Planning & Zoning - Regular Meeting

Really is no conflict of interest tonight because we only have votes. So no public here. So we have no participation. And so then we just need an acceptance of the agenda. Mr. chair, I propose we accept the agenda as presented. Second. All in. Okay. All right. This is on the motion to accept the agenda. Commissioner Smith. Yes. Commissioner McCaslin. Yes. Commissioner. Acosta. Yes. Commissioner. Kaiser. Yes. And yes. Thank you.

All right. So that automatically accepts the minutes. So now we're on to election of officers. We're going to be electing the chair, vice chair and secretary. The way it's going to work is all nations will come forward. And then in the order in which the nominations come in, we will then vote on the first individual, second individual, third individual, how it comes in, and the first person to get four votes will take that seat. What happens if you don't get four votes? Then we start all over. Can I ask a point of clarification? So are we going by position or just.

Yeah, we're going to go by we're going to go by chair. The chair first. So I know we will open up for nominations for the chair position. I was just I was just going to say really quick, since there's only five of you here, it would be a approval of three votes. It's only three tonight. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mr. chairman. Yes. I'd like to nominate. Nominate. I Commissioner as chair.

Is there any other nominations? I'm sorry. Council as chair. Is there any other nominations? Perfect. Okay, so the first one is McCaslin and we will need a vote. Yes.

This is on the vote for Commissioner McCaslin as chair. Commissioner Smith. Yes. Commissioner McCaslin. Yes. Commissioner Acosta. Yes. Commissioner Kizer no. And chair. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. Okay. On to the next chair. We will now have a nomination for Vice chair. Chair.

He can finish. And then you guys. Yeah. You can swap out either after this or at the next meeting. It's up to you. Okay. I'm totally fine. After this, we'll go through this. Yes. I'd like to nominate Janet Acosta. Do we have a second? Or do we have a second nomination? Okay. No. Can we get a vote?

Okay. This is on the nomination for Commissioner Acosta, for Commissioner Smith, yes, Commissioner McCaslin. Yes. Commissioner Acosta. Yes. Commissioner Kizer. Yes. And chair. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Now the last one, we have a secretary seat that we need to be filled. Do we have any nominations? I know Councilor. As a secretary. Do we have any other ones? All right. Let's call for a vote.

Okay. This is on the nomination of Commissioner Kaiser as secretary. Commissioner Smith. Yes. Commissioner McCaslin. Yes. Commissioner. Acosta. Yes. Commissioner. Kaiser. Yes. And chair. Yes. Thank you. All right. So we are done with the election of officers. Now goes to discussion. Do I get to switch seats now? Sure. It's up to you. I was taking my pencil. It's all yours.

Well, I guess we don't even need anything. Really? You know what you're doing? I'm sure we're doing annual training. Yes. All right, let's proceed with the annual OMA training.

Okay, awesome. Congratulations to everybody on their nominations. I am Christina Rivera, the city clerk, and I'm going to do the annual training that I do with all the boards and committees. I actually think this is the first time I've come to PNC. And so hence why Chris asked me to come and do the training with you guys. So here we go. It should be quick and painless. I'm hoping to get you out of here fast. So. So we start out by what the municipal code says about the boards and committees in the city. And there are different board types based on membership. And so there are standard boards which you are a standard board because you are each appointed by a specific councilor and or the the mayor at large. We have non standard and those are kind of like a mixture of different seats. So a good example of a non standard is our historic preservation. They kind of come from different avenues. And so they come and bring their expertise and they're not district specific. So they have seven members with all different expertise. Like I mentioned, we also have what are called ad hoc committees. We don't have any right now, but usually those are created so that they come and discuss like one certain topic. And then once that topic has been resolved, then it kind of goes away. We've had them in the past for like utilities rates we had during Covid, an economic development one. And so once they were done with what they were assigned to do, then it just kind of dissolved. We also have an operational board in the city, and that is our utilities board. And that's because they operate kind of on their own. They do their own resolutions, and they don't necessarily always have to come to council for approval of some of the items that they're doing. We also have. The Jpas who have

