County Council - Session - Regular Meeting

Okay. Sorry for the little bit of delay. So I wanna welcome everybody to the 03/31/2026 County Council regular session. So start out with the procedure for tonight, just like every other night since COVID. Tonight's meeting is in hybrid format with council presenters and public participation in person or via Zoom.

Attendees can participate virtually with computers or other devices. We also have phone lines. So we'll have public comment at beginning of the meeting on topics that are not on tonight's agenda. Comments on agenda items will be taken as they are discussed during the meeting. So during the meeting, during public comment, Ms. Messon will look for virtual attendees that use the raise your hand feature. So make sure to limit your comments to three minutes or otherwise directed. And we just want you to state your name before making comments. Virtual commenters should include their name on Zoom so they can be properly addressed. And we also ask that comments be addressed to the chair and focused on the topic being considered.

So our goal is to finish the meeting no later than ten p. M. Tonight. We'll check our progress at nine if we're still meeting at that time. Let's see. Roll call. So since we have a councillor online, can you please call the roll?

Councillor Neil Clinton? Here. Councillor Hand? Here. Councilor Herman? Here. Councilor Reidy?

Here.

Councilor Rigor?

Here.

Councilor Haberman? Here. And councilor Cole?

Here.

Okay. Let the record show that we have all counselors here. Two are on Zoom. Counselors Neil Clinton and counselors counselor call. Okay.

So now if you're willing and able, please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. So now we're on to item number three, which is public comments. Again, this is for items that are not on the agenda. If anyone's president in chambers wants to make public comments. Not seeing anyone.

Ms. Madison, can you check on Zoom to see if there's any commenters?

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

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

you, Chair. I move that we approve tonight's agenda as presented. Second.

Okay. So we have a motion by counselor Hoeppmann. Second by Counselor Niafutin, I believe. So any discussion? Can you please fill the role?

Counselor Hand? Yes. Counselor Reidy?

Yes.

Counselor Cole?

Yes.

Councilor Neil Clinton? Yes. Councilor Rigor?

Yes.

Councilor Haveman? Yes. And Councilor Herman? Yes. Motion passes seven to zero.

Okay. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So we're now on to item number five, which is presentations, proclamations, and recognitions. So five a is 214-0826. It's gonna be a briefing to counsel on the Atomic City Transit Saturday service pilot program and Bandolier service update. So we're gonna have looks like mister Wilson is starting us off.

Correct. Good evening. Keith Olson, deputy public works director. Online with me tonight is James Barela. He's the transit manager. He's down in Roswell, doing a training, so he couldn't be here in person. And behind me is Anna Brunson, who's the transit, senior management analyst. And as you mentioned, we're gonna give you a couple of brief presentations, one on the Saturday service pilot and the second on the. So right now, I'm gonna hand it over to Anna who's gonna run you through the, Saturday service pilot presentation.

Thank you, Keith. Keith, good evening. Welcome. I'm happy to, share a little bit more about, a project that we were very passionate about and finally got to actually pilot since prior to COVID. So with that being said, Los Alamos County here, we were able to perform a pilot, a three month pilot for Saturday service for on demand service.

And so what tonight is going to entail is just going over the goals of that service, how successful it was, the stories that we learned from it, and then where we go from there for further implementation. Next slide. So this has been a request from the public since prior to COVID, definitely prior to since I've started here at the county. But the purpose of this was to test some innovative experiences to gather that information to understand how people need mobility services on the weekends. Also with that, it was a direct response to the community for this request to have that expanded mobility on weekends.

And so we wanted to see where people would go, how often they would ride, and much more information than that. So next slide, please. So typically here with just the general pilot operations, what this was, this was an on demand service. So door to door service by reservation. It was managed by a software platform we call ACT MyRide that is powered by the software company Spare.

And we had dispatchers available for phone calls, but also the app was ready for making reservations in hand. This started on August 2 and it went through Saturday, October 25. And really we had so many riders, but we call this until all capacity is full. And so basically, our priority is by capacity, fitting the most people, instead of the typical rideshare, which is fee based. So with that, our schedule was nine a.

To 05:30 p. M. And the staff, in order to make this work, was a supervisor, a dispatcher, and three drivers in order to support that service. Next slide, please. The general area, if you're able to see this, great. If you're not, I will explain it to you. It's a little small. The service area was around major areas of Los Alamos and White Rock. You could request door to door rides within those zones and between those zones. So anywhere could work there for pickup and drop off.

Next slide, please. Our PIO team is incredible and I worked really closely with them to create this promotional video, which we won't be playing tonight for time purposes. But if you use our handy dandy Ask the County button on our website, you can find this video very easily. And it is a one minute video of how someone would use the app to book said ride. So TLDR, as they say, too long didn't read.

This whole pilot was about an on demand service that shared rides. This wasn't just a one on one service. This trip was and trip capacity was based on prioritization of capacity and not cost. This is a free service that we offered. Thank you to the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that we received from counsel to put this on.

And then how this worked a little bit differently than what you might imagine Uber was that we have pickup windows to maximize that capacity. So with Uber, you'll get your exact time, you have the tracking bus following you through. But in this case, if we are allowed a slight window, we can actually fit more riders in and still maintain that on time performance. Next slide, please. All right.

So enough about the basics. What we did to let people know about the service, how we promoted it, and what we saw. So there were three major pieces here. Prior to the kickoff of this, we attended farmers markets. We promoted via social media, of course, with the collaborative help of our PIO team.

And we put out a press release that was letting folks know that this is coming. You're also seeing physical promotional items at the top of the picture there. We had three printed banners showing this is the one in White Rock and then we had two going both directions on the pedestrian crosswalk on Diamond. We wanted to do physical promotions and digital promotions places people may or may not already be following the county or information. So with that, during the banners hung through the entire service period, August or October 25, excuse me.

We promoted social events, too. So we paired with other county events such as AtomicCon. You're seeing that one in the bottom left. Headed to AtomicCon, ride Atomic. Bear Fest in the middle, you see a little bear, beep beep, driving a bus. He is just cross collaborating with these different departments. And then it kicked off on August 2, which was rodeo. And so our PIO team and I created a funny little save a horse ride atomic kind of grab so people would start to listen and see that this is a new service. So from there, afterwards, we did have a survey. I will talk about the survey results shortly.

