County Council - Session - workshop

Okay, I'd like to welcome everybody to the July 14th, 2026 County Council work session. So we'll have the same format as meetings we've had recently. So we're going to be having the meeting in hybrid format, meaning we're going to have some counselors and presenters and public participation here in person or remotely. We'll be taking a public comment at the beginning of the meeting for items that are not on tonight's agenda. And when we take public comment, we want to make sure that people have their name on Zoom so they can be properly addressed. And then we want to make sure also that people limit their comments to three minutes or as otherwise directed. And also ask that comments be directed towards the chair and focused on the topic being discussed. So our goal is to complete the meeting no later than 10 p.m., and if we're still meeting at 9, we'll check on our progress at that point in time. So I think we're ready to go on to item number one. So we do have a counselor on Zoom, so we'll do a roll call.

Counselor call. Here. Counselor, are you going? Here.

Here.

Counselor hand here. Counselor have a man here here. Counselor Herman here. Counselor Neal Clinton here. Counselor writing I'm here. We have 7 counselors present with counselor have a man remote.

Okay, like with the show that all counselors are present to cancel have men is turning us remotely tonight. So now we're on to item number two, which is Pledge of Allegiance. If you're willing and able, please join us in pledge. Okay, so now we're on to item number three, which is a statement regarding the closed session. Is there a councillor have that up, willing to read that into the record?

The matter is discussed in the closed sessions of County Council held on July 14, 2026. that began at 4 p.m. was limited only to the topic specified in the notice of the closed session and no action was taken on any matter in the closed session. We request that the statement be included in the minutes.

Okay, thank you, Councillor Hand. So now we're on to item number four, which is public comments. Again, this is for items that are not on tonight's agenda. Do we have any members of the public that would make I can make public comment tonight in person. Yeah, so please come up to the microphone here and just ask you to state your name for the record. And to be audible, you'll have to press the little person looking thing and have the green line come up.

Hi, I'm Catherine Bourne, DeSoma Foundation. I think I have three minutes. I want to create a local Los Alamos AI policy group outside of the lab. Based on what we can see on Facebook, Nicole O'Daniel, who I mentioned months ago in the same fire station, has not yet had her babies. She is the pregnant woman who was the catalyst of starting public outcry about LAMC closing down their L&D ward. Here we are months later still wanting change, still wanting women in labor to not have to do the harrowing one-hour drive through the canyons in the middle of the night and risking a roadside tragedy of which this county would not recover from. What does this have to do with AI? Simply, we are not gonna fix these issues and do adequate research if we don't use AI. When we as a community have been fighting for this issue, we, the DeSoma Foundation, have been helping people understand everything from policy to healthcare rules to budgets, all to understand the for-profit healthcare system. In addition, our AI research has unearthed Anchor Health, a massive not-for-profit that is literally $500 million that's supposed to be going towards New Mexico health and really isn't. There's no oversight and scrutiny as far as I can see. We have used AI to generate reports and we'd be happy to share. I, on behalf of the DeSoma Foundation, ask that we begin creating a committee that can find a balance between AI skepticism and AI usefulness and outside the lab. Let the lab have a policy on big AI. scientific understanding which is different from the needs of the town site with generative AI. Los Alamos is a truly impactful local policy group that must avoid both the defensive block of those who hate technology, along with avoiding a commercial power grab by tech companies, tech oligarchs, lobbyists, and people who represent the interests of big for-profit AI companies. Instead, we need a mindfully constructed table of tech champions, thoughtful skeptics, everyday community voices, and many actual tech experts to align on a balanced structure before we make a single recommendation. We also cannot have AI policies that discriminate, like an Arts Council grant that denied anybody who used AI to translate their application into English just being denied. Once established, our first priority should be a high-stakes local test case solving a labor and delivery crisis at LAMC. By deploying AI-driven system mapping, we can look beyond generic national grants to instantly uncover and target hidden regional funding grants like Anchorum Health Foundation. Let's not just debate AI policy in the abstract. Let's build a balanced task force that actively uses urgent use cases to address our community's most critical challenges.

Thank you very much.

Thank you guys so much.

Okay, do we have anyone else would like to make a comment or items on the agenda? Not seeing it. Mr. L. Can you check online?

If you're online and you'd like to make public comment, please raise your hand. Not seeing anything chair. Okay, thank you.

So with that, we're on to item number five, which is 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.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. So we have a motion by Councillor Cole, seconded by Councillor Neill-Clinton. Okay. I can't see any discussion. So can you please call the roll?

Councillor Reidy?

Yes.

Councillor Regor? Yes.

Yes.

Councillor Hand. Yes. Councillor Cole. Yes. Councillor Haveman.

Yes.

Yes. Councillor Neill Clinton.

Yes.

Councillor Herman. Yes. Motion passes 7-0.

Okay, let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So now we're on to item six, which is presentations, proclamations and recognitions. 6A is 21137-26. It's a briefing presentation to council by Patrick Cruz, chair of the Historic Preservation Advisory Board.

Good evening there. So I wanted to start. I want to talk about our work plans and what we're looking for, what we've been working on for the last, since the spring and early summer. The first part that we wanted to mention was that we want to better understand the historic preservation master plan that's intended. the contract there and that we as a board want to be able to support and help promote the master plan. And we want to be able to identify the best places that we as a board can contribute to that. The next point I want to make is that the Historic Preservation Board does support any sort of effort to contract or to bring on to the county cultural resources specialist, someone who is trained and educated and has the experience on actively planning and implementing some of the projects. Someone who can contribute to plans such as the master plan, but also to other historic preservation projects in the county and someone who can also bring those topics to the board so that the board has more insight as to what activities could they might be of interest to them. Also, to better understand how the county identifies historic preservation properties, or historic properties, excuse me, and how it determines what project efforts are needed to address or support those historic properties. We want to be able to coordinate our advisory efforts with any sort of projects, future projects that the county might have, and also to align our efforts with that. Also, the historic preservation advisory board wants to, along with that wants to be introduced to whatever county staff are involved in those efforts, just so that we can better coordinate with them directly. And also, we also want to be able to increase our public presence in the county. and to raise awareness that we as a board exist and that we are open to the public having any comment or interest in historic preservation. They have topics to bring up to, that we're available for them to come to us. So those are the things that we have on the work plan. The progress that we have made, I think, Well, basically, we have promoted the Historic Preservation Month of May, and thank you again for the proclamation that came out. Also, to raise awareness by participating in activities in the county, including the Los Alamos Arts Council Spring Arts and Crafts Fair, and also participating in the farmer's market. and any other activities that are happening with the county that brings the public out. We were trying to put a presence out there. We're very happy with the opening, the ribbon cutting of the Memorial Rose Garden, and so we're proud to have seen those efforts come to fruition. And that also goes to the just again bringing aware or bringing able to advise or contribute to any other concerns that the public might have and voice in any support such as the the Bullards barriers of with the Ashley pond park safety implement projects so um. We are also actively looking for grant funding opportunities that can support historic preservation, that includes federal and state, and so we're searching out whatever might be applicable to us, certainly in the realm of being a CLG. And then lastly, just to mention that we, When I started at the board, with the board, we were fully staffed with five people. One person left, they had other family and other activities and such that were conflicting with their contribution and they wanted to step back. We had two other people finish their terms and that left us down to two people and so Luckily, we were able to bring a third person on, a new person. We're glad to have them. But at three people, it's hard to meet quorum sometimes. So we have not been able to meet as often as we would like during the spring and the summer. And of course, that impacts our activities as far as presence and whatnot throughout the community. But we do what we can, so... That's all I really do have to report. Any questions? Oh, sorry. Sorry, now that I'm finished with that. Okay.

Sure. have my microphone so okay so thank you very much for the presentation and and then what's in the package so it's not just presentation tonight so we'll just if councillors have any questions or comments can entertain those first thank you chair I see in your work plan your

researching the clock for the post office?

We did quite a bit of research. We did form special working groups that could look into that. And we carried it as far as we as an advisory group could. Anything beyond that, I feel like we would have to have someone be more active than an advisor to do that.

That would be a neat thing, I think.

Absolutely.

Thank you for your presentation. Sure.

Okay, thank you, Councillor Herman. Any other questions or comments? Councillor Hann?

I just have a comment. So with your limited membership on the board right now, you know, I understand the need to coordinate with some of the other boards and commissions to know what projects are going on. And I would think that a lot of those are available after the meeting as a video. And so that might be one way to try to budget your time. Because I know that it's a lot, and especially being able to go to all these meetings in the evenings or at lunch hours or whenever they are. that might be difficult. So I just wanted to mention that as maybe a shortcut to try to gather information. And plus, you should be able to get lists of projects. And you might be able to identify some people on staff that can help you with areas that might be of interest from a historic perspective. perspective. So that's all.

All right. Well, thank you so much for that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Hand. Do we have any other? I guess I wanted to ask you, I didn't notice the Baker House in your work plan. Did I miss it, or did you ever discuss that previously?

We discussed previously. I don't know if... Danielle might be able to actually help with that answer, unfortunately.

Good evening, Chair. Good evening, Council. So the Baker House, we are currently evaluating we are assessing through the master plan process that should be complete by the end of the year and then we will have a guide to help our Historic Preservation Advisory Board go through and now start with the projects, their assessments and preservation efforts as far as maintenance, routine, how to get it if it's not currently on the historic registry. So that master document that you all approved a few years ago that we got started last year, should be done by the end of this year, and now we'll start helping with our preservation efforts.

Okay, thank you. I'm not seeing any other questions or comments from council. Is there any public comment? Presentation? I'm not seeing anyone present. Mr. Brown, can you look online for us?

Chair, I'm not seeing anything online.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for being here tonight and for all the work you're doing.

Thank you.

So now we're on to item 6B. So it's 21138-26. It's a presentation to council by Robert Gibson, chair of the Board of Public Utilities.