their own boards, and those are basically run by what their JPA states or what their contract states. So we usually will have city representation on that board, but they don't necessarily report to me as far as boards and committees. So all the wards and committees are created to advise and make recommendations, mostly to city council. You are required to meet quarterly, and you guys were exceeding that for a while meeting every month. But I know it's kind of been reduced a little bit, but the requirement is just that you meet four times a year, you have to attend 75% of the meetings. What we do is we kind of try to keep track of attendance, and if we see that there's a problem, then we'll try to address it. If it becomes more of a problem than we usually will, reach out to your district Councilor to say, hi, this person isn't attending regularly like we would like. Can you have a discussion with them? And then if it just becomes way too regular, then recommendation is to be removed from the board. I've never seen anybody removed from PNC, so I will say that in the municipal code, it also states that all boards and committees should run by Robert's Rules of Order, which you guys do at all your meetings, and that it's governed by the Open Meetings Act. So I would like to go over the Code of Ethics, which is in chapter two. This is the code that you all should have received in your packets from my office. Which reminds me, Commissioner Acosta, I have yours in my office. But basically it just says how you're going to conduct yourself as a member. And it says, be respectful, don't mislead or obstruct. Lead with integrity and competence, abstain from making offensive comments. And then this last one refrain from addressing counsel for or against board decisions is really important.

So you never want to go to a city councilor and say, this is how we voted at the commission, and now I'm asking you to look in opposition of it, or I really am encouraging you to vote in favor of this, because this is how we voted at PNC on it. It becomes difficult because Council is not able to necessarily respond to you on those things, especially if it's coming to them for a vote, if it's coming to them for a vote and they engage in that, it becomes ex parte communication. And so you have to be very, very careful. It's good to update them, of course, on what you're doing on PNC, but it's not always kosher to try to address something that they're going to be voting on at one of their meetings. So the Open Meetings Act, I always call the Open Meetings Act kind of my little Bible. I have it sitting on my desk, and it is so like ratty for me going through it all the time because I'm always having to look at it. But it's also called the Sunshine Law at the state, and that's because it promotes transparency to the public. So hence why your meetings are open to the public. So the public can come and respond and hear and listen to everything that's going on with the Open Meetings Act does not require or does not state anything about is recording meetings. And what I mean by that is if someone comes in here with their cell phone and starts recording you, I can't stop them because the Open Meetings Act doesn't say anything about that. It's an open public meeting. They can they can do that. Now, if they start to get a little rowdy, then that's when we can step in and do something about it. It does not say that public participation is required. I always tell people, though, it is a courtesy to the public. So put it on your agenda because you want to hear from the public. You guys are a little different because you kind of have to, based on the fact that some of your stuff is quasi judicial and will end up going to city council, but it's not required. And there's no like time limits that are required for public

participation either. Our city council, we do like two and three minutes. And so as chair, you'll get to determine that. And then the Open Meetings Act talks about closed meetings, which you will never have to attend. And lucky you. But there are exemptions to what we can talk about in the public and what we can't talk about in the public, and those things that we can't talk about in the public. We take them to a closed meetings, and the most often things that we talk about in closed meeting are pending litigation. We talk about real estate, we talk about union negotiations and personnel matters. So those are the ones that we talk about most often. So what does the Open Meetings Act require? It requires that you have an agenda, which you always do thanks to staff, and that it has a specific outline of the items that you're going to be discussing. And so, for example, when they put the cases on there for you guys, that's very specific. It's telling you exactly what you're going to be looking at. What's something that's not specific? And I tell people, please don't do that. Do this is they'll put like. Old business and then they'll just leave it as old business. And I'm like, but what old business are you talking about? You're not letting the public know what old business you're talking about. That's not acceptable. So I tell people, please don't do that. Please be as specific as possible on your agendas. You'll see that kind of with the City Council agendas too, how very specific they are. We want the public to know because we want them to come out. It also states that agendas have to be posted within 72 hours. The 72 hours starts when it's posted on our website. It doesn't mean like when you get it in your email, it's 72 hours posted on our website. After the 72 hours. You can't add anything to the agenda. Now you can remove stuff, but you can

do that at your meeting, which I think you guys have done a couple times. It also states that you have to have minutes, which you all do, and the minimum requirements for minutes are date, time, location members present, members absent. And then it has to have a brief summary of all the items that you guys took action on. Are you guys still doing them verbatim? Okay, you guys do them verbatim. We do for city council, like emphasize summary, basically where we try to put as much in there, but we don't put every little thing just because the minutes are the official record of that meeting. So audio and video are not, but the minutes are and they live forever. They're permanent. It also says that minutes have to be available in draft form within ten business days. It doesn't mean that they have to be posted on the website so everybody can see the draft. It just means that they need to be available at City Hall or in somebody's office, so that if somebody comes in and says, I want to see the minutes from this day, you have them available for them to look at. Rolling quorums. Not my favorite thing to talk about because they're kind of difficult to understand sometimes. But rolling quorums are mentioned in the OMA and they advise against them. And so rolling quorums, how I like to explain it is there's an item that you guys have on your agenda that's coming up for discussion. Probably some big item. So this commissioner talks to this commissioner that talks to this commissioner. And as you can see, you're rolling the quorum on what you're discussing related to that item. I see this more often than not in email because what happens is somebody will email all of you and then like three of you will respond, you responded to

