County Council - Session - Regular Meeting

Okay. So I'd like to welcome everybody to the August 25th, 2026 County Council regular session. So just a couple remarks to advise on the protocol for the meeting. It's the same protocol I've been having now for years. So it's going to be a hybrid meeting. So we'll have some participants online in addition to in person. And we'll have participation in person or on Zoom at the beginning of the meeting for items not on the agenda. So we ask that comments be directed to the chair and that they stay on the topic being addressed. And I also ask that if you're on Zoom, please have your name so we can properly address you. So we're planning, hoping to meet, close, end the meeting no later than 10 p.m. If we're still meeting at 9, we'll check the CRM progress at that point in time. So I think we have Oh, yeah, during public comment, Ms. Madison will be looking for the virtual attendees on Zoom. So since we have at least one counselor right now on Zoom, I think we need to do the roll call. Can you please call the roll?

Counselor Herman? Here. Counselor Haveman? Here. Counselor Call? Here. Councillor Rigor?

Here.

Councillor Neill-Clinton? Here. Councillor Wrighty?

Here.

And Councillor Hand, absent.

OK. We have five councillors present in chamber. A councillor call is online. And we'll let everyone know when Councillor Hand joins us. So with that, we're on to item number two, which is Pledge of Allegiance. So if you're willing to enable, please join us to pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic Excuse me. Now we're on to item number three, which is public comment. As I mentioned, this is going to be public comment for items that are not on tonight's agenda. Do we have anyone present here in the council chambers that wants to make public comment for items not on the agenda? I'm not seeing anyone come forward. Ms. Madison, can you check online first?

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

Okay, thank you. So we're now on to item number four, which is approval of the agenda. Is there a councillor interested in making a motion on the agenda as presented? Councillor Haverman?

Thank you, Chair. I move that we accept tonight's agenda as presented. Do I have a second?

Second. Second.

So we have a motion by Councillor Haverman, second by Councillor Neill-Clinton. Okay, not seeing any discussion, please call the roll again.

Councilor Neal-Clinton? Yes. Councilor Herman? Yes. Councilor Bridey?

Yes.

Councilor Rigor?

Yes.

Councilor Haveman?

Yes.

And Councilor Cole? Yes. Motion passes 6-0 with Councillor Hand absent.

Okay, let the record show the motion passes unanimously with Councillor Hand absent still for the moment. Now we're on to item number 5, which is Presentations, Proclamations, and Recognitions. So 5A is 21161-26. It's a proclamation declaring September 2026 as National Suicide Prevention Month in Los Alamos. So we're going to have Councilor Nell Clinton that's going to read that for us.

Thank you, Chair. Proclamation. Whereas mental health disorders transcend all demographic boundaries and impact millions of Americans and their families, friends, and communities, including Los Alamos County, and whereas suicide is a significant public health issue, the second leading cause of death among 10 to 34-year-olds especially in New Mexico, where we are the fourth highest state for deaths by suicide. And whereas Los Alamos County Social Services and the County Health Council are raising awareness about issues related to mental health and suicide prevention by offering suicide prevention trainings and connecting people in crisis to life saving resources. And whereas local organizations such as JJAB, Los Alamos Public Schools, Los Alamos Retired and Senior Organization, Family Strength Network, LA Cares, Self Help, and many others collaboratively provide a safety net to give hope and resources to as many people as possible. And whereas Los Alamos County publicly supports those who work in mental health, substance use, education, and law enforcement. And we should also have maybe said substance abuse. Now, therefore, on behalf of the Council of the Incorporated County of Los Alamos, I do hereby proclaim the month of September 2026 as National Suicide Prevention Month in Los Alamos County. I call upon all residents to seek mental health and suicide prevention resources through the Social Services Division and to participate in events promoting mental health awareness and suicide prevention taking place throughout September, including attending an ABC suicide prevention training, a mental health first aid training, joining a forest guided therapy walk, or checking out any of the other resources available in our communities. And furthermore, I strongly encourage individuals experiencing a mental health crisis and those who know someone who is in crisis to call the nationwide crisis line at 988 and use the crisis text line at 741741, call 911, or go to the nearest hospital. dated this 25th day of August, 2026, signed by our chair, Randall Righty.

Thank you, Councilor Neal-Flinton. I think we have Jamie Halbeck to make a couple remarks. Can we all come up? Yeah, please.

Where should I stand to make my remarks? Here? Okay.

Yeah, just make sure the green light is on the podium.

It is. Thank you. Thank you all for the opportunity to say that I am extremely proud to be a part of Los Alamos Social Services. I took this role in December and I was uncertain of how my work that I've been doing primarily in the prevention and healing of sexual violence would transfer into this new role. But it's all interwoven. And I've learned through trainings and my experience that much of what I bring with me is very applicable in Los Alamos County. As you mentioned, we have a lot of suicide prevention trainings that are already in existence within our county. We have ABC classes, including those taught by Christine Koblentz monthly at the White Rock Library. We also have mental health first aid classes, which I have the privilege of teaching about every other month. And we have those coming up in September as well. And I would encourage everyone to please participate. Another opportunity to think about mental health is New Mexico Forest Bathing Day, where those of us who have been certified in forest therapy will be leading guided walks. And these walks are very gentle. They're not strenuous hikes. and taking time to focus on our own self-care, be present, and tend to the mental health. Especially, I see a lot of faces in this room of people who are caregivers, who give care at home or in the workplace, who are always taking care of others. And I hope you'll join us on September 19th to take care of yourself for some time. In addition to these trainings, the real work of suicide prevention is often housing security, food security, seeing people where they are and what their needs are and accepting them without judgment and then helping them connect with the right resources. And the people who have been doing that much longer than I have are here with me. We have people who are from the teen center. We have people who work with me alongside me, like Jeremy, social services. And then we have representatives from our health council. Would all of you please stand? If you don't mind joining me in acknowledging the people who have been putting this work in for a long time. I'd like to thank the council for your support of all of the organizations that you mentioned in the proclamation as well as the people who are just putting in work tending to neighbors tending to the safety of the people around them within our community, thank you.

Okay, thank you for the remarks. letting everybody know about all the training and help that's available. Okay, now we're on to item 5B, which is 22017-26. It's introductory overview of the Community Health Action Center project scope and schedule. So we have Mr. Narano, I think, or maybe.

Good evening, Chair, counselors, We're here tonight to present an introductory overview of the Community Health Action Center. I am Miguel Jimenez, senior project manager with Capital Projects and Facilities, and I am joined by Russell Naranjo, my colleague. He is the project manager for this project, and Mr. Wayne Lloyd, who is our design architect for this project. This project is initiating the planning phase, and I will step aside to let my colleague, Russell, walk you through this phase of the project. Thank you.

Thank you, Miguel. Mr. Chairman, members of the council. As Miguel mentioned, my name is Russell Naranjo. I am a project manager for the Capital Projects and Facilities Division of Public Works. This evening, I'll be providing you with an introductory overview of the Community Health Action Center project. I will provide a brief overview of the project, introduce the project team, explain where we are in the planning process, discuss the three potential locations currently being evaluated, and then finish with our preliminary schedule and next steps. So I want to emphasize, first of all, that we are still very early in the planning process. We have not selected a site and we have not developed a final design by any means. The work we are doing now is intended to provide the information needed to make decisions in a thoughtful and transparent way. Next slide, please. At its core, the goal of this project is to plan, design, and ultimately construct a community health action center that brings several important services together in one location. The concept is to co-locate county programs and nonprofit organizations that provide health, wellness, social services, and other assistance to individuals and families within our community. We're looking at how we can create a facility where organizations can work collaboratively and where services can be more accessible and coordinated. At this stage, however, we are still defining exactly what the facility needs to include. That's a major part of this planning and program effort that's currently underway. Next slide, please. This project requires collaboration across several county departments and community organizations. I am serving as the county's project manager for now with Miguel Jimenez providing senior project management support and Eric Martinez representing the public works leadership. We also have Corey Styron from the community services, Jessica Strong representing the social services and Lisa Hampton representing the Los Alamos County Health Council. The County Manager's Office and Community Development Department are also involved because there are broader policies, land use development and community considerations that will need to be addressed as the project moves forward. On the design side, we brought in Lloyd & Associates Architects to assist us with the programming, site evaluation and schematic design. So, This isn't simply an architectural experience or an exercise, if you will. We are bringing together people who understand the services, the community, the needs of the program, potential sites, the development requirements, and ultimately the construction process. Next slide, please. Using the recommendation from the Health Council as a framework, the project scope was developed. We held our project kickoff meeting on July 31st of this year. The priority is to understand that we're trying to build before, or the priority is to understand what we're trying to build before we actually start designing a building. That means identifying the services that could potentially occupy the facility, understanding their space requirements, looking at shared spaces and opportunities for collaboration, and developing an overall facility program. At the same time, we're evaluating the potential sites. The architect will help us to establish objective criteria so that we're looking at each location consistently. That will include such things as available space, access, parking, utilities, site constraints, compatibility with surrounding land uses, opportunities for future growth, and ultimately the cost. Once we better understand both the program and the sites, the architect can begin developing schematic concepts and preliminary cost information. That work will eventually come back through the appropriate public process, including presentations and discussions with the Planning and Zoning Commission, Health Council, and County Council. So, if I haven't driven this home yet, There will be several opportunities for review and input before any final decisions are made. Currently, we are beginning the evaluation process with three separate properties. Next slide, please. The three locations currently being evaluated are 1000 Sombrillo Court, 3540 Orange Street, and 1990 Diamond Drive. These are three very different properties which are helpful for this evaluation. Sombrillo Court, first of all, let's take them individually. Sombrillo Court, owned by the county, roughly 1.4 acres, is currently a vacant lot. So this option would essentially involve looking at new construction on an undeveloped site. The next one, the Orange Street property that's owned by Los Alamos Public Schools. Roughly 1.7 acres has an existing building which gives us the opportunity to evaluate whether an existing structure could potentially be reused or adapted to meet the program or raised depending on the entire study. The next one, the Diamond Drive property, also owned by Los Alamos Public Schools. This also includes an existing currently unoccupied building and presents a different set of opportunities and constraints. At this point, we are not presenting any one as being a preferred site. The purpose of the planning effort is to allow the architect and the program team to evaluate all three against the same criteria. We want to understand not only whether the program physically fits but also what improvements would be necessary, what the relative cost may be, and what advantages or disadvantages each location presents. Next slide, please. This schedule provides a roadmap for the work we're undertaking over the next several months. The early work focuses on gathering information about the sites, utilities, topography, existing conditions, and input from additional stakeholders. At the same time, we're working through programming, determining space requirements, reviewing applicable codes, identifying agencies between different services, and developing a criteria we'll use to evaluate the sites. From there, the architect will move into schematic design. That will give us preliminary site plans and floor plans, and importantly, a rough order of magnitude cost estimate. We can then apply our site evaluation criteria to those concepts and begin making meaningful comparisons between all three alternatives. You'll notice that the latter presentation dates on the schedule are intentionally shown as to be determined We don't want to establish those dates prematurely. We want to complete the necessary technical work first so that when we come forward with alternatives and recommendations, we're bringing forward meaningful information for discussion and decision making. So in closing, Mr. Chairman, members of the Council, The important takeaways this evening is that we are really at the beginning process of this entire project. We have identified three potential sites, but no site has been selected. We have a project team and architect in place, and we're now doing a programming, site analysis and preliminary design work necessary to understand what is feasible at each location. As this information develops, we'll continue engaging the public, appropriate boards, commissions, stakeholders and ultimately the County Council before moving into the next phase of the project. Our goal is to develop the Community Health Action Centre that not only meets the immediate needs of the organization, but creates a functional, accessible and sustainable community resource for the long term. Mr. Chairman, that concludes our presentation. I would like to call forward Mr. Wayne Lloyd of Lloyd & Associates Architect to give you a little bit of his background and his passion for this project. And after that, we'll go ahead and answer any comments or questions that you may have. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Michael and Russell for the thorough presentation. He's pretty much told you what we do or how we'll go through this. But counselors, I'd like to let you know that based on the tremendous amount of community input that's been done today over the last year to two years, we've got a lot of information. We need to gather all that information and put it into a form that allows us to quantify all of the physical space, how that physical space best fits on any one of these three sites. We'll create a site matrix that identifies pros and cons of each site to help finalize that selection. But my interest, I guess, in this, having worked in Santa Fe or have run the firm for the last 45 years and completed well over a thousand projects, I've got to say I can't think of another building type that's more satisfying than working on a social services building. My master's thesis at UNM was a crisis center for the town of Hobbs. They never got the funds to build it, but we got through a programming and design on it. So I have a great passion. I also worked in a mental health center for two years while I started architecture school at Drexel in Philadelphia. So I just can't think of anything more rewarding than to really define a well-functioning social services facility. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Thank you for the introduction and Mr. Morano and Mr. Jimenez for their remarks. So this isn't an action item tonight, so just informational. So if there's counselors have any questions or comments, we can just take those now.

Thank you, Chair. I have two quick questions. You actually alluded to both of them earlier, but regarding the design, I think the last slide actually showed the design phase, but what follows the $950,000 design phase after that? I know the last two are TBD, but after this design phase of 950, then what's next?

Chair, Councilor Neal-Clinton. So this is our planning phase of the project, which means we need to translate the vision for this Community Health Action Center into a set of requirements and specifications that can be designed, that can be put into a design. So at the conclusion of this phase, we will be in a position where we can start actually developing drawings for the, construction drawings for the building, for the facility. Mr. Lloyd, anything you would like to add?

Yeah, I'm happy to add that by the time we get this program and site analysis done, we will also have a rough order of magnitude of the cost of the building. And that cost might change based on the different sites. So that becomes a factor as well in deciding which site because one may be substantially more expensive than another. So we'll have estimates on all three sites and how well that building fits on those sites. At that point, we'll quantify based on present construction costs data this is $4 million, this is $8 million, whatever that is, and then that hasn't been approved yet. So we certainly will be back here to say, here's the site analysis, here's the one we think is best based on 10 or 15 different factors, and then that needs to be approved. And not only is the site selection needing to be approved, but the but the estimate of the building needs to be approved before we sign any portion of the next phases of the work. At that point, I would suggest that that's a six or seven month process from the time we picked the site approved the the budget and complete the drawings for a permit.

Okay. One other thing. You alluded to stakeholders, but what I didn't hear is for the residents of the building. Will they be included in the design process as well?

The residents?

The people that actually work in the building that you're designing?

Oh, yes. We hope so. So we've had one kickoff meeting. We've had... suggestions of several other departments to meet with, which we expect to do. We're willing to meet with any number of community organizations to get their input, which could be valuable. And I should say that we typically, in a programming process, ask the question at least to anticipate each of these programs Not for today, but for five years from now, we many times have done buildings where they're in a great growth mood mode. And by the time we get the project done, they already realized they've hired four more people. Well, where are those folks going? So we realize that social services many times are getting grants from various agencies, federal, state, whatever. We like to ask each of the primary personnel in each department Okay, you might have five people on your staff now. Where do you expect to be in five years? And build that into the program. The last thing you want to do is build for today, only to have the building be finished and it not be big enough.

Okay, thank you. That's what I wanted to hear.

Thanks.

If I may add, The community services department, the social services division are part of the project team. So they are and also the county health were working on the recommendations from the county health, health counties, health council. Too many syllables, yeah. I'm tongue twisting.

I got you.

So they are all part of the project team.

Thank you, Mr. Jimenez. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Neal-Clinton. Any other questions?

Chair, Chair, I just want to let you know that Councillor Hand has joined.

Just on the phone, right?

Just on her phone. So I can't promote her to a panelist, but I will keep an eye on if she wants to talk.

Okay. Okay, that's good. So I did want to ask a couple of questions. So I know that when this process, we've been doing this for a number of years now, trying to look at this, you know, combined center. So and within the list of organizations, some of them already have space, right? So do we know if there's going to be a net reduction in space needed or, I mean, how is the space going to be handled? Like, are we adding space? Are they going to keep their space? Or is there going to be some... I understand the social services would probably move, right, into this new building. But what about any other organizations? Is there... So are you going to be looking at sort of the kind of operational efficiency in that way of, you know, consolidating? Is that going to be part of the evaluation? And is that... Basically, are some of the sites likely not to be able to have as much of a building put on them based on their size and parking requirements? Or is that something that's too early for you? Or is that something you'll look at?