Mr. Chairman, council, good evening. It's my pleasure this evening to present the annual report to the council from the Board of Public Utilities. The board itself has been stable in the sense of no turnover for the last couple of years. It is a very strong board. We have five very strong, capable individuals who worked together to make the board something somewhat greater than the sum of its parts. It's a great board to work with. Thanks for appointing everybody. Of course, we don't do the work ourselves. It's a very large staff that gets all the work really done. Unfortunately, Philo had to go to another meeting this evening in Santa Fe. I'm sure he would rather be here, but he sent a number of his deputies, to keep me honest, which I do appreciate, but... It's a large and very capable staff. I'll start with an overview of what I'm gonna talk about tonight, or maybe more what I'm not gonna talk about tonight. I think you're all familiar with the fact that we supply all four major utilities to our community. We're one of the very few utility organizations in the country that does supply all of these in one organization. That's not common at all. It takes around 100 employees and around $100 million a year to do that. Basically, our responsibility is to keep the lights on and all the fluids flowing when and where they should. And for non-technical people, natural gas, like all gases, is a fluid, so it fits in this description also. Those routine operations, the day-to-day routine of keeping the lights on, etc., is what consumes the vast majority of the department's efforts. I won't talk a lot about that tonight. Thankfully, I don't need to. But I've underlined it on the slide for the simple reason that that's the most important job that gets done by the department. That's a major effort. I'm instead going to focus, since you're mostly familiar with all the things we've been doing and what we do on a routine basis, with major issues that are on our plate or expect to be on our plate soon, and that will, in many cases, come to your plate also, so that perhaps you can be a bit prepared, maybe. I'm gonna start with the most exciting one, wastewater. Why is wastewater the most exciting? Because we have the fewest problems with it. Now that we have two new sewer plants, we really don't have any major issues. We constantly have some blockages and backups, of course, which some of those have to do with tree roots and some of those have to do with people flushing things down the drain that they shouldn't flush down, which then gets caught in the tree roots. We can see the tree roots with the little gophers that burrow through the pipes and take a look with the camera and we can clear those, but please don't put the flushable wipes down. It's a national problem, we're not unique in that respect. We do produce more very high quality effluent water from the sewer plants than we can use, but if we were gonna try to use more of it, it would tend to take more pipelines. And I think you're all familiar with the fact that we are a party, along with hundreds, if not thousands, of other communities or other utilities in the class action PFAS litigation. Moving to water, Our distribution system, our supply and distribution system, supply with one exception I'll note here in a minute, and our distribution system are generally in quite good shape. You see frequently, oh, the utilities department's digging up a road to repair a water main break, and you see those reports all the time and think, oh, we have a lot of water main breaks. In reality, we have about what would be considered normal for a utility our size, which is actually pretty good given our terrain and what happened underground here. So that's okay. The Hamas Mountain Fire Protection Project is progressing quite well, in part due to having had good, very favorable weather last winter for construction. So hopefully there's gonna be snow made this winter in large quantity and we'll have some extra fire protection water next spring if we need it. Again, PFAS litigation I want to talk a little bit about water rights, which are not a critical issue at the moment. The county's use of our share of the water rights has never approached our limit at all, and in fact has been declining a fair amount for about the last 10 years. The lab has been fairly stable or increasing slightly. Until recently they were projecting large increases in the amount of water that they wanted, which would have actually probably exceeded the water rights that we have, at least the groundwater rights, what comes out of the wells. Last month they told us they'd changed course and they were going to be able to reclaim a large amount of wastewater and use that for cooling and not need potable water from underground. That's good, but it does completely change the strategy going forward. I mean, it makes it easier because if, big if, they do succeed in meeting their water needs with a lot of reclaimed water, we will stay within our groundwater rights. That may get rid of one problem, but we have one other big one, and that is one of our major wells, PM3, has been out of service for a couple of years because of the chromium plume. And that's not going anywhere in terms of resolution as far as we can tell. And even if they figure out what to do about it, it may take decades to do something. So for all practical purposes, that well is out of service. We think DOE or the federal government in some form owes us another well. our plan had been to drill at Overlook and go into the San Juan Chama water right, which is a different water right than one we've never tapped. And that would provide more water for the lab and would provide an independent water source for the community. That still may be a good idea, but we need to review it. In any case, we think the federal government owes a well. And you can imagine the hassles that will be associated with that. Moving on now to natural gas. Overall, the system is in very good condition. We have good supplies, we have good transmission, we have good distribution system here. The Elkridge subdivision over on East Amos Road has a brand new gas system. It is complete, it is operational. It has not yet been turned over to the county. It will be, should be soon. There remain some legal and financial issues to be ironed out in association, but physically it's there. The big challenge with natural gas is the long term challenge. We have a goal to phase it out over the next several decades. Less well known is the fact that we have an interim milestone as part of that goal, which is to reduce use by 10% by 2030. And that means 10% relative to the heating demand. Last winter we used had a 10% reduction, but that was because the temperature was low. We're not gonna take credit for that one. Unfortunately, if you're looking at the graph there, you could see there has been basically no change in the gas usage compared to the heating demand for more than 25 years. It's been within plus or minus 5% each year of therms used versus heating degree days. That's something that we have to change. It pains us greatly to see any new construction that uses gas. We can't do anything about that right now, but you folks may have some influence and the Community Development Department works for you. Because anything that's built now with gas is gonna eventually have to convert and that becomes very expensive down the road someplace. It's... there are many advantages to electrifying right up front. Meanwhile, we continue with a fairly aggressive education effort for folks with existing properties to provide them with information and options on what they can do to electrify over time, to phase out their gas needs over time. That brings us to, the big complicated one, electricity. The electric ordination agreement, the saga continues. We can talk more about that in the Q&A if you'd like. Long term, Both the LARES Task Force and the Burns and McDonald Electrification Report from last year estimated that we will eventually need two to three times the electricity that we are currently using to support an all-electric community. We also have a goal that natural gas, excuse me, that we will phase out, excuse me, that we will have a carbon neutral electrical supply entirely by 2040. We've had that goal for 13 years now and made no tangible progress on it, but we will. Foxdale Flats is scheduled to come online next spring. It is very much under construction up north of Farmington. It will actually produce more power than we the power pool that is us and the laboratory can consume, but we certainly don't want to Get all of our power from one source not all we don't want all our eggs in one basket by any means The but it will produce we'll probably take something close to half of our power from there. And we'll see how it develops from there. The exact details of how much power we take, how much goes to Sandia and Kirtland, how much we sell to start with anyway, is in what we call the business plan, which we have postponed developing until we get the ECA approved, so we know for sure we have a customer, what form that takes. But we're gonna have to move forward soon there, and then we'll have a more definite idea of exactly how much power we wanna get from there. In very rough terms, it winds up replacing the power that we used to get from the San Juan Generating Station. Meanwhile, we continue to look at other potential carbon-free sources, other storage technologies. There's quite a few of them out there. We're trying to track and pay attention to what might work here, because it's a continuously evolving business worldwide. It's kind of fun and interesting to see the various technologies, and then to try to figure out how practical are they? Or will they be, involving regulatory and political environments also? We have a major issue with Elvato. Not with the power plant, but with the dam. It is an earthen dam built in the 1930s. And BLM took it out of service a couple years ago to basically replace the metal facing on this earthen dam. And after they drained the pond, they said, hmm. This looks like it's a bigger job or a different job than we thought it was gonna be. We need to go back and think for a while, like maybe several years, just to think. And then probably several years to do something. And it isn't clear that they're doing anything yet. So that dam is likely to be out of service for a number of years. Meanwhile, it produces, there's very little water flowing through it. They do release some on weekends for rafters, and we're actually able to generate with that, but it's nothing like what the dam is capable of producing. So we need to look at what are we going to do with that dam, and frankly, we don't know right now. With that power plant, I should say. The dam belongs to BLM, the power plant belongs to us. So that's a upcoming significant issue. All electric utilities have historically produced an integrated, what's called an integrated resource plan for their five year plans. Used to be five year plan would be good for five years or longer, not true any longer. So our next five year plan will get started on soon, but it needs to be dynamic so it can keep up with the evolving market, evolving technologies, evolving regulatory environment, et cetera. So it has to be done differently than it has been in the past, because usually they're obsolete by the time they were delivered. A potential big change that is coming is what's called the Extended Day Ahead Market, or EDAM. We will be part of EDAM in next September, a year from now, 27. We don't have any choice there. What happens in EDAM, is that instead of the way we schedule power now, which is our power schedulers look at expected demand over the next four days, excuse me, and they make deals, bilateral deals with the power suppliers or others who can take the power if we have too much. And those are just the ongoing series, bilateral deals. Under EDAM basically all of the resources and all of the demand for a large area get thrown into one pot and somehow or another out of that pot is supposed to come a more efficient solution for everybody as to what supplies go to what loads. We don't yet understand all of the details about how that's gonna work but that's something we will obviously be working on over the next year to understand it first and then see what, if anything, we need to do about it policy-wise. I'm sure there will be some things. So there's a big change, and it's happening all over the country, it's not just here. There are some places that already have active EDAM operations. We go through, the reason we have to do it is we're really supplied through PNM, and they're gonna do it, so if they're gonna do it, we have to. When I go to the distribution system, or the transmission system, excuse me, both the country and New Mexico have a big problem there. That's really the bottleneck nationally in the electric supply system. If you look at, you know, they say loads are increasing. Yeah, the supplies are there, but you can't transmit the power. We here for the foreseeable future are okay in that regard. In New Mexico, it's got a lot of east-west transmission because they generate a lot of wind power in the east part of the state and send it to Los Angeles. But there's not much north-south transmission that's limiting. There's no problem getting the power from Foxtail Flats. We have the transmission rights tied to the old San Juan generating station for that. Locally, with the lab projecting considerable increases in power consumption, they were concerned about the two power lines coming in that neither one by itself could handle the full load if the other line was not available. So they proposed, and it's now been approved, a third transmission line construction of which should start this fall. When that's done, two of the three lines should handle the projected lab loads, and in fact, I understand they're going to reconduct the other two lines then, too. So we should have very robust supply across the river anyway, but we have to get power from elsewhere. Then we go to the distribution system. I'm gonna talk in just a little different order than what's up here. I didn't do this very well. First, I'll mention White Rock. As you know, we had a failure there last August of one of the two transformers in the substation. That left us with a single point failure for a long time in that substation. We got away with it, but it certainly made a lot of us very nervous for a long time. We now have in place and capable of being used a tie line, an emergency tie line from a LANL supply such that if we should lose that whole substation for whatever reason, we have a way of supplying power to White Rock through the laboratory. There is a new, relatively new, I won't say a new technology, but a new product to this country, it's been in Europe for quite a while, called plug-in solar, or sometimes balcony solar, where you can go get solar panels basically at the retail store, order them from Amazon. They produce a few hundred, maybe a kilowatt of power, and you plug them just into your 120 volt outlet. There are a number of safety issues associated with that, a number of other issues too, and we need to get ahead of the game and develop a policy to cover them. And so that we're planning to do soon. Now I'll get back to the current system in general is quite reliable. In spite of the very prominent outages that we had recently, it really is a reliable system, but it's aging. A lot of it was built by AEC originally or by PNM for the White Rock system. They built the White Rock system originally. It needs to be renewed. And the goals of that will be, of course, to extend the lifetime. increase the reliability further by a number of means, and increase the capacity to meet electrification requirements in the future. There are two projects going on right now, but in the head end of that, one is the Los Alamos switch station, which will supply from the lab, basically double the supply from the lab. It's carried over from the lab across the canyon to the town site. It also doubles the number of transmission lines, which improves reliability, If we do lose one feeder, we lose fewer of them, lose a smaller percentage of town, et cetera. That should be online soon, although we've been hearing that for quite a long time, so it's imminent. We're replacing the failed transformer at the White Rock substation with a new one which will be sized to meet the eventual expected demand here in White Rock. We would have done that in several years. We're being forced to it right now and it's happening right now. You can walk over and look at it. It's a five minute walk from here. The other near-term projects, One is to improve the modeling of the system. We don't really have a good model of the system that can tell us what will happen if you put three large distributed energy resources, three large rooftop solar installations on one transformer or one line, what happens exactly? We need to have a better handle on that. The physical near-term project, nearest term project is to replace the EA4 feeder line. That's the line that runs north-south on the east side of the county, kinda runs over the east ends of the mesas out to the wells on the north side. That's an old line. It needs to be replaced and it's also a very hard line to work on so we need to work on that too so it'll be easier to maintain. Longer term, there'll be a large number of smaller projects, probably won't even really notice because there'll be the kind of routine replacement projects we do anyway, except we'll be increasing conductor sizes and transformer sizes and so on to increase capacity. We are looking at whether or not any more of the system can be undergrounded while we're doing all this. Just don't know yet, we're just starting to look at that question. Now's the time to look at it. The, let's see, I think my last slide here is on various organizational challenges. All in all, our view from where we sit and hence look at all the details, but we think the department runs very well. We don't see internal issues of great consequence in the department. There's a lot of public sensitivity to rate hikes. There always are, there always will be. The main driver for rate hikes is inflation. You'll say, oh, hey, a lot of your recent rate hikes have been greater than inflation. Yeah, but inflation's been going on for a long time, and our rate hikes have not kept up with it. So now we're in the position with depleted reserves of having to catch up, basically. And we can talk about that more in Q&A if you'd like to. We are, however, planning to do a little deeper dive into operating costs than boards or councils typically do. And we've already started a review of our reserve policies, which were set by a board 10 years ago and haven't really been reviewed since. And they at least need to be reviewed and probably tweaked in a number of places. And that could affect rates also in either direction. We have had some challenges in hiring. There are seven vacancies currently, although I think two of those are close to being filled. But critically, there are two engineering positions in electric distribution that have been vacant for a long time. We have not been able to fill. That's a big problem. Our electrical engineering resources, of course, are focused on the day-to-day, keep the lights on, which makes it harder to do the long-term planning that really needs to be done. So that is something that is a limiting factor at present in how rapidly we can move on some of these things, and it certainly is adding stress to our staff. With that, I think I am finished, and I'll be happy to stand for questions.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Gibson. So let's see. Just have questions or comments. Let's go first.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much for your presentation. I know that today there was supposed to be a venting operation this morning. I was just wondering if you knew how that went.

A venting operation?

Yeah, it was... The natural gas line?

Oh, well, I can guess what it might have been, but I wasn't aware of it. And I haven't heard it. I mean, I know what project they're doing.

Okay.

And, you know, it's a hydrostatic test on the gas line, the main gas main. That's why they've been trucking methane up to the East Gate and pumping it into the lines there. But I haven't heard anything about how things went today.

Okay. Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member. Any other?

That's why I come. Always good to see you, Mr. Gibson. Quick question. Regarding the EDAM, how are the other communities who are using it currently, how are they faring?

I think it's too early for us to really tell. That's something that, I mean, this is all very new. I was just at an American Public Power Association conference, the national conference in Boston two weeks ago, and there was almost no discussion of how EDAM is working. It was more, hey, it's coming, or hey, we just started, or things of that variety. I think it's just too early. By a year from now, we'll have a little more information, but not a lot.

Okay, thank you. Sorry. No, it's okay, that's why I asked. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Sunil. Ms. Clinton, do we have any other, Ms. Cole?

Yeah, I mean, as you said, get a lot of comments from members of the public about the rate hikes, the recent rate hikes especially. And so I just want to say I appreciate you, the board and staff scrubbing costs or taking a look at that and looking at the reserve policies, even if it ends up being something that further increases costs, but at least I mean, at least we know we're trying to understand and project into the future, and it's gonna continue to be a tough issue, I think, for the public, so.

Well, it always is. Everybody gets excited about rate increases. They never look at the actual rates and see what a bargain they're getting, but if they're getting less of a bargain this month than last month, then they're not so happy, but we understand that. That's just the nature of the business. Sure, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Councillor Cole, Councillor Rager?

Thank you, Chair. So looking at the, just sort of the electric generation system, if you wanted to cover the nighttime uses of the town with batteries, exactly how much would that cost?

I don't have an answer to that question because it's not something that we have contemplated actually doing. As part of the business plan development, I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to calculate that. We don't need to cover it all with batteries right now. We do have alternative sources to cover it overnight. And there are other battery technologies coming along that may be far less expensive than lithium-based and longer endurance. Not yet ready for prime time, but when we get past getting foxtail flats online and get used to that, then we'll start looking at how do we cover the rest of it.

Well, but for covering just for our town, is it hundreds of millions of dollars to put batteries together to get us to net zero? Because we, you know.

That is not necessarily the way we would do that. So let's say we haven't, spend any time or effort trying to figure out what that route would cost us. It probably would cost a lot. That's why we don't expect to do it that way.

Well, how do you plan to do it then with, you're gonna buy other electricity at night and barter our daytime solar for that or something?

Well, I think you're thinking about what do we have available today in terms of where our, Where's the technology today? What are the economics today? That's all gonna change. Nuclear is experiencing some renaissance in interest. It's really the only technology that seems to have bipartisan political support, which is helpful. So there may... and they say may, be nuclear projects that we can get involved in. They won't deliver for 15, 20 years, probably. Advanced geothermal is quite promising worldwide, not just here, because it's applicable anywhere if it really works. And I've heard some indications that the seismic issues that have slowed that down may have been solved. Again, we need to dig in a little deeper to determine that. We actually have interest in a small geothermal project, actually a couple of them, up in central Utah, which right now we're limited, they're limited by the transmission rights coming out of there. The plants are one thing, the transmission rights are another. There are several other storage technologies that should be more good deal more cost effective than lithium based batteries that may well be ready for prime time and the timeframe of interest. And so that may say, yeah, use solar to charge batteries during the day and run on batteries all night. That's a possibility also. But I don't know that we would do that with lithium batteries, at least not today. Although batteries keep getting cheaper, even lithium batteries keep getting cheaper and cheaper. They're kind of following the same path that solar panels did 20 years earlier. Now, I mean, solar power nowadays is pretty much cheap. Batteries aren't quite there yet, but they're headed that same direction. They're just 20 years behind the solar panels.

Well, it's an interesting belief system. I don't know how many more of those battery technology innovations are going to happen. You certainly can't count on them for planning a utility. So we have to right now, I think our plan, we're buying electricity at night. Isn't that what you're saying?

Well, right now we are buying electricity at night, or we're using, I mean, some of that is WAPA power, some of it during season is still Abiquiu power. Maybe someday it'll be Avado power again. We do have the Laramie River Station still up in Wyoming, which is a coal plant. That will go away eventually, but we're using that now.

And of course there is- WAPA is just the Western power grid.

Right, well, it's Western Area Power Administration. It mostly comes to us from Glen Canyon Dam. But from a planning standpoint, and this is hard for a planner, I understand. I think a plan has to be based on flexibility because things are changing and they will continue to change rapidly. And locking ourselves into any one thing for too long a period of time is just as dangerous as not doing any planning at all, maybe more so. On the other hand, we do have to commit and do some things. If people had looked at computers in 1985 and said, well, I'm gonna wait until they're mature and then buy one, they think where we'd be. So do I have an exact roadmap? No, I think we're gonna have to be flexible, which is much more difficult than the way utilities have always been run, but that's the way of the new world.

But you don't even, but I'm saying there's no plan right now that . I mean, there is not a technology to fill the nighttime gaps that is carbon free. at any reasonable price.

I didn't say that.

Well, it's more of a question. Isn't that true? The batteries are too expensive. You're just hoping something happens.

I'm expecting things to happen. I don't just know which it's going to be or when. I guess I have more faith in technology than you do, perhaps.