everyone. So now you let the whole commission know how you're voting on something. So that's when it starts to become a little tricky. I've seen it a couple times. I haven't seen it for P and Z, so congratulations. But I have seen it for other boards and committees. And then I have to basically self report us to the Department of Justice for doing a rolling quorum. It's not fun. So that's, that's my scary story for today. Regarding that, I will say for rolling quorums, what I do tell people is if you want to email everybody. So like if Chris wants to give you guys some information, I always tell them, put them in, put everybody in BCC, because then when you're responding, you're only responding to him, you're not responding to the entire commission. And so I do that with city council because they're only responding to me on items, and I do it for anything. I'm emailing them even just for caution. Like even if it's like the tiniest thing, like here's an event on BCC seeing them just so that they don't all respond to me. Okay, we're going to get to rules of procedure. So the Rules of Procedure is a document that City Council adopted the resolution 22-077. It basically is a condensed version of how meetings will be run. I think I provided some of you with that condensed version, but it basically says you're going to follow Robert's Rules of Order, which you do. It talks a lot about the motions that you're going to do at your meetings. You won't do all these motions, but these are the ones that I bring up that we use the most motion. And second, which you've already done, we do amendments, which you guys have started doing instead of the what is it approve with conditions. I've, I've had you switch and kind of do amendments instead because then it helps keep up with the flow of the Robert's rules tabling versus postponing. I started throwing this one on here because there was some confusion in the difference. And there actually is when I

did some research on it. So tabling is date specific. So if you have an item you want to bring to the next meeting, you would say, I want to table it to the next meeting. Postponing means you're going to postpone it indefinitely and it kills that item. So yeah, it was interesting. I didn't even know that I had to do some research into it. And then point of order, we use this sometimes at city council, but basically like when you want to jump in and maybe like get something back on track or just kind of clarify things, you can say point of order and then ask what your question is. And that does not require a vote. You can just jump in and do that.

This is I got one question. Yes. The when when staff presents a case at the end of their case, they say, here's the here's your options. The options. Yes. And in that, the options were always like, if you don't agree with this, you have to state why you don't agree. Can you explain why? That is why we couldn't just vote no on something instead of. If we disagree with staff and their viewpoint, why do we have to clarify why we disagree?

Commissioner Thurston, I actually brought this up to Chris because I was like, why are they doing that? Like, it didn't make sense to me. And I was trying to find I look in state statute, I was looking everywhere and I couldn't find where it said that. So I recommended to stop doing that, just vote yes and no. Because what's going to happen anyway is that if it's going to be appealed, it's going to go to city council, and then the City Council is going to be the record of the appeal. So anything that is discussed in there regarding why it should have been voted yes or no for is going to be in that record. And so I was like, I don't think there's any sense in you guys vote telling us why you're voting yes or no. And in Robert's Rules of Order, it kind of states that you shouldn't explain your votes either. And so that's why I brought it to their attention.

Okay. That makes more sense. Because when when they a lot of times I'm sitting here thinking, wait, I don't necessarily agree with I might not agree with their verdict out of it. And then it was like, well, if you disagree with me, this is the way it is. And you have to in order like you have to bring something else up to say that you disagree or else you have to pass it and say yes.

I also didn't agree with it was like it was almost like putting each of you on blast. Like, you know, like saying, I don't agree because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, that might not really matter, you know? And so I didn't, I didn't like how that was kind of going down. And so I had recommended that be changed because I couldn't find any reason why you guys had to do that. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. That helps. Yeah. Of course. Yes.

So just to further elaborate on that point, but in, in some of our cases, there's specific criteria, right, that we're supposed to follow. So we can't just be making stuff up as to why we would reject something. Although obviously there's, we have the ability to do that by the nature of this body. But how does it work when there's the findings, right, that that staff has said that this meets this criteria, and therefore it is our duty to accept it? Can you talk just a little bit about that relationship with what we just explained?