We also did have an article in the reporter, the Los Alamos reporter, while it was still going on, I think that came out around September. So there was quite a bit of promotion around this and public engagement. Next slide, please. So now into how it went. So we can measure success and we can measure storytelling and how this was used through a few different ways.

One is through the trips and the riders, the people we served, where they went in their destinations, where their purpose was, and the timing of that. That tells us a lot about the usage of this program. So first starting, you're seeing a bar chart here describing the trips and the riders. So you're seeing a bar graph with three major colors. Blue represents Los Alamos to Los Alamos trips.

That means they just started and stopped inside that first top zone. And then the red is between Los Alamos and White Rock. Whether it started in LA or WR, it doesn't matter. It was in between those two. We finally have orange, which has a very small but still not gone little representation there for folks that used it between White Rock destinations and didn't meander over to Los Alamos.

So all in all, I want to show you that there were three ten total Los Alamos to Los Alamos trips, 98 intermingling between White Rock and Los Alamos, and then two in between White Rock to total three fifty nine completed trips. So as this is rideshare, we could have multiple riders in one trip and we sure did. There were four seventy one total riders and keeping in mind this is thirteen Saturdays, so single days of service. With that, we calculated in this time that three fourteen new rider profiles were created and then 96 unique riders were identified. And what that really means is these are users that used it more than once.

So we're seeing repeats and unique identification there. Overall, 88% of the trips that were booked were kept, which is a very good retention rate in terms of saving trips and not canceling and rebooking. And so we're pretty proud of this across the board for thirteen weeks. You're seeing just generally a spike towards the middle. You're going

to see

there August 23 and the thirtieth. That was Bear Fest and Atomic Cons. You're seeing a spike there. You're also seeing the Arts and Crafts Fair on October 4 with an increase there as well. So there definitely was some benefit in cross collaborating across events during with the county.

Next slide, please. So the next way we can look at this are through heat maps, through the destinations and the volume of trips, where they were going. So for privacy, of course, there's not any personal addresses up here of any type, but these are just public locations. So you're seeing Los Alamos on the left and White Rock on the right. And then in the middle, you're seeing a volumized list of destinations.

There's a few repeats in here that I caught after I sent it in, so forgive me for that. But our number one destination was the Smiths in Los Alamos. Mesa Public Library, the Speedway, Mountain Vista Apartments were very high users. Ashley Pond and the Sala Event Center as well. And then you're going to see trips seven or less there.

And it's really important for us to understand especially how weekend service and mobility may change and be different from weekday service and mobility and what that looks like for us. Next slide please. So overall, the third lens of what this program gave to folks and how they used it is to look at the purpose of their trips. How are they using this service and for what? And so on this slide you're seeing two images, a table, and a pie chart.

And overall, we can categorize which trips based on addresses, especially public addresses. We won't get too nitty gritty with the personal addresses here. But these are categorized by address. So for example, shopping, which you can see here on the pie chart, that's 36% or about a third of the entire trip purpose. Shopping is like Smith's, grocery, anything that you go out and purchase things, we were looking at it that way.

Social was library, the salah. Nutrition sounds kind of like a strange one to add, but those would be restaurants outside of shopping. So we kind of split it that way. And then education was UNM. There was a very dedicated UNM student using this on Saturdays. And then, of course, medical medical centers. So ultimately, we saw the highest percentages, two thirds of the service being used for shopping and social. People want to engage with their community. They want to be mobile. They want to see each other.

They want to catch up. And they maybe want to go shopping and who doesn't? So with that, something to include is the unique that I discussed earlier was at a rate of 96. I think someone used this service about 35 times total. So with that, you know, it can skew towards personal desire on that end too. So it's kind of interesting. Maybe they went to Smith's every Saturday. Maybe they didn't. But it very interesting to see. Other categories, of course, fill the rest with other.

Other was pretty much if we couldn't really identify an easy way to categorize that location. Next slide, please. And finally, trip timing. This is the fourth lens that we used. Timing of trips helps us know how to operate and to service this.

What people need and at what times do they need it. So you're seeing here on the left side every week, every Saturday that was in service and across the top you're looking at the hours that we gave that service from 9AM to 5PM. You're seeing totals all the way to the right per weekend and then the full total of three fifty nine trips. So as you can see, the eye is drawn to the darkest color, which is the highest volume. So for example, October 4 at 2PM, we had 10 trips in an hour.

So our rideshare really got its efficiency dollars used in that hour, for example. Coincidentally, that was the Arts and Crafts Fair. So we actually do know and can tie specifically to events when we promote around these certain times. But what we did end up seeing was a lot of 9AM to 12PM locations going to get your groceries so you can spend the rest of your day doing whatever else you would like to do. Something that's really exciting about this is that the total rides that were shared, there were 59%, so almost 60% of rides were shared, which just maximizes the efficiency of the tax dollar.

And then with that, anything over four or more rides was just kind of a gold star in terms of maximizing that usage of our operators, our time, and the way that we can reach our public. Overall with that, we had an average of 98.6 on on time performance in getting people where they needed to go. So building the trust and the reliability of knowing that you can use public transit and you will get there on time. It's a very nice thing to know. Next slide, please.

So those were the four lenses that we looked through in order to successfully implement that program. And now we wanted to know how people liked it beyond the data. The data tells us a lot, but we wanted to hear from people. So we put out a survey. We got 157 respondents. The survey was both distributed via paper to libraries and to the Muni Building. But we got most responses. In fact, I think 100% of the responses were digital. And the unique part, 90 responses were folks that did not use this service. So we also got to kind of pull in a nice lens of what we didn't know from the data.

And I wanted to bring to light a few of the major questions here that really we can't really tell from the numbers all the time. So we're taking this qualitative data. Why didn't you use the service? Is one question. What would make you consider using the service? And is there anything else we should know? What you do see here is qualitative data added and volumized. So at the very top you're seeing the highest number of responses on that theme down to the fifth or sixth. You're just getting a few less answers. So the majority answers here that you're seeing for why they didn't use service was some folks already have a car, they bike, they walk.

It is a very walkable town and so some say they didn't need it. Some say they were out of town or traveling. Some say they had schedule conflicts or they were too busy. Some just have health and mobility issues that are so extreme that they don't access their community and their environment. And then uncertain to have reliability and scared of the unknown.