Oh, I know a lot about technology progress, yeah. All right, well, anyway, that's... sort of a non-answer, but that's what answer you could go with your hope for the future.

Well, right now we're trying to get Foxtail Flats up. I mean, we expect to get it up integrated into the system. There'll be a learning curve and you're learning exactly how it works and everything else about that. And that's a big thing to swallow right now. but we're certainly keeping our eye on what happens after that also, and anxious to proceed to working on that in more detail. That's part of what the integrated resource plan will lead us through, shall we say, that process.

Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you, Councillor Rieger. Councillor Edmund, had some questions or comments?

Yes, please, thank you. Thank you Chair Gipson for being here tonight and for giving us such a really well organized and thorough presentation. Couple things, one, I really like your metaphor about kind of the deployment and application of computer technology in its early stages and how that might parallel to the deployment and application of different energy technologies. I'm with you, I think this is a rapidly changing field and I pay some attention to it and new technology and new solutions are happening all the time and being deployed in other countries across the planet. And I think the more we get on board, the more activity will be get activity and we'll get more economies of scale and the price curve is gonna go in our favor. But I'm glad that we're at the table on thinking about these things. I regret that I've not had a chance to go and listen to the presentation about the balcony solar, also known as the plug-in solar, that I think was given to BPU maybe a month or so ago. I think that happened. Is that correct?

Yeah, it was about two months ago. Two months ago.

Yeah. So even worse that I haven't listened to it yet. But I wanted to get a sense. You said, you know, granted, there are some safety issues, but, you know, those have been they have figured it out, at least in the state of Utah and a couple other states. Yeah. And I think it has to do with the electrical code, partly, and just the actual plugging in and making sure that residents have the right kind of outlets to support these devices. Is that mainly correct?

Well, that's part of it. You might think simply about the fact that when you put a new source, a panel, into your wall outlet, you're bypassing the circuit breaker and feeding power directly from there into whatever is plugged into that line. So suppose you already, suppose it's a 15-amp circuit and you already have 10 amps on it, and now you put in a source that will support another, let's say, 20 amps, you could wind up with 30 or 40 amps being pulled off of that line and the circuit breaker's not gonna protect it. Those sorts of things need to be understood. I won't say that they can't be. I've heard, board has heard, that there hasn't been as much in the way of safety problems or incidents in Europe where these have been used longer. than you might think just from looking at it. And that's useful to know what's kind of, they've done the experiment, let's find out what the result was. Maybe it isn't as bad as it might look when we first look at it. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's challenging, I should say. So yeah, there are some issues there to try to help everybody be as safe as they can be, obviously.

Yeah, I just got a little nervous when I heard you say a number of safety issues. It made me think, oh, maybe there's more than I realized. And yet, so thanks for the refresher on the circuit breaker issue. Would one desired outcome of deployment of those across our community, you know, it'd be a voluntary thing. Residents could just buy them like you buy cars. you know, a satellite dish, for example, is my understanding.

You can buy them on Amazon now.

Yeah, yeah. It would be really to lower one's energy or electricity consumption costs, right? I mean, that would be the main reason. And some might do it too because they just feel like they're having a lower carbon footprint during the daytime at least.

Correct. Same reason that people put solar cells on the roof.

Yeah. So if we were able to accomplish a higher or any deployment of those and get to a point where it's a high percentage, is there some long-term planning happening at DPU or within DPU to consider that when looking at future electrical production, distribution, transmission needs?

Well, they would fall in exactly the same category as rooftop solar as far as effect on the system. We just need to be able to estimate what's out there because depending on how permitting is done, if there is any permitting, and there may not be for these small systems, then it becomes a little harder to know what's out there. Yeah, it's great if people can generate their own power and we don't have to burden the grid with it. At least it's great during the day. Then you have a problem at night, which is going to eventually be the peak loads anyway. So lots of people are in a big hurry to put solar on their rooftop or on their balcony with ease, if you will. But ultimately, a major issue or major, not really issue, but a major thing, a major appliance almost for the home is storage. so that people can supply some of their nighttime load too and not just daytime load and count on utility support to supply the nighttime load.

Yeah, yeah. My understanding, though, is there's also emerging technology for, you know, like plug-in storage, maybe more for business and commercial, not quite residential yet. You know, of course, you can always get a Tesla firewall, you know, battery too, but... Okay. Well, I'll move on from that unless you wanted to add anything more on that topic. Regarding the, I think, worthwhile comment about... Sorry, I'm in a rental and there's really bad noises going on outside of it. I apologize. The... Comment about getting off of natural gas and new construction being required to be all electric. I wonder... I acknowledge this is something that council could nudge more on with our county management and with the community development department to encourage a building code and a development code that says we're not going to allow natural gas hookups. Has there been... I think that probably from the BPU standpoint, there's probably not been enough progress in that space. Is that a correct interpretation?

I wouldn't say that. We didn't expect a lot of progress, at least so far. And, you know, it's not something we can make happen. So that's more in your department. the we'd certainly like to see less gas use in new construction but it's not something that we can directly influence ourselves we can ask you to it yeah no I hear you on that and I'm just glad you brought it up and I'm

Just kind of for the record, I'm glad we're at least making note of it for everyone's consideration.

There's a lot of new construction happening right now, and many of those buildings are going to be here for most, if not all, of the rest of this century. So now's a high leverage time to try to solve those problems.

Yeah, and I'm sure you know that the new fire station on Diamond Drive across from the golf course is going to be all electric. So I think that's outstanding.

Yes, I was very glad to see that.

Same. All right. Thanks again. Really appreciate your service to the community.

Okay. Thank you, Councilor Haveman. So I had a couple of questions or comments. So I guess starting with the first one, which was the boring one, right? So wastewater. Something you didn't mention were the backflow preventers. I know there's been some publicity coming out about those as well. Just let people know which, you know, certain neighborhoods and houses have that issue. And I think that came out probably 15 years ago or so, letters. Has the department thought about doing any follow-up letters with property owners, homeowners about the backflow preventer?

Not that I'm aware of, but I would turn to Clay and ask if you can shed any further light on that question.

Thank you, Chair Reddy. Actually, we have sent a follow up in the past. So we've done it. We've done two full ones, two full direct mailings, and then we've done some follow up public involvement so that we got it out on social media. When we did the mailing, social media wasn't as well developed or as widespread as it is now. People are still aware of it, and a lot of the issues are actually the communication channel we've noticed works best with real estate agents. long as the real estate agents pass along that that information because the the database is still there and everybody has access to it we maintain that so we do get questions when someone is looking isn't like doing their due diligence for researching a home, and we'll get that question. We'll look at it and see if they've had it or whatever. We provide a free service to send one of our crews out to investigate it, see which type they have, because not all of them are the same. Some tend to fail at a higher rate than others. When I say fail, they'll let a little bit of water back into the home. They're not really a true preventer, but they do protect it. But anyway, we've done it twice, and we're putting out more public information for it.

Okay. So just to follow up on that, so for the properties that you've actually gone out to, is there a way of indicating, like in the database, that had a black flow preventer on a certain date that was of the right kind? Or is that not something that we're trying to keep track of?

Right. So that's actually a state permitting issue. Okay. And that's part of the problem here is that people think the county is in charge of it. It's actually a state building code.

Okay. Yeah, thanks for the information. I just thought it would be a good opportunity to maybe highlight that again since maybe it's great to have the realtors involved too. So I did want to... I don't know if it's worth bringing up the slide that had the water right on it. So, because I had a question about the, I guess the burnt orange or orange bar. So, yeah, this one. So we're... Our water right that we're currently able to access is the number there at the bottom, the 5441.3 acre feet. And that's slightly above the top of the graph. Correct. Right. So we haven't ever come that close to it. But I was curious about, so is this the actual use? So Landau has that actual use going up and down, the county use, which includes schools, right? The county itself, that's everybody in the county businesses. That goes up and down. And then we have the project.

Not very much, but it's generally been going down.

But then there's the EMLA allotment. Is that a number that they're actually using? Or is that related at all to the X million chromium flow?

It's the chromium plume issue.

Okay. So that's the allotment that they have. So they may not be using that number then currently, is that correct?

I, Okay, I didn't make this slide. I'm assuming that it wouldn't have been plotted that way if it hadn't already been used that way, but I don't know the answer to that myself for sure.

I don't see that there is a person that would be answering this question behind you. Okay, but I think that might be clarification because my understanding that's what they are allocated that they could use, but I think with the pump and treat system and the injection that I'm not sure that they're actually using any, but I think, because that's a pretty substantial chunk of the bar, if they're not actually.

That's a big chunk of Lannell's allocation, not the county's. Right, yeah. I mean, the two together share the water right in a 70-30 split. Right, okay.

So maybe we can get a clarification on that at some point. So, let's see. So I'm Glad you talked about different power sources. You mentioned the two that I was going to ask about, geothermal and nuclear. My understanding is that the department is looking at a variety of different projects. And so we're not, like you said, not all in one basket for any of these. But I guess the other part is the time frame. Like you mentioned, we don't want to go like 200 megawatts into something that It turns out to be the wrong thing. But we need to have something to cover this projected substantial increase, whether county or LANL usage. So I guess how urgently is something, and you mentioned the Foxtel flats coming on in less than a year. So once that's incorporated, what would be the plan for bringing on some other kind of resource? Is there a discussion about something coming on that's that size or smaller? What's the consideration right now?

There has been some discussion. There's nothing specific at this point. We are looking at several specific projects. but we're not committed to any of them at this point. But that is something, that is what we will need to turn a lot of our, well, a significant part of our attention to that soon, like I said, probably in the context of the resource plan, which we need to start developing soon. I think it was funded for this year, if I remember right. And of course, the generation resources, there's also the question of transmission associated with all of them. And if they're intermittent resources, then there's the question of storage that goes with them too. a really simple one, but no, we don't really want to have all eggs in one basket, although that's a big basket, we could pull a lot of power from there, but we don't want to.

Right.

How much we want to, we haven't determined that yet for sure, but that's something we'll be looking at very soon.

And so, because the, Question of capacity factor comes up with a lot of different carbon-free. So what we have, 170, is that right? Correct. And so if we apply the usual, say, 25% or something. So in reality, it's not that much, but then we have the storage. So does the storage amplify that to like 50% or does it not quite get us to 50%? It's probably not because it's like hours. It was like 360 hours.

It's 320 megawatt hours, which is nominally, I mean, for lithium batteries, you generally think of four hours as being kind of practical timeline. So that's 80 megawatts for four hours during the evening peak is the way we're anticipating using it at this point.

Okay, so it's between the 25 and 50. So it's somewhere around the 301.

Because remember, you gotta charge the batteries, so that takes some of the daytime.

Takes some of the, so you're dropping your 25% down a little bit too, right, so okay. So it'll be interesting to see how that math works out in practice and when it makes the most sense.

Yeah, we're interested in that too. If we get through this bloody ECA, then we can start nailing that one down. I understand in a couple weeks. Well, how many times have we heard that before?

So I think that there is nothing after two weeks or the end of the month, right?

Right now that's when the current extension runs out. So something will have to be there, either that or the lab goes dark.

Right. Okay. So thank you for the comment about the all electric. We're gonna be talking about comprehensive plan shortly, so that was good to see their discussion there. So I was just curious about Elvato, because I remember hearing about this a while back. And then I probably also remember hearing about the fact that it was delayed. I guess I hadn't heard about how long it had been delayed. And I don't know if there's anything that could be done about making it go any faster, because we obviously do have our federal priorities. Do we know if there's any traction to gain in discussing this with our federal delegation?

Well, I suppose an informal discussion doesn't hurt anything to find out if there's traction for a more substantive discussion. Remember, this is, like Abiquiu, this is a run of the river power plant, meaning we only get to generate when they're releasing water for their other priorities. So we're not very high on the priority list. Now that is something that might be, worth really tackling at the federal level is can we get a higher priority for power generation from any of our power plant, either of our two power plants, rather than being just on what they happen to be releasing for other purposes. That's a broader, more general question. But I think they told us that BLM said that they would be looking at this or studying it for something like three or four years. And we haven't heard that they've actually done anything yet. And given how long it likely would take Once they completed a study to get a contractor and then actually do a job and all that stuff in a federal bureaucracy that doesn't seem to be terribly interested in it, that's many years. And we've got a power plant to take care of in the interim.

OK. Also, thank you for the comments about the rates. I've already had a little discussion on this. And I was just curious because I did see I guess that I think it was a city of Santa Fe that could have been Santa Fe County recently just got approved for a CPI level you know adjustment in their rate. And so I think that was just in contrast to our rates which were obviously larger than the general CPI. And I understand I also know that what you're targeting the long term You try to get the rates to a CPI level in the out years. But it seems like we do continually like, it seems like we're getting better at knowing what we're deficient in. But I know that's one of the things that, as we know, frustrates people. And when they see a neighboring city or county you know, applying a CPI and we're applying something that's obviously higher than the CPI. But so that was just more of a comment. It's just what we're dealing with right now. And it would be, so I'm glad you're also having the discussion about the financial policies. Just understand where you need to be with, you know, each utility so that it is self-sufficient and can basically take care of all the issues that you come up with, so.

Mr. Chairman, if you'll indulge me in one more slide. Juan, could you put up that one graph that I gave you as an extra? Maybe I can explain a bunch of this verbally in a very short, or visually in very short order. The black line there is the consumer price index for this century. It scales on the left-hand side. The thick green line is the utility bill, monthly utility bill for the quote, typical customer, unquote. There's lots of caveats in that, of course. You'll see that over time, our typical customer has seen rate increases that on average have more or less matched the consumer price index. Now it varies from utility to utility. Sewer, which is the bottom line there, Brown Line, went up a lot faster. We bought two new sewer plants in that time. There's a lot of debt service on those two sewer plants. On the other hand, if you look at natural gas, which is the orange line, our customers today are paying the same rate that they were paying in 2006. And that's in current dollars. That's not inflation-adjusted dollars. Cost of gas has gone way down in that time, but our cost of delivering service has gone up But all in all, we're not paying any more for gas. Most people are using less gas than they were then because it's gotten warmer, unfortunately. So you put them all together and we've basically been tracking inflation. Our problem is that we haven't raised rates at the right time in the right amounts to track it well. And so Our reserves are lower than they ought to be. Our cash balances are generally lower than they ought to be. And each one of our utilities is separate. Each one has to take care of itself. So we've got some adjusting to do there. And that may require some continued rate increases higher than CPI. Of course, CPI is only a consumer market basket. There's a lot of things in utilities that have gone up a lot faster, a lot more dramatically than CPI. But that's what everybody pays attention to, so that's what we try to reference it to. But all in all, that's what's driving it, inflation, whether it's current inflation or past inflation that we didn't raise rates in time for.