Let me see if I understand the question. So is the question whether this new facility will co-locate organizations that are already working with the county?

Well, let's say, just for sake of argument, they use 10,000 square feet right now. Are we going to build a 10,000 square foot building that houses everybody? Or is there going to be more space, less space, something like that? So are we looking at how much space organizations currently have in terms of what their mission is? And then does the mission need to be expanded? Are there gaps in the mission? That's why we have more space. So how are we looking at it from kind of a program standpoint? Is that going to be part of the evaluation? Because I know that the The report from the Health Council basically outlined a whole bunch of things, organizations that provide services. And we could look at the kinds of space they have, and maybe they're not offered all the time, right? Some of them are offered part-time, certain days of the week or month. So when we look at the Community Health Action Center, it's going to integrate a whole bunch of things, and it might have more space, but are we actually going to be able to show that Either we'll be more efficient because there's co-location, or people can get access to services because they can just go next door and get the services, things like that. So is that going to be part of the evaluation? Because I don't think that was necessarily part of what the health council looked at. They looked at, like, here's all the things that people currently have, and here's some things we might want. But they didn't quantify, like, how are services being improved? for this amount of money? Because I know that's been one of the questions that's come up kind of more generally. You know, if we're going to spend $10 million, and it's for, like, I'm glad you're looking at five years, but the building is probably going to last 30 or 40 years. So hopefully we don't run out of space if we needed it. So is that part going to be part of the evaluation? In addition to just, like, what kind of footprint can you, what building can you put here? The other way around, right? So just what could you fit here?

Yes. The project team is looking into the programming into a holistic way. The community services department and social services has identified a number of services that they would like to provide and which services will be on a full-time basis and which ones will be on a As you mentioned, they come on certain days of the week to provide those services to the community. So that is part of what the programming will be looking at. So efficiencies, the idea is to make this center a one-stop shop for the people that need access to these services and programs. That is also being considered as part of the programming of this project. But maybe, I don't know if that answers your question. Mr. Quinn?

Yeah, there's a lot involved in that question, Mr. Chair. However, my limited amount of meetings so far is that The key organization already doesn't have enough space. They're making do. So typically in a planning and design process, we're not trying to just make do. I mean, everyone could just stay where they are. We're trying to do a one stop shop, which allows us certain efficiencies that presently don't exist. We do restrooms that serve the building. We do conference rooms that are shared by various different departments as opposed to a conference room now in each building that they've got. So you gain some efficiency. Have we been asked to analyze the rental rates on existing offices? I don't think we have. We could make that, I guess, part of the process. And how does that compare to the debt service on a new building? I think from a planning standpoint, the more of a one-stop place you can have, the easier it is for those social services to be provided. Given the number of different social services, I don't think we can put everyone in this building. I think there will be some organizations that stay where they are, but the core functioning of this should be in one building. And I think there's efficiencies to be gained in that. What I failed to say earlier is, fortunately, the county of Los Alamos requires LEED certification. We've done the only LEED platinum building in Santa Fe.

Okay, thank you. So, Councilor Hands, are you able to join us? online, so we have her as well. So I think if there's no other questions or comments, we're ready to go on. So thanks so much for being here and kicking it off.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so now we're on to item number six, which is public comment for items on the consent agenda. Do we have anybody that's present that wants to make comments on those items? I'm not seeing anyone. Ms. Manson, can you share that online?

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

OK, thank you. So round item number 7, which is the consent agenda, I believe there's no amendments to any of the items there. Is there a counselor interested in making a motion? Counselor Nicklin, do you have this?

Yes. 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 record. Okay. Is there a second?

Second. Okay. So we have a motion by Councillor Neill, second by Councillor Rieger. Not seeing any discussion. Can you please call the roll?

Councilor Hand? Yes. Councilor Rowdy?

Yes.

Councilor Cole? Yes. Councilor Neal-Clinton? Yes. Councilor Rigor?

Yes.

Councilor Haviman? Yes. Councilor Herman? Yes.

Motion passes 7-0. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So now we're on to item 8, introduction of ordinances. One ordinance to introduce tonight, 8AOR1152-26, introduction of Incorporated County of Los Alamos, ordinance number 759, an ordinance authorizing the execution of the River Water Project Fund loan grant agreement between the New Mexico Finance Authority and Incorporated County of Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the amount of $3,252,000 for the purpose of financing the cost of Phases two and three of the Denver Steeles project. Is there a councillor willing to read that one into the record? Councillor Hauptman, do you have that one, or no? Get it ready.

Thank you, Chair. I introduce without prejudice incorporated county of Los alamos ordinance number 759 and ordinance authorizing the execution and delivery of a water project fund loan slash grant agreement between the new Mexico finance authority and MFA and the incorporated county of Los alamos new Mexico in the amount of. $3,252,000 for the purpose of financing the costs of phases two and three of the Denver Steel's water line replacements, and ask the staff to assure it's published as provided in the county charter.

Thank you, Councilor. So I think this one might be coming back to the next meeting, if I remember correctly, which is in a couple weeks. Okay, so now we're on to item number nine, which is public hearings. And we do have a couple of public hearings tonight. So the first one, 9A, is OR1148-26B. Incorporated County of Los Alamos, ordinance number 766. an ordinance adopting a local economic development project for public support of VE Holdings NMLLC, a domestic limited liability company qualified to conduct business in the state of New Mexico. So we have Ms. Laurent to start us off.

Chair, I'm going to defer to Mr. Kudiakoff.

Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. So good evening all. So tonight we're holding the public hearing on ordinance 760 for the ROC redevelopment project. Essentially the ordinance would authorize a public participation agreement under the Local Economic Development Act with VE Holdings and LLC. Next slide please. So we're gonna start with the project overview. So the applicant is VE Holdings and LLC. The project is located at 116 and 118 State Road 4 in White Rock. Currently, it's a vacant commercial building that's proposed to be redeveloped into a multi-service community hub. So the planned uses include a laundromat, sports bar, frozen yogurt shop, EV charging stations, and food truck pads. So essentially, it's a mix designed to bring food traffic, and everyday services back to the site. On revenue, the applicant projects $1.26 million in annual sales in the first year, grown to more than $3 million in five years. Next slide, please. So this slide goes over the project budget. So the total project cost is just over $2.1 million. The count is public participation under the LIDA program. would be $868,000, or roughly about 41% of the project. The remaining 59% comes from other sources, developer equity, USDA grant, and some additional funding sources. Next slide, please. So this slide goes over the loan terms and security match. So like I mentioned, the loan principal is $868,000. which is essentially calculated as 80% of the appraised value of the two properties. That's a very conservative loan to value ratio that protects the accountants position. It is a zero interest loan. Repayment structure follows a 24 month deferral period from the effective date to give the project time to gain some capital funds. And then it follows a 96-monthly payment of roughly about $9,000 with a final slightly smaller payment through month 120. So that's essentially a 10-year term. The security, it's going to be a first priority mortgage lien on the property. This does satisfy the New Mexico state requirements under the LIDA state statute that the public assistance is secured. Next slide, please. So this is the economic return to the county that we calculated for the project. Essentially over 10 years, that's the period of the county's participation on the project, we are looking at getting roughly slightly over $30,000 during the construction phase and the GRT revenues. And during the operational phase, we're looking at slightly under $600,000 in sales revenues as well. And then additionally, we're looking at about $155,000 in incremental property tax over 10 years. So the total economic benefit to the county over 10 years is estimated to be $785,000. Next slide, please. So essentially, this is the public return on investment. So if we were to estimate some interest that we would have charged on the loan, so we estimate that to be about $347,000. So minus that interest from the total economic benefit to the county, we're looking at total public benefit to the county of about $438,000 over 10 years. In more simple terms, we're looking on return on investment of $2.26 in public revenues for every dollar of public participation cost. And that does not account any jobs created through the project or the blight elimination. Next slide, please. So this is the job creation requirement that we have in the agreements. So we are requiring the applicant to create at least eight full-time equivalent positions. So the annual average salary that the project is gonna create for each job is gonna be around $28,000 annually plus tips for the total annual payroll of about $216,000. And positions include different roles from management to hospitality operations, accounting, marketing, et cetera. Next slide, please. So those are some of the requirements that we are looking and we're putting in the agreements. So first and foremost, the county is requiring to obtain a certificate of occupancy within 12 months of the loan disbursement. The business must remain operational for at least eight hours a day, five days a week, including one weekend day, continuously until the loan is repaid. Then, essentially, we also outline all of the associated economic benefits, like I mentioned earlier, construction guarantees, annual sales revenues, annual payroll, and the number of jobs created. Next slide, please. And then, essentially, this is kind of like the meat of the public participation agreement. That's the clawback provision. Events of default include any missed payments, failure to meet any measures that associated with the project that we just covered, the season of operations, abandonment, or transferring the majority interest without approval. And in a case if a default occurs after notice on a cure period, the county can terminate the agreements, demand immediate repayment, foreclose the mortgage on both properties, and accelerate all amounts due with additional interest rates implemented. Next slide, please. So additionally, we also reviewed the project scope against all of the existing strategic plans that the county has, including the comprehensive plan, economic development plan, tourism plan, downtown plan for White Rock. And the project does align with all of the plans on the following goals. So the first one being adaptive reuse and blight elimination, expanding retail and services provision, tourism and nighttime activity, public-private financing tools, and infrastructure sustainability. So with that, next slide, please. I think we're ready for any questions that you all might have.

Thank you, Mr. Cody.

And then we do have the project applicant in the audience, Ms. Janet Lovato. So she's available for questions as well.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and the information. So we're going to be taking action on this. So we're just looking for, I guess, technical or clarifying questions at this point in time from counselors. Do we have any? Councilor Rieger?

Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I'm just sort of looking at these clawback provisions and these targets. And there are a lot of ways in the first year of business you don't hit this million dollar sales argument, sales target. And what happens then?

So essentially, those are pretty standard clawbacks. We have worked with the applicants on identifying those benchmarks. And this is the benchmark that the applicant is comfortable with. which even in the first year.

Do we have some pre-plan to just delay the benchmark if there's an issue? Is that going to make part of it?

Yes, I believe so, right? Because that goes under the deferral period.

Because there could be all kinds of things we don't count on, like shutdowns or lockouts or whatever.

Chair Reidy, Councillor Rieger, that issue that allows the applicant and the county to have a discussion if something happens unforeseen is the cure process. That is before any foreclosure or any callback happens, that there is this dialogue and ability to get the project back on track or realign some of the dates. We understand. And so that is built into the contract language.

So you suppose something like there's a government shutdown that goes on long enough and the lab starts sending people home. What do we do then?

Yeah. The contract, Chair and Councilor Rigger, the contract contains what's called a force majeure clause. If something makes it impossible for you to perform, it's generally out in a pandemic or some kind of terrible strike.

Yeah, like a COVID thing.

Yeah, something like that happens, a force majeure clause. They're in all contracts. It just basically excuses performance until this whatever thing that you can't control goes away. So there are ways in contract law to naturally deal with those types of situations.

So that's in this contract is what you're saying?

Yes, it would be applicable to any contract, and it's expressed in this contract. Also, there's a cure period that they've referenced. So before anybody could do anything, I think, The applicant is afforded a hearing before council. So in these situations, in these agreements, there will be a cure period. They propose a cure. It's written in the agreement. If they default or something, we notify them of the default, and then they propose a plan to the county to remedy the default. And if we're happy with that, we proceed. Before anything severe or stern was going to happen, They would have a right to have a hearing before council and present their options to it. So it wouldn't be the staff or the county manager just taking unilateral action on these things. It would require some input from council.

Oh, thank you. So in But I can imagine the simple picture would be to take the milestones and just back them back six months or a year, or whatever the event was. Is that that the kind of idea you think of? Or is what is management intent? What do you intend to enter? Holden or whoever? What do you do with that? If there's you just going to push it all back six months? Is that reasonable? Or what do you do?

Chair Variety, Councilor Rieger, it's really upon the applicant to propose what's reasonable and for us to evaluate it. So we would go into it with an open mind based on their specific circumstance and needs and evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. There would be a lot of factors that I think we'd want to consider, and it would be hard to speculate what would work for an applicant. So we would respond to what they propose as what would get them back on track.

I would feel great if it were in the contract, exactly what the cure is, and that's guaranteed to the recipient. I don't know.

Chair Reiting, Councillor Rieger, the process is outlined in the contract and is very clear.

Okay. So why is this, it's like a million dollars a year is the target for the income. Um, why is it so big so fast? Is that, can't you say it's a 10 year deal? So it's, you have four years to get to that $3 million mark instead of.

Um, so essentially, you know, it is a combination of the different business, um, components of this business model. Uh, and there are a lot of different pieces included there. So like I said, we did work with the applicants on getting those numbers calculated, and they feel pretty confident that they're going to reach those numbers in the first full years of operations and reach that target of $3 million in the next five years.

And what was the five-year part? I thought it was $1 million per year for three years. Yes. What's the five-year part?

So it's slightly over $3.1 million. So that's kind of the benchmark they're looking to hit in five years of the business operations. $3.1 million per year.

That's going to be very hard to hit. I hope so, but that's... what is the consequence of failing to hit that then they go back into this um it means that wouldn't be paying as much grt but wouldn't you just extend the the time scale so they would have more time to reach those numbers um chair maybe we should there's a little bit difference between the whereas and what the estimates of revenues are versus what the criteria are

under the contract and what would what would equate to a default. So maybe we can bring up the slides again. Mr. Kutiakoff can just talk about what the criteria reporting in the that are in the contract.

Yes, essentially, these are all of the requirements we do have in the contract. They are relatively kind of like, you know, we put them on the lower level to ensure the business success. So the annual sales revenue that we do have on the contract, it's $1.2 million. Um, so the 3 million figure that kind of comes from the business owner, uh, and that's what they're looking to achieve, uh, in that five year period. But it is not a part of the, um, requirement that we're going to be looking at. Yeah.

It's not five years. It's three years, right? Yeah.

Or where's the five years? Um, so they're looking to achieve, uh, the annual sales revenue of 3.1 million by 2031. So I guess technically four years if they're going to open up in 2027. Annual sales revenue. Annual sales.

Seems very difficult. Is that, I don't see it listed here, but you're saying it just says greater than 1.26 million.

Yeah, so that's the benchmark they would need to hit, essentially, to meet the requirements of the agreement on the annual basis over the 10-year public participation period for this project.

Cumulative or annual?

In three years, she has to hit $3 million a year in sales? So that's the benchmark the businesses set in for themselves.

They set for themselves, but what... Default is only if they don't pay the loan, isn't that right? No.

I'll try to clarify, Chair. Chair, righty, Councilor Rieger. So when we receive these applications, we do get some sort of aspirational estimates, but then we also talk about what are the commitments the business is comfortable with and how does that economic benefit of the commitment equal to the participation of the county? So when Mr. Kudiakoff kind of compared what the A benefit of the use of the county funds and the compared to what the return is those are based on these lower estimates now the applicant is telling us they have aspirational. You know plans to exceed that it would not, but those aspirational numbers would not the way we've written the contract would not not meeting those targets would not mean a default just these criteria and we limited them to certain years. meaning that we understand the first year is really going to be about construction and getting up and running and seeing the GRT for construction, meaning that after the first two years, they'll start paying for year three till 10 on the loan. And so that if they don't pay on that loan as required, three to 10, that would be a default. And then, so you've got the GRT from construction. I think there's good numbers from the contractor that those are based on. And then the annual sales is only for calendar year 28 through 31. It's not for all 10 years, because again, we're just looking at the benefit versus what the contribution is. We didn't really need to require more than that years So beyond 31, it's really just repayment of the loan. So you're correct. After 31, it's just paying back the loan that is all required to not be in default. And then there's the jobs piece.

Okay. So the $3 million per year is not part of any default of the terms of the loan?

That's correct. It is? It's not.

Not the $3 million.

Not the $3 million.

Sorry. Chair Reidy and Councilor Rieger, The agreement is clear on what the requirements are. It's in the council packet. It's in paragraph two of the ordinance of the agreement that's attached to your packet. And in part two of the project participation agreement, it's titled Contributions of V.E. Holdings, New Mexico LLC. These terms were all negotiated with VM holdings and reviewed by their attorney. They did have legal counsel throughout this process.