This is an area that was uniquely interesting to our team in terms of public engagement and letting people know how this works even more, getting them comfortable with it, and then getting them to first try it. The discovery and the try the first time is probably the most intimidating part of public transit. The second question of what would make you consider the service, if people didn't have cars, they would ride it more, they said. Community events, which we already paired with, which was successful, that was nice to hear reiterated. Originally at the beginning we had thirty minute pickup windows.

They didn't really love that part. We have since reduced those down to fifteen, and we're seeing more rides being able to be booked through our Monday through Friday service. Later service hours were also requested and just more public awareness. For example, maybe posting posters downtown or things like that where people could see them. And then the anything else we should know.

The most resounding answer there was please and thank you, continue this service. And so advertising more downtown, later service, they wanted to go to movies and dinner and potentially minimize the DUI kind of rates and options that do happen when we have too many drinks in the evening. Using smaller buses, appreciating us for the seniors and the folks with disabilities who aren't able to always engage their public the way that they want to. Again, the long pickup window has been adjusted, and just a lot of love for our drivers, which I will plus one as well. So all of this reiterates and confirms what the data tells us, which is this is a very loved service.

And through that, our next steps will be discussed shortly, but mostly have to do with that last piece of praise for our helpful drivers. Increasing awareness is something that we can continue to advertise and pull with the PIO team. But overall, this was a very positive feedback. And so slight service changes may be remedied in order for the best experience, such as the thirty minute to fifteen minute window. Outside of that, our next challenge is how do we operationalize this long term?

This was a pilot of three months. And mostly this was done with, over time, with our same bus operators as is. And so the risk there being, of course, burnout and overworking. And so let's talk about that in the next slide. So you're seeing here this is our largest barrier to being able to implement this year round immediately as we may like to.

With operator vacancies, this is not just a Los Alamos issue. This is a nationwide problem. Keeping and retaining bus operators is our hardest challenge here. We also do offer Saturday service and Sunday service with bandoliers, so there's an additional body riding and driving folks around. So with that, I wanted to show you a twelve month recruitment average vacancy for our roles.

So our total driver positions, we have 26. We currently have 21 filled. New hires were 22 from March 25 to '26. 16 of those we were training for CDL, and 12 have withdrawn since throughout that twelve month recruitment. So our turnover is very high.

And with that, is in line with the national challenge of retaining bus operators. Next slide, please. So this is a major barrier to succeeding extended program on Saturdays. There are multiple problems to solve here for longevity being, how might we look at our fixed route system? Are there inefficiencies there that could help free up operator hours where we could evaluate not overworking and putting overtime on our folks and burning them out and being able to sustain this service?

Having a Saturday pilot review is helpful in order for us to just fully understand how this would implement. Because the last thing that we would like to do is to put this out long term and continue to have the same operational issues to where we cannot sustain it. Turns out people don't love that when you give them something and then take it away, right? So with that, our next step here is to have a service study that pulls in and evaluates our fixed route, our busing system as it currently works, our operational constraints, the opportunities around on demand and switching potentially some of that fixed route inefficiency to be over to on demand efficiency in certain cases where that works. So we are going to bring in a consultant in order to help us do this.

We are already in the works with them right now. We have a scope already done. We are just on the back end of getting some funding from the DOT in order to create this. And what we will eventually get from this is a preferred service model that shows us how we can do a long term implementation without losing more staff with the current turnover reality that we live in, and then how we implement that in a longer term roadmap. So before I turn it back over to Keith to talk about Bandolier, I can now pose for questions. And thank you for your time for hearing that out.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Bronson. So we'll take questions now on the two different parts. We're not taking any action on this tonight. So we might ask for public comment on this part too. So any comments or questions from counselors? Answers to start. Counselor.

Thank you, chair. Thank you for this great presentation and all this

information. What kind of vehicle is it that you use for this? Is it actually the big buses? So we have different buses, but they are the smaller, 30 foot buses. There's also a 28. 12 passenger. 12 passenger. See, I'm the data girl. So, yeah, the 12 passenger. So they're smaller. They're not like a 40 foot bus that usually you'll see going between White Rock and Los Alamos. Of course.

I was just wondering, did you think about self driving buses? Self driving cars?

I thought about think about it a lot. I think the implementation do you want to take this one? Okay. I'm to give that to Keith.

And and James can jump. I know this has been a recurring question, and I think we presented to T board for a year or two ago about self driving, but I guess, Tom autonomous. Did I say that right? Buses. I think there's some pilot projects. I think there's somewhere in Denver that has them, but it's typically in kinda, like, industrial parks or short term things. It's not kinda like a community wide thing. Maybe in the future, that's gonna come, but right now, that's not really a reality that we have available to us.

Yeah. I don't know how it fit with the bus service because it would be more like a private company or something. I don't know how it would all it would all work together. But have you thought about how to fit it in even? Because

I so as I say, we've kinda looked at it, and I don't think it's fully there yet. It's something that could be implemented. You know? So we're kinda working on where we are. The models we have available that we can implement now, but it's definitely something that's gonna be you know, we can talk to the consultants, so we hope to get on board because they they work nationally in in Canada on on these on demand services in different transit so we can see where see if there's any updates or any models that we can pull from from communities that are using self driving vehicles.

Yeah. So you're kind of working on it. We might see something in the future.

Is that what you're

Yeah. I just as I say, based on the information we have, currently, I don't think there's a a model that you could do wholesale self driving vehicles for I I guess there are those models, but they're more like cars, you know, like Waymo and

Oh, yeah.

They're and stuff and stuff like that. So they're more commercial and and profit driven. So or not. I don't know if they make profits, but they charge you money, whereas, you know, we're trying to work within our free transit service and the the resources we have right now. That makes sense. But I'm not saying this off the table for as we move forward.

Yeah. Especially for Saturdays, but then what is the car gonna do the rest of the week? Yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

K. Thank you, Casper. Sorry. Just on that point, the the the kind of the point of the on demand is that we're not just running single people around. We're trying to trip chain so that when the bus goes out to North Mesa and we've got three people who want to come, We can pick all three of them up or four or five or whatever whatever it is, not just having cards with back and forward. We can try and make it more efficient that way.

Okay. Councilor Ivan.

Thank you, Chair. Wow, I think that was a really well done presentation and really comprehensive. So thank you. And I think it's really great you did a survey following the trial period as well. But maybe piggybacking on that, have you received any feedback anecdotally or maybe in the survey and I just missed you saying it about people complaining, like, Where did it go? Why aren't you continuing it? My life is ruined now that you don't have it anymore. I don't know. Just or anything like that. Like, what the ramifications been since it ended in October?

