, it is critical that we have support for projects like this so that we can get them over those hurdles and they can be contributing greatly to our community. I think the timing in particular for the Los Alamos project will work out well because, as we heard earlier this evening, there's going to be quite a lot of housing issues. coming online that might provide more opportunities for workforce housing. And so I think, again, we're coming at a lot of the challenges that we're facing from multiple angles. And I would like to thank the community and the council for their attention to this. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Connelly.

Is there... Oh, County Manager Laurent. Oh, thank you, Chair. I just wanted to maybe clarify one point, and thanks for allowing me to do so. So So I just want to acknowledge that these are public dollars, and that's why we have these participation agreements. And we very much are spending this time outlying how the public dollars are protected and how they are a good investment. And that's largely got to do with the economic return. And that is exactly why the state law and our local economic development ordinance talk about security and talk about collateral. and that if there is not a performance and there's a breach of contract, the collateral is called on. Now, does the county want to do that? Absolutely not. And that's why there is probably going to be a delta between maybe what the economic potential of a project is versus what the commitment is in the participation agreement. We only need enough commitment of a participation to justify the participation amount. But I think with both projects, the anticipated return is much greater than what we will be required of the participation because of course there's going to be you know ramp up time there could be another goodness forbid pandemic where we you know you hit a hard year and those types of things and we want to leave some room so that we don't we don't want the businesses to over promise but we do need it to be in some sort of proportional amount for the participation for the economic return so I hope that helps as we talk and we come back with some you know the actual specifics Agreement and talk through some of those details, but I appreciate you listening and to these presentations tonight.

Thank you Thank You miss Lauren are there any other okay? Thank you very much, and I just want to say thank you also for staying so late We appreciate you being here and hearing about this this project Thank you very much Thank you appreciate the opportunity. Thanks All right. Moving on to council business. Item number 10, 21830-26, consideration of sponsoring the Los Alamos Nuclear Forum on August 25th of 2026. Let's see. Councillor Righty, did you want to talk about this?

Yeah, please. I'd like to just briefly reintroduce the topic. So, thank you, Chair. So this was in their package last meeting and just had some brief discussion about whether or not we wanted to provide any support to the meeting. And I guess I've had a little bit more time to think about it as well. And I think it would make sense for us to provide support at that lowest level, the $3,500 level. And the benefit is that we are trying to engage with nuclear energy developers, and we're thinking that we might be one of the communities hosting the New Nuclear Forum in New Mexico in two years or a little bit less than two years now. So I think it makes sense to to engage with this this event here in Los Alamos since it's right here. And so I think that makes sense. I just saw I'm in Washington, D.C. for the Energy Community Alliance Intergovernmental Meeting. And so, once again, there's been a lot of discussion about nuclear here and what other states are being able to do. And I think we need to look at, you know, things like this to help New Mexico, in addition to just Los Alamos, be successful with nuclear power initiatives.

Great. Thank you. Is there any discussion? Councilor Cole?

So when I went back and looked at this, Councillor Wrighty, I saw the optional sponsorship opportunities. And it seems like since we're sort of hosting this as a community, I thought the reception sponsor for $3,500 made sense to me. And I don't know if we can attend as the reception sponsor to do any of the networking that it talks about as part of the reception, but it just seems like since we're the community kind of sponsoring this, That fit better, but I don't know.

Just yeah, I think that. Yeah, I agree. And I think that maybe the motion could just be. Indicating a financial amount so that we can get the ball rolling. I'm not sure if the reception is still available or not. We'll have to communicate with Mr. Lopez. But I, I think that's 1 option and I think the only other logistical issue is, of course, it's a council meeting night. So. and we would not be available for the reception amongst us, but it doesn't mean we can't find someone to go. Certainly we have Mr. Shelton and some of his people and the DPU members But yeah, that's what I thought when I also saw the same thing. So I think if we just make the motion general in terms of the sponsorship activity and just indicate an amount, then I think we could be authorized to go. And I think if we wanted to wait until, I guess the question is, do we care if we commit the funds this month or we need to wait until next month? It's a different fiscal year. I don't know if we have any guidance from Manager Lauren.

Chair Herman, Councilor, righty, we can make it work either way. So I think if we get the motion, we will figure out the logistics, but it's not an in an amount we would either carry encumber it now and just carry the funds forward. Or if we don't have the funds available, we would just encumber it as soon as the July dates came.

When July was here, so Thank you any other input Okay is there a counselor interested in making a motion on this sponsorship

Thank you, Chair. I move that Council support participation in the Los Alamos Nuclear Forum on August 25th, 2026, and provide sponsorship funding at the $3,500 level, period. I said $3,500, I hope. That's what I meant to say. Thank you. is there a second second thank you we have a motion by councillor haveman and a second by councillor cole is there any discussion on that um i just wanted to add um i'm glad we had some time to think about this since our last meeting when it was introduced one hesitation i was having was gosh you know we might have lots of seminars and conferences here where we might be asked to sponsor or participate somehow. So that gave me a little hesitation, because what do we do with the next ask and the next ask? But I also feel like this one really aligns with a lot of our strategic goals, especially with transitioning to clean, renewable energy. And so I agree with Chair Reidy and his comments. We've already tried to be a partner with small nuclear reactors, modular reactors to the carbon-free power project that didn't come to fruition. But I think that anything we can do to show support for this as an emerging technology and for economic development regionally and in the state, I think we should be at the table and support it. So thank you.

Thank you. Any other input? OK. Can the clerk please call the roll?

Councilor Reidy?

Yes.

Councilor Regor?

Yes.

Councilor Hand? Councilor Cole?

Yes.

Councilor Haveman? Yes. Councilor Neal-Clinton?

Yes.

Councilor Herman?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you. Let the record show the motion to approve this sponsorship passed unanimously. On to working groups and external entities' reports. Do any councillors have any reports they would like to share this evening? No reports, okay. If there are no objections, we are adjourned.