So that wasn't listed up there? Is this wrong again?

No. I mean, if you look at the agreement, there are certain things they have to do. They have to repay the LEEDA loan. They have to maintain annual sales for the first three years of not less than 1.26 million. That's right. That's up there. You have to have the eight full-time equivalent jobs for the years. And the detail goes into that. So that and the repayment of the loans are their performance that they have to provide to the county and the community, not just the county, the community. And... Those are their obligations under the agreement for receiving this significant amount of money from the community chest.

And if the sales revenue is short in one of the first three years, the consequence, you don't know what it is, but it will probably be a cure process?

Yes. And the agreement is attached to your packet. There is a cure provision that lays out the process clearly. And that is in paragraph five. It talks about termination and recovery of investment. So in the agreement that's attached to the ordinance, it's in your packet. If you go to paragraph five, you can see clearly what happens in the event of a default. So you start there, and we notify them of the default. If they didn't make their sales in the first year, we would send them a notice that says, hey, it looks like you're in default. You didn't meet your gross sales criteria for the first year. As outlined in the agreement, VE Holdings would provide a response within 30 days to the county proposing how they would cure that default. And if the county's satisfied with that proposed cure, maybe they'll increase sales or they'll do something else, then that would be the end of it. But if they can't do anything and everything collapses and there's no cure for the default, then we have remedies in the agreement. But the questions you are asking are addressed in the agreement that's in your council back.

Well, then... A little bit vaguely. I mean, it's just, yeah.

It's secure in the written agreement that's in your packet. So if you go to that agreement and read these sections, it should answer your questions. All right.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Rieger. Are there any other technical or clarifying questions?

I have just one. And you may have addressed this, but I believe I missed it. So is the county's $868,000 loan fully secured? Correct, yes. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. We have any other questions? So I guess going back to the questions Councilor Rager was asking, we've had other lead agreements that are structured differently than this one. I'm thinking the one that we had for the laboratory, Mexico Labs. That wasn't their name. But they had promised in their agreement a certain number of jobs and economic activity for a certain number of years. I think they actually met their targets early. Isn't that correct? Or sort of, and then they were able to exit. So they, I mean, it's not uncommon. So the, whoever applies for this LEEDA funding would understand, they would know before they've submitted to the county that they're a little short or they're well over. So if you're well over one year, would that be part of the evaluation for the next year where maybe it's a little under? Because you're looking at a cumulative number, right, for this case, for sales. Or do you have to meet 100% of the number even if you met 200% in one year? Just hypothetically.

Yeah. I mean, sure. Right. I think just as Mr. Liebhardt said, I think we would notify, like if the first year was compliant, we would all be happy. If the second year was noncompliant, we'd send a notice and we would have a conversation. And part of what they would say is, well, we were over last year, so we think overall. And then we would bring that to council to decide if that was hunky-dory in terms of a cure. Okay. You know, based on that explanation, you know, based on that example, I wouldn't, as an account manager, have any concerns recommending that to counsel.

So we're not counting the jobs anywhere in the, other than that there's a requirement to have the jobs in the agreement, but they're not in the academic analysis. Is that correct? Or did I miss them somewhere? Because I was trying to see them in the, are they counted somewhere in that net benefit?

So they're counted separately. So in the economic analysis, we looked at more financial return on investment for the county in the form of taxes. Right.

But it's also part of the benefit project. Correct. Yes. And there is no specific requirement that you must get $1.01 return for every dollar of public monies. Is that correct? And there isn't anywhere, there's a benefit cost analysis, but it doesn't say that it must be two to one.

No, that's the estimation that we calculated for the county's participation in this redevelopment project.

Right, but there's no requirement for a certain minimum amount.

Correct.

Yeah, okay. And this one may not particularly germane to this, but economic competitive I guess impact analysis. So basically, I guess in some cases where you may be having a business, but there's a lot of other competing businesses in the area, which is not the case here. There's obviously very little there, but is in general, that's something that can be evaluated more qualitatively. So in like Los Alamos, Downtown, there's more businesses here than in White Rock. So there would be more potential for competition with whatever project we might be supporting with public monies. Is there some simple way of understanding what the competitive impact is, even in a project where there's very little, you know, competition, or is that very qualitative?

That's a great question. So the state of New Mexico nor the municipal code requires us to do this kind of analysis for any leader projects. I think that would probably have to come from the county management if it's something that we need to look at moving forward.

We don't have hard numbers on this other than what I can tell you is when we did the numbers on the gap analysis, all of these applications and the criteria that all of these applications were supporting met were areas of need. So I don't think there are a lot of areas where based on the current applications we have that it's going to come back that we are over-served. It may not be that somebody wants competition, but that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't capacity for competition. So all we can go on is based on how we develop this program, which is based on the gaps that were very clearly identified as part of that initial report of what the spending capacity is in certain areas based on our population versus what it is. And these are all areas with gaps.

Okay, I understand that, but I think that if you, I mean, it's hard to argue that it's all, especially if you get $3 million, is it all new money or some of that money that was being spent somewhere else? That's basically the idea, I think. It seems like in this case that, especially when you're in the first four years, that it's got to be mostly money that's not being spent because it's just entire leakage because there's not many other opportunities for spending money in White Rock. But to me, it seems like it's something that we should be looking at. at some level, but I don't know that this one, other than there's, it can't be like zero. There has to be some monies that somebody would have spent somewhere else, but they're spending it here, right? So I think that's the only question I'd have about when you say it's a positive number of like 2.3 or whatever, that some of that money would have been spent somewhere else, right? And even White Rock, it's not like there's zero places to spend money there. Okay, I'm not seeing any other questions. So I think we're ready for public comment. I think we'll have some people that want to make public comment. So just we'll start here in the chambers and then go online. So just have to state your name. Thanks.

Good evening, chair and members of the council. My name is Becca Jones. I'm a resident of White Rock, and I will be opening the frozen yogurt shop in this building. And so I'm here tonight because I want to share my strong support for Janet's project at the Rock in White Rock. and urged the County Council to approve the LIDA funding application. Janet's project is exactly the type of local economic development investment that LIDA funding was intended to support. She has spent the past three years doing this the right way, working through the proper channels, taking the necessary classes, using available resources, and carefully preparing her application. That level of persistence, preparation, and commitment deserves recognition. More importantly, this project responds directly to what we repeatedly hear from members of our community. People want more to do locally. They want welcoming places to gather outside of work and home, what are often called third spaces. White Rock has a real need for more opportunities for both young people and adults to connect, spend time together, enjoy activities, and build a stronger sense of community. The Rock Project has the potential to become a valuable community asset. It can help create a space where residents stay, local families have something meaningful to do, and our community gains another reason for people to gather, participate, and invest in White Rock. Janet has shown the dedication and follow-through needed to bring this vision forward. I hope the county council will support her hard work and approve this lead of funding so the ROC project can move ahead. Thank you.

Thank you. Please come up.

Good evening, Chair, righty, and counselors, and the community. I am pleased to speak in support of Janet Lovato, NVE Holdings, and the proposed LIDDA assistance for the ROC. My name is Audrey Marroquin. I work at the Los Alamos Chamber of Commerce, and I have worked with Janet Lovato on the USDA Rural Development Grant. And Janet NVE Holdings has already demonstrated meaningful progress through her work on the USDA RBDG that supported development and infrastructure improvements for this space. The project has helped The Rock move towards becoming a very creative multi-use business that combines a bar. And as we heard the frozen yogurt treats, small bites and a public laundry, which is a model, I believe that supports both community gathering and practical local needs. This is especially important. I feel for White Rock where public laundry access is very much limited. and where residents have expressed strong interest in seeing this space activated during June 2026 Los Alamos Chamber Fest in White Rock, several community members came to me and shared comments, written comments, a number of them, and I'm paraphrasing, shared that the Rock, their excitement and that the Rock is the type of business for White Rock and appreciation for Janet's dynamic personality, that's a quote, and business sense. And from an economic development perspective, this project's already showing results. So Janet has made progress towards the project's three-year employment goal for the USDA grant, having achieved over a third of the employment goals in the first year. And that represents a real movement towards local job creation, business activation for White Rock community and the Los Alamos County. So in my view, The Rock is exactly the type of local driven community serving project that LIDA is intended to support. Janet has shown persistence, follow through and commitment to creating a space that benefits residents, visitors and local economy. And I've worked very much with a lot of grant recipients as a sub recipient. She has really satisfied the procurement requirements and the two CFR 200 part. And so I respectfully encourage the council to support the approval of this LIDA assistance for the project. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Anyone else want to come up?

Good evening, Chair Reidy and Council. I would like to thank county staff for their work on this LIDDA project application. And I'm thrilled that we are at this step. Chamber stands in strong support and encourages you to approve this. My name is Sandy Jones. I'm sorry, I forgot to say that. I'm the director of the Los Alamos Chamber of Commerce. I'm also a resident of White Rock and very excited about this project. We need places in White Rock to go because we don't always feel like driving back up to Los Alamos as much as we love it. So this is so exciting because When that space is activated, it will be so visible. It's just going to continue to be a catalyst for additional activity there. And I'm excited about that. Thank you for considering this project.

Thank you. Anyone else present want to make comments?

I'm Lisa Shin. I'm at 637 47th Street, Chair Reedy. I do have concerns, as David Rieger did, about the 1.26 million in annual revenues at each calendar year starting in 2027. So I don't know if you're aware, but startup businesses are extremely difficult. I know that because I started pretty much cold when I, you know, about 30 years ago, And it's very unrealistic to expect a cold start operation to generate $1.2 million in annual revenues in the first year. I mean, my guess, I was looking at the numbers too, and I was thinking likely it's more like $300,000. And it's also very unlikely that revenues would be tripled in just five years to $3.1 million by the year 2031. I just know from personal experience and from what I've seen and how I've talked to many business owners, I feel like those are very unrealistic metrics. And I do actually agree with Councilor Rieger that maybe you should look at that and maybe extend the time required to generate that much revenue, or you could shorten or actually lower the number. Maybe it's not 1.2 million, but maybe it should be more like 600,000. Maybe that's more reasonable expectation. Also, I just wanted to point out that, you know, we have a very, we have a labor shortage in the service industry. So it's that tier that this project needs. And, you know, even Smith's is extremely short staffed and they're looking for people. And I know we have friends there that are just completely overworked. So I'm just kind of questioning, I mean, the creation of five full-time employees in the first year, that's to me, that is a lot. And I'm thinking it's more like two or three in the first year is reasonable. I want to remind everyone that even a McDonald's could not succeed in this location. Thirdly, the GRT revenues for 2026, remember we're almost in like September, 2026 is almost over. And yet this agreement, calls for $936,000 in construction expenditures to generate $30,000 in GRTs by the end of 2026. So I'm like questioning that, like how could that be because we're almost at the end of the year. I'm also concerned about 4E. It says county at its option may require VE holdings to enter into additional agreements only to the extent reasonably necessary to secure county's interest in property one and two. So here I'm just thinking that the county can change terms and require additional agreements, not in the original project participation agreement. So I'm just concerned that there's not enough legal protection and recourse for a local entrepreneur here. And lastly, I just want to say that I'm very worried about the county's ability to seize private property in the case of default. Missed payments, failure to meet performance measures are also events of default. So if VE Holdings fails to generate all this income and GRTs, I'm concerned that the county would force foreclosure and seize private property, which would be really, really devastating to this local business owner and to our community. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Dr. Shin. Anyone else present?

Hello, Chair Reidy and Council. Jan Lovato, VE Holdings. I just wanted to tell you guys thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I've had so much help from the community, so much help from the Business Accelerator Program, you know, all the way up to you know, the USDA grant from everything. And I really appreciate the opportunity to do this for the community. I want to give back. And one thing about me, if you don't know me, I don't like to fail. I don't believe that we are going to fail. I have studied these numbers. I know what I'm doing. I have looked at this. These numbers are based not just on the laundromat and the bar. This includes all of the businesses on the property. This also includes the food trucks, the EV charger, the laundry mat, and yogurt shop, the bar, the revenue for all of them together combined. Just talking with Hungry Bear, Fusion Taco, who are already very successful in the space, I don't foresee me not meeting these milestones. And I know this community wants it. Four years ago, I asked White Rock, what do you need? And these were the things that were stated. This is what they wanted. And I listened. And I want to be able to give that to them. It's going to happen, and I'm not going to fail. So I would really appreciate your support, and thank you so much.

Thank you, Ms. Lombardo. Okay. Anyone else? Let's see if there's anyone on Zoom that wants to comment.

Chair, it looks like there is. Ms. Connolly, you should be able to unmute. Please state your name and limit your comments to three minutes. Ms. Connolly, if you're talking, we can't hear you. Ms. Connolly, please state your name and limit your comments to three minutes. Ms. Connelly, if you're talking, we can't hear you. Mr. Jones, please state your full name and limit your comments to three minutes.

Sure. My name is Tyler Jones. And just thank you for your time. Chair Reedy and council. I just wanted to say as somebody that's grown up in White Rock, I kind of remember like the Gordon's concerts and Pizza Hut and a lot of the local things going through the village. We used to have Gordon's concerts where the lab is now. There used to be a movie theater. I know a lot of White Rock kind of feels like, like Becca had said, that there's not a lot of great places to congregate and feel like a community. So I'm really excited about this. Kudos to Becca and Janet. And I think Lisa Shin makes a lot of really excellent points. I hope that everybody is kind of considerate of the idea that these are new businesses and that we kind of treat them with compassion in this process and try and give them every opportunity to exceed and excel. but also just wanted to give kudos to the council and to you guys as well. I think there's been a lot of promises in the past and for a long time about how helping build local businesses and helping kind of, you know, get small businesses started and bring White Rock back. And I think you guys are doing an excellent job of kind of standing on your word and and making these things happen. This is a great opportunity. I'm super grateful to the council and everyone involved. So thank you guys for helping bring White Rock back.

Thank you for the comments.

Mr. Saenz, you should be able to unmute. Please state your full name and limit your comments to three minutes.

Hi, my name is Alan Saenz. I'm owner of Sala and Los Alamos Network. And I'm glad that Janet has been going through the process and close to get, you know, disapproved. But, you know, I'm also concerned more like for her. I know her and I respect and appreciate and I know that she's going to do her best. But, you know, just as a warning that, you know, doing business sometimes it doesn't go as planned as you wish. So, you know, I also believe that those numbers are really high. If it was me, I will maybe try to negotiate those numbers. numbers that is a little bit more favorable for you. And again, not giving that much control to a county that if for some reason, you know, I hope you do. And I hope it goes well and it's supported by everybody. But if you cannot achieve some of those metrics that, you know, you are not in a good position. So that is kind of my comment that Again, the reality of doing business, especially in these days, it is tricky, and I'm just concerned about achieving those numbers. But I wish you the best, and that would be great for White Rock as well. Thank you.

Thank you. We have another one. We'll try this calmly again.

More time.

Thank you for your patience. My apologies, Council Chair, Chair Reiting and Council. Thank you so much for allowing me to speak. My name is Jacqueline Connolly. I'm the Main Street Executive Director. And I am speaking in support of Janet's project and ordinance number 760. I'd like to say that we have worked with Janet for over two and a half years in a variety of capacities. As she mentioned, she participated in our business accelerator program, as did Hungry Bear, which has been on site and thriving on her location and continues to drive traffic and clearly shows a continued demand and need for these types of food services. We've seen her growth with multiple other food truck and other food related businesses being supported and being able to launch, including Chefs for You that now is up in Los Alamos, but is eager to participate and come to White Rock still and and be in our events. We've partnered with her with the White Rock Evening Market, and I have been just so impressed with how many home-based businesses, which you all can come to the Chamber Expo and learn all about all the ones there are, but there are so many in White Rock that are waiting for space like what Janet is providing. This allows access to Being able to have job creation because the overhead costs for these individual businesses that will partner with her is so reduced by what she is offering. And the business accelerator program will continue to be able to produce folks who are ready with training and guidance and support to continue to populate her vision for the community. So I emphatically encourage you to approve this project. And I'm so grateful that we have mechanisms like LITA and MRA to be able to help folks get over that last hump so we can see real revitalization for dated structures that really need it. But look what she's done with what she already has. I'm so excited to see this vision come true. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Conley. Do we have any other comments?