Yeah. Great question. We thought about this. We worked really hard with the PIO team. How do we promote a pilot service? Every time we promoted this, we told everyone the end date every single time. So it's about setting that expectation early with the community that this will end. Take it while it's hot. But the whole point of that was to please just know our boards, our posters, our events. We were constantly saying the end date to hopefully keep that in mind. That being said, it still was a Band Aid to rip off. And we do get calls. We even had a call today for someone asking for a Saturday service. So no one's life is ruined so far as I've heard. But I don't know that they would tell me.

So we'll see. But I think we definitely still get requests at least one a week. And it is something that people in the survey said, I'm going to have a hard time when this goes away. So definitely is something that is grieved to not sustain.

Thank you. And then I saw, you know, in one of the comment boxes request for Sunday service. When you're looking at how to, you know, potentially implement this going forward, are you going to try to couple it with Sundays or just keep it Saturday for now?

Yes. We're going to look through several different models and have at least two, maybe three implementation plans from the consultant that's coming in to discover, how best and really the question is, are we meeting the need of the community? Period. So how are we going to do that? And how do we measure that? And so if that's something that the community is wanting, we definitely would do our due diligence look down that road and try to create a plan for it.

Great. Thanks very much.

Okay. Thank you, Councilor Ehrman. Do we have any other?

I have one quick question, Chair.

Please go ahead, Councilor Nixon.

Thank you.

And and I think you actually alluded to this earlier. I just would like for you to to break it out a little bit more. So given that the 359 Saturday trips and the strong satisfaction that's been shown, from the community, What specific performance or equity thresholds would justify making Saturday an on demand service permanent or or even expanding the hours?

I don't know how to answer that question. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going to I'm going give that to Keith or someone higher up that didn't look at data spreadsheets this whole time. Hold on.

Thank you for the question, Councilor Neil Clinton. I'll try to answer it best I can, and you let me know if if you need more. But how I'd address that is that a lot of it has to do with trying to model the service with our existing staff and our existing budget as best we can. And then, of course, looking to see if we need to expand that in any way. Given the struggles we've we're currently seeing with with recruiting and retaining bus operators, that's that's a challenge.

So that's just something that we're gonna have to keep our, you know, our reality check on as we study this more. And one of the reasons we wanna study this and have a, you know, a professional come in to assist us is one, it it it takes a lot of effort, and we wanna model it correctly. There's a lot of moving parts to this and a lot of different scenarios that we can run with on this type of service, but we have a lot of data, and so that helps us. And so we wanna make an informed decision on how we can and different options that we might have available to us to to to select the service that works best for the Los Alamos community. So long winded answer, I know.

Hopefully, I kinda helped.

No. No. No. You you you you broke it out and made it much clearer for me because, again, we can see that the community does appreciate this service. And then the reality is we are having retention issues, so how do we address that going in? And the fact that you're going to bring in a consultant, I think, is wise because now you're not reinventing the wheel.

And and one of the other reasons for doing that is because with any kind of change in service, we don't wanna just experiment and then have to go back and keep changing. And then, you know, you get a lot of customer frustration with that if you keep changing routes and times and that sort of thing. So we just wanna make sure that we're in a good position with the rollout if we do make any changes.

I think that's very wise. Thank you. That's all I have, chair.

Okay. Thank you, councilman. Councilor Manklin.

You very much for the presentation. I love the data. It it was a a very good presentation. Gave me a lot of information. And, you know, I I gather from all the questions that you've answered so far that basically what we you know, our next step is that we are moving into providing this data to a consultant so that they can really look at what longer term implementation would be here in Los Alamos, and they're they're gonna give us some options.

And then I would imagine that we're going to have some costs that are related to that. And is this something that that you're going to present to counsel at a a later date to get additional funding to implement a program like this? And is it going to be something that is, you know, for a certain time period or long term?

Thank you for those questions. It could be seasonal. It could be year round. We are using the data that we have and also the data we've been doing some A lighting services. So where are people getting off on our normal fixed bus route system? Where are they boarding? We have that all day. But where are they getting off? It's not always captured. And so pairing that together helps a lot to know seasonally.

We did a lot of that in November. We're doing another alighting survey in April. Time of year could be a huge piece of this. How much is this needed in the winter season versus we did this in fall? So that's an aspect of this where the consultants could come back and say, we recommend you do this seasonally these months because of this. They could also come back and say, we are asking them to put together a year round model as well. And so the costs will kind of come together through that as well. But we're looking it could be either or. So the service that

we provided was free. Yes. Right? If we provided the service and it wasn't free, is that an option? You know, to where we can have the service, we can have the service more often, but it's not free. Are you going to, potentially look into that?

Could I hand that over to my higher ups there? I don't know.

So that hadn't crossed our mind about trying to charge it. I suspect if we say we do do a Saturday service, we're paying the cost for the drivers, the supervisors, dispatchers. Paying for it may suppress those people using it, so we may be still have the same costs, less riders, very low revenue. So we to be honest, I hadn't even thought about, given that we're a free fare community the rest of the time, I guess we can look at that once we see what the models, what kind of operational models they come back with. I think the biggest challenge is, you know, just the the person power to be able to implement something.

That's why we're trying to find out is there can we reallocate our existing resources within our existing services to try and expand the time frame that we can provide service? So, I guess, once we see what kind of options we have out there, then we can apply a a cost to that and see if if we get it. I suspect just based on experience, if you start charging a cost, then you will suppress some of that, demand naturally, which may be good if we're overwhelmed, but not to say it can't be done.

So our our partners around New Mexico like Bluebus, they're not free, are they?

They're generally fare free. There are some routes like the ski Hill routes. They charge I think it's, $5, but the majority of their routes are free.

Okay.

At least the last time I was

Their on demand is a dollar.

Okay. I I think Albuquerque ABQ ride went free fare relatively recently. I know when I was at Santa Fe, there was a lot of pressure to go fare free, but I don't know if they did or not.

Okay. I I wonder how that changes their ridership. I wonder if we have any data on that.

We can well, blue blue bus has always been free, so that would be hard, but we can maybe reach out to ABQ Ride and see.

Yeah. I I'm just wondering if that might improve our options for offering more of the service, but I guess we'll find out.

I don't think passenger capacity is our issue.

Okay.

Thank you.