Okay, thank you for having that. I'm glad you asked the question to bring up your additional slides. So let's see. Let's see if there's any public comment from anybody here. Mr. Brown, can you check online to see if there's any public comment?

If you're online and you'd like to comment on this item, please raise your hand. No comments online, Chair.

Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Gibson. Thank you. Thank you. Pass along my thanks to the rest of the board. Okay. So now we're on to item 6C. So it's going to be 21844-26. It's demonstration of community dashboard performance metrics. So we have Mr. Krueger. Good evening and thank you for having me here, Chair Reidy and Council.

So yes, I'm going to do a little demonstration of our performance metrics, which are based on the strategic focus areas that you all have for the whole county. And so what we did is we took the approach that we've had from previous years and looked at ways of making them more meaningful for the community members to understand them, as well as ways that will make it more efficient for county staff to incorporate these metrics into community outreach. And so one of the things I wanted to show before we dive into the metrics is on our new look of our homepage, we added a section in the bottom half where we're highlighting the different three of the five strategic focus areas. And these are meant to be very dynamic sections where we can really highlight efforts that the county has undertaken or is about to undertake in these strategic focus areas that the performance metrics help tell the story, but this is another way we can tell the story. So just wanted to highlight that. And then another thing that we did is at the top of the home page is now we have a dedicated button that Mr. Real is showing that everybody in the county or anybody around the world can find our performance metrics. So we really wanted to elevate this to really be able to, again, show how we're working to accomplish these strategic focus areas. And then if you move all the way up to the top just for a second, you can also find it under the government menu item. It's the very first one, performance metrics. So again, we're trying to elevate its visibility. So going into it, I'm going to have us dive into the economic vitality focus area, because this is one of the areas that, A, it It's on everybody's mind, but it's also a good area to show kind of the breadth of how we're able to demonstrate how we're doing on these performance areas. And so in the first section, housing, the approach we took here is a very visual approach where we developed a map. And the reason we did this is, maps can speak a lot better than just lists when it comes to listing housing projects and you have these names. If you don't know a particular project, you don't understand or you don't really have an idea of what the project is about. So at a glance, the map allows us to first show where the housing projects are so we can show that we are, you know, just at a glance, you can see we've got projects all over both town sites. And then the other thing we did is if you scroll just a little bit, you can see that we really also wanted to demonstrate with the color categories how these projects or how the county interfaces with these projects. And so you can see the top ones, the green and blue ones are ones that the county has supported in various ways, where the orange and the yellow ones are pretty much strictly private development projects. And so we wanted to show that to show that there are some that we can have some influence on or are partnering with organizations and others. There's not a whole lot we can do, but we wanted to show that there are projects that the private sector are doing. And then the other thing you can do on this map is you can actually click on these. and it gives you a little synopsis, just a very brief summary, but even more important is when you get down to the bottom, you can click on that tell me more about the housing, and you can get all this great information that I know you heard a lot of the information from Dan just a couple sessions ago, and so this is where he's keeping all this data up to date. Let's see here. Then the last thing that we're doing besides those standard metrics you've hopefully seen before, is we have a blue button there, more on housing development, where we're also trying to link to other information directly. So if a community member wants to learn more about this topic, they can go there and they can really do a deep dive into the topic. So we wanted to make it, again, as easy as possible for people to be informed about these metrics. Moving on to local business. One of the other things we wanted to do is similar to what I just talked about. Whenever we have an initiative, so like this business and event directory, again, we're linking directly to it. So it's not just seeing that we accomplished it, but then people can actually go into it and interact with it, make use of it. Let's see, and then we're also doing some additional stuff where community development department is doing a good job of tracking how many businesses are in there. So we wanted to show how it's growing over time, that it's not just something that we launched and that's it, that we are continually asking businesses to sign up to it. And so we're tracking that. And then some of these other ones just below that, the amount of county spending, I wanted to highlight those as that's data that we have that through our purchase card program and our entries through our immune system, that data exists. So this is just one way that we can simply do some data calls on our existing systems to then demonstrate to, again, community members, to you all, how we're doing in these particular metrics. Same thing with this blue chart, the annual direct spending on tourism. We get that data from the state of New Mexico, and then we can present it here And then the other thing that we recently added was CDD again was able to go through their business licenses. And now if you scroll down just a little bit further, you can see that we can show over time the new business licenses that we're issuing each year by category. And so we can really start taking the data and starting to look at trends or growth opportunity areas. The next one, downtown revitalization. This one I think is a great one because we've got some relatively new mechanisms to support business through LIDA and MRA, which are a little bit alphabet soup. So the first thing we did was a little bit up there. We provided definitions. So people can go to this, see that we have these metrics, learn about it, and then can even further deep dive with those links again, specifically to LIDA, LIDA for Retail or MRA. And then we again took a map approach to help show which projects are, or which applications are out there and the status of the applications, the type of funding or support that they're asking for, And then, again, same thing. There's that link, the Tell Me More, that goes to the project page so people can see the status of each of these. And that way we can, again, be very open about how we're supporting businesses through these different initiatives. Let's see. And then below that, in some of our standards, charts that we've had in the past. We've updated them to show retail in the county, so you can see how we're tracking total commercial score footage, empty storefronts, commercial vacancy rates, all of that. So we can see how those change over time. Right now we don't have a whole lot of data set in here, but we're hoping that we can keep adding to this into the future so we can start seeing trends and making some more informed decisions based on what we might be seeing in the data. Moving on to the next section. This area, we're showing how the county supports in this case, educational, arts, cultural, and historical amenities. And so we wanted to show both the total investment that the county does each year in these types of contracts, but also be very transparent by showing what each individual contract amount is. So going back up just a little bit to that first chart, You can see the big green bar is the total contract cost for all of these particular contracts, but then each of those other smaller bars, you can see how much we're putting towards the summer concert series or the history museum contract or the nature center contract. So again, you can see trends over time. Any community member can come here and see what we're doing to support these efforts. Let's see, and then, yeah, next one down, we can also not only show how much we're putting in, but then what some of the results are, at least in terms of participation in these events. And so we're getting this data from each of these contracts, and then we can show those trends. And then below these last two, when we have things like the Historic Preservation Property Master Plan or the upcoming Manhattan Project Dormitory Renovation, where we don't necessarily have data, we still have these progress charts that we can update and show people where we're at within this whole process. So even if we don't have a whole ton of data, we can at least show that we're making progress in these areas and what step we're in. And then tourism is my favorite one for a couple of reasons, one of which is the data here is probably one of the more interesting sets. But the cool thing about this one is This is where we can see, since we have a longer data set in this area, we can actually start looking at trends. And so if you go down to the big, the second chart, where we're putting it all together, you can see that green dashed line is total visitation across all of our tourist sites that that are reporting visitation and so you can see in this case there's some seasonality right so there are opportunities for us to look at this data and see are there areas where we could target some tourism to bring in more tourism in those areas that are that are lower or Or even, let's see, if you hover over, I think, Bradbury down at the bottom, I think that one's an interesting one. The movie Oppenheimer caused a bump, and you can see that in that 2022 year. But the bump did not go down. And so that's kind of interesting to see in the stat, is that the visitation has stayed higher than it was before the movie. there are areas like that that we can now start looking at the data and seeing what we can do with some decisions moving forward. And then let's see here, I've got a couple more. Excuse me, the big curve on top, what was that? That is the summary of all of the other ones, all the other lines. So it's the culmination of Vice Caldera Visitation, Nature Center, Bradbury, Manhattan Project, Bandelier, and the Los Alamos visitor centers. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Then we're going to skip community broadband and actually go to quality of life. Let's see. And then, yeah, the first one, health, well-being, and social services. This one's similar to the education, arts, and cultural and historical amenities in that we wanted to show how we're supporting this area with the total amount of contracts as well as scrolling down. You can see all of the different contracts. Unfortunately, I couldn't do one chart for all of those because you can only do 10 at a time. And we've got 10 contracts plus summary. But you can still see each individual contract. But the other thing I wanted to show on this section is how we can also show how we're partnering well with others. And so in this case, social services is showing how they're supporting clients as well as referrals to this Unitas network, which is a partner network with regional social service networks. And so we can track Yeah, exactly that, how we're working with our partners. And then moving on to public safety, it's actually, yeah, probably fast to go to the top and to the last one. It was the last one, quality of life, sorry. No, that was my bad, I didn't direct well. I just wanted to... to show that both the fire department and the police department have some wonderful, amazing stats. And they're one of the areas that we're known for for being a very safe community. So this is a great way to visualize some of the very complicated stats that they have. And so showing just the vast amount of EMS calls that they do or wildland fire calls, technical rescues, but then also looking at the crime stats and really showing what's happening in the community. If we go a little further down, you can start seeing all these different stats that the police department reports and where they're making some good strides. And then, let's see, I wanted to do two more and then I'll open it up to questions. So over in quality governments, in the communication engagement one, I wanted to, this one's just a fun teaser because I actually ran the numbers today. In this particular case, this very first chart, it shows our monthly usage of our website. And so you can see our trends from 2024, 2025, and 2026. I'm very excited to follow this one in particular because you can see this past year or this past month, the first month that the new design of the website has launched, we reached numbers that we haven't seen on the website before. So I'm hoping this is one way that we can dynamically show as we make some changes. Hopefully they're for the better and the numbers go up, but we can at least start seeing some data changes in real time and make adjustments if we're following these trends. And then operational excellence, the last category. I wanted to highlight this because this one helps us show how, through these performance metrics, we can demonstrate that we're meeting the demand. So in the very first one, effective, efficient, and reliable services for IPRA, these numbers just boggle my mind, I have to say, when I put these in, was just seeing what the volume was of requests that our small but mighty REM team does. They handle a whole lot of requests and the amount of documents that they have to process every year is astronomical. for a team of three. So I think that's really cool to show that when people do have concerns about IPRA or the same thing, CDD has some great numbers on their permits and their inspections here that we can show them that we are working and we've got a high volume and sometimes it might take longer than we would like, but we've got a lot of requests coming in that we're trying to meet the needs for. So with that, I know I skipped over a lot of the other metrics, but I wanted to highlight kind of the different ways of showing how we're doing. And with that, I will stand for questions. Or sit for a moment.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Krueger. Do we have any questions or comments? Councilor Hand?

Thank you, Chair. I want to compliment you on your presentation. I really appreciate the way you've presented the data, and it gives us a good idea of what's going on in a variety of different areas. I love the visuals. That is something that communicates much better to a variety of people than words or other means of putting that information together. Um, one of the things I've noticed on, you know, all these different graphs is that we, we show sort of the, uh, composite, you know, so, you know, you know, like within a particular category, you've got, uh, the total at the top, you know, on the graphs, and then you'll have each individual component on there. Um, and, and it's a good as is picture. you know, and especially looking at things over time. And I think this gives us a really good opportunity to, you know, you had mentioned trends and, you know, looking at things over years or months or seasons to see where, okay, you know, that may be too low or too high. We want to see something different. Are we going to develop, as a next step, goals or objectives to say, okay, on visitation, for example, in December, all the numbers are very low. Do we want the numbers higher? First, we have to identify if we really want that, because maybe we don't. Maybe everybody wants to go on vacation, I don't know. You know, but we have to determine what it is that we want to see or change based on the information that we currently have. And, you know, we could make a goal. Well, we want to see it higher, but how much higher? Maybe we want to just work for the next year. We're going to try to make it 10% higher in December. higher visitation. You could do that across the board in a lot of areas. Maybe you would have to identify some new areas where you want to track data, but I was just wondering if there were plans for that or what the next step is.

I can give a partial answer on that one. So good question, Councilor Hand. Mr. Real, if you could go back to the website. I think the best example is Community Development Department. Again, was great at developing some of this. So if you actually go into the business section of the website, go up to the top in business and then apply for a permit. And just that one, apply for a permit. Back over, there you go, perfect. So what they did is they wanted to show over on the right-hand side their permits. So not only do they show the volume, but right below that, they wanted to show their monthly average number of days of processing residential permits. So this is one of those cases where they already set a target And now they're showing each month that they meet that target or not. And so I'm actually training them on Friday. That's why the data is a little bit behind of adding the data to the system. But this is where every month you can see for the previous month where they on track about how many days can you expect to wait for your permit. So that is. one of the examples where, yeah, one department has already set some targets and is demonstrating right here on the page that's most applicable how they're going to meet that.

That's excellent.

Thank you.

Chair, if I could just add to that, Councillor Hand, if at the top of each of the section, like housing or whatever the topic was, so remember, Council, this is a, This is structured around Council's strategic leadership plan that's evaluated every year, and there's focus areas, and then there's objectives. And on each objective, we tried to, in the narrative at the top of each one, talk about we want to increase, for instance, visitation. So we tried to put descriptive words that identified to your word, what the goal or what's good and what's, I won't say that all of them are where they need to be, but some of them are pretty good. And I think it's something we'll continue to work on to your point, communicate what's good and what's bad when you look at this or what's the outcome we're looking for. So that's what we're trying to continue to develop.

Thank you for that. Any other questions, comments?

Thank you, Chair. I also want to compliment you on this. I think it's fabulous. I wanted to say I was doing something wrong and I couldn't figure this out. Under housing, on the map there, when you click on each of those or any of those, down below where it says tell me more about each project. The way my screen is, when I would click on tell me more about that, I wasn't able to click on that. And I actually had to scroll down a little bit to get to it. And I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong at first. And the information that is in there is exactly what I was looking for. And so I just wanted to tell you I It was a user operator error there when I couldn't figure that out. But I love that you go into, you define some of these terms, county supported, private. It's just, it's really well done. So thank you.

Thank you. It's been a big team effort.

Okay, thank you, Councillor Herman. Do we have any other questions, comments? Not seeing any. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Council government.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Yes, thank you. HAB-Masyn Moyer- I just wanted to. HAB-Masyn Moyer- echo the compliments and standing ovation i'm actually kind of blown away, this is a lot better than I thought it was going to be. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And so I think the biggest challenge now is just making sure people know about it and engage with it and then and keep providing data, so we can keep making it better so thanks a million really good.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- it's my pleasure.

Thank you, Council Huffman. So yeah, thank you very much for, I know there was a lot of work that went into all this and using some tools that we haven't seen before, especially the maps and the graphics that you can actually select. You have to kind of understand the sequence, but you figure it out. But you can select the particular data and figure out which line it is pretty easily. Um, so, so that's good. And, uh, I think what's interesting is you can look at just in your little overview to, we have some amounts spent on some things that are in like the tens of thousands and other things that are in the millions. And so that raises the questions like, what's the, what's the difference there other than, well, that's what we've been doing. So I think it's good to be, can see more kind of immediately and we're not comparing them across each other, but you can look at the numbers pretty easily. And I think obviously having more data will be really good. And I just think this, I want to compare to the old way of doing this when we got the budget book and there were the static charts in there that were a little bit dated because the budget book, you know, is in April. So I think that this, having this information up to date, and I think that the facing to basically thinking that the people that are the customers, right, want to know, like, what should I expect? for a turnaround time. And so that creates a metric of expectation, and you'll get feedback on that more directly, I think, when people understand, yeah, that's what we're expecting to do. So I think that's very helpful. So yeah, obviously just having more data on some of them would be really helpful. And that's what I wanted to comment on. And let's see if there's, oh. Sure, go ahead. You can say it.