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

Any other hands raised? Okay, so is there a councillor? I knew there was somebody who wanted to make a motion.

Councillor Herman? Thank you, Chair. I move that council adopt Incorporated County of Los Alamos Ordinance No. 760. an ordinance adopting a local economic development project for public support of VE Holdings New Mexico, LLC, a domestic limited liability company qualified to conduct business in the state of New Mexico, and ask staff to assure that it is published as provided in the county charter.

Second.

Okay, so we have motion by Councilor Herman, second by Councilor Reeder. Is there any discussion? Do you want to say anything? Okay. Council member here.

Thank you, Chair. Yeah. Well, I think this is a great thing for us to try, and I'm a little worried about the severity of the terms, but if the owner is confident in it, then I think we should just charge ahead and see how we do, and we'll all be aware of how... how difficult things could be in the future, but we're moving ahead with confidence. So I thank her very much for going through the process and applying for it. And this will be our, well, the first big one in White Rocks that we've ever put through. So I'm excited to see the development for sure. So I hope everybody supports it. Thank you.

Do we have any other comments? No. Well, I remember hearing about this at a Main Street meeting, I guess, maybe close to when you're getting this going. So I was very excited about the prospects. There's also MRA funding we're not dealing with tonight, but that's another thing that will help the project. So just really pleased you stuck through and we've been able to get to this point. And thank you, everybody, for working hard on it. And we appreciate all the efforts. So with that, call the roll.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. So let's see. I think we still got time to continue going. So thank you for being here tonight. There's some more exciting votes coming. If you're interested in electric coordination agreements, stuff like that. Let's see. So the second public hearing is 9B, CO0760-26B, Incorporated County of Los Alamos Code Ordinance Number 02-385, an ordinance amending Chapter 40, Article 3, Sections 40-151 and 40-152 of the Code of the Incorporated County of Los Alamos pertaining to gas service rates. I think we have Ms. Gentry here tonight.

Good evening chair writing and members of Council i'm here to bring forth our gas rate ordinance 0235. So the overview is we're ringing for approval, this gas rate. I'm going to discuss through my presentation aligning our gas rates with our current operational needs and discuss the final kind of net income that we ended up with in FY26, discuss the prices of natural gas in New Mexico and how it compares to gas the Department of Public Utilities. I want to discuss how this rate adjustment translate to the average summer and winter residential bill. County Council rejected our previous ordinance that we brought in early June. That was ordinance 02379. And they suggested for us to come back with a single rate adjustment. And so that's what I'm bringing back rather than a multi rate. We're just bringing back one single rate adjustment. So how did our gas fund do in fiscal year 2026? So this graph was done probably in late April, early May. So some of these numbers are a little off when we're now into our new fiscal year. So looking at our final numbers, this is showing at that time we were showing about a net income loss of about $760,000. Based on our unaudited 2026 numbers, we're looking at about $120,000 gain. That is mostly due to some capital projects that we will be carrying over moving into FY26. The cost of gas wasn't as expensive as we had anticipated. And we're also have a 350,000 dollar revenue transfer that was in 26 that wasn't completed. So we're carrying that over into 27. And then we also do have some encumbrance rollovers in about 85,000 that will also be. we'll be bringing for 27. So the next slide. So this is where did all our expenditures go in FY26. You'll notice the largest piece of our pie is the cost of gas. 37% of our expenditures for the gas is the cost of gas that we pay. The next one is our inter-fund charges or IDCs that we pay to the general county. Coming in at 18% as our salaries and then contractual services and then salary, I mean benefits for our employees in that fund and then our capital outlay. Okay, so This time we looked at more of the cost of gas in the state of New Mexico, and so we found this website, eia.gov, and so it does give us numbers for the cost of gas for all of New Mexico. It actually gives you for all of states. In this graph, I did use calendar year 2025. And the reason I did that is because 26, there was three months missing of the five that we needed to kind of look further. So they weren't available, the numbers. So I did try to go into 25 just to kind of give a better view. I know it's a little outdated, but that was the best way we could use those numbers. These are the published prices that include tax, delivery, commodity, demand, and other charges in the EIA. So how does the cost of gas in New Mexico versus DPU? So this is just a graph of showing the sales of therms, 50 therms, 70 therms, 100 therms, 150 therms based on New Mexico gas prices through the EIA. So looking at our neighboring communities. So this is kind of narrowing it down to two of our neighboring communities, New Mexico Gas Company and Zia National Gas. So just looking at the prices in the purple line that you see, I added in where the EIA gas prices are. So that is like the state of New Mexico average cost. So I did change the chart a little bit for the bars or the us and the neighboring community. And then the purple line is EIA. The information on the right hand of the slide is kind of just the breakdown of each of those costs for our neighboring communities. I'd like to point out the New Mexico Gas Company serves about 553 homes and Zia Natural Gas serves about 40,000 customers. We have about 7,000 customers that pay for gas in Los Alamos County. So this is looking at the typical bill for residential customers. So we did kind of do an average, and I think I talked about this last time. Prior to about customers, we were averaging about 75 therms per year. And we did a three or five-year average, and it's kind of dropped down to about 70 therms per customer. So the lower half of that graph is kind of going down to the 70. So it's showing the cost of gas at 70 therms, and then the total bill and the total change in the bill if this gas ordinance is approved. So the next slide. So how does the current rate compare to our proposed gas rate? So the biggest change is our fixed rate per therm. So we're looking at a 41% in that part because there's three components to our gas rate. We have a fixed rate, a service charge, and then the variable rate. The variable rate is what it cost us to buy the gas. So that's just a pass-through rate. So whatever the cost of gas is, is what we charge the customer. So the two components that we're bringing of that gas rate is the fixed rate, which is the 41%, bringing the fixed rate from 34 cents to 48 cents. The service charge is 9% change, so it's going from $14.25 to $15.53. And then the two charts below show a monthly average over 12 months at 70 therms, and then the winter average is about 126 therms per customer. So overall, at 70 therms, it's about a 16% increase to the bill, and winter average is about 17%. So the recommendations in summary, we're asking for county council to adopt ordinance 02385. This is to align our gas rates to our operational costs. operational costs include all those things I showed in the pie graph. We don't have very many capital projects. In FY27, we budgeted $135,000 in capital projects. So most of our cost of gas is to maintain the system, to keep What am I trying to say? With our gas employees, they have to have certification. So they're constantly taking classes and keeping with certifications related to PRC audits. just cathodic protection, everything that kind of goes on maintaining our gas rate system. This is a single rate adjustment that if passed, it will go in effect September 1st. Our proposed gas rate is below statewide cost trends, and adopting this rate ordinance will also provide stable operations and the necessary infrastructure maintenance for our gas system. So this is kind of next steps, but we've already done our introduction and approval to BPU. The introduction was brought to you guys on August 4th, and then we are here tonight. So that is the end of my presentation, and I'm open to any questions.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Gentry. to begin with this next item. So we'll be taking technical or clarifying questions from counselors. Are there any technical counselor?

Thank you, Chair. Hello.

Good evening.

I just have a couple of questions. What assumptions produce a positive cash flow by 2029?

I'm sorry, what assumptions?

What positive assumptions?

So the assumptions when we did was our 10-year forecast. So when we did our budget, we were anticipating the previous ordinance coming into play, which was this current. And then I think it was 3% or 5% the following years. And so that was estimated with those potential Rate increases that we would be able to get to a cash positive cash flow with our expenditures and also start funding our cash reserves. So it's a projection based on what we were doing back in January, February and March, assuming that the. gas rate ordinances that we brought a couple months ago would have passed so that may change slightly depending on this it also could change slightly if the ordinance to the revenue transfer ordinance that's going on the ballot so if that does go through and we that we don't pay revenue transfer then that money stays in the fund as well for both gas and electric so that could impact future rate ordinances for electric and gas as well. Is that? No. No.

So I understand that your initial projections were based on if we had passed it.

Exactly.

But we didn't. Right. So are the current projections for 2029 based on if we do pass it?

Um, yes, and no, because I think because at that time we were, we were anticipating the 2 year or, you know, the, the, the multi rate ordinance and so we're not doing that. We're only coming with the 1. so it could slightly change. We didn't do those kind of projections right now when we bring the budget next year, we'll have a better idea with this 1, single rate ordinance where that'll lead us in the future.

Okay, so you're not able to make the projections now because we didn't pass it initially. Okay, I got you.

Yeah.

Not a problem. Then the second question I have is could the November vote change this increase?

That I'm not sure how to answer because I think if you, I don't know how to answer that because I think that's a legal question maybe because if it's passed, I think the rate is in effect. But I don't know.

Do you want to weigh in, Mr. Leapheart? Like, what?

Yeah, could you repeat the question?

I'm sorry. Yes, not a problem. I wanted to know, would this change the November? I'm sorry, could the November vote change this increase? Because they're asking for an increase. And then we've also got something on the ballot in November. So would this change this?

Chair, Mr. Shelton's online. I think you're talking about the profit transfer question that the council put on the ballot?

Yes.

Okay. I'll let Mr. Shelton address. I don't believe they're related.

Chair, Councilor Neuquen, it wasn't. They're somewhat unrelated.

Okay. All right. So belay that question. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. No worries.

That's all I have. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Eklund. So aren't they somewhat related also? The rates are built up with the 5% in them. Because I think there was even some confusion about they had been called a profit transfer because the charter has the words all remaining operating profits. I'm remembering that wording right.

Yeah, Councilor, I do. I do believe our chair ready, I do believe that the because of the history of it being returned to the utilities for capital projects, they have built that into their planning, but I'll let Mr. Shelton, Mr. Shelton wants to possibly answer, let him go first.

Yeah. Yes, chair. Uh, you know, typically it's in the order of 300, 350,000. That's a revenue transfer that goes into the general fund and then back to DPU for projects. Uh, and it doesn't necessarily need when it goes back historically, uh, it's been mostly towards water and wastewater type projects in the past, uh, to replace lines in the streets. Um, This rate increase is to help build cash and have our cash reserves on hand so we can deal with another mild winter or an upset in December. delivery of gas, whatever the situation may be. And so if the voters choose a different path this November, it only means we get to restore our cash reserves a little quicker. It would lessen the need for any rate increase in the future, but not today. We need the increase to rebuild our cash reserves in the near term.

Okay, so I'll say that they are related because it's part of the rate, right? So if you weren't putting it back to other projects, then they would stay in the fund.

Right, and build cash a little quicker to meet those reserve targets we need to meet.

So I guess the, maybe this question came up the first time. So New Mexico Gas Company has over half a million customers, right?

That is correct, sir.

And they operate in most all counties?

I think they have like 27 of the 30 counties. So they do cover a great percentage of the state of New Mexico.

So but we wouldn't be able to just hypothetically. I guess somebody had to figure out if it's a good deal or not, right? So hypothetically, you could, the Mexico Gas Company could be operating the gas utility here, just like anywhere else, but we have decided that we want to operate all the utilities, gas, water, electric, you know, sewers, you know, and environmental services, right? So they had one consolidated bill. So what's confusing is that I mean, when you had the Energy Information Agency, right, EIA numbers, they were less than the numbers that you're presenting for Mexico Gas Company. So, right, they were more. So Mexico Gas Company is less. And then these other numbers are more, which makes our numbers look better in comparison. But who, I'm just confused about who's actually paying those numbers, because if there's 550,000 customers, so where are those numbers coming from? That's from the, because that's the federal government, right? Energy Information Agency, it's the DOE. like across the bridge, a different part of them. But it's the federal government compiling those numbers. It just seems like it's confusing to see those numbers in contrast. It's interesting that those are higher, but they're also higher than all these other numbers like New Mexico Gas Company. So what are we to make of those numbers, the energy information agency numbers in comparison to these other numbers?

trying to think of like how to answer that so i think we pulled in the eia numbers just so that because it's just looking at how the what the state of new mexico are other people are paying across the state um because we we the only comparisons we had were like zia and um new mexico gas company but it's hard to find like where something compares more to us. So I think we were just kind of trying to do a broad of this is what the average cost is in the state of New Mexico and what the average customer is paying per therm.

Okay, but I'm just thinking mentally about the math. I mean, the delta between 550,000 and the number of households in New Mexico, it can't be another 550,000, right? There's only 2.2 million people in the state. So we're going to be, you know, it's going to be $400,000 maybe. So I'm just trying to figure out how were these numbers that are so much bigger than New Mexico Gas Company. I mean, if that's the average someone's paying, that implies that there's some people paying a whole lot more than New Mexico Gas Company. I'm just trying to reconcile the numbers you're presenting because there's a pretty big delta between those and New Mexico Gas Company.

Okay, so maybe I said something wrong with New Mexico Gas Company. They serve about 553 homes and about 1.3 million customers.

I think it's 553,000. Yeah, not 550 homes. What I found online, it did state 553 homes. Okay, we'll leave that aside. I'm sorry.

Yeah, that's okay.

um i think i think that's up on that so uh any other questions um mr sheldon did you want to say anything else no well chair the only thing i'd say to think it i don't think this is a weighted average statewide i think it's the average among all the gas suppliers so you have you know like You mentioned a large gas supplier, New Mexico Gas, has a lot of efficiencies, tight streets in Santa Fe, et cetera, in the communities they serve. But you have other areas like in Deming that are smaller communities, kind of. more in the nature like we serve. We serve two small, you know, the town site and Los Alamos, Bite Rock. And when you kind of look at our system, we're spread out like some of these small areas. And that's why it costs more to serve. We still have to comply with the same state, you know, PRC regulations and inspections. And we just don't have the scale of if it's The efficiency of scale.

Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. So I think we're ready to go to public comment. Do we have anyone present who would like to make public comment? I'm not seeing anyone come up. Is there anyone online that would like to make public comment?

Chair, they look like there is. Mr. Chappelle, please state your full name and limit your comments to three minutes.

Good evening. Can you hear me?

Yes, we hear you.

Okay, thank you. My name is Jason Chappell. I just want to speak briefly about this topic and discuss that there's a bigger question beyond the numbers. I've looked at some of the information and I understand that the DPU is responsible for maintaining safe and reliable gas systems. And I'm not questioning that responsibility. But what I am questioning is the cycle in which we seem to find ourselves in. We raise rates have gone up. and we come back again and raise them because we're experiencing a shortfall. At some point, we have to stop and ask ourselves, what does another rate increase stop being, when does it stop being a solution and start becoming a symptom of a larger problem? I'm not going to stand here and pretend that I know anything about gas systems and the people who operate them, but I know the council has heard and will hear plenty of numbers when discussing this. I would like the council to look beyond tonight's vote and consider what happens after it. If you approve this increase, what specifically is going to be done differently to make sure we're not sitting here next year asking residents to have another increase? Because residents don't experience these decisions as individual ordinances or individual percentages, they experience them as a total cost of living in Los Alamos. At some point, we have to ask not only what the utility needs, but what our residents can reasonably continue to absorb. If the council is going to ask the question to pay more tonight, I believe the residents of this Los Alamos County deserve more than another rate increase. They deserve a plan to get us off of this cycle. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chappell. Anyone else would like to make a comment?

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

Okay. Thank you. So is there a councillor interested in making a motion? Please go ahead and ask a question.

I apologize, border, but it just occurred to me when was the last time we had a rate increase? Does anybody know?

I believe Mr. Shelton might be able to correct me, but I believe the last time we bought a rate ordinances was four years ago, but I think it had yearly rate increases in that. That last ordinance.

Is that correct, Mr. Shelton?

I'm going from recollection. I think we had 2% per year. We were not keeping up with the inflation, obviously.

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Okay. So see if there's any counselor attention to making a motion. I'll make a motion.

Thank you. Yes. I move that council adopt Incorporated County of Los Alamos Code Ordinance Number 02-385, an ordinance amending Chapter 40, Article 3, Sections 40-151 and 40-152 of the Code of the Incorporated County of Los Alamos pertaining to gas service rates and ask staff to assure that it is published in summary form. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion by Councillor Neill-Clinton, second by Councillor Haveman. Is there any discussion on the motion? Councillor Rieger?