I think it's, having the people in the driver's seat.

Yes. The drivers is our is our challenge right now. Thank you. You're welcome.

Okay. Thank you, councilor Hannon.

So glad I brought them.

Yeah. Councilor Cole? Yeah.

I mean, I just wanted to say that I'd I'd heard from some community members about how positive this was, and they were looking forward to having the Saturday routes again this summer. And that's that's one reason why I wanted to hear this presentation was to find out what the status was. And I I know that weak link is a number of drivers and availability of drivers. But if at all possible, it would be really nice to have this service again this summer. One of the things we get is an influx of students in town as well, and a summer service, I think, would be worthwhile for those folks as well.

So, kudos to you all. I think it really was a positive thing. I don't think there's a bunch of negative comment comments out there that you didn't hear. I think a lot of folks were really appreciative of the, the Saturday service. So we can do it again. It would be great. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank

you, councilor Cole. K. So I had a couple of questions. So can you is there a cost for just those thirteen days that's broken out? Because you mentioned a number and I just wanted to make sure I heard it correctly.

Yes. So, I think the average and James can chime in online as well with this, but I believe the per hour rate was somewhere around $52 per hour, of of operating this service for the thirteen weeks. James, if I'm wrong about that, please feel free to unmute and, comment. I can hear you.

Yeah. It was about $59 an hour to provide the service.

Okay. And so it was, like, an eight hour service. So it's like $500.

Yeah. It's per per sorry. Sorry, councilor. Was about $59 an hour per driver.

Okay. Per driver. Per yeah. Per driver. Okay. So there were total of four people. Is that right? Or five? Three.

Three drivers and Three drivers and supervisor and one dispatcher.

So there was five people.

Five individuals.

So it was So you take the that's different prices for different staff, right? But I'm just trying to compare it to what we have for the whole system, right? Because you're building on the whole system, don't have to buy new buses just for this day. So I was just curious, like, what is the marginal cost of doing the service?

Yeah. I can get back with you with the total there. We really are just at the place of really understanding hourly at this point. Okay. But we can definitely give you an update on this.

So roughly speaking, if we're 500 times at least so it's at least that. Right?

Oh, yeah. At least that. Yeah. Because 59 per hour per driver, and then adding two more, you know, to that, it's gonna be more than 59 an hour. So, I mean, just with that, if we were to just hold 59, it would be over about, what, 300 an hour?

Am I

adding that quickly?

Yeah. James will correct me, but I think the 59 includes the support staff,

so the

dispatcher and the supervisor. And the drivers weren't it wasn't three drivers consistently. We kinda staggered them. So first first off, there was one driver, and then Right. Busy times of three, and then we went back to one. So but we can give you I I think we can work on getting your cost allocation of how much it was costing per day

Yeah.

To provide it.

I think that might be because it seems like it's an opportunity. I think so we've been long awaiting this COVID interrupting trying to do it. I know people were trying to encourage other people to ride it. But when I looked at the data, it's like four percent were for employment. And I kind of wondered about the hours. Right? So the hours are not conducive maybe to somebody that needs to show up early or so I understand that's another thing. It's going to cost more. Right? But in terms of like providing a service for people that don't have a vehicle, it'd be highly beneficial if they could be, take a service.

And I would hate if we had to start charging people money because I don't know that we would get much benefit for doing that. Otherwise people would just be running ride shares if it was profitable I would think because it's not going be profitable. But having the system like you have combining trips seems like it's good and it gets and we're not at a capacity issue. You had maybe a time issue like where you can get to people. Was there certain there was like one you had like 20 people in one hour on one day, right?

So was that like and so that's you couldn't tell what the capacity was per hour. Like how many people could you pick up? Maybe that's too complicated because maybe if they're all at the same house, you could pick them all up. But is there a sense of what capacity, like what fraction of capacity we're at in general?

Yeah. I can speak to two things on that. The first thing being the 4% alluded to employment. These were labeled and organized by location. The only way we knew it was employment was because we knew the drivers or the riders. So there's others, that 15%, where a lot of that could be employment, and we just don't know.

Okay.

The other part of that being that what did you say there? I lost it.

Hours of service and

Oh, thank you.

I think. Right?

You're the other part of my brain tonight. Thank you. I think that, the capacity that we are seeing, it's built more, but we haven't ever hit a capacity where we cannot provide a service. So that would be another thing that we can take back and ask, what is the maximum capacity? Because that is a factor of the location and the number of the pickup.

If we have somebody going from White Rock to Los Alamos, for example, it's gonna limit the capacity down to, you know, to twenty minute single ride there. So if we're within Los Alamos and we're going, you know, central to the coop somewhere around there and you're getting a, you know, group of high school students being picked up at the high school, you could fit, you know, six, eight of those in one ride. Excuse me. The max in one trip is six on the app. So I I really don't have a a number of capacity yet, but I do know that we have not yet hit it. So that's a positive note. But we are kind of getting close with our peer transit.

Okay. And I think it would be interesting to just compare. So obviously with the guess Bandelier, there's a we're going hear about that in a second, but there's a contract for that. So that's different. But we have funding we get to ride this service, right? That I think is some of it's based on the fact that we don't charge money. Isn't that still true? That we wouldn't be eligible for some of the funds if we started charging for rides?

Are you referring to Bandelier or to the

The five day a week service. Because I'm trying because people are gonna look at this and they can compare the one day a week, How many people you had riding that? Because it's actually in the county manager's report. You can go back there and you can look at it. There's always a lot more buses running, right? But there's like almost a 100, what is it, 16,000 a month, you know? So that's twenty days compared to, you know, a few 100 for thirteen days. Right? So it's almost a month of days and you only had 500. Right?

That's only two buses, right? For those times a day. So people are just going be looking at the data because I think we need to have the answers ready for people like how much is this costing? How does it compare to the service that we have five days a week? And I think it is an equity issue for people that don't have a vehicle because they can't get around and do anything on the weekend.

And the apartments you mentioned on North Mesa, that could be well be the case as people may not have a vehicle for everyone that's living there. So anyway, I encourage us to try to get the data that supports that we I think we should be doing this. It makes sense we shouldn't be charging people money for this because that's just going to suppress people writing it. And I think we just have done a pilot. So we don't know what neutralization.