And I can definitely defer to Chris a little bit, but I think when staff is bringing you the criteria and says it meets all these, you're basically voting and saying that it meets all those. And so that's where it comes in for staff to really be explaining and making sure that you guys are aware of how you're voting on stuff. And I don't know if you want to add anything to that. Chris, for the record, yeah, basically voting to agree or disagree with staff's assessment that it does line up with code, right? You're here to basically say, yes, this votes with. Code because there's some sort.

Of like a variance or something. And there's an exception. To that where you have the option to have some more flexibility. But basically this body is here to say, yes, it does follow code or no, it doesn't follow code. So then the so then let's say something was approved by this body and that would ordinarily be the end of it. Right. But there's the appeal process that goes to council. Yeah. Wouldn't the discussion that our findings are that they meet the criteria, wouldn't that be part of the official record for that basically quasi legislative act?

Correct. And so it'll be part of your minutes and then your minutes are attached to our council packet. So that's how they would they would find out exactly everything that you guys discussed. And that's kind of why they do verbatim so that we have all of that in the record. Okay.

Thank you. You're welcome. Any more questions before I get to my favorite slide? Okay. This is the last slide that I started throwing into my Open Meetings Act presentation because it's become a beast for us at the city. And that's the inspection of Public Records Act. And I'll explain why we throw this into my presentations. But basically it says that every person has a right to inspect records. And then here's a long list of things that are considered a record at the city. Honestly, it's like 99% of what we do. There are exemptions, though, to what we can release and what we can't release. And so anything that's attorney client privilege, we're not going to be releasing that. Anything that has like a personal identifier on it. So if your date of birth, so security number, account number, credit card number, we remove all of that. That will not be released to the public. The other thing that we just recently got from the state legislature was that we could redact employee addresses, which wasn't a thing at first, but now we can do that. There's lots of exemptions related to PD and what we can release from that. So we're always looking at that before we release documents. But the reason why I bring it up for you guys is email. So you, I'm sure, email Chris and his staff about stuff. I just like to remind everyone that your email is subject to public records. So once you email somebody in the city and I get an IP request, if your email is in there and there's nothing I can exempt, I have to release it. And so I just use it as a cautionary tale because I did have another committee that was emailing some really not kind things about city staff, and I had to release it to the public. So that's the only reason why I have it in here is just remember that anything you

email to staff may be subject to public record. Yes, sir. Chris. I would recommend that you have this. Discussion with some members of HPC. Set up a separate email address just for working on P and Z. So that way, if it is subject to Ipra, it's just that email, it's not your personal email. That would then be further subject to a larger potential litigation, I would say. So just that would be a good rule of thumb set up. You know, your name at whatever district, whatever you want to do, and just have it specifically for this. Thank you.

And I agree with that because you are a quasi judicial board and you see more things than than most boards and committees do. And your stuff is subject to going to city council, whereas other boards and committees aren't. I recommend a separate email just to keep working personal, separate.

I just want to state for my colleagues, I have done that. I have a separate email, but I would also like the city to examine the feasibility of planning and zoning. Getting a Las Cruces email, because I think that would be tremendously beneficial for this group, especially our our role in local government. Yes, I would check. With it and find out how that works. I know. Some have reached out and they weren't open to it, but. I'm wondering.

If P and Z might be one of the exceptions, given the nature of what we do up here. So I'll follow up and blind copy the rest of the commission on what they say. Someone was listening. And good question, of course. Is there. A forum for the public to to access to get copies of these records? It sounds like you said, it's it's a full time thing, so at least the city should get some type of benefit from. For the public.

You would think according to state statute, we can charge reasonable fees. We haven't necessarily been able to determine what's a reasonable fee, because I've seen other municipalities try to charge reasonable fees, and then they get dinged by the Department of Justice. So we're actually looking at that right now to try to figure out how we would do that. Almost everything we do is electronic, and what the state statute says is, if it's in that format already, you have to give it to them. So it's hard to balance what we can and can't do. I will say for email files, it's crazy. It's crazy the amount of emails that I'm going through right now, it's thousands and thousands and thousands. So I don't know how to charge for that either. But the majority of what we give is actually free to the public.

I was just just thinking about the amount of staff hours that's dedicated to that variety of records. Yes, you are correct. I'd be more than happy for you to advocate for us. Well, that's my entire presentation. So I thank you guys for letting me be here. I hope that I didn't keep you too long. And are there any other questions? Oh. Thank you so much, Christine. We appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Assuming no staff announcements. No at this time. Thank you.

I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Mr. Chair. I'd make a motion to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? Aye. I all of us. Aye. Motion passes. Thank you guys.