Yeah, I think what we've seen in recent years is a very low cost of gas. no real inflation there at all. And the margin on this, if you look at this, the gas system as a business, the margin is like 60%, about 40% of the money that people pay in, it goes to pay for the cost of gas. You've got to be able to run, think of it as a business and run it on a 60% margin. That's kind of silly that if you can't do that. And that's a management issue, and you've got to think of a way to adapt to the changes, especially, you know, we might deliver less gas, so we need to put more money into it or whatever we're doing. So I would say this is the same result we had a month ago. or two months ago maybe. I don't know, I don't think we need a rate increase and we were already charging more than typical and more than some of the other companies around. We just got to think of a way to size our budgets to deal with even a 60% margin, that's a tremendous amount of excess charges to spend on the operation. And there's no, what are we gonna go for, 70% margin? The cost of gas is eventually gonna be down to zero of the system. I don't know what we're gonna do. So I think you gotta be able to run the system with about, you know, even a 40% cost of gas and 60% of it in margin, you got to be able to run a system on that. So I don't think we should support this, this rate increase. It doesn't really make any sense. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Rieger. Any other comments?

Worst case scenario, if we don't approve it, what happens?

Worst case scenario would be that the projected revenues that we brought for FY27 would be different and we'd have to try to curtail some costs and maintenance on the system.

And when you say curtail the cost, if you were to speculate, what would that look like?

Well, it's kind of hard to say because usually if we don't have the money, we would curtail capital projects, but we actually don't have any large capital projects to curtail. So, I mean, right now what we're spending is to maintain our system. It's been a good system. I think that... some that it's going well and it's well maintained but we just don't have big capital projects that we'd have to curtail and maybe Mr. Shelton can kind of add to that but generally if we don't have a rate increase we'd have to curtail some expenditures which would be in capital and we just don't have that I think in FY27 we budgeted $135,000 in capital projects so there's not a lot there

So you budgeted 135, and then what did you actually use?

Well, I don't know if I have, let me, hold on. I think I have that number. Hang on just one second. This year we had, for 26 we had projected 217,000, and we spent 38,000 in capital projects.

You spent 38, but you projected for 200? Yes. And so the difference between those two was a little bit of savings.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay. Thank you. No Clinton. Um, any other comments? Oh, we have counselor hand.

Um, thank you, chair. I just, um, wanted to say that it seems like some of these cost increases are out of the county's control. I mean, we're experiencing cost increases on everything. You know, everybody in the public is experiencing that. It's not just the utilities department that is creating a problem with rising costs. And, you know, I wonder if, you know, we're shooting ourselves in our foot by... you know, if we didn't approve this because, you know, we won't have the money to keep our systems reliable. You know, this is, you know, we're basically creating, you know, funds so that we can maintain our system. And if we don't have any funds and we, you know, start letting go with the preventive maintenance, then we're going to end up with worse problems down the road. It's going to become more expensive. So I just really don't know. Sure, we can say, oh, no, we're not going to do that. But I've just seen so many situations where you push off the maintenance, you push off all those other costs, and eventually you end up paying for it. in the long run. So I think we need to do this. And I don't think that we should be blaming the utility department for raising costs because we're all experiencing cost increases everywhere. And I don't think that we can just blame the utility department for needing this increase. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Hant.

I think there's a guy standing near the door.

Oh, you wanted to make a comment now?

Sure, go ahead. I'm sorry I did this late. Chris Lucchini, Living Wire Rock. So I know a little bit about natural gas. I have a portion of the operation in Texas. The price of natural gas has been flat since 2010, okay? If you're trying to raise funds or build a cash buffer, I understand that. That is something you need to actually do. However, your gas pipeline doesn't care if you deliver 50 therms, 500 therms, or zero therms. The way to pay and finance maintenance and fix cost for a network is to have a connection charge, and you need to raise the connection charge rather than the actual delivery of the gas charge because it doesn't reflect reality. It's been flat, which is anti-inflationary over the last decade and a half. This is a ill-formed proposal, in my opinion. It needs to go back and be reworked to simply increase the connection charge to reflect the actual maintenance cost and, yes, a buffer for future anticipated costs. It doesn't sound like they're in big need of immediate funds for capital outlay. They spent less than they expected. Nevertheless, yes. You do need to build in buffers. Things happen, and when things happen, they can be very expensive, and you wanna have that money there. But putting this rate increase on the actual usage is not the way to do it. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Lucchini. So I think we were in the middle of councilor comments. Not seeing any other, did you have a comment or you want a question?

There it is. OK. Mr. Sheldon, could you address Mr. Lucchini's comment about the connection things I'd never even heard of it.

Sure. So we do have a monthly service charge and our monthly service charges to cover the internal department charges, which is basically the equipment that helps maintain our system as well as all the finance and administration for doing our billing and, and, and so forth, you know, the back of house items. Um, you know, we, we have been making those adjustments, uh, Just to cover that, I think Mr. Lucchini's suggestion, you know, in some areas do have higher monthly service charge, and that goes to customers flatly across all classes, regardless of how much you use. But in our current rate, recommendations for both electric and gas. We've been trying to get the alignment with the administrative and interdepartmental charges to be covered under monthly service charge. And then the O&M is covered more on the commodities. So there's a lot of different ways to do rate design. And that's how we currently do it. And his suggestion is a different rate design. But we didn't look into doing that.

So when you say different, does that mean that it's because states differ? Is that just something that the state of New Mexico doesn't do? Or is that just something the state of Texas does?

No, it's up to each utility to choose a rate design method. And that's something we could, if we need to do a future rate increase, we could retain a consultant at know kind of survey what the different rate designs are and what's appropriate um so that's all i can really offer at this time okay so so what i hear you saying is that there is a way that we can entertain this in the future to see if that'll make a difference it's possible yes okay thank you okay thank you councilman clinton um so that was kind of comment comments like okay so um i guess no one else has any comments

So yeah, it was a couple months ago when we voted on this and it was a multi-year. And in the meantime, we do have the charter question to remove the operating profit, OK, revenue transfer item from utilities. So that would involve looking at the rates. So gas and electric would be affected by that potentially. To my mind, it makes sense to have a one-year rate at this point change, and then the utilities and council a year from now or whenever would be appropriate, they could look at that. And they could also look at questions like New Mexico Gas Company. Hypothetically, what would that involve? I don't think they're going to take over a system if it's not functioning right, but who knows if they would take over the county if that would be beneficial or not. We've decided we wanted to be in control of our own utilities. So it's somewhat of an interesting comparison that they're less, but I don't know what practical difference it makes. So anyhow, there are lots of different ways of constructing the rate. The more you raise the connection fee, then the less that people use the commodity, they are paying more per unit therm. So we just had a lot of concerns about low-income people. The last time we talked about this and impacts on affordability for low-income people. So, I mean, it's a very complicated subject. And when we get these ordinances, we either pass them or don't pass them. We don't get the chance to modify them. That's what the Board of Public Utilities and consultation with the Department of Public Utilities does. So So we do have a charter question. Hopefully people will pay attention to that. I think it would make an impact on the rates ultimately, and I'll support this given it's a one-year increase at this point and ready to call for the vote, I think. So can you please call the roll?

Councillor Call? Yes. Councillor Ragoor?

No.

Councillor Hand? Yes.

councillor haveman yes councillor herman yes councillor neil clinton yes councillor righty yes motion passes six one okay let the motion record show the motion passes excellent councillor rieger in opposition and so i think that given that it is after eight o'clock last time i looked uh we'll take a about a 10 minute break 10A is AGR1234-26, possible approval of contract for general services agreement number AGR26-54 with Sancre Productions in the amount of $1,370,000 plus applicable gross receipts tax, a seven-year contract for the purpose of production of the Los Alamos Summer Concert Series. I think we have Ms. Huntsman here. Thanks.

Good evening, Chair Reidy, council members. I'll try and keep this very short and sweet, but to just hit some high points. The Los Alamos Summer Concert Series is a longstanding tradition in Los Alamos. It has grown over the years to a point where it's not only a benefit of Los Alamos County residents, but it is also a tourism component that draws attendance from neighboring communities and keeps commuters in town by featuring scale of entertainment that appeals to people who are willing to travel and stay in Los Alamos. The series also attracts a wide variety of vendors, ranging from nonprofit organizations, food vendors, and consumable products. Vendor participation has grown from 16 vendors in 2022 to 51 regional vendors in 2025. This contract before you today is for seven years, allowing for long-term planning and booking of musical acts. The agreement requires 15 concerts per season, which is current. 15 includes five large-scale concerts, with a target audience of 5,000 or more spectators each, and 10 small-scale concerts. The budget for the calendar year 27 series is $80,000, which equates to roughly $5,333 per concert. This amount has been budgeted within the Community Services Department budget for FY27. After year one, this contract increases to $140,000 with a $30,000 increase each year for the life of the contract. While this agreement maintains the requirement to seek sponsorships, staff has heard from local businesses that they are being asked repeatedly to sponsor concerts but also other events within the county, which puts a strain on everyone. Due to this, the contract amount is increasing to help alleviate this burden to our small local businesses on donating large amounts of money in order to support and continue to grow the series. Since 2022, the Community Services Department has documented metrics for the Los Alamos Summer Concert Series, which includes attendance, vendor attraction, and satisfaction. And because you guys like data, please provide me and allow you some data. Over the course of six years, 384,720 people have attended the summer concert series. That is an average of 64,120 people per series, which is an average of 4,274 people per concert. In 2025, the average dwell time was 110 minutes. That is almost two hours. In 2026, average dwell time this year was 115 minutes. Peak attendance time is holding steady at 8 p.m. We hold currently concerts from 6.30 to 9.30. And our percentage of visits from location, top three. In 2025, Los Alamos County, 74.4%. Española, 16.2%. In Santa Fe, 4.4%. In 2026, top three so far year to date. Los Alamos County, 72.8%. Espanola, 7.2%. And Santa Fe, 3.9%. The average person per cost for the last five years, which is 2021 through 2025, is $4.04 for anybody who goes to a summer concert. The average cost per person with the current proposal before you today, based on the series average of 64,051 people, will drop $3.50, or sorry, $3.05, bringing that cost down. Again, nope, there is no again. That is it. I will stand for questions.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Hespin. So just, again, action items. So any technical or clarifying questions? Councilor Hedlund first.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thanks for your work on such a great service to our community. I think people love it, as we all know. But I do have some questions. I've got one based on what you just said right there. Did you say that if we look at the total cost for a series, and then you take the number of attendees. Currently, that's running about $4 per attendee.

$4.44.

I thought you said $4.04. Okay, so $4.44. But if this were to be approved tonight, with this new rate schedule, that price would go down to just around $3 a person?

Chair, righty, Councilor Haverman, yes, that is correct. $3.05.

And even, is that just for the year one, though?

No, that is an average. I took the average attendance for each year. So that is the total cost per person for the life of the contract over the seven years.

Year one to seven, year seven. And year one starts in calendar year 2027. Correct. Okay. And is that because there's going to be more concerts and a higher expectation of the number of attendees?

Chair, Righty, Councilman, Heverman, we expect with the increase in the summer concerts to see an increase in attendance. But that math that I just provided was based on an average that we're seeing right now.

So I guess I'm just, which relates to the questions I prepared, I needed to have my memory refreshed on what the current contract terms are.

So the current contract terms are, the current contract is sitting about $72,000 for this year. The contractor is required to seek out sponsorships within the contract. That did not change within this current proposal to County Council before you today. However, I will reiterate with this proposed increase, we want to help alleviate the sponsorships that are being sought from our local businesses to help alleviate that burden. Additionally, is still 15 concerts for the total for the series, five of which still have to be large concerts with a 5000 person maximum or maximum 5000 person minimum to meet the threshold of a large concert. The 10 others are what we consider regular concerts.

And are those requirements in our current contract? Yes. Five large, ten smaller? Yes. Okay. And is the large supposed to have 5,000 people each? At least, yes. Okay. But what if there's inclement weather or a force majeure, an act of God, something that prevents that? I mean, what if, you know, it's smoky, it's pouring rain?

chair righty councilman haverman we understand that we are at the mercy of the weather and these days um it is a the verbiage that is within the current contract and the proposed contract before you is for a targeted audience of 5 000 current or in 7 000 for the proposed so we it's not a hard fast requirement it's a targeted so we plan um to have a concert that is going to attract large crowds um for that particular identified large concert does that answer your question

Yeah, it does. Did Mr. Styron want to add something there?

So I'm going to try to help the math. So the proposed agreement is $1.3 million. What we did is we took the average of the 61,000 people, multiplied that times seven, divided that into the contract. That's where the $3 number came from. So it's the current average attendance times seven versus the seven-year contract to get that number. So that's where that math comes together.

Okay. Okay. I was just surprised when you said that because, and this relates to some other questions I've got, that my thing keeps timing out. I'm out of order of how I was going to address these now, but the 30K increase per year starting in year three, because we go up 60K in year two, we start with 80, just for everyone's benefit, we start with $80,000 in year one, we bump $60,000 in year two, and that is a 75% increase. And then we have a 30K increase every single year. So over the seven years, we will have an increase of 260% in the obligations that we have to this contractor. And to me, that just seemed shockingly huge. But then when you said the per attendee price or cost is actually going to go down, I just didn't see how that computed.

So everything is based off the average, and I took the proposal cost. Oh, sorry. Looking at the wrong one. My apologies. All right. All right.

Yes.

So again, we're going to try to help with the math. So using today's average summer attendance of 61,000 people, we multiplied that by the seven-year lifespan, and that will give you somewhere around 427,000 people that would have attended over that period. When you take that number and divide it by the contract amount of 1.3 million, it averages out to about $3 and some change per person, $3.04. So that's how we got the math.

She was talking about that. Then how did you get the average cost of about $4.44 today? Same math. Same math.

All average. Yep.

That's what I thought you were going to say. It just doesn't seem logical when today we're only paying 72K a year, but we must be seeing it, you must, because you were using the same attendance number.

Correct. So my math includes not only our contract rate for Song Creek Productions, but also the donations and sponsorship money that they have collected from local businesses for a total combined of what the series costs. each year. So for example, let me give you an example. In 2025, let's see here. Yes. In 2025, our contract was $75,000 to pay Sancre Productions. Sancre Productions sponsorship was $112,500. for a total of $187,500 for the total amount applied to the summer concert series with an estimated attendance of 68,900 people. So if you divide the 187 by the 68,000, you get the cost per person. for that particular year is $2.72. So I worked that math all the way back to 2021, which gives me an average of $4.44. So that's where your math is confused. I think you were just, I had not explained that I was taking into account the sponsorship dollars.

Okay. And then, and then in, in this rate schedule year ones through seven, do not, we don't add on any incremental sponsorship dollars. Correct. Um, okay. It was actually one of the things I was going to ask you is what, what was the, do we know the amount of the sponsorship dollars received in the past? Was that the re contractors responsibility? Yes. Okay. And if they, succeeded in getting $200,000 in donations or sponsorships. Is that just gravy for the contractor? Extra profit? Or is it just less than the burden to the county?

Chair, Righty, Councilman Heverman, depending on the cost of the concert series performers and costs that are associated with that, It's a yes, no question. It could be depending on what the cost for the entire series was, or it could be a wash, depending on the year or the series that year. So for example, I do have an instance. Where in 2022, the contractor did in fact raise $200,000 in sponsorship money. They spent the entire amount for the concert series. So it was a zero profit for him.

Was that the contractor's choice to do that? Or is that just the way it worked out? He would have lost money if he had not obtained those sponsorships. Right. The latter? He would have lost money? He probably would have lost money, yes. Okay.

We do not get involved in how the contractor spends the sponsorship money. We just designate that it needs to be spent on the summer concert series.

Okay. But this current contract actually does say that if sponsorships are solicited, it is the responsibility of the contractor to do that. So if this agreement is approved tonight, we're not we're not mandating that the contractor seek sponsorships. In fact, maybe we'd prefer they not because we are, I mean, this goes back years back when I was running the chamber of commerce, you know, these are small businesses just get tapped a lot. Um, so we're trying to ease that burden for everybody, but if the contractor wants to seek some, I guess the contractor still can, but it's his responsibility and he therefore maybe potentially has a higher margin.

I guess chair right councilman that is correct we do put the burden on the contractor to solicit for donations and sponsorships for the summer concert series and it is within the contract for them to continue to do so, but it will be set as the expectation to limit that as much as possible to be able to support the summer concert series so. For example, this. next year, which is set at $80,000, which we have already budgeted. There will probably be still solicitations for sponsorships, but moving forward, those will get less they should and the expectation will be set to be less and less to learn to lower the burden on the local businesses.