I just think that if we could so people that could be accommodated with their employment, I know we can't necessarily know that, but that'd a great thing to know, right? Because they're really helping local businesses by they can now have staff that can work. That's one of the issues that businesses have. They don't have staff. So if you have financial employees, but they don't have a vehicle, it seems like it's helping support our local businesses as well. So I know that's more commentary than the question. But I think isn't that true that we when we lose some of the funding if we start charging for the the five day a week service?

So when when you get revenue on transit, a, from the fare box Yeah. That gets deducted from your grant funding. Right. It's money you've already got. So it's kinda like a nose a nose some game, if you know what I mean. You know, it's not like they they take that into account when they allocate the funding, how much revenue you're generating from whether it's advertising or or fare box revenues. So there's really no strong incentive to to start charging a fare Right. Unless there's some other reasons for doing it.

Yeah. Right. Okay. So I did say we would ask for public comment. We'll see if there is any public comment on this Saturday service piece. I was asking if could check on the line.

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

Okay. So I guess we're ready to go to the Sankey again for the presentation and all the work you've done on this.

Thank you so much for Oh,

there's somebody that wanted to make so sorry.

I just wanted

to say

that this

You have to come up to the microphone and just state your name, if you would. Michael Eibling. And I think this is a great program. I just wish I had heard about it while it was actually active. This is something that's come up in conversation in our household multiple times about having a free bus service with no Saturday option. So it's extremely encouraging to see this being discussed. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We didn't have anyone to raise their hand. Okay. So I think we're ready to go back. Did you have something else to answer my comments?

Chair Reidy, no. I just wanted to close by saying, thank you to mister Wilson, mister Barilla, and miss Brunson, and transit staff for, being able to pull off this Saturday service pilot. It was initially when we were talking and getting serious about it. You know, there's a lot of concerns about, you know, can we do it? You know? And they did the hard work in in in getting it done, collecting the data, doing the outreach. So fantastic job to to staff, so I appreciate that. Thank you, mister chair.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you again. Okay. Mister Wilson?

Okay. So I'm gonna race through the Bandelier update just to provide you a service update. Next slide, Linda. So basically, a quick overview. So Bandelier service started back in 2011 following the conscious fire and then flash flooding down in the canyon at Bandolier that basically washed out a lot of the parking.

So back in 2011, the the Atomic Transit did a couple of months of service September, October time frame in 2011. That led to entering into agreements with National Park Service and providing pretty much seven day a week service. I think at March there, actually it was about mid May through October time frame, and that service basically ran from White Rock into Bandelier. One, initially, because the parking was restricted. So, basically, you couldn't park it bandily or you had to use a transit service unless you were there first thing in the morning or late in the late in the afternoon.

During that time frame, we were averaging, in excess of a 100,000 passengers per year, through 2019. I think we all know what happened in 2020. COVID hit and things kinda took a a nosedive at least for the next couple of years. And then last year, National Park Service, they were struggling for staffing. They were in hiring freezes.

They've had some layoffs, and they came to transit and said, we can't sustain from a staffing level providing transit service from from White Rock because, actually, they had staff at White Rock to facilitate that service. So they they created a entry gateway and had their staffing there so people could drive in at the gateway, pay their fees, get their information. And they asked us to provide a service basically within Bandelier from the Fray Trailhead, which is just inside the gate down to the to the main park, and the intent was that was to provide that service when the bottom parking lot got full and people had to park up top. 75% of the service is paid by the National Park Service. We do have what's called a master agreement.

It's typically been a five year one. We're currently in the last year of the current master agreement, so we will be going starting later this year negotiating whether what what a new one may or may not look like as we move forward. Next slide. So this is just a quick snapshot of the last, five years of park visitation and, our ridership. So as you can see, as COVID was kind of hit, we kind of our ridership was cut down quite a bit down into the 70,000.

2024, it really took a nosedive. And then in 2025, that's when we've stopped providing service from White Rock. And last year, we provided seven day service within the par for mid May through the September when the government shut down. And during that time, we have frame, we only had, like, around 3,300 passengers. So it really wasn't that efficient.

When we started talking to the park service this year about what service would look like, they they expressed that they have the same staffing issues as they had last year. They're in hiring freezes. And then they also said that based on their analysis of visitation, they were beginning to feel like having this transit service from White Rock was actually suppressing their visitations. So they they saw quite a an 18 or 20% increase in last year's visitations over previous years. Given what we were just talking about driver retention issues that we experienced, we said to them, it's quite a hard push for us to provide be providing one driver seven days a week from mid May through October.

Can we narrow down times to when you feel like we're gonna be actually providing a service? So this year, what they did I think next slide, please. Yeah. So this year, they they basically analyzed their visitation data for the last two or three years to find out when the trends when they felt that they would be at or above capacity for parking at their sites. And, essentially, what they found was kinda spring break right now as a peak period, and then weekends through April and May, around about July 4, Labor Day, and then balloon fiesta around that that time frame.

So we kinda came to agreement that we would provide similar service to what we did last year, but during those focused time frames. So, originally, we're gonna start off on March 14. We weren't able to get the contractual paperwork finalized, so we started on March 19. So we're down. We're committed to fifty one days of service for Bandelier.

And as I say, the there's a map on the the the left hand side kinda shows the route, the Fray parking lot just next to the entrance down into Bandelier. And, actually, I can report that we've almost surpassed all of last year's, ridership in the eleven days of service we've provided so far. We've we've provided that, I need to put my glasses on, 2,855 rides in the in the eleven days through Friday, through Sunday, so far. So this collaboration of identifying when they felt that they were gonna need additional park people to be parking up in the top end, I think part of that's been helped. You know, a lot of the ski resorts have closed down early this year, so probably a lot of people who have come to New Mexico who planned on skiing no longer can and may have come to Bandelier.

But I think it's worked out well that we've been able to provide that service this last couple of weeks during our time, and we'll we'll continue as we move forward. Next slide. So one of the other things we discussed with them when we met earlier this year, they recognized and we recognized that with the servers no longer starting and terminating, White Rock has a potential impact on White Rock attractions in White Rock itself and then also beyond up into Los Alamos, people going to the visitor center and stuff like that. So our economic development division has been working closely with the National Park Service to bolster information sharing with the visit visitors who go to Bandelier so that they're not just going to Bandelier for the two or three hours is what they estimate as average stay that they're made aware of. Oh, what else can we do in in Los Alamos County?