Thank you. Chair, for letting me ask one more question. So I was just wondering, are you also having all the departments compare with other communities similar to us, other you know, what are you using as a measure that says, Oh, we're totally awesome. Or yeah, this is, you know, this is our process and it takes this long to get a permit, but is that good or bad compared to everybody else in the world? So what are you doing on that?

Good question. I'll try to answer that and then I'll phone a friend if need be. Uh, Two things, one is we looked at a lot of these metrics that we tied to the different objectives, looking at what other counties or cities, municipalities are doing and having at least some similarity there. But then we also have our national community survey, which is going to be coming out this fall. And that's the one that really helps us understand where we're at on a very apples to apples with other communities that are also doing the same survey. So how did I do?

Excellent as always, Chair and Councillor Hahn. I just wanted to say there's several sources we used. One is there's actually a big book of municipal metrics that we went through to see and pulled out what we thought was relevant to council strategic leadership plan. So that was a resource. We spent a lot of time looking at other communities resources. We didn't have an ego about this. If somebody had figured out something better than You know, we tried to see what we might compare ourselves. But quite frankly, some of them came directly from council. Some of them came from the local business coalition. I mean, some of them are coming from other sources that we just sort of pulled from all of them and tried to pick the ones that we thought were most relevant to what councils identified. And it will change over time. But what I like about how it's set up now is it's a little bit more of a living document versus you sort of get it up once and it's like then you have to start over again. This one seems like now we can continue to keep adding to it. So that's something I'm very excited about. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councillor Hannan. Okay, so I think I was getting ready to see if there was any public comment. Just remember to state your name for the record.

David Hampton. Chair, council, I think this is a fantastic tool. I really liked seeing the part about housing and economic development that Lita and MRA things that are in process. And I think it could be expanded. I mean, it's very powerful, very useful. I'd also be interested in seeing behavioral health data also, if we could put it there. And of course, hard stuff like suicides, overdoses, even reported high school bullying, domestic violence, those things. And I'd like to see how we do year over year, and I think it might be very useful in how we approach those various problems in our community. Thank you.

Mr. Hampton. Okay, we have any other, is there anyone else here? There's somebody on Zoom to make a comment.

Maura O'Neill, you are now unmuted. Please state your name for the record and limit your comments to three minutes. Thank you.

This is Maura O'Neill with the Los Alamos Reporter. And I just wanted to congratulate David and the team on the great work on this project. There's an amazing amount of information there. And the graphics, the colors, everything is beautiful. I mean, it's a product that you would want to go to instead of going, oh, my God, I've got to go on and find the uh the information i'm looking for i'm really looking forward to working with this but i would ask that um that um council and the county keep the information coming to local media you know um share the data with us um it's important and uh um uh both of the the the pages that do most of the sharing are anxious to put it out there and happy to put it out there. And there is an audience that doesn't go to products like this. So keep up the great work. Send us your news releases. It's, it's getting harder to find things by having to go to like next door and, and tell for the, news releases from there to put on my page. And for me, there's just me. So that eats up a lot of time. Keep sending the news releases. Like I said, there's a whole audience who don't do Facebook, don't do the county website. They just go to to news pages on websites for their news. So don't leave us. And I consider I'm almost I'm 69 now. So I look at myself with a in a different group than I used to be when I started writing. So keep up the good work and keep us keep in touch with us and thank you again.

Okay, thank you, Miss Neil. Any other public comment?

Chair, I'm not seeing any other hands.

Okay. Thank you. And I just, I guess following up on one of the first comment we heard, that did remind me that, so it's important to show the data, like some of the troubling data, right, too, that we've seen. And I just was having some discussion at a different kind of meeting today about some of that data and what we can be doing as a community. So I think that relates to the comment I made about, like, where are we investing our money and that we're trying to solve some of these or address some of these other issues. So thank you again for working on this and showing it off tonight. So I think maybe we should take a short break before launching the next one. I'm not sure how long the next one's going to take. So oh, I guess I never gaveled us in. So this meeting never occurred. There's no gavel. So we'll take a 10-minute break. Thank you.

Okay.

The gavel is back. Okay. So we're on to item 6D. It's 21863-26. It's going to be Comprehensive Plan Update of Public Engagement Vision Scenario Survey Results and Next Steps. So we have Mr. Isaac and Ms. Valdez.

Good evening, Chair, members of the Council. Before I turn the presentation over to our consultants, CZB, who are online with us this evening, I just wanted to give a brief update on where we are and why we're bringing this to you this evening. So we've been working on this project since January of this year, and as we've mentioned in previous conversations with Council on this topic, we are really trying to get the comprehensive plan adopted by the end of this calendar year, so that the Council that has sort of been working with us. along the way is the council that ultimately gets to approve and adopt the plan um where we are now is we've we've um and czb uh both peter lombardi and thomas eddington will go into more detail where we are in the project but um we're at sort of critical juncture uh we are transitioning into drafting of the draft plan that we will be presenting in august and so we thought it was a good idea uh to bring this forward and and update the council and get some feedback to make sure we are on the right direction so that we can keep this uh aggressive and ambitious schedule moving uh as planned and so with that um i'd like to turn it over to peter and thomas uh danielle and i are are here for any questions along with our consultants so thank you all right thank you eli um i have um

Going to pull up the slides here for the presentation. As Eli mentioned, I'm joined here with Thomas Eddington from CZB. And we have a short slideshow here to bring everyone on council up to speed on where we are with this project. We have some project updates to pass along. We'll spend most of our time focusing on the emerging plan framework that has developed over the first seven months of this project. And then we'll talk about the next steps, including what Eli mentioned, the development of the first draft for presentation next month. So this project, this comprehensive plan, is the first major update to Los Alamos County's comprehensive plan in about a decade. This is a long-range plan for Los Alamos County, setting general direction goals and strategic priorities for the community, especially direction on where and how to grow, where and how development should take place, providing guidance on on future budgeting, capital investment planning and infrastructure. And something that we know is important to this council, it serves as a foundation for updates to zoning and development regulations. So that's one of the important features of any comprehensive plan is serving as the foundation for updating development standards, zoning uses, things that directly influence where and how development happens. So just to put a finer point on that, the way to think about this planning process here, goals, policy direction, even when it's adopted, it's non-binding, it's policy direction, but it really, the rubber hits the road when it comes to the guidance it provides to chapter 16, for example, the zoning and development regulations, which are binding. So one way to be thinking about the draft plan once you get a chance to see it next month and as it goes through public review in the months that follow is thinking about implementation and how does the plan influence updates to the code and updates to other binding aspects of county government. Part of the guidance that the plan will be providing for Chapter 16, as an example, is a future land use map, which was part of the last comprehensive plan. It'll be part of this comprehensive plan as well. That'll provide guidance, for example, on subjects such as ADUs, accessory dwelling units, parking standards, and other subjects that have been bubbling up in the last few years as important subjects for the county to be responsive to. So that future land use map that you'll see a draft of in August, again, a non-binding policy map, but it's an important step in providing guidance on updating the county zoning map, whether that happens next year or down the line, the future land use map is an important policy resource. The approach that we've taken to this process since we started at the beginning of this year is really focusing on three components of great comprehensive planning. One component is that a good plan gets the big things right. The state of the art and comprehensive planning today isn't planning that attempts to be an encyclopedia of every subject known to man and providing guidance on every imaginable subject. It's really identifying the issues, the subjects that are extremely important to the community that are prioritized and where the plan can provide focused guidance on moving the community forward in ways that are measurable and that will help advance well articulated goals in the community. So getting the big things right is perhaps the most important feature of a great plan. The second part is that it plans for what is known. So an important part of this process has been going through previous plans that have been completed in the past few years to understand what's been happening on housing, on population, on open space planning, a number of subjects so that this plan is responsive to trends and conditions that we can put our fingers on. And then the third component of a great comprehensive plan is that it creates a decision-making framework for the unknown. So it creates a kind of filters that include core values, planning principles and priorities that can be used as the unexpected as unexpected things happen over the next few years. As you know, they will happen in order to make sure that the plan is not obsolete on day one. If it provides a way of thinking about how to be responsive to the unknown, that's that's one critical role that a comprehensive plan can play. So as Eli indicated, the goal since the beginning has been to have this plan update finished by the end of this year. As you can see here, we are more than halfway through, but we're towards the end of the second of three phases. This second phase that we're in right now had a busy month. Last month, we had a second round of public workshops. There is currently a survey that mirrors those public workshops available for the public to take at planlosalamos.org. That includes a look at some vision scenarios that we put together that are responsive to some of the priorities we've been learning about from the public since the beginning of this process. week of August 17th when we're there next, that will coincide with a third round of public workshops. And then as we get feedback on that draft, our goal is to turn around a refined, near final version of the plan by October that can then go into the public hearing and adoption process towards the end of this year. So we're on time for phase three delivery of this project. So far, the public has been involved in a series of ways. Our team has been doing some stakeholder interviews with people who are not on the steering committee in order to broaden the scope of our understanding of community issues. The steering committee that we've been working with since the beginning has been helpful in providing names and organizations for us to be in touch with. So there've been some interviews. This is the second round of community surveys that are currently posted at planlosalamos.org. In the public workshops, we had the first round in March, a second round last month. That third round around the draft plan presentation will be coming up. And then planlosalamos.org has been a way for the public to get in touch with our consulting team since the beginning of this project. And that remains a resource for anyone who's interested in learning more about the project. So the emerging vision for focused investment is what we'll talk about now for a few minutes. This is really where the process has been taking us so far. When we've asked people since the beginning of the project, what are the big things that this project has to get right? Potentially predictable things have come up based on all of the issues that you hear about on a daily basis. Housing opportunities is certainly one that has come up very, very frequently, both from the steering committee and from the public. The nature and quality of amenities. entertainment, restaurant, retail, those sorts of things that has also come up repeatedly during this process. The vitality of downtown and the White Rock Town Center, those have come up, as well as some additional issues, open space preservation, healthcare and social services. We highlight those top three there just as the kind of the most numerous, the most frequently mentioned general topics. that have been prompted by our question about what are the big things in the community. We've also been hearing pretty consistent responses from the community when we ask, where do you want Los Alamos to grow and how do you want Los Alamos to grow? And it's been, we think, a pretty strong consensus around reusing underutilized commercial sites, really focusing on redevelopment,

in strategic locations.