What's the average? Do you know what the average sponsorship dollars received? over the last, say, five-year period, the same period you were doing some of the other data?

Yes, ma'am. Chair Reidy, Councilman Haberman, yes, I do. I have the average over the past five years. The average sponsorship was $121,449 on average, which is a huge chunk of money from our local businesses.

Yeah, so from my vantage point, when I take that into account and take just the cost of doing business, inflation, all the things, it seems logical to get to maybe the 170 and even the 200 in year four, but it's that bumping out to 260 and 290 that I'm just still grappling with. So let me just kind of parking lot that for a second. It said that the RFP process, you sent out, I think, around 40, 41 solicitations or invitations to respond to applicants, and now you're bringing one recommendation tonight, the vendor we've used in the past, Sancre Productions. Are we able to know kind of what differentiated Sancre from the other applicant, or is that kind of confidential with our procurement process?

I believe I can talk about that. Yes.

Chair Ridley, Councillor Happerman, in general, once there's an award, then that information becomes a matter of public record.

But we don't have an award yet.

Correct.

Okay. So that's not quite something we can talk about. But can I assume then that Sancre met all the, you know, was responsive to all the elements of the RFP?

Chair, righty, Councilman Herman, yes, they were responsive to all elements of the RFP.

Okay. And then have we done multi-year contracts in the past, or have they just been year by year? I can't remember. I'm sorry.

In 2019, when we first went with Suncray Productions, that was a one-year contract. And then since 2020, we have had the seven-year contract, which is why it expired.

Gotcha. Okay. So... And then back to my question about, in the end, a 260% increase in payment obligations to the contractor by year seven, I was looking at the recreation programming budget for FY27 versus 26, for FY26, and... That's a 0% increase in the recreation programming budget, FY27 versus FY26. And then FY28 versus FY27 is a 3% increase in the recreation programming overall budget. And your overall budget's around 1.3 million, something like that. So then again, I know, and yet a contract of this magnitude represents, you know, 10 to 15% of your total budget. And yet you're jumping it up 260%. I'm just having a, I guess when you come to budget hearings next spring, it's gonna be a big increase in this line item.

Chair Reddy, Councilman Huffman, yes, it is. We're gonna have to ask for... increase in funds for this new contract. We left it flat for FY27, considering the instruction that we were given, and then we also left it flat moving forward because we were trying to anticipate not a huge jump in a potential contractor, knowing that it was coming down the pike. But we did leave funds in there, so we are going to have to ask for additional funds once we come around for a budget season again to be able to support this contract.

Okay. And then my final question is just going back to the one that I tabled or parking lotted. Can you explain what you're thinking and why these numbers jump up so high? I mean 80 K to 290 K when it's 75 K today. I know there's the sponsorship part and maybe that's the only answer, but I don't know. It just still seems hard to understand.

Sure. And counselor, um, we've also seen coming out of COVID that the performing acts are requiring more money for the further travel and to come to show we are looking at Regional acts, which is a little different, a little more expensive than some of the traditional acts we've had here. We've done a pretty good job of trying to balance those over the past couple of years. We had a title sponsor the first two years. We haven't had a title sponsor for the series in the last three. Like everything else, it's getting a little more expensive to rent the production equipment. So can that be attributed to all of it? Probably not. But there are costs like that that are increasing that we're seeing from everything else going up and continues to go up. I think the bigger question is we've had a pretty good run at increasing this, making this a popular destination. one of the best Friday night concert series in New Mexico. And this will allow us to do that with some higher end acts that we're hopeful to have. I think another thing that Ms. Hespeth didn't bring up is two key things is their sponsor sheet. We review that and approve and bless that each year. So we could have some conversations about lessening those rates that they've been on their typical sheet. And then we also have final approval over the acts that they may bring in for the series.

Does Suncrate Productions solely and unilaterally choose the performers and artists?

Chair and Councilor, no. We actually, the last two years, Ms. Hudson and her team have done surveys with the crowds to see what type of acts they have. We actually had two of our prime acts this year were recommendations from that. The Foggy Bottom Boys that were there last year was one that was a crowd. It came up a number of times in the survey last year, so I don't know if they had people here dumping or what. But we tried to do that. We tried to get the feel for that. We also asked them about the genre. But again, they make their pitch, and Catherine and her team reviews that, and we're the executive producers, so we kind of have final say on what the bands are that show up here.

And then when you said there's a desire to get more regional artists here, does that include as far as Austin, Texas? Could it?

Yes. Yes. We've had bans from Colorado, Arizona, Texas, obviously New Mexico, and Arizona.

Yeah, I saw that new report. Okay, good. So I want to make sure that the future contract allows for that or the contractor didn't come back and say that they can only do a certain reach or whatever. Because it's probably more expensive to bring someone from further.

Yes, Chair Reddy, Councilman Haveman. Yes, it is more expensive. The farther we go out, the more it's going to cost for travel and whatnot. To make a slight correction as to what Mr. Siron stated, we actually had five, sorry, excuse me, seven acts this year be identified by the community within the surveys that we have selected. So we've had several and it was foggy memory boys last Friday. But yes, we do. To answer your question, yes, we do reach out regionally and we do have fans and acts regionally.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks again, you guys. And thanks, Chair.

Any other?

Thank you, Chair. Well, what happens to all of the vendors? Who collects that fee money? Does the contractor keep all of it?

Oh no, I chair writing Council reader. So the vendors for the summer concert series actually flow through the recreation division. They complete a vendor paperwork form. They come, they pay their either daily fee or series fee that we have set up within the county. And those fees come into Los Alamos County and we manage those vendors. The contractor does not have any control over them.

Well, how does that compare to the size of the contract? It doesn't know how much is it? How much per year? How much the vendor fees that you're collecting from all the food trucks and stuff.

So the vendor fee for the series is. $5.50 if my memory serves me correctly, and that gives the vendor access to all 15 concerts. Or they can sign up individually per day, and I believe that is a $55 fee per day.

How much does it add up to then? It's...

So this particular year, we had 31 vendors for the summer concert series. I believe out of those 31, about 20 signed up for the series. So 550 times 20? 17,000.

So they pay one-tenth of the... whatever we spend, we get about one-tenth of that back in vendor fees. Is that what you're saying?

Roughly.

Yeah. Okay, thank you.

For a series, yes.

Yeah, and the sum rate doesn't have anything to do with that, then. That's our management, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Rieger.

I don't see any other questions. Can I ask about the table that's in the agreement?

Yes.

So where did the numbers come from in the table? Is that the contractor's proposal?

Chair Reddy, are you talking about Exhibit D?

Yeah, Exhibit D, the one with the numbers that go up.

Year 1 through Year 7 is what is proposed by Sancre Productions.

Right. So you had two different – you had another proposal with presumably different numbers in it because they were – the only thing that the contractors knew was for seven years, right? Correct. Okay.

The only thing that we provided them in the RFP is a base of $80,000 and we left that out and open to the proposers to propose the next seven years, the next six years.

Okay. So, okay. So, I mean, the reason why it looks so different is because of the questions you were getting about the sponsorships add in to what we've been having. And I guess, you know, before, so my first year on council when there was a lot of concern about Sancre getting the award after it had been the Gordon's concerts, right, forever. But they had a whole different way of doing the concerts. So we've been doing the concerts since 2019 this way with some different mechanisms contractually, right. So they started with a one year and then they We rebid it. Of course, there was COVID in there shortly after 2019, 2020. Okay. So those are just the numbers that they proposed. And we don't understand why they did it that way. But we understand that there's a benefit to the local businesses and that we're not asking for sponsorships for a while. But I I'm just kind of curious about it. It's kind of scaled up. So we are asking for sponsorships, like almost the same amount starting, right? Because it's 80 and we're going to be asking for a lot of sponsorships. So we're not, because there's no way we can have 15 concerts, five of which are drawing a large audience for $80,000.

Chair Reddy, you're correct. And we've known that.

Yeah. Okay, so, but we're, okay. So this is what was proposed. This is what we have to approve or not approve, okay. Not seeing any other questions. Is there any public comment? Okay, not seeing anybody here. Is there anybody on the line?

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

Okay. Is there a councillor interested in making a motion?

I can't speak for everyone else, but I just, these numbers are, I agree with Council Hafferman, and I heard the explanation for the math, but the math just is not mathing for me.

Okay, so what's the alternative if we have no motion? We can go out. Please, Mr. LeBart. Chair, the item can't proceed. Yeah, but. Oh, Teresa's got her hand. Okay. Teresa, did you want to say something? Counselor Cole.

I will make a motion. Can you hear me?

Yes.

I move that council approve contract for general services agreement number AGR 26-54. with song grade productions in the amount of $1.37 million plus applicable gross receipts tax for the purpose of production of the Los Alamos Summer Concert Series for seven years.

Second.

Okay, so we have motion by Councilor Cole, second by Councilor Hamm. So do we have any discussion? Council Rieger.

Well, I agree with the comments of the previous two councillors. I mean, if you ask questions about the numbers, I think it's hard to make sense out of them. And I think they were on the right track with the questioning. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Council Rieger. Any other comments? Councillor Culler, did you have a comment? Yeah.

So, I mean, I agree that we should be... And not have to constantly go back to businesses for sponsorships. I mean, it's the same businesses year after year. They're asked to give to the concert series. They're asked to give to Little League. They're asked to give to everything in this town. And they get hit up a lot. I heard that constantly from CB Fox in the past. And that's just one business that I know was asked to give a lot. So I like the idea of the county providing additional funding to this contractor to keep them from having to go after businesses for sponsorships. you know whether or not that the numbers add up um to us you know i think this has been scrutinized by community services and i think it's a good proposal okay thank you council call any other comments council hand

Thank you, Chair. I'd just like to say that I think that the concert series has been a very successful attractor in our community, and I think we should continue it. I agree with the general premise of what Parks and Recreation Department is trying to do. I like the fact that they're trying to alleviate some of the burden on the small business community for donations. And they're talking about doing some amazing things in the next seven years. I think that we have just had such great success with the concert series. I think we should continue to support it as best we can.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Council again. Any other? Ms. Wagner, did you want to?

Chair Reidy, I apologize. I should have made this comment earlier. I mean, I do agree that it, The intent of the math was not to say that the contract costs were not going up. And that was confusing. The cost of the contract is going up. I would just say from a perspective of looking at a lot of the CSD contracts that have come through, and what a lot has happened over the last seven years, it was seven years ago, this was negotiated, a lot has happened in the market, a lot has happened with inflation, a lot has happened with the county operational costs. So I don't see this increase as out of whack with a lot of our other contracts that we've re-procured after seven years. So I just wanted to give that perspective. And I just wanted to say that the intention of doing the math was really just to show the total cost. It really wasn't to say that the costs were not increasing because they certainly are. So thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Lorette.

Thank you, Chair. And this may not appropriate timing so tell me if not but when when we potentially were not going to have a motion a couple minutes ago i was going to ask if there could be an alternative motion um and so can i go ahead and just ask if that's a possibility right now or do we kind of need to vote on this one first i'm sorry i think we need to vote on this one because of that what we actually procured was this most of the response we got from the contractor so um i would also wonder why we're not but

So my comment would be, or is, why don't we just ask for the county to pay for the concerts without sponsorships? I mean, is that why we just, so we procured this assuming that there were some cost share between the county and the local businesses.

Sure. So, Chair Reidy, If this vote fails, if there is an ultimate direction to re-bid it, I would have asked, I was going to say I would have asked for some direction as to what we're changing. I would also say that it is, you know, our experience with re-bidding and asking contractors to redo work proposals and things is that the price goes up. Maybe that's the intention in this case, but If the concern is the increased price, my experience would tell you that that wouldn't occur by re-procuring services.

Right, yeah. So maybe we should let this one play out, if that's okay.

Yeah, I'm just... An alternative motion that I was pondering, kind of whether or not that would be permissible... impacts how I might want to vote on this. So I don't know. It's hard for me to know. I think, go ahead. Why don't you tell us what you were wanting proposed? Thinking about it. Like, would it be even plausible to have year one start off higher, like a $120,000 base? Again, just to take that burden off trying to seek sponsorships. So rather than starting with 80, start with 120, and then cutting it off at year five and not do year six and year seven quite yet.

Yeah. Chair, righty, Councillor Happerman, that's just not the scope that we procured. So we would be outside the scope of our procurement to make those changes.

It's kind of thought that might be if we change the length. So yeah, I think we're kind of okay, where this one goes.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

So I don't know, because it looks like it would be probably double the amount. I think if we were saying the county was funding the concert series would be more like double this amount, I think, roughly. But we don't know what the response would be. But it would be more. That's pretty much for certain. So if there's no other comments, we could take the roll on this one. So we're voting on the contract as presented in the package.

Councillor Herman. Yes.

Councillor Haveman. I appreciate all the extra information. I will vote yes.

Councilor Cull?

Yes.

Councilor Rigor?

No.

Councilor Neal-Clinton?

I'm going to say no, and this is a really hard vote because I know how important this concert series is to the town. I just have a problem with the numbers, the scale. But, yeah.

Councilor Reidy?

Yes.

Councilor Hand? Yes. Motion passes 5-2 with Councilor Regor and Councilor Neal-Clinton voting against.

Okay. So let the record show the motion passes 5-2 with Councilors Regor and Neal-Clinton in opposition. Okay. So now we're on to Item 10B. I guess Yeah, it's after 9 o'clock, but we're going to keep going. So we need to do this item. We know that. OK, so 10B is 21707-26, possible approval of the 2026 Electric Coordination Agreement between Corporate County of Los Alamos and US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration. So I think we have Mr. Holbrook.