You know, go to the Manhattan Project National Park, the historic Bradbury, and then also the businesses in White Rock and such like. So they've been working together and talk about placing a kiosk at the park with the flyers and the information for these other attractions in Los Alamos County. Next slide. The other pieces, we've we've put TVs on the buses that are right going up and down within Bandelier, and they'll they'll display information on these different attractions. And we're able to go in and up those so we can keep them current information current.

So if there's an activity going on, the kite festival, the craft festivals, wherever we can add those in so that as people are dry riding within the park, they see that and they go, oh, let's go to this next activity. So that's been a big push this year. Next slide. And as I said at the beginning, we're at the at the end of the the current five year master agreement we have with National Park Service. We're gonna engage with them in August timeframe to start discussing what or how the next agreement is going to be put together for future services that we provide for Bandelier based on, you know, our findings for this year.

Next slide. And that's basically it. Everyone will be pleased to hear.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Do we have any questions or comments from counselors? Looks like people are mostly questioned out. So the attractions are county events and attractions? Or are they local businesses that are doing things?

I think I don't know what Linda, you want to jump

Chair, counsel. If you saw the markup that we had, we one of the ideas that we have is to utilize the business directory that we have been working on, and that will be kicked off. So that would be you know, a QR code that would allow people to search for restaurants and stores, and other, you know, businesses. And then the activities are similar. So activities and events that would, be for visitors and tourists.

Okay. I'm not sure if I didn't notice hands. I don't know who's first because there's two hands raised. I'll just Councillor Culp.

Thank you, Councilor or Chair Reidy. I was, I was actually wondering about the cost share. It seems like when the shuttle is strictly within Bandelier that you know, what we gain from that is possibly not as much as having people have to stop at the visitor center in White Rock. And so I I I don't know if that's something that is being considered when you all redo the contract. But if they're gonna have the shuttle strictly within Bandelier, seems like the cost share on our part should be less than 25%, for that kind of service.

Just, just my thought. You know, what are we getting from, the 25% that we're we're providing, in addition in addition to the service that we're providing for them. So, not necessarily a question, just a comment. Thank you.

Okay. Councilor Nayklin.

Thank you, chair. Quick question. Did I read that correctly that the total cost for the changes is about $68,000 in in '26 in fiscal year twenty six.

But I I I don't think I had any costs today.

That's why I'm asking them, like, that I don't know why that number is jumping out of my head.

Yeah. I don't think we had any.

James. James is raising his hand.

Keep rolling.

Okay.

He's got the cost probably.

Alrighty. And councilor, Neil Quinton, those were ridership numbers based off of the actual visitation to Bandelier. So the that chart wasn't any cost type thing.

Okay. Thank you for that clarity. Appreciate it. Okay.

Well, I was gonna ask what what what what what is the contract? Do we know the amount of the contract?

I think James.

Alrighty. Our current contract for this year that's ending is $208,000 to provide service, but that was part of the original agreement five years ago for running service from White Rock. But it last year's cost came out about 139,000 for the service we provided. So I'm looking at this as probably gonna be a little less than that this year because we're providing less service. So that funding and cost will probably be negotiated when we start these conversations in August for the future agreement.

And that and that what we get back from the National Power Service is based on the service we provided, service hours and things like that. It's not just a lump sum.

Okay. So it's yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Christina.

I guess I do have

question. A

Yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah. Thank you, chair. I guess I do have a question and then a comment. The the cuts that we saw in 2025 and the reason we don't provide service anymore that Bandolier helps pay for from the White Rock Visitor Center into the park is because of federal cuts to the the the National Park Service, and then that trickled down to Bandolier. Is that correct?

That yeah. So there were I I think there was, a national hiring freeze. So there was layoffs, and then they couldn't hire additional staff. And I I believe those hiring freezes are still in place this year as well.

So that was my understanding as well. I just wanna see if you had a different understanding. And then so so one could baby hope, depending on your vantage point, I guess, that that could be restored someday after future elections. So then that leads to my comment about, you know, providing this service even though we're paying for 25%, and I understand Councillor Cole's sentiment on that, but I would argue, you know, there's something about continuing something and not having it stop, you know, and then having it restart maybe in a couple years. And there's also something about, to me, the goodwill that is generated when all those thousands of visitors see that it's a Los Alamos County bus providing this.

I think even if it's subconscious, creates a good feeling, like when I go to Zion National Park and if Springdale were providing a bus in to the park, I would think, Wow, good for Springdale, you know, for those of you who've been to Zion. They're just right there at the park entrance and you can't take buses into I mean, can't take cars into Zion anymore. So anyway, I just think that it's worth doing, And if it became a fiftyfifty split, maybe that's a different conversation. But I'm supportive that we're still part of this. And thanks for the presentation.

Thank you, Councillor Herman. I guess I should mention that one of the 15 meetings we had last week was with acting superintendent for the National Park Service. And we brought up, you know, we're the gateway to three national parks. We talked about the agreement that we've had and the staffing issues. We did voice the concern. I don't know that anything is going to change, but we did voice it. So just wanted to make note of that. Let's see. Do we have any I think we're done with counselor questions and comments. So any public comment on the mandibular service?

K. Not seeing anyone here. Miss Mass, can you check online to see if there's anyone?

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

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the presentations. So now we're on to item number six, which is public comment for items on the consent agenda. So is there anyone present that wants to make any public comment for items on the consent agenda? Not seeing anyone coming forward. May ask you to check on Zoom for any commenters there?

Chair, I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Okay. Is there a counselor interested in making a motion on the consent agenda? Councilor Merriman?

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

Okay. So we have motion by councilor Merriman, second by councilor Han. Is there any discussion? I guess I'll just note that we have the profit transfer on here on consent, which has been, happening now for a number of years. So, that's a good use of that revenue or profit in my opinion. So, see if there's no comments. We can can the clerk please call the roll?

Councillor Haberman?

Yes.

Councilor Reidy?

Yes.

Councilor Hand? Yes. Councilor Cole? Yes. Councilor Rigor? Yes. Councilor Herman? Yes. And Councilor Nell Clinton? Yes. Motion passes seven to zero.

Let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So now we're on to item eight, public hearings. So we have two items tonight. The first one, 8A, is OR one one one seven-26B. It's incorporated county of Los Alamos ordinance number seven fifty three, an ordinance authorizing the lease of restaurant space at the golf course of the nineteenth Hole Pub LLC, a New Mexico limited liability company to provide food and beverage services. And we have Mr. Styron here.