And in doing so, focusing on a higher density of development, mixed use, upper story residential, a wider range of housing types in the community for households at all life stages and compact and walkable places. And we think that one of the things that we'll mention in just a minute, a lot of those things connect directly with plans that have been adopted by the council in the last decade. So it really is a continuation of things that we think have been expressed by the community over time. Some additional input we've been getting from the community are on these pieces of the decision-making framework for the unknown. So core values, we presented a draft set of core values and planning principles to the public last month and on the online survey that's available right now based on responses that we got from the public back in March. And the core values that have been identified so far, Los Alamos being a neighborly place, inclusive, aiming to be more innovative and collaborative. Those are three legs to the core value stool that we see emerging from this process so far. And then planning principles that are that are drawn from those core values, as well as some frustrations that we gleaned from the community in March, where some people mentioned that the community over the past generation has had a tendency to become stuck or hesitant on some issues. That was a common word that was selected when we asked community members to identify words that They identify with Los Alamos County. So these planning principles are responsive to those core values, as well as some of the frustrations that we heard from the community. So embracing risk taking in new approaches, being proactive about priorities by having skin in the game, and then balancing development and open space preservation. We see those as both relating to those core values, as well as being part of this emerging synthesis of the big things. So we presented these three emerging big things to the community last month, appealing and accessible housing options need to be expanded, vibrant amenity rich activity centers need to be cultivated. And then a third big thing, natural and recreational assets need to be preserved and connected. that kind of draw together the threads of issues that have been expressed most commonly during this process. So these are emerging pieces. And again, as I just mentioned a minute ago, we see these as really echoing to a very significant degree, recent plans like the town center master plan and the downtown master plan. the open space and trails management plan that was adopted last year, the affordable housing plan, and also I think, you know, key pieces of the comprehensive plan from a decade ago. So our impression scanning previous policy guidance and planning documents in Los Alamos County is that the vision we're hearing so far is a continuation. There doesn't appear to be a hard break or a very sudden direction that the community wants to take. There's a lot of consistency. And so we're seeing this comprehensive plan update as really an opportunity to draw those threads to the present and kind of pull them forward under the umbrella of this updated comprehensive plan. The policies, some policies that have been enacted, the MRA boundaries, the downtown district overlay over the past several years are also reflected in some of the priorities that we've been hearing. So the county has been responsive in the past to this interest in seeing more development in the downtown and the town center and having the tools to put in place to assist with those efforts. In our meetings with the public last month, we also presented some imagery of types of development that are indicative of the types of preferences that the community has expressed so far. We presented this as a way of getting some feedback from the public, confirmation of direction that this is the vision that the community would like to go in. And so when we asked the public directly a series of questions last month, and this is ongoing in that online survey right now, we asked them directly, do those draft core values and principles reflect how decisions can and should be made in Los Alamos County? Three quarters of respondents so far have said yes, those look good. Work with those. Agreement with the big things as presented that synthesis of three big things, housing, activity centers and open space and recreation. 70% said, yes, those look good to us. Keep moving forward on those. And then does the emerging vision as a whole reflect how you think Los Alamos County should evolve over the coming decade? About two thirds of respondents provided pretty strong endorsement of this emerging vision. So again, we see a lot of continuity and a lot of members of the public seeing these themes emerge and recognizing them as themes that are familiar from previous planning work. Something that, and as we kind of round out here, this presentation, the most recent meetings we had with the public and the steering committee in June, we really, emphasize that this emerging direction will really occur through real estate development. This especially thinking about housing opportunities, thinking about emerging activity centers, you're really talking about the comprehensive plan having to provide guidance on how Los Alamos County helps to influence private real estate development going forward in ways that align with community goals. And so what we expressed to our steering committee last month was that if the vision fails to materialize in the coming years, It is very likely to be because of hurdles to the real estate development process, whether that's financial, regulatory, could be a combination of things. But it's very likely that real estate development will be really a focus for implementation. And so this plan we suspect really has to recognize the potential hurdles that could present themselves and how to lay the groundwork to overcome those hurdles so that the vision can advance. And so what we expressed last month in terms of providing a sense of where this project could be going and where the draft might be going is we presented three potential implementation pathways for a comprehensive plan to influence real estate development in ways that align with community goals. We talked about a limited or passive pathway a moderate and partnership focused pathway, and then a more active development focused pathway. And we presented how each of these three pathways have differing levels of control, give the county different levels of control over where and how investment happens. They come with different resource requirements from the county, and they all have different timing, different influence on the timing of when and how development happens. So we laid them out and we also really help people understand that all three of these pathways can be pursued at the same time in the same community. And that it really comes down to what are you trying to accomplish in specific locations and what is really needed to achieve location specific goals. And so that, you know, there may be. some pathways that are super appropriate for certain very specific goals and others that aren't. And so helping to sift through the appropriateness of each pathway will be important. But another piece of our engagement with the community most recently is really trying to understand the community's appetite for the most active pathway, for the most assertive pathway, the most proactive pathway, and whether that should be baked into the implementation piece of the comprehensive plan. So as we walked through these with members of the community last month, we talked about this limited or passive pathway is really being about getting your zoning and permitting processes right. You have ultimately not a lot of control over development with your zoning and permitting, you can influence where and how things happen, but you don't have a tremendous amount of control over making development happen. There's a lot that's dependent on market forces. So the limited pathway is really about making sure zoning and permitting are right. That's a relatively low cost way of influencing development. But there's a lot of control you don't have. So the timing of implementation can be very unpredictable. It can be very long, depending on market conditions. But that's really how to think maybe about implementation. types of development that aren't very complicated, where we're just having the right zoning and the right regulations in place is all the county needs to do. So we laid out that limited or passive pathway, which is already in existence in Los Alamos County and will have a role in this comprehensive plan. The moderate pathway really turns up the dial a bit in terms of the county's proactiveness. So there's a little bit more control ultimately over where and how development happens and the timing of development, but it comes with more resource requirements. So here we're talking about targeted infrastructure investments and financial incentives, public private partnerships, strategic investments in certain areas. So this is an area where also the county does have a track record of pursuing this moderate pathway. You could look at MRAs and other programs right now as being part of this more moderate pathway where there's a little more cost involved, there's a little more proactiveness on the county's part. And this is really suitable for larger scale, more complex forms of development that might need more county help to move along at an appropriate speed. And then the active pathway that we talked about with the community last month was really thinking about what are the most proactive things that a government can be doing to ensure that certain development goals are achieved in a reasonable timeline. And so there you might have redevelopment authorities created, land banking programs established, light site assembly, structured parking as a piece of the county's development toolkit. So things that really go the extra mile, if development of a certain type in a certain location is an utmost priority for the community and it's willing to support, being more proactive in order to achieve those goals. But that that greater level of control comes with higher costs, higher risks, but the benefit of being able to make sure that some sort of development happens in a shorter timeline. So all of these have their pros, their cons, and also their potential appropriateness in certain types of development contexts. And so walking through our steering committee, You know, each of these pathways trying to discern their level of comfort and appetite with pursuing one or another in the right context was an important part of our work last month and into this month. And I think a lot of what we've been hearing in response to talking about these pathways is it depends. I think there is interest in understanding more about what does it look like to do the moderate pathway or the active pathway. pathway in downtown Los Alamos, in White Rock Town Center, in other potential areas, but recognition that there's a lot that depends on what type of risk is the county taking on, how much will it cost, how much control does the county really have over the results. And so part of our drafting process now is really trying to pull the different pathways together into a clear implementation framework that's very clear about what type of tools are most appropriate and most useful for the different goals that the community wants to see around housing, around activity centers, and other priorities. So that the conversations over the past month have been helping us kind of figure out where to potentially land with this draft that we'll be delivering in August. And there'll certainly be time for all of you and other members of the community to review that and provide us with feedback so that we can tweak the implementation guidance and land in a spot where there's a high level of comfort from the county council and from others in the community. But I'd say one thing before we finish here is that there is, I think, an appetite to explore and understand more about what this most active path looks like. And And so there's, I think, a lot of interest in seeing how the draft plan handles a more proactive stance. And so getting feedback on that next month and in the months ahead will be really important. So that full draft of Plan Los Alamos will be released and discussed during the week of August 17th. Specific dates are pending in terms of those public workshops, but we'll be meeting again with our steering committee and the technical advisory committee of county staff. And then... As it goes up on planlosalamos.org for broader public review, there will be a comment mechanism for the public to submit comments and questions. And then our goal will be to turn around a revised draft by October that reflects the feedback that we received to that point. So with that, we'll take any questions that you have on the process or where we are with the plan framework.

OK, thank you very much. Do counselors have any questions or comments?

Yeah, just a quick question. Can you give some examples of activity centers? What are you talking about there?

So the activity center, how about you, Thomas, take this one.

Sure. So when we think of an activity center, it's really much, it's probably more similar to say like, you know, from the, probably the more typical viewpoint would be from kind of a downtown center, but it could also be a neighborhood center. It could be kind of a smaller center where people could gather. It's kind of a walkable area that is a bit of a magnet for the area immediately around it. if it's a downtown, you know, if you're looking at really downtown Los Alamos or White Rock, it's got a bit of a more regional component, but it's really that kind of a center that's really mixed use and kind of walkable in nature.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you. Councillor Caldwell, do we have any other questions or comments? Councillor Hand?

Thank you, Chair. On slide 20, you say that the realization of the emerging vision will occur primarily through real estate development. And if it fails, if the vision fails to materialize, it will be because of hurdles to real estate development processes. Well, that's kind of what I think we've already been experiencing for quite some time. So I'd really like to see how we're going to solve those problems that, you know, we're still dealing with a lot of vacant areas throughout some very high visibility parts of town. And I think we've received significant input from the public about, you know, why aren't we doing anything about that? And, you know, I think the response has been that we don't have much control over that, that it's, primarily private developers that are responsible for moving forward on that. So I agree with the slide. I hope we solve the problem. Also, I just had another question on slide 14, where you say that our planning principles are going to, number two, proactive about priorities by having skin in the game. Can you define that more specifically, what you mean by skin in the game for our planning principles? I know what skin in the game is, I'm not sure how you're applying it here.

Yeah, so really what that's expressing is if there's something that is a critical priority for the community, if it's housing, if it's downtown Los Alamos, the White Rock Town Center, then the planning principle is that the county will will really hold itself to opening its wallet to make sure that that prioritized issue advances in the way that the community wants to see it advance. So you just raised the issue of real estate development and that everyone in the community recognizes that there are opportunities goals that have not been realized in the past. And a big part of that is that private real estate development hasn't chosen to develop something that the community might wanna see at a certain location. So a hurdle to that is often financial. And so if seeing the downtown Los Alamos master plan realized, seeing the White Rock Town Center master plan realized. If a hurdle there is financial, if the financial return isn't there for the private sector, but the county really wants to see aspects of those plans realized, then that's where that active implementation pathway comes into effect, where the county has to think about more aggressive ways of putting its resources on the table to help make development happen, whether that's structured parking, whether that's how it participates in the MRA with a private developer. It's really about not you know, not waiting for the activity to happen, but really being much more assertive, which is not, I would say for most communities, that hasn't historically been where communities have seen their role. It's really that more limited or passive approach of have the zoning right, have the development regulations right, and let development happen. And those are all important to have in place, but in many places today, that's not sufficient. When you think about interest rates, labor costs, building costs, there are a number of constraints on private development activity. And so being a more full-throated partner And just investing in ways that will help that, you know, development activity happen is really what we're talking about. Skin in the game is resources on the table, on subjects where you really want to see things advancing, where... saying, oh, I guess the private sector just can't make a go of it right now, where you don't want to fall back in that, oh, well, sort of position where the community doesn't want to find itself in that, oh, well, hopefully next year, hopefully 10 years from now kind of position. So that can't happen across the board on every imaginable subject. But if there are particular things, and we know that the county has done this successfully on many fronts in the past. There are certain things that are so important that the county really wants to be much more aggressive about investing in assisting private sector activity. That's really what that second principle is all about.

Okay. Thank you for explaining that a little bit better. That does make sense that, you know, Financial involvement is certainly going to mean more risk if the county is providing the finances to make something successful, which means that we would want to get more involved in the success of the project. Lastly, on slide 19, where you talk about confirmation of the emerging vision, You talk about, excuse me, does the emerging vision, this is the last bullet, does the emerging vision reflect how you think Los Alamos County should evolve over the coming decade? And you have 65% agreement. Is that a high enough percentage, in your opinion, to say that we got it right? Is that an indicator that we still need to work on that vision?

I think as the survey comes to a close, one thing that we'll be looking at is for people who did not indicate that they agree with that emerging vision, one option that people have is to suggest, well, what is it that would fit that you would agree with and sort of describe an alternative. So we'll be looking at those alternative descriptions to see is there kind of a theme, is there a theme that emerges from those who don't agree with the emerging vision? And is there a message in that that that needs to be heated or needs to be paid attention to. And so as we close out that survey, we'll be looking at that, you know, 33%, 35% that did not agree to kind of see what sort of themes emerge. I think when it comes to it, it's 66% sufficient. I think that really comes down to how the council feels about 51% versus 66% versus 80% and where your comfort level is in kind of endorsing a vision based on what kind of a majority is in alignment with it. Yeah. So I think that's a good question for the community in general, is a 66% thumbs up. Is that enough of a ringing endorsement for this council to stand behind the plan?

Yes, thank you. So on implementation pathways, slide 21, where you talk about different ways aspects to level of control, resources, and time required to achieve community goals. Does that in any way relate to overall level of growth of Los Alamos County? In the previous comprehensive plan, basically I believe we had a statement at the beginning where we said that the community believed in a moderate growth over time approach. Do we have anything like that here in this plan where we're saying it's moderate, no growth, slow growth or accelerated growth? Do we have anything like that to give people an understanding in a one sentence description of this plan of what what this plan is all about?

So I think what this was actually, we asked people about this in March. We said like, how much do you want Los Alamos to grow? And I think we've had members of our steering committee express that they wanna see growth, they wanna see that, and they suspect that the county can grow by quite a bit based on activity at LANL. And at the same time, when we did the March community engagement, I believe not, it wasn't consistent, but there was a fairly large cohort in responses that said, we're kind of fine, kind of, being kind of modest growers in the coming years. So I think that we don't see a consensus in the community in terms of, you know, do people want the county to grow by a lot, grow by a little, stay the same? There's kind of, you know, you get different takes on that question. One thing that we do sense and that we reported to the community back in March is that The projections for Los Alamos County are basically to have a fairly stable population over the next couple of decades. Those are University of New Mexico projections. And the census estimate for 2025 basically showed pretty much stable population compared to 2020. So I think there are estimates and projections that suggest kind of not, you know, that the county will kind of stay pretty stable. And so I think one way that we're thinking about the plan framework that's emerging is that regardless of whether the county stays where it is in terms of population or if it grows by three or four or five thousand people, that these the core values and planning principles and the priorities, I think remain good guides for how and where to grow. So if the county grows by 500 households, thinking about expanding housing opportunities for a wider range of household types, focusing on downtown and the town center, thinking about how to balance open space preservation and new development that that all of those aspects of the emerging planning framework are actually good ways to be thinking and making decisions, whether the county grows by a little or grows by 3,000 or 4,000 people. So that's kind of a long answer for we're getting mixed signals from the community on the question of growth, but we sense that the emerging framework actually provides pretty good guidance regardless of how much the county grows.

And Pete, if I could add a little bit of color to that, I would also say that what we've also heard anecdotally from the community and via surveys, I should say, is that the kind of growth matters as well. I think that if there were growth in kind of targeted areas, whether it's these downtowns, these centers, the heart of White Rock, the heart of Los Alamos, I think that people are generally for it. It's a different experience. it offers a different kind of housing typology, a variety of housing typology, et cetera. I think that people are generally supportive of that. So I think it's a bit of the kind of and the how the growth occurs that determines whether people are generally supportive of growth or not. I think it's a bit nuanced.

So in your opinion, do you think we need to catch up? Do we have any catch up that we need to do to be able to meet what our projections for stability of population are?

I think my answer Well, I would say one thing that I think is notable that we heard from people early on and then we were able to crack it in the data that are available is you've had a lot of job growth in Los Alamos County. over the past 10 or 15 years, and that job growth has outpaced by quite a bit the labor force within Los Alamos County. And the result has been a pretty rapid uptick in commuting from other counties into Los Alamos County. And so I think that has been... kind of a part of the puzzle for this whole project has been, you have all of these people, you know, who drive in and drive out and how much, to what extent are those households in, to what extent are they capturable? Um, and you know, what, what, what fraction of them are capturable, what fraction of them want to live, you know, would, would choose to live in Los Alamos if the right housing and the right neighborhood, you know, environment were made available to them. Um, and so I think, um, uh, as Thomas mentioned, thinking about the nature of where an outgrowth happens and to the extent that that can provide meet needs that exist in the county and provide something compelling to people who are currently commuting and might be looking for opportunities in Los Alamos County, that there's just the confluence of the commuting pressure the housing opportunities, the amenities, the downtown activity center amenities. I think all those things kind of come together. And one of our challenges with putting this draft together over the next few weeks is really showing how those things can interact with each other. To what extent can the county make a play for some of those commuters who can, whose demand have attracting their demand into Los Alamos County can help support, um, housing development and help support restaurants and retail. Um, and, and also take, take, take cars off the road, um, and, and lower some of the commuting pressures and traffic pressures. So, um, so I think, I think you're, you're, it's, uh, I think you're, you're, you're right to kind of, um, uh, uh, ask that question and I think we are seeing a number of these different threads that kind of get knotted together and that's something that we want to make sure gets expressed in the draft plan. Thomas?

No, yeah, I agree with that. And I suspect to kind of put a bit of a pin in your point, Pete, is that, yeah, there probably is a little bit of catch up with regard to some of the LANL employees in particular, right? Take some of the commuting off the road, put them into some of your centers and energize those areas. I think that's a bit of low hanging fruit, but to Pete's point, it is also something that we need to explore in a little bit more detail. And that's part of what will suss out over the next couple of months as we, between now and late next month, as we finalize the plan. That's a good question though.

Well, thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciate the extra information and definition of how you believe we will proceed. And I look forward to seeing the future drafts.

All right, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Haynes. Councillor Herman, do you have a question?

Thank you, Chair. When does the community survey finish? It must be just about done.

I believe it's kind of open-ended right now in order to encourage more participation, but I would say over the next couple of weeks.

Okay. How's participation been?