Chair, Councilors, thanks for having me again. My name is Ben Ulbrich, Deputy Utility Manager for Power Supply. You saw me just a week ago with this similar, when you introduced this electric coordination agreement. And today we're here with, went through the Board of Public Utilities and they did recommend approval and forwarded it to Council for their decision. I will be presenting briefly on what changes have happened in the past week to the agreement. And I will be asking Mr. Utilities Manager, Mr. Tyler Shelton, to make some remarks. And then I will ask that the chair of the Board of Public Utilities, Mr. Robert Gibson, will also like to make some remarks about his perspective and what happened with the board and their reasoning and discussions that went at the meeting that they held last Wednesday, recessed, and then reconvened last Friday at 1 p.m. and made their decision. So with that, I'd like to move. Oh, I will say, please speak up and let me know if you have any questions along the way. I'd like you to just ask them right away so that we keep the flow going. Next slide, please. So I'm going to skip forward through this. This is largely the same presentation. I'm only going to go talk to things that people ask for or that have changed. So next slide, please. Next. Next. All these things still are true. We still have a history of a 41-year ECA, the need for a new ECA is still in place. The pros and cons that we discussed at the last meeting are all still the same. Next slide, please. Next. And again, speak up if you have any questions on any of these slides. Next slide, please. The pros, the cons. The scenario of what would happen if we didn't renew still applies. Next slide, please. And this still is true as well. Next slide, please. So we support the approval of the new ECA. We're still in that, staff still has that position. So I'm not sure if I put in the, let me see if there's any more slides here. Okay, that's it. So I will, I've gone over that, but I'm gonna tell you what's changed now. Aside from needing to change all the term dates throughout the contract, because of the extension, additional one month extension that we recently put in place last month. Here's the major changes. Most of them were pretty minor. What we did was we changed some language about, it was important to, formally put into the agreement that the staff recognizes the need to plan for, as I mentioned, it's a 10-year contract with the DOE has a 10-year option. It's entirely at the DOE's option to extend the contract for an additional 10 years. Normally, they can only do a 10-year agreement. So they've bent on this a bit and allowed this option, which is already part of the contract. It doesn't say anywhere about the contract value associated with that. but that's already a part built into this contract as a separate contract line item in Dewey's contracting system. We don't see that in this agreement, but it's there, including the estimated dollar value for that contract extension. Or $590 million which again isn't stated in the document, but it's there and it will be revised if we get to the if and when we get to the option period and the DOE chooses exercise that. So the language that we added in was to the operating procedures. And we stated that the operating committee who has the responsibility for managing the contract and both between the DOE and bringing the parties together to a mutual understanding and making sure that both parties get their needs met in an equitable fashion. We've added language that says coincidental with the, and here's the main reason is because Foxtail Flats is the big contract that we're all looking at. It's coming on next year. It's a 20-year long-term PPA, Power Purchase Agreement commitment that the county's already contracted for. And so we wanted to get some comfort that we will know in advance whether the DOE is going to actually execute this extension, exercise their extension of 10 years, their option. that wasn't really spoken in in the language of the terms and conditions it simply says and this is one of the changes that 15 days used to be 30 days they change it to 15 it doesn't really matter in practice I don't know why they wanted to shorten it but we can still make that work 15 days in advance before the contract at a minimum of 15 days before the contract expires believe it's July 31st or maybe it's August 31st 2036 10 years out they'll tell us whether they want to exercise the option we recognize that's not nearly enough time to get through our contracting process so we've acknowledged that in language in the operating procedures to say that the operating committee is going to start looking at this three years in advance that that should give us adequate time to make any changes we need to do modifications in the agreement And we'll plan both for the exercise of the option and the alternative where they don't exercise the option. Three years gives us lots of times to say what's our exit strategy, what new agreements that we need to have in place to address the and break the current tight linkage in resources between the county and the DOE. So that's built in there, the three year timeframe was selected because it is it aligns with other piece of foxtail flats where we are agreeing to sell part of the power to sandia national laboratory and curtland air force base as a new partner essentially for that resource so we want to make sure and they have a three-year option to extend their term into additional 10 years they need to let us know three years in advance so we can plan what to do with foxtail flats if they choose not to exercise their 10-year extension so we wanted all those things to line up why an operating committee is committed to looking at this three years in advance rather than the 15 days that they'll tell us minimum that they'll tell us when if they want to exercise the option and we also have a 90-day requirement that in advance of the termination of their end date of the agreement they need to notify us the DOE needs to notify the county of where they're going whether they think they're going to exercise the option or not That's one change. I mentioned the dates. I mentioned adding the operating committee language, looking at that. The other big thing that was brought up at the last meeting was the DOE as a government agency, and like all government agencies, has a special privilege of termination for convenience, which essentially means they can terminate the agreement at any time for any reason. What we've done under this, and we recognize that they have limitations on what they can fund as part of the payout for if they choose to, I will say, we believe it's a very unlikely scenario where they will choose to exercise a termination for convenience. We've been working for 41 years here, and we expect to have a good 20 more years here under our new ACA. But in that event, however unlikely it may be, they did elect to terminate the agreement they are currently and they still will be you couldn't get that language changed it's a necessary requirement they believe the DOE believes and that they can only pay out what liabilities they have funds for they can't they can't sign up for unfunded liabilities That's just the way federal procurements work under the DOE. So what we tried to do was get some language in there that said, hey, we have this long-term resource. We have Foxtel Flats. We've signed up for it. We're contracted for it. How do we get some confidence that if this were to occur that we would be made whole? And so what they've done is they put in entirely non-binding language, I will point out. So contractually, it doesn't provide any additional protections, but it does show that they are understanding of our concerns and have added language in the contract performance work statement. Under section H for entirely new. Selection of 4 pages of documents that state a lot of preparatory statements similar to what you'll see in a contract as the whereas statements saying what the situation is with foxtail flats how we've contracted for how we anticipate using that resource to do we and the county and what the plans are And then it goes into more detail about if they do elect to do a termination for convenience, what the process is for determining what damages might be necessary under the contract for Foxtel Flats. It talks about opportunities for the DOE to take over their portion of the PPA with the concurrence and agreement of the county. We may have other needs for it. 10 years or whenever down the road. And we want to make sure we protect the county's interest and the option to keep it if we need it. It also talks about looking at other opportunities. If we have too much power, we should try to sell it, see what we can do with that, or to other parties, third parties, to minimize the cost to both the county and the DOE for their termination. It goes into a number of those scenarios. It's pretty thorough, but again, point out it's not a binding provision under the contract it is simply language that explains the shared understanding of how this process we expect it to fall out if again unlikely scenario of a termination for convenience so with that I'd like to stop because that's really the full substance and effect of the changes that we put in again not binding I want to be clear on that but they do give us some level of comfort that the DOE is acknowledges the risk to the county of these long-term resource. Oh, I'll mention it also provides a path work, a path for if we want to engage in future long-term resource procurements. It enhances the understanding and explanation of the process that the county and the DOE would go through for new resources. And again, we look for other mechanisms outside of the ECA itself to protect the county's interests if we were to entering any longer new long-term relationships, power purchase agreements and such. So with that, I'd like to stop here and see if there are any questions before I hand over the, ask to hand over to Mr. Philo Shelton, Utilities Manager.

Okay. Counselors have any questions so far? I guess not. Mr. Shelton?

Yes, Chair and members of Council. I was asked by a board member last week if there's an option to extend by another month, and there was not receptiveness by the DOE to do that. However, I think we moved as far as we can with the agreement before you. Uh, and if there needs to be changes down the road, uh, the DOE did offer, they could handle that through a modification like we've done in our extensions. Um, the other thing is we have business to conduct. We need an agreement in place so that we can purchase power economically. Uh, we've been buying it month by month and, uh, The charges per month have gone up through the summer peak season. Expect the monthly cost of power will drop some for September, but we need to start doing the business of the electric utility. The one other thing that Ben failed to mention was the agreement does allow flexibility. While it's a fixed price contract, it acknowledges Issues like EDAM, the Energy Day Ahead Market, that's before us within one year. PNM's joining it and we have no choice not to join that market. And we need to be studying that. We've begun some initial meetings in our Power Pool meetings about what that means to us collectively, how we're going to manage entering that market. And then it leaves room, too, for just known unknowns. A lot of things have changed. Cost of power for building new projects is only getting more expensive. And I just sat through a presentation with UAMS. They're seeing new projects now being delivered from 2020 to today and Looking forward, it takes five years just to buy a combustion turbine in the market and the costs have gone up two and a half times since then. So I think the fact that we have foxtail flats at a fixed cost for the next 20 years. It's only going to be a more attractive resource, and the DOE and Sandia and Kirtland are going to enjoy the benefits of that resource as time goes on because power is not going to get cheaper as we look for new resources. So I just wanted to kind of, you know, this is a business decision, and it's important that we get over the finish line. That's all I had to add.

Okay. Mr. Gibson, did you want to?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The board also supports approval of the new ECA, although perhaps with a little less enthusiasm than the staff expresses. This is not a slam dunk in our view. And I'd like to share with you the major factors in our consideration to make this recommendation to approve. There are pluses and minuses. On the positive side, and this is a big one, we concur with I think everyone else that there is considerable advantage to both the county and DOE to continue to cooperate in electric power resource acquisition. The old ECA from 1985 has generally worked quite well. The new ECA that's before you tonight is fundamentally similar to that old agreement. And in particular, and it's quite important to us, it does recognize, as does the current agreement, Foxtail Flats and other currently approved resources. So there's no carryover issues there. In practice, Both ECAs handle, or under both ECAs, most issues are handled by the operating committee. The operating committee, unlike the overall document here, overall agreement, is balanced. The TOE and the county have equal representation and consensus is required for the operating committee to take any action. And that has worked fairly well. The new ECA does include some potential financial bonus to the county if we can deliver power at below market costs. And as time goes on, market costs will probably keep going up. And our current big supply is Foxtel Flats, which is a fixed cost item for 20 years. So we might get a little profit there. The laboratory has historically greatly overestimated their electric power needs. And whether they overestimate or underestimate, in either case, that potentially impacts what our customers wind up paying. This agreement does recognize that there are risks to the county of those poor load forecasts. And I think we've already maybe seen some advantage because DOE's most recent forecasts have been much more reasonable. So maybe that problem is on its way to resolution. And there were many other changes to update the agreement to match current market conditions. The downside of this is primarily in the area of financial risk to the county, meaning our customers. The original ECA was 30 years long, and that was to match the bonds that the county issued at that time to acquire resources. And it was extended another 10 years also to match bonds. So we had a customer for our resources during that time. This new ECA is only 10 years long. Yes, there is a rather vague possibility of extending another 10 years. But this is basically a 10-year agreement. We already have commitments in Foxdale Flats and Laramie River Station that considerably exceed that, 20 years and roughly 17 years, accordingly. So there is risk that in 10 years we will still have obligations that DOE might not be a customer. ben mentioned the any federal government contract can be terminated for convenience of the government at any time so we face that risk that they could cut us off at any point and we would have obligations that we still have to meet yes we could potentially go out and sell power we might even make money but we also might lose money and we're not really in the business of trying to gamble that way so that is the big downside risk of this agreement. The old agreement, the current agreement, has the same problem with respect to the potential termination for convenience of the government. What has changed is the government itself. As you are all I'm sure aware, The federal government is not quite as reliable a partner as it has traditionally been. Just ask a number of foreign countries, thousands of institutions and maybe millions of individuals that have counted on promises of the federal government. We don't even have a promise, we have an intention. Another drawback is that although the operating committee is symmetric, The basic relation, they have to work within the confines of the agreement, within the context of the agreement. And this relationship is highly asymmetric. DOE is a buyer, the county is a vendor. DOE writes the rules and we get to live with them or not. This is a fixed price contract, a fixed price procurement contract. It does not fit this situation. This vehicle is designed for buying widgets. It's not designed for long-term acquisition of commodities. It's a whole different ballgame. And that's why it doesn't fit very well. And you see a lot of square pegs hammered into round holes, not very successfully. the holes that these are hammered into are basically bounded by the very large number of federal and DOE acquisition regulations. Every time it turned around and said, can we do this? Can we do that? No, you can't. There's a reg against it. No, you can't. There's a reg against it. I'd like to say just a few words about the process that got us here. The good news is I think there was good faith on both sides all the way through. Both sides want an agreement here. The issue has been bureaucracy in the DOE procurement bureaucracy. This process took four and a half years from the beginning, and it has been infuriating. The last agreement originally expired the end of June last year, 2025. DOE didn't get around to delivering the first draft until six days before Christmas last year, and all it really was was a rewrite of the old agreement with a whole lot of errors introduced to it. That was how this started, and they wanted at that point Everything to be done in confidence. They wanted final approval by the county behind closed doors. Actually, you know, obviously we could not do that. And eventually they recognized that, gee, there is a state law here that says we have to do these things in public. But they continued along that line as best possible to them. The effect was that our staff was basically in a nondisclosure situation. They could discuss this matter with DOE. They could not discuss it with us, with the board or with the council. And I find that absolutely ridiculous. We should not get ourselves into that situation again. Ultimately, DOE did their best to minimize any public exposure of the contract because, as I think you're aware, They basically provided us no extra time. They delivered drafts at the last possible minute before consideration was given. You're here tonight with your backs against the wall. The current agreement expires at the end of the month. next Monday. And I know you don't like that, which you really don't have a lot of option. We didn't like it either. We still don't like it. But we do think that the county is better off with this agreement than without it, and therefore we support its approval. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Mr Gibson. So after all that, do any counselors have any questions? Can I make a comment? Later. Not yet. Almost. We're going to try to follow the process for this one. Councillor Rieger, did you have a question?

Well, just in general, do we have any other choice anyway? I mean, is this like actual democracy? I think it's just fake, right? We're so tied into a corner now. We have to have an agreement. What choices do we have here in front of us? We have nothing on the agenda except one thing. We're pushed so far back. Is there another option for us?

Chair, Councilor Rieger, as Mr. Shelton said, from a business standpoint, this agreement is necessary for our continuing electric utility operation.

Yeah, if we voted down, what would the consequences be? I mean, what would start happening immediately?

I've been asked that question. There is no path defined for what would happen without this agreement. All I can say is it would be messy and chaotic. We would be in violation of numerous Bruton utility practices. We would be in violation of Federal Electric Regulatory Commission requirements and rules for utilities. The DOE would have their own issues. Electrons would keep on flowing, but we would have no way to bill them for the power that they're using. Because none of those agreements are in place, and there's no way to get them done in the next week.

Yeah. So in fact, this is, it's like a little play of democracy, but in fact, we don't have a choice. I mean, isn't that really what it is? I mean, it's almost like a little charade. But anyway, you are confirming there is no other choice, right? Mr. Gibson, is there another choice?

I think what Ben said is correct. Certainly not on the time frame or any reasonable time frame. It would take probably, starting from scratch, it would probably take another couple of years to come up with a true follow-on that was substantially different. First thing we'd have to do is find another vehicle that actually would work for this purpose.

But

I don't think we can wait that long.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Counselor Henn, did you have a question?

Yes, I did. Thank you, Chair. So my question is, We have a proposed motion that basically says to approve, you know, the electric coordination agreement between Los Alamos County and Department of Energy. But, you know, we realize it's not perfect. Right. What can we add to that motion to allow us to continue to coordinate with DOE, even though we're going to potentially move forward with this agreement, just so we have something in place? It sounds like we want it, but DOE hasn't signed up to it yet. So how do we get that? How do we get to that point? Is there language that we can put in a motion that would allow us to continue to work with DOE?

Mr. Chair, counselor, and that's a good question. I'm not sure about the details of the modification or change to the motion. I will ever point out that throughout the 40 years of the current ECA and under the new proposed ECA, there are provisions for modifying the contract. Both parties, the county staff and the DOE, are cognizant of the need to make changes and that whether they're for purposes of improving the document and the contract, equitability, adding new resources, that's all defined within the structure of the the contract itself. There's a process built into there for addressing these need for changes. So it's already anticipated and accounted for in the proposed agreement.

So how can we have an approved agreement from Los Alamos County if we don't have DOE on board? Do both of you sign the agreement? Or is this not a signed agreement? But if they're not on board, how can we make this an official working agreement?

Good question, Councillor. I'll clarify. The document package that we have received from the DOE through all these months and years of negotiations between the county and the DOE, that is not a proposed agreement. This is an award document. They are saying they are prepared to award this to us if we sign it and they get back the signed copy and then they enter that into our system and it's done.

Okay, so we're good to go. If we approve this tonight, we have an agreement in place and coordination can continue to happen with this current agreement, even though it's not perfect.

That's correct.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councilor Hannon. questions so i think i have what's a question so um we signed the agreement for foxtail flats at some point like was that like a year or so ago maybe a little bit longer maybe a couple years ago march of 22. okay so that was under the whole 22 i'm sorry 24. yeah so it was so two years ago so we were in this process of negotiating the eca basically was just being continued right so but we signed an agreement for foxtail flats with the understanding that they were going to be using primarily a lot of the load i remember even the discussions about cindy at kirtland that's not new that's like that was always part of the mix right so um so that never got incorporated into the old eca is that correct

Chair, that's correct. It's always been a part of the draft new language.

It's been in the draft new language. And so what were the discussions, I guess? Because in the new agreement, it's more clear is that you wouldn't even, we wouldn't have signed an agreement for Sockstale Flats, right? If we had a decision about Sockstale Flats starting next meeting on September 8th, if we were voting on it, we wouldn't be voting on it unless we knew that DOE was gonna take 80%, right? There'd be some sort of agreement with the contracting officer that they'd be taking that load. Whereas when we were in this interim period, we agreed to do it with the understanding that they wanted the load, right? But there was no formality to it. Is that where we were? Like when we, so a couple of years ago, when we agreed to Foxtail Flats, we were just working on good faith. And then it's now, now codified in this agreement here as best we can, even if, so they can still, you know, cancel the contract for their convenience. But we were just, so we're basically, unless we agree to this, we're sitting holding 170 megawatts contract, right? Is that the best way of looking at this? I mean, the alternative is that we have that contract for all that power and we don't have a use for it.

I believe your last sentence is accurate. I won't speak to the legalities of the rest of that, although I do believe it's largely valid as well. But I will say, confirm, yes, we are contracted for Foxtail. The county is contracted for Foxtail Flats, both the photovoltaic and the energy storage contracts.

And if we were going to do a Foxtail Flats 2.0 starting, it wouldn't be that soon, right? It wouldn't be in two weeks, right? But if we were going to start another one, that would have to be agreed to more formally by DOE as best we can because in the language it indicates that, well, they can still have wiggle room, right, because they have their own legalities that they can't. But we wouldn't be in the situation we're in now, right? It would be a different scenario if we were to go out for another large-scale power production project. Because I was trying to think back. So we had the Uniper contract. So Uniper predated the end of the ECA. We were still on the old ECA. Was Uniper agreed to by DOE at that point? Because they were going to be the majority of the load for that as well, right?

That's correct. We did have a contract modification to encompass Uniper agreements.

Uniper was in the power pool because that was the language we'd always heard. But like the SMR, the CPFF was not. That was county only. But it kept getting whittled down to the amount of power we were gonna get. Okay, thanks. I think that helps clarify things for me anyway. Not seeing any other questions. Is there any public comment? on seeing anyone coming up here. Ms. Masson, is there anyone online that wants to make a public comment?

Chair, it looks like there is. Joni Ahrens, you should be able to unmute. Please state your full name and limit your comments to three minutes.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Joni Ahrens, and I'm the executive director and co-founder of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. Since at least 2023, I have been attending virtually the Board of Public Utilities meetings to learn about the EPCU project and Foxtail Flats. Originally, I first studied the Power Pool Agreement in the late 1990s. And I appreciate Chair Gibson's comments and explanations about what happened because it was very disturbing to me to witness DOE making the county, it seemed almost like a hamster wheel adventure. I don't know how to describe it, but I did write up comments and I'll submit them to members of the council. But I do want to say that CCNS is all too familiar with DOE tactics to run roughshod over the people of New Mexico. And we need to figure out how to make them more accountable. And some current examples include stepping away from working with the Environment Department to address the hexavalent chromium plume, to the detriment of water quality in the regional Espanola Basin sole source drinking water aquifer, the venting of the four flange tritium waste containers, the delay in the release of the plutonium aging study until the draft programmatic environmental impact statement for plutonium pit production, comment period ended, delays in moving the transuranic waste stored at Area G off the hill to WIP, and increased worker injuries among other things. I'm going to send you my comments just as documentation of our concerns, but I think it's really important to acknowledge the BPU and the staff who have worked diligently and consistently and professionally through this whole process. And just to say thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Aarons. Any other public comment?

Chair, I'm not seeing any online.

Oh, sure. Please come up.

Eric Stromberg, thank you. So I work for the lab. And I can say this, I was in the field office when we spoke about the CCA contract last year, and I brought up with the fact that the LANL distribution network supplies 45 other customers that are non-lab customers. This is the only DOE site of the 17 sites in the country that have other non-lab customers. And when I mentioned that, there was silence in the room. They didn't know what to do with that. And so I can tell you firsthand that that was some of the delay in DOE is that they didn't have a template for this. And as Mr. Gibson said, this is a time and materials fixed price construction contract. I looked at the contract and I asked the question, can we get rid of the first 22 pages? Because it has nothing to do with a services contract. It's labor and materials construction. And so it's, again, DOE, it's like they didn't know what to do. They didn't know what to do with the 45 other customers. And this is what we ended up with, is they pushed it out the door and we are where we are. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Strombart. OK, not seeing any other public comment. I know. So we need to have to have a motion on the floor. So someone will make a motion. And Councilwoman, did you have it? Or did you want to make the motion, Councilman?

Yes, I'm ready to make a motion.

Okay, thank you.

If no one else wants to make it, I'm happy to make it. I move that Council approve the electric coordination agreement between the incorporated County of Los Alamos and the US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration.

Second.

Okay, so we have motion by Councillor Hand, second by Councillor Herman. I know you wanted to make a comment.

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the Board of Public Utilities. Mr. Shelton, his staff, Mr. Ulbrich, This board, they're an incredibly dedicated group. And they looked at this up one side and down the other. It's not what they wanted. None of them were completely happy with it. But I think it is the option that is in front of us. And I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of you for your incredibly hard work on this.

Okay, thank you, Councilor. Any other comments? Yeah, I'll just second that, and thank you for all the work, and it's obviously a very long process, and I mean, even though it's only been, you know, last week, it seems like there were some changes that were beneficial to the county in the different drafts, so I think that that's a positive and also that the contract can be amended in the future. So it gives us something to something that we can do starting September 1, which is in one week. So with that, call the roll please.

Councilor Neal-Clinton.

Yes.

Councilor Hand. Yes. Councilor Herman? Yes. Councilor Reidy?

Yes.

Councilor Regor?

Yes.

Councilor Haveman?

Yes.

Councilor Cole? Yes.

Motion passes 7-0. Okay, let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So thank you again for being here. Thank you. And all the work again. Okay, so we're on to the... I think we're probably not quite 10 o'clock. Okay. So item 11 is council business. 11A, general council business. We don't have any 11B appointments. We had one on consent. 11C, we have board and commission vacancy report. There isn't a report this meeting. 11D, are there any board or commission reports from council liaisons tonight?

I just have my report from NACO. I attended several meetings, but the ones that I actually talked about was from strategy to implementation was one of the events that I met, that I attended, and then I came back and I spoke with Dan Osborne to work with them because I thought they were doing some really amazing things. And the second one that I attended was scaling government services with secure cloud and AI. I learned a lot. I didn't make any connections with that one, but it was really good information that I see the potential for using in the future. And then the third one was understanding today's overdose crises. And I brought back a mobile Narcan device device for distribution and worked with our social services folks so those were the three that I had and then we did not have a personal meeting this month so that's all I have to report and the report has been already passed over and will be included within the record okay yeah we'll make sure that one gets in the minutes thank you any other council yeah just real quick

You all may know about it anyway because it's been written up in the Daily Post, but at the last Planning and Zoning Commission meeting earlier this month of August, P&Z approved the site plan with Christus Health for the new medical facility right over here on DP Road where the Knights of Columbus used to be. So if you have any questions, let me know or read that article. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

Any other? Councilor Hamm?

Thank you, Chair. I have a couple of things that have built up over the last month that I wanted to just brief everyone on. On the 29th of July, I chaired the NCRTD Finance Subcommittee. NCRTD is the blue bus organization. And basically we had a number of items that we review and recommend for the full executive board's approval. So there were three items on that agenda that ended up on the full board's agenda. That was the audit entrance, fourth quarter report, AND ELECTRONIC PAYMENTS REPORT FOR THE FOURTH QUARTER. SO THE NORTH CENTRAL REGIONAL TRANSIT DISTRICT BOARD MEETING WAS HELD ON AUGUST 7TH. AND IN THAT MEETING, SOME OF THE MOST INTERESTING OR THE HIGHLIGHTS I'D LIKE TO BRING UP FROM THAT MEETING IS WE HAD a proposal to adopt a resolution to implement district use of force policy. There was quite a bit of discussion on that. And I believe that the discussion was very fruitful and that it was approved. The other item was that we had appointments for the at-large and tribal member positions for the executive committee. And I am currently serving on that executive committee as the secretary treasurer. The executive committee will now start meeting for an additional meeting than just the executive board meeting. And so we will have You know, meetings with these two new appointments and the other three people, which is Secretary, Treasurer, the Chair and Vice Chair, and then, of course, the staff of NCRTD, like legal staff, the Executive Director, et cetera. So those are the items from those two meetings. Then the health council met on the 6th of August, and they had a presentation on suicide prevention. Basically, there's a concern across our entire state. They presented a significant amount of data. And the one thing that was identified is that Los Alamos kind of has a gap of information. And You know, some of this could be because information is kept through DOE and is not processed in the same way that it is for the state. But one of the items that came out of that is that we need to really concentrate on the youth in Los Alamos County that there are, let's see, 34% between 18 and 24 years had, let's see, out of the 809 that were part of this program, data collection effort. 34% had suicidal thoughts, and over the age of 65, there were 18% of those people who had suicidal thoughts. So there are a number of people in Los Alamos right now that are experiencing suicide, anxiety, depression, hopelessness. And so we need to continue to keep an eye out for individuals in our community. You know, that there tends to be a lot of unusually high expectations and pressure. And our culture here in Los Alamos is that we have kind of low tolerance for this type of thing. So we need to just be more aware of some of the things that are going on under the radar in our town. With the Environmental Sustainability Board on August 20th, they had a meeting and they talked about biosolids composting operations and also the Bee City USA. They had a presentation on that. And that's all I have to present.

Okay, thank you, Council Hand. Anything else? Okay. I think we're on next to the 11E, County Manager's Report 1E121119-26, County Manager's Report for July 2026. It's attached. Did you have anything you wanted to highlight or anything else you wanted to mention?

Very briefly, Chair. I just wanted to mention that Atomicon and Bear Festival are both happening this weekend as well as the last summer concert, so We're coming to the end of our summer season and the fall activity guides have been published and are available. So grab your copy. And then we are, Miss Jackie Salazar is her last week this week. She is retiring after 18 years with the county and her last day is Friday. So if you see her, please wish her well. If you see us crying in the office, it's just because we're going to miss her and she's been around for so long. It's just really hard to imagine that not having Jackie. So, um, and then, uh, we have some really good, we've been high, we've had some good hires in traffic and streets and transit and some of the, um, and next week we have some lifeguards starting. So I just want to say that we are seeing some, um, new hires in the areas where we've been struggling with staffing. And then the last thing is on the MRA and Lita, you're seeing, there's a lot more progress coming.

and um you're going to see a lot more applications but i'll leave it there because they throw us giving out so thank you okay thank you miserable i think we'll let you skip questions since you're sort of skipping out okay um so i think um we're on to council chair report um i guess it didn't give a report since beginning of the month but Yeah, just a couple of things to note. So on August 17th, we had a meeting with the leadership from the Pueblo de San Ildefonso. Mostly we talked about the hexavalent chromium plume, current status, and what interest we might have in Kind of jointly discussing requests with the Department of Energy. Also talked a little bit about legacy cleanup issues. Yeah, the 18th we had our monthly meeting with the congressional delegation representatives. It was fairly quick. One of the members was not available, so we talked about some things. Presumably talked about that because of the chromium plume and some other things we're working on, including housing in the county. August 20th, we had the meeting with the schools. So we're looking for having some information out from the schools on some of their plans for their properties. And yeah, met with constituents on Monday or last Friday. Today, a couple of us went to the Los Alamos Nuclear Forum And that was interesting, including Chair Gipson from the BPU. And Mr. Goldberg were there too. So I think that was all I wanted to highlight on things I had been meeting about. And then let's see. Then we have 11G, approval of councilor expenses. And I know we have one. to approve.

Councilor Hubman's going to be going to another energy symposium conference in Albuquerque in mid-September. And total cost for everything is about $1,200 for three-day conference, registration fee, two nights staying there.

Yep. So we need to have a motion to approve and probably need to probably just state the location and so do you have the dates?

I'm sorry. Is it Sandia Resort in Albuquerque? Is that what you meant? Yeah.

The date. Will you have the dates? Oh, the dates. I'm sorry. We need the dates. I think we need the dates. Yeah.

I've got the dates. I've got the dates.

My bad. Okay. I think that's the only one we have to approve.

I'll just go to my, it's September. Oh, good gravis, I'm so sorry. 14, 15, and 16. Okay.

Okay, is there a motion to approve travel expenses? Council Member Herman?

Thank you.

Did you want to go? No, I was going to make the motion, yeah. Go ahead. I move we approve the travel expenses as stated.

Second. Okay. So we have a motion by Councillor Rieger and second by Councillor Neill-Quinton. And I don't see any discussion, so can you please call the roll?

Councillor Reddy?

Yes.

Councillor Rieger?

Yes.

Councillor Hand? Yes. Councillor Cull? Yes. Councillor Haveman?

Yes.

Councillor Neill-Clinton?

Yes.

Councillor Herman? Yes. Motion passes 7-0.

Okay. I'll let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So 11H is the preview of upcoming agenda items, 11H121099-26. So it's tickler. And I did want to make sure, yeah, the one thing I had noted here was that we're having, so you're not having the week off next week. We're having a meeting on the 2nd, which is Wednesday, correct, right? So we're meeting on Wednesday. So it's a joint meeting with Los Alamos County Council and the Rio Riba County Commission and the City of Española City Council. So that's the three groups, and we're going to be finalizing some of the details, but I believe we have the start time. Is that noon? Is that correct, or are we starting a little bit before noon?

that is correct but it also says it includes travel time so i i think the meeting may start at one and the noon is travel down there okay linda madison chair i believe the actual meeting will we're trying to gavel in at 12 30. okay um okay so it's 12 30 on september 2nd

At Northern New Mexico College, yeah. And it's going to be a joint meeting with all three bodies, and we're going to figure out the logistics for doing that. But we're going to be doing it at?

Northern New Mexico College. Yeah, the college. And we'll be publishing that agenda on Friday. So we'll be sending that out.

Okay. So that's why I want to make sure that, and so the topic of the meeting is the regional landfill next steps.

Oh, okay.

Okay, so that was a question. Yeah, so there's a meeting next week on Wednesday, not Tuesday. Okay, let's see. So I submitted my report on all the different things, and I just wanted to highlight a couple of things. So there's been a proposed Office of Management and Budget rule change. They would let basically the federal government, without really much notice, cancel grants and so forth for, I guess, a little bit more vague reasons we heard today about inconvenience. I think it's just to allow more flexibility in the federal government just saying we're going to cancel a grant. So there was a lot of concern raised by, I think, both the National League of Cities and National Association of Counties. And there's a continuing resolution that passed the Senate that postponed that action until December 11th. and the house version of the extension didn't include it. So it's still up in the air. So it could be, so the rule would be enacted for October 1st, I believe, if there was no action taken. So I thought that's something to be aware of. We're tracking that, what impact that might have on the county. Then the other thing, yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. It's late. Yeah, I know. So, yeah, the other thing that I wanted to highlight, other than what's in the reports, is I guess it was probably the meeting, must have been the meeting right before I had the Mexico County's meeting, so it must have been the end of That was the one meeting that was the August 5th meeting, so it was a meeting three weeks ago. We took action to say that I should oppose or make sure that our interests are not, that the rights of the citizens are not trodden by changes in the statutory amendments for elected officials. That was maybe the language we heard from our attorney. Something like that. So I guess the good news, I think, is that It didn't wind up being one of the main priorities for New Mexico counties, which they're now going back to their old name, New Mexico Association of Counties. So we all have to learn NMAC instead of NMCE again. So anyway, I won't get into all any of that. But the good news on the item was that so it can still be promoted by the commissioner's affiliate. So we all jointly here, our counselors can be go to those meetings obviously there's kind of the quorum issue but we just need to make sure we're tracking that so i don't know if the commissioners really you know get legislation introduced we need to keep track of that and make sure that it does address incorporated counties in particular and potentially home rule also so just wanted to highlight that because that's something that that's something that could come to the 60-day session that the i think This body has already said that we are very concerned about the language that was in the proposed changes. And so we just need to keep track of that to see if it's actually introduced. So it's been mentioned to our state lobbyist as well. So they're aware. So I thought it was worth sending in a couple of minutes just to make sure people keep it on their radar. FOR THE REST OF THIS YEAR AND IN PARTICULAR GOING INTO NEXT CALENDAR YEAR. SO, OKAY. THAT'S ALL I HAD. OKAY. NUMBER 13, COUNSELOR COMMENTS. SO I'LL REITERATE JACKIE SALAZAR'S RETIRING AND HER EVENTS TOMORROW AT THE I'm not sure, probably too much public. But anyway, so there's an event tomorrow for her. And I still, I've just been here for, I don't know, I was going to ask her how many years she's been here, but I've only been here for eight years. So she was here, she was an institution one before I got here. You probably remember her from way back too. So yeah, Jackie is great. I'm going to miss her. And then I guess maybe another item that you didn't mention, license plate. Town Hall on Thursday. It's in here, right, 5 to 7 p.m. So I think I'm planning on attending, and I think it's going to be recorded, too. So anyway, but I think Vice Chair was wanting to attend, and you were going to attend that in person?

Yeah. And I was going to attend by Zoom, if that's permissible. Or I can just listen to it later, but I was going to attend live on Zoom. And where are you going to attend?

I think we...

I mean chair right it is a matter of county business that will be just discussed so it's a little bit of a it's not just a celebration or something right um so that it would be ideal to limit it to three um especially in person and yeah people can watch so if I'm on Zoom they'll be recorded um I'll be in California so nobody can talk to me

I don't know that that's true. Can't people talk to people in other states? I mean during the thing. During the thing, right. Okay. So I think we're going to have three councillors there in person, but it's recorded. And then we're going to have that discussed at the council meeting on the 8th. We'll have a presentation on the town hall. So, okay. Are there any other councillor comments? Not seeing any. If there are no objections, we are adjourned.