I believe we've had, it was as of mid last week, we were at over 100 responses to the community survey. I think back in March, we had closer to 300 responses. So part of the goal of leaving it open for a little bit longer is to see if we can get closer to the March baseline.

Sounds good. Thank you.

Councillor Herman, you have another?

Yeah, I'd like to ask them so they had these three levels of development and one of them is called active development and they're the all the extra dollar signs there and so forth and I was wondering how do you deal with the issue of fairness in that type of situation where you're giving money to somebody who is developing another business when previous people have developed a similar business without a subsidy. So you could be talking about apartment buildings, hotels, all kinds of different things where you say you want to do it actively, well then how do you deal with fairness or even lawsuits from people who have done it without such assistance and have a competing product? Won't that always devolve into some kind of I don't know the correct word for it, but how do you do that when you say you're going to do active development?

Yeah, I could jump in here, Pete. I would say that all development is sequential, and you certainly do have the MRAs and the support of the state in terms of how you begin to incentivize the development that you want. So I would say that as you look at and as you review the comprehensive plan, I think that what you will see is this recommendation for targeted areas of growth. And so I think that as you look towards, say, an active level of development, I think it's really utilizing the existing tools that the state and the state that you, the county, have already in your possession, but really kind of focusing them in certain areas. And so I would say that subject to a project meeting, your vision, your goals subject to it kind of serving as one of the big things, if you will, as part of the comprehensive plan. I think that it does start to receive some sort of justification to incentivize it if it meets what the community's goals are. And so I think of it somewhat less sequentially as what has occurred prior. Less so that rather than, hey, this meets what the community has asked for us to incentivize, to help guide, to direct, to hold hands with, to partner with. I think of it a little bit more in those terms. But the MRA, a tool that you guys currently use, does offer you a certain amount of opportunities to partner with developers. So I think of it like that, maybe slightly on steroids.

Yeah.

The partnership part.

Go ahead. I was just going to say that when you put the MRAs in place, could you have had people who said, hey, I built something before there was an MRA. Is that unfair? And so I think you could... That line of argument can be raised whenever a new development tool is put in place, a new financial tool is put in place. And so I think what's most fair, as Thomas was indicating, is by expressing that going forward, Here are our priorities. Here are the targeted areas where we're drawing a line around. And this is what we want to achieve there. And these are the financial tools that are available. And here's how we will assist developers, property owners, who want to be partners with us on projects that align with community goals. So it's really, it's being very transparent about from this point forward, here is what we're trying to achieve and here are the tools we have in place and being as predictable as possible on that front.

Well, partnership was the second level, but the other one, you said active development. And I was wondering what that example is, you know, because you... No matter what you do, you're going to be creating something that competes with somebody else who's a taxpayer and didn't get a subsidy. And they may, you know, what exactly? And I would assume there are even legal ramifications of that. I don't know. It's like a very selective gift giving. There's a whole series of, and we have laws like the MRA that allow you to do some things, but... How do you solve that fairness issue? Do you have to compete it or what do you say?

I guess I would say that as you think about moving into that active tier, that it is a partnership, but it's also a leadership role where the county is really starting to direct, to handhold, to partner. And again, slightly different than partner, you're actually leading, but I don't think that it would be a, a biased approach. I think that it is a targeted approach. And I think there is a difference there with regard to geographies and the type of development that you want to see. I think that it is open to anybody that is willing to coordinate, to partner, to kind of take that dive with you. I think that it is a... Mayor Mrakas, It puts you all in leadership role, which is probably an ideal role for you all to be in based on what the Community, the Community responses today, I guess, I would think of it as an as an opportunity.

Mayor Mrakas, To ready customer, if I could jump in. Mayor Mrakas, To maybe give an example that will kind of frame some of our thinking around this, you know, a good example would be something like structured parking in our downtown right where that is something that. isn't really being offered by the private sector it is a sort of a functions in many ways as sort of like an enhanced understanding of infrastructure can catalyze private development in our downtown by removing the burden for using valuable land for surface parking now we had can have a zone of benefit of parking reducing that need developers mentioned that to me too before that they

If the county would just buy them parking, they'd be happy.

Exactly. And so that's the type of thing we're talking about. We're not saying, let's compete, let's open a county-owned Chick-fil-A or something like that. I think what we're talking about is...

Bringing the Chick-fil-A next to the McDonald's. Exactly.

It's really about sort of identifying where there's market demand that's not being met or where there's, I should actually say, a lack of market demand, where there's projects that would catalyze future development and the county taking more of a leadership role in making those projects come to fruition. I think that's what we're talking about in the more active stance in sort of key areas of our communities, you know, not in neighborhoods, not in things like that, but in our downtowns where we want to really prime the pump for redevelopment and make it easier for our private developers to bring projects forward.

And what do you say to the next guy who comes in next year with his similar project, you know? That's a tough one.

So Chair Reddy, Councillor Rieger, I think in the parking structure, think about it in terms of public parking and alleviating any new private development from a parking obligation in a certain distance from the public parking.

Yeah, it's a greater poach.

Which is different than individually as each development comes in. will the county build my parking, will the county build my parking, which would be sequential. And then at some point.

Complicated. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So that, that, that's how I would different differentiate that example is it would be more looking at it like a public investment, but the reason why it would be on the proactive or the forget the tool, sorry, the active. Thank you. Because right now we would have to identify and probably purchase land. And then we would probably have to maybe just... Oh, they'll give it to you.

Some of the people downtown will give it to you. I mean, they'll give us land if we put up parking. I mean, they've said that to me privately, but, you know, that's... But anyway, finish your story.

Yeah, I saw your... That would be a surprise to me given the limited land we have and the value it holds on the marketplace. But just play with me that in theory, we don't have public land. We would have to acquire in some format privately owned land. It may or may not involve like relocating some things or demoing something to put something new there. And those types of investments, a public parking structure, you know, depending on the size of it, depending on if you're going underground or not, it's just fair. It could be very, very expensive. I mean, and that's that would be a big project for a county of our size to take on. And we would have to seek funding and maybe we'd be asking for a general obligation bond to do it or. those types of things. So that would be being active. And that's something that just an idea that comes to mind. And that idea of consolidated parking has been in our downtown plans for a long time. And in fact, I think in our downtown plans, it's identified where potential locations could be.

OK. Well, thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Any other questions? OK. Try to make this pretty quick. So it's I guess lots of ways not surprising that some of the basic structures and objectives aren't different. So which then I think begs the question you had some questions from Councillor Hand about. So what's been. So we have these three options that are like in theory there's money and control And we've tried some things. And maybe we haven't waited quite long enough to see which things are working, right? But do we understand that there's fundamental things that our comprehensive plan and development code don't allow that would make a substantial difference based on? Because I think you have your technical advisory committee. So that's staff. And then we have some members of the public. Is there any consensus amongst those people on actual solutions? Because it's basically the same objectives. And we have maps that show here's where a parking garage is supposed to go. There's three of them in downtown Los Alamos. So what are the things that have stymied making progress? Because we have the thousands more people working in the county, mostly. you know, cross the bridge. I guess we're not, it's the wrong metaphor here, right? Up the road. And so what are the things that we should have been doing, you know, 10 years ago or five years ago that would really make a difference? It seems like that's, and are we getting people's input on those things? Like is it parking garages or is it the code should be more permissive? I mean, I have the list I've asked about before. ADUs, that could be allowed by right without having to have a review. Allowing modest density in residential neighborhoods, because we already have lots of neighborhoods originally that had quads and duplexes and triplexes. So parking minimums, we just heard about parking. So do we understand which of these kind of, technical things through the comprehensive plan process would really make a substantial difference besides just having an infinite amount of money.

Well, I think what we'll see in the draft next month is that there will be kind of a set of tools. And some of those tools, some of those recommendations will relate to the regulatory issues that you just mentioned. There is certainly some regulatory tweaking to be made to help advance aspects of the priorities that have come up through this process. So that's sort of a category of tools. And then you have, you know, kind of in the moderate to active space in those implementation pathways, it's kind of thinking about what are the what are the resources and capacities that need to be put in place so that the county can act on something like structured parking or act on things like significant financial gaps that private, developers might be facing because of prolonged high interest rates and high labor costs and high construction costs. At the end of the day, it really is about regulation and money. And so I'd say expect that there will be guidance on those two categories. And on the money side, we'll be thinking about the moderate moderate and active paths, what types of financial tools are appropriate in the right contexts and for the right projects, whether that's assisting with site assembly, assisting with infrastructure, assisting with the actual financing stack that a developer has. So we'll be providing guidance on kind of a full suite of financial contributions that the county can make. towards development partnerships in areas that are targeted. So I wouldn't say so much that... I don't think there will be much in the comprehensive plan that will seem like a dramatically new thing. It's really kind of putting everything together and providing a sense of here's the... in certain contexts, here are the tools that make the most sense and that do the most good to overcome the hurdles to development. And in another context, here are the tools that make sense. And here's how to think about what the costs and risks are to the county. And just kind of providing coherence and how all of those tools can be pulled at the right times in order to realize your goals in different parts of Los Alamos. Thomas, anything you want to add to that?

I was just going to add, if you don't mind, Pete, Chair Reidy, I want to just remind the council and anyone listening that we are still in the process of revising Chapter 16. And so on July 28th, we will be bringing forward the second round of code revisions. Those are Really procedural changes more so than substantive development standard changes that last round of changes, which is to articles two and four, I believe. Those will those will be done sort of as we are sort of aligning on these regulatory tweaks and brought forward. later this year or early next year. And that'll really codify these changes such that folks using the land development code will have some of those obstacles removed and can hopefully bring projects forward more easily.

Okay. And then, so a friend of mine was just complaining to me yesterday about White Rock and the fact that there's nothing here. So I know our vacancy rate is very low, but it doesn't account for, and the commercial space changed here before the window. So we know we lost a lot of commercial space before that window. That's fine. I mean, we're trying just what we have that, you know, for right now. But it brings up the question again about, so talked a lot about incentives. Are there any, Basically requirements. So we know that there's been vacant building, you know, vacant land ordinances. I'm not so familiar with. But is that something that's being posed to all the people and recognizing this is part of the problem? I understand. Yeah. If we if the county can help with the financing, maybe that will help. But I mean, it just seems like we are doing some things that are going to take a while, like the straightening of Longview was happening in White Rock. But are there's going to be any I mean, so that's more of a technical question in terms of so are you evaluating any of these more, you know, requirement and as opposed to just the incentives? So because that came up a lot about vacant buildings and, you know, vacant land. So

City Council Chambers, Where is that sit right now within the so we'll be continuing to charity will be continuing to explore, you know the full suite of tools we have at our disposal, some of some of that is on the carrot side some of that's on the stick side. City Council Chambers, And those you know, as we continue to look through the look through those options and we'll be evaluating those as we prepare. both the draft as well as the final comprehensive plan. And those strategies would be part of the implementation section of the plan so that we wouldn't be adopting, you know, new ordinances, sort of creating penalties for keeping property vacant, but that would be an action item that could be implemented moving forward if that was something that was appropriate and would be effective in in addressing the goals of that idea.

And Chair Reddy, I think we're just, I'm not sure how far the comprehensive plan effort will go down this road because it's a little bit more of a legal review of what's, there are limits when we've looked into this in the past about what we can charge fees for and we can't just create a new tax for a vacant lot. It's not that simple. The way Albuquerque does that is they've determined it as a nuisance and a safety concern. And so what they've created is a registry and a fee that's based on the cost to them to have extra police patrols or removing graffiti or having to board up a window. And so some of those things we're having a hard week when we looked at them. haven't really pertained to our situation here. So I just wanna caveat that a little bit, that it might be a little bit of a separate legal review of the tools separate from maybe what this effort will create in the plan, but your interest in those tools is noted.

Okay, thank you. Okay, so let's see, I guess if there's any public comment. I'm not seeing anyone present. Can we check online?

Chair, we do. Stephanie Nockley, you are now unmuted.

Hi, I just wanted to thank everyone for this wonderful discussion and presentation. Can everybody hear me okay?

Yes.

Yeah, I just thought that was one of the best discussions that I've heard on this topic in a long time. So that's all. I just wanted to say thanks to Council and the consultants for that.

Thank you.

Not seeing any other hands, Chair.

Okay. Well, thank you for the presentation and working on this since the beginning of the year.

Thank you. Thank you.

so we're on to item 6e 21253-26 overview of focus area operational excellence so mr rail has a few slides thank you chair and given the time i can give an abbreviated presentation if you all choose i was going to say we saw we can go check this out on the live version but if If there's anything you want to highlight, you can do that or we can just move on.

I'll do the quick just there's a few things I just wanted to touch on. OK, maybe five minutes. Yeah, I'm really bummed. I had an hour penciled in for everybody, but maybe next time. That was just me. No comments. So, you know, let me start by introducing myself. I'm Juan Rail, deputy county manager. You all know me, but maybe somebody online might not. We heard earlier from Dave Kruger about our strategic focus area and objectives, so I won't go deep into that. I did want to touch on this slide regarding community development because we did hear from Dave Kruger earlier, but I did really want to highlight two things. One, commercial and residential permits are both up from last year, and the turnaround time is down. So I really just wanted to make that point again is just You know, we hear it takes a long time to get a permit through the county, but if you have all your required documents, it really should take no more than two days. And so we've been able to show that, and now we'll be able to check that with our new metrics on the dashboard. We heard from Chair Gibson and the BPU talking about the tie-in for White Rock, so I won't touch there, but there's a picture of that. I also wanted to touch on the REPT County, REPT Ask the County tool that's on our website. We received over 10,000 inquiries on that. Which is amazing saved about 340 hours of staff time so using technology to be able to. Free up staff time to work on other priorities. Police and fire again. Great numbers in both of those. The response time for fire continues to be below their personal department benchmark. And police continue to have a very low crime rate for Group A statistics. We can look back into the dashboard if we want to dive into that. You all heard they got reaccredited. In March with 100% just really key Community Services they're continuing to use the recommendations from the master plan. The integrated master plan and the Ada audit to prioritize their work, some of the work that's been recently completed. We you attended the opinion park and the 37th street playgrounds and then the rose garden we heard from chair cruises earlier this afternoon from the. historic preservation board. I also wanted to show that photo on the right. I love that photo. It really just does show what it takes to get the pool in order. So this is just laying down the lines before the plaster is coming. One of the other reasons I just didn't want to go too fast was I really wanted to highlight our administrative services department. You know, most of their work is really done behind the scenes. The public doesn't really see, but what they do Really provides the backbone for the staff to be able to do everything else that we can deliver to the public, so I really just wanted to highlight the administrative services department, many of whom are still here tonight so just wanted to note that. Public works continues, we set up projects you guys set up projects they knock them down that's continuing there's a whole list of stuff there, we could get into individual ones if you'd like. Fleet I didn't want to touch on, we do have 12 electric vehicles in our fleet now, including five new ones from last year and. Our fleet manager P ones are going also let me know that we have for non plug in vehicles which are really cool using technology. The breaking adds to charging the battery so it's just I thought that was really interesting that we have that here now. Transit logged over 400,000 miles in service to the Community last year again amazing statistic and you all heard they got the 2025 transit system of the year. From the dpu I wanted to just touch on elk Ridge gas replacement you've heard from. Manager Shelton that that's been completed it's just wasn't seem like is that long ago we had a whole room full of people in here talking about Elk Ridge gas system that project is complete. And lastly, I just wanted to touch on recruitment and retention, because these are stats you all don't see that often, but I think it's really interesting 164 vacant positions that equals about 20% of our total. number of positions in the county or vacant last year we received over 2300 applications. And then we hired 154 new employees those 10 we're still trying to hire a lot of those are those hard to fill positions that you have all heard about. And then I also wanted to. Two things here also we have three key positions that were held that were hired last year. We used recruitment firms. These were national searches. These were three key members of our senior management team. That's our fire chief, our HR manager, and our public information officer. And, you know, it's baseball season. Last night was the home run derby. I really do think we hit three home runs with those three hires. I mean, all three of them have been outstanding. Another point I wanted to make here is last year you asked the county manager, all county employees need to go through a customer service training. You set it up she knocked it down, we have 672 employees that have been through that training and I, we can tell you, because between and Linda. And myself, we go to every one of those intros we've seen how the class really evolved and so from the start to the finish there's been about 20 of those classes it's just been really good so. Really hats off to to you all for setting that goal for the staff for completing that so that that really is is great and then we converted some policies from pilot to full and then our peer to peer support groups. have been really effective. So we have two stood up now, the administrative services group. So this is administrative professionals from all departments get together, share knowledge, stories, and learn from each other. And then recently we've done that with our public information group. And with that, that's our abbreviated version. So I'll stand for questions. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Riel. Do we have any questions or comments? No, thank you very much. Apologize for putting you at the end, not giving any time not giving the hour you deserve to. That was very informative. So thank you. I guess we should see if there's public comment. Oh, there's there's a comment from counselor. A question.

Oh, sorry, I was gonna say what you I was gonna say sorry, it was abbreviated. And thank you so much for all you guys are doing.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor. Do we have any public comments? I'm not seeing anyone here.

If you're online and you'd like to make a public comment, please raise your hand. Not seeing anything, Chair. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Rial. So, Ronda 6F21926-26, possible actions to suspend council rules for the work session. Is there a councillor instance in making a motion to suspend the rules? Councillor Cull.

I move that council suspend their procedural rules for this work session, July 14, 2026, so that formal action may be taken. Second.

Okay, thank you. So we have a motion by Councillor Cull, second by Councillor Hand. Okay, seeing no discussion, can you please call the roll?

Councillor Gregor. yes councillor cole yes councillor haveman yes councillor herman yes councillor righty yes councillor neil clinton yes councillor hand yes motion passes seven zero okay let the record show the motion passes unanimously so uh item seven is public comment

for items on the Consent Agenda. Do we have any public comment for items on the Consent Agenda? Seeing none here, can we check online?

Not seeing any comments online either, Chair.

Okay. So now I believe we just have the motion on the Consent Agenda, and there's no amendments to the motion, so Councillor, will you make a motion? Councillor Herman.

Thank you, Chair. 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.

So we have a motion by Councillor Newman, seconded by Councillor Coulton. Not seeing any discussion or questions, so can I please call the roll on that one?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I'll let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So I think we just have one item under business. So item nine is business nine A is 21738-26. It's the possible approval of contract for general services agreement number HCR 27-808 with SHI International Corporation as the authorized reseller for enrollment execution of three year Microsoft Enterprise Agreement.

Chair Wrighty and councillors, it's been a long night so far. I want to introduce myself. I am Bev Prettyman. I am business manager.

John Roy, I'm the CIO for the county.

What we're bringing to you tonight is the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. And what this is, is this is the backbone of the county's software infrastructure. EVERYTHING WE DO PRETTY MUCH WE RELY ON MICROSOFT. SO WHAT THIS EA DOES FOR US IS IT ENABLES ALL OF THE REGULAR EMPLOYEES AND ELECTED OFFICIALS TO HAVE THE FULL SUITE FOR M365, WHICH INCLUDES EXCEL, WORD, COPILOT CHAT, You know the whole suite it also includes a level of licensing which is office 365 and that enables certain licensees to have a countywide email communication. This is something that we bring to Council every three years we do this this agreement with Microsoft for a three year term. And we plan well in advance to do this. We need to know not just what we have right now, but what we're striving for, what growth we need, what we're planning. Part of the licensing is the, it's called software assurance licensing. And what that does for us, it is our licensing for our servers. So it runs the operating system. And it enables all licensees or all license upgrades, so we don't constantly have to pay if they upgrade from a version 2019 to 2022. We automatically get that, which is a huge financial savings for the county. So this agreement is our primary office business suite. THAT WE HAVE CONTRACTED MULTIPLE TIMES FOR THIS THREE YEARS. WAY BEFORE I WAS HERE. BUT THIS HAS BEEN GOING FOR A LONG TIME. IT IS PURCHASED THROUGH A COOPERATIVE PURCHASING AGREEMENT, WHICH IS THE NASPO SOFTWARE AGREEMENT. WE USE SHI AS A THIRD PARTY RESELLER. YOU CANNOT WORK DIRECTLY WITH MICROSOFT. YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO PURCHASE AN and form an agreement with this third party reseller, which is SHI International. That being said, we do have a Microsoft team who we can now work directly with and gives a lot of guidance, free training, and it has been a great experience since we finally acquired one. I think, I don't know, they felt sorry for us or something. One thing that I really think it's important to point out is we are adding items to this three-year agreement. One of the main ones is Teams Calling. And we're going to upgrade our end-of-life current phone system. It is still a VoIP system. But rather than having the overall cost of the expensive Cisco licensing, This will be wrapped into our Microsoft enterprise agreement. The other there is additional funding planned for growth in the use of AI as we know this is coming. All of the AI growth and use will be governed under the forthcoming AI governance policy. There are additional funds also built in there for opportunities to approve audio and visual capabilities in select conference rooms, training rooms, things like that. AS A FINAL NOTE, ALL OF THIS IS PLANNED FOR AND BUILT INTO OUR APPROVED I AM OPERATIONS BUDGET. THIS IS NOT A CIP EXPENDITURE. THIS IS AN OPERATIONS BUDGET. AND I WENT THROUGH THAT A LITTLE QUICKLY BECAUSE IT'S BEEN A LONG NIGHT. BUT WE STAND FOR QUESTIONS.

Okay. So thank you so much for waiting around for your item. And are there any Councillor technical or clarifying questions? Councillor Hann.

Councillor Hann. Thank you, Chair. So I'm not familiar with, you know, how all the operations are performed within the county and what kinds of software packages you use. But I was just wondering, like for project management software, do you use any of the Microsoft suite?

I will be honest with you. Yes, we do have some people who use the project management software. In the M365 suite, it's sort of a little bit of a watered down version. You can buy a project license, and we do have some of those. It is a very complex program to use. The software is difficult.

So you're not necessarily using, are you using any other type of sophisticated project management software that isn't a part of this Microsoft suite that you're purchasing?

Not that I'm aware of. Now other departments may have project management suites and platforms. We try to stay up on all the software that is being purchased within the county so that we can govern that. But as for Microsoft-specific project management, it's a low-used product throughout the county, but there are so many products under Microsoft that we do use every single day.

Okay, what about Adobe Acrobat? So you can convert to MS Office suite type functions.

So actually we just finalized our annual LGA with CDW for Adobe Acrobat. A matter of fact, that came before Council last week for approval. OK, yeah, that is a one remember that. Yeah, that is a one year agreement. OK, not been able to convince the vendors to let us do multiple years. But yes, I think. Honestly, just under Microsoft licensing, Adobe is probably the second most used software in the county. Yeah, and those of us who use it all the time, honestly, I don't know how I would do my job without it, but I feel the same way with Excel and Word. I live in Excel. That's my preference for everything, so.

So that comes to the next question. I've got two more other types of software I just wanted to ask about. So the accounting software, it looks like it's done in Excel.

I'm sorry?

Accounting.

Accounting?

Yeah.

So you're speaking of finance?

Yeah.

I can't speak to that particularly like if they have any other software. But yes, we all work in Excel and our budgeting process when we are doing our prep work, our comparison worksheets, all of that.

And it all rolls up together.

It all rolls up together. And it's a nice touch because another part of Microsoft is SharePoint. So we can share those. Those spreadsheets amongst different divisions and and all have our input, we can each see how we're building ours, you know how it affects another divisions budget things like that so it's very useful and lastly database software. OK, so actually that's interesting. Our SQL Server licensing, which is also a Microsoft product, that is software that oversees the database portion of our servers. And I don't know if you want to add something to that.

It's not part of the suite.

Oh, i'm well i'm sorry it's part of the Ea. Yeah, i'm sorry.

Okay, so not Microsoft related stuff. Microsoft sequel server is the base server that we server management software that we use across the county, including on our erp, which is back in the it's tyler munis. You may be familiar with that. So so this is our counselors talk with Microsoft so very much so okay good, but the sequel service offer we it's we have hundreds of databases at this point okay yeah.

I'm sorry I misspoke I didn't mean sweet it's part of our software assurance okay it's part of the EA all right probably more detail than anybody wanted to hear about, but I was just curious.

No, this is about the only time that I ever thought to find out.

I enjoy that because I really enjoy Microsoft licensing. I'm very odd that way. Yes.

OK, thank you, Councillor Ann. Do we have any other questions?

Councillor Newham-Clinton. Thank you for your presentation. So the county is a predominantly Windows-based environment.

Correct.

Have you thought about Linux?

Go ahead. We do not operate Linux in any official capacity in the county. Now, there are Linux operating systems embedded in some of the appliances that we operate. For example, the Granicus one that is streaming this very conference is Linux based. But we do not have Linux engineers on staff.

Have you thought about bringing any of them on?

There are several individuals in the county who are interested in doing that. It's just a question of building that kind of talent base in order to do that. So we've thought about it, but we have not planned for it.

I'm as hesitant as well. My husband is a big proponent and he thinks us Windows people are muggles, so I get it. But for effectiveness, he's pro Linux and when I play with it, I get it. But I'm just looking at the cost and the fact that Windows is very bloated, Linux is not.

Correct. Technically speaking, academically speaking, you're correct on all those points, but we have to have the humans still. Maybe one day that will change, but right now we have to have the humans who have those skill sets to support that. Windows, there's a lot of Windows engineers. The Linux engineers, there's not as many, and the ones that we... could employ, I think probably are most captured by another organization that's very near to us.

I hear you. One other question regarding the VoIP phones. Have you guys budgeted into replacements of those phones? Because I don't know how much they are now, but a couple of years ago, they were pretty expensive.

Um, actual desktop phones. Is that what you're asking? So yes, we have. I will tell you that our preference is to reduce the number of actual desktop phones countywide. A survey is going out to all department directors and division leads with some of the onus in going into their areas to ask. Who needs a desktop phone? And we know that there are individuals out there who require a desktop phone to do their job. Part of our research has found that when you switch to something as new or as different as Teams Calling, there's a security in having this device here. Research finds that those phones continue to get turned in to your local IM or IT department. And so that's a cost that we would love to reduce in the areas that for those of us who use a cell phone all the time, who use our devices, we already have multiple ways to use Teams Calling besides having a desktop phone. The question was, have we budgeted? Yes, we have. We are looking at multiple Teams-capable phones right now. We've narrowed it down to our top two. And I will say it's less expensive than I expected it to be. But again, I'm hoping to decrease that by putting the feelers out and deciding who actually requires one or feels that need to have one.

Okay. And then a further question just on the VoIP side is, you know, when we lose connections, we lose the phones because they're VoIP. So what are you doing as a backup in case that happens? So if you avoid, like today, when the Internet goes down, you're not going to have a VoIP phone. So what else are you doing? I mean, yes, you may have a cell phone, but again, if you don't have anything...

yeah yeah, this is a discussion that has been floating around the county ever in my whole time here, because we have basically are dependent upon one provider. So if you'll notice these there's an antenna on the roof of immunity building and that went live a few years ago, and that is our failover we have had to. test failovers that we did not engineer. They happened under natural circumstances and they both worked. Now the bandwidth is about a third of what we're getting for the internet right now. So the answer, long-winded answer to your question is that we have high confidence that we still have telephone service in the event of an internet cut from our main service provider.

Okay.

Thank you both. And also on the cell towers, yes, a lot of the cell providers use the same off-the-hill paths. We all know that. So that antenna actually points to an aluminum building in Santa Fe. So it avoids now if there's a cut between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Well, then yeah, but you know You can't control everything I'll take the opportunity to plug it here if you can get fiber up to party to her to the tower and then we can see Albuquerque and we can get around that problem, too So okay plant that seed.

All right. Thank you.

Appreciate that Okay, thank you counseling any other Questions I guess Since the subject of AI came up at the very beginning of the meeting, I was just curious about, so Copilot comes as part of Microsoft, right? Or is this something that's discretionary to have?

Okay, so there is a Microsoft product in the suite, and it just says Copilot, but what it really is is Copilot Chat. It does have a level of ability and capabilities to do some underlying artificial intelligence. It is fantastic to say, please rephrase this paragraph more concisely and more professionally. It will do that. There is a cost to have a full co-pilot license. We have not purchased those in the past. We have a very small number of people in the county who have tested it, but we have not rolled it out yet as we do not have an AI governance policy yet, which is, like I said, forthcoming. We do have a governance committee working on that.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. No other questions. Is there any public comment? Not seeing anyone present. Mr. Rao, can you check online?

Not seeing any online, Chair.

Okay, is there a councillor interested in making a motion on the software? Council call.

I move that council approve agreement number AGR 27-808 with SHI International Corporation as the authorized reseller, Microsoft Corporation for enrollment and execution of the three-year Microsoft Enterprise enrollment agreement, otherwise known as an EA, in an amount not to exceed $2.5 million plus applicable gross receipts tax.

Is there a second? Second. Mayor Mrakas, Motion council call second by counselor Neil Clinton is there any discussion. Mayor Mrakas, Not seeing any can you call the roll, please.

City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers.

OK, let the record show motion passed unanimously. Thanks again for waiting and being here and answering the questions we had. So thank you very much. So item number 10, working groups and external entities reports. Is there anything that Council needs to update the rest of Council tonight on? Not seeing anything. So then we're on to item number 11. Adjournment. So there are no objections. We are adjourned.