Thank you, chair and counsel. We're really excited to bring this to you tonight. I'd like to start off by thanking Linda Lindstrom, our senior management analyst, who has worked on this from the statement of interest all the way through the process to where we are tonight. She's done a very good job of working with those folks. Just to share a little information, this is for an agreement between nineteenth Ho Sports Pub.

We have members of that team here in the audience this evening with us. This was a statement of interest that was issued back in September. And we did have three qualified participants that submitted interest in that process. Our previous operator chose not to participate in this particular round. And then county staff evaluated the proposals based on the criteria outlined.

We're here tonight to share this with you. We're excited to see this public hearing continue. And hopefully, you'll approve this later on this evening so we can get this going on. In your packet, you'll see that June 1 is the intended start date. They are working with with the operator team as well as our legal team to work on a license agreement to try to get them in earlier.

We felt it was time as a county that we had some high end maintenance that needed to be done. We're in the process to replacing the HVA system. That's been a problem for a number of years. We need to do a deep cleaning since it's been a few years to be in there. We're also doing some painting and replacing some flooring that has been distressed. So we're working with our public works department, facilities group to coordinate all that along with our new operator to schedule that time when they when they can get in there and get their feet so they can do all their necessary steps. At this time, I'll stand for any questions.

Okay. Thanks, Mr. Steyron. Are there any technical or clarifying questions from counsel? I guess I'm not seeing any. I did so I didn't notice much discussion about the previous agreement, but this one is structured fairly different than the previous one. Is there a brief synopsis of some of the differences you provide?

Chair and counsel, I'm gonna make a stab at it, and then I might have to call my relief pitchers over here to my left. This is very different. The previous one was a service agreement, and this is an outright lease for the space. So it's it's it's very different on the structure, and mister Lee Park can tell you all the details of the difference if you're interested.

Chair and counsel, the fundamental difference is this is a lease rather than a service agreement. The previous agreement was basically we shared part of the revenues generated. This just doesn't this just does it differently, right? This is more of a straight lease. You've leased the space. You have to do certain amount of things. You pay us a certain amount of money and whatever you make in your business is yours to keep. And that just seemed like a simpler and based on our experience with the last agreement, a better way to go about it. So this was our proposed course of action for this agreement. Okay.

Thank you. And the community room, it might be different as well. So maybe since if people just read this one, they won't know what we had done before. But

Chair and counsel, in this particular one, we pulled the community room back out. That is under the county's purview to rent and lease. It does a couple of things. It allows the anyone that rents the community room to bring in alternate food and alternate food to the facility. Unfortunately, with our government alcohol license, they would still be responsible for any alcohol cells on the service. But it gives us a little more flexibility, and it gives the county some flexibility to use that space a little more diligently.

Okay. And I guess the other thing I wanted to say was that I am a member of the beer co op. But I don't have any financial interest in this. So I just wanted to make sure that was in the record. Okay. I don't see any other questions. So is there any people public who want to make any comments? Okay. I'm not seeing anyone present. Is there anyone online?

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

Okay. So was there a councilor interested in making a motion? Councilor Herman?

Thank you, chair. I move that council adopt incorporated county of Los Alamos ordinance number seven fifty three, an ordinance authorizing the lease of restaurant space at the golf course to nineteenth hole Sports Pub LLC, a New Mexico limited liability company to provide food and beverage services and ask staff to assure that it is published as provided in the county charter.

Second.

I think that was Councilor Cole.

Yep. Thank you.

Okay. So we have a motion by Councilor Herman and a second by Councilor Cole. Is there any discussion? Okay. Not seeing any hands raised. So I want thank everyone for their work on all the work on this and look forward to having the space occupied again. So with that, can the click please click please call the

roll. Councilor Reidy?

Yes.

Councilor Rigor?

Yes.

Councilor Hand? Yes. Councilor Cole?

Yes.

Councilor Haberman? Yes. Councilor Neil Clinton? Yes. And councilor Herrmann? Yes. Motion passes seven to zero.

Okay. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So thank you. So now we're on to item eight b 21334 dash 26. It's a new liquor license application, special independent theater liquor license with on premises consumption only with no patio service filed by the applicant SALA Los Alamos Event Center LLC doing business as SALA Event Center Los Alamos, New Mexico, 87504.

So the presenters are the county council, which so I think we so I think that the staff probably reviewed the application. Ms. Arendt, is there anyone that wants to make any comments? Or Mr. Leipart? Chair and counsel, this is liquor license application. Based on the materials I've reviewed, they and it's included in the packet, they meet the requirements for the alcohol license. There's basically some measurements between schools and places like that and they've met that criteria. Okay. Thank you, Ms.

Leipart. So do we have any technical or clarifying questions on this liquor license? Not seeing any. Is there any public comment on this liquor license? I'm seeing any at present in chambers. Is there anyone online that wants to make comment?

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

Okay. Thank you. So is there counsel interest in making a motion? Good. Councilor.

Thank you, chair. I move that council approve new liquor license application, special independent theater liquor license with on premises consumption only with no patio service filed by applicant SALA Los Alamos Event Center LLC doing business as SALA Event Center Los Alamos, New Mexico eight seven five four four. Second.

Okay. So we have a motion by Councillor Huffman and a second by Councillor Herman. Do we have any discussion on the motion? K. Not seeing any line. Can you please call the roll?

Councilor Rigor?

Yes.

Councilor Cole?

Yes.

Councilor Haverman? Yes. Councilor Herrmann? Yes. Councilor Reidy?

Yes.

Councilor Neil Clinton? Yes. And councilor Hand? Yes. Motion passes seven to zero.

Okay. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously. Okay. Looks like we're good on time. So we're up to item nine, business. 9A is twenty one thousand three and seventy four-twenty six. It's going to be the quarterly update on small and local business action items. So I think we have go straight to Mr. Eisenstein.

Good evening, Chair Reidy, members of the council. It's nice to see everyone this evening. Tonight, I'll be giving a quick overview of the quarter one update for the local and small business engagement effort. Miss Madison, if you don't mind, you can jump right in. So first, I'd like to give a quick update on LIDNA and MRA application tracking community development is doing in cooperation with other departments here at the county.

As you know, 09/02/2025, we launched Leader for Retail. Since that time, we've received roughly 20 business 20, excuse me, part one questionnaires from local businesses. Three of those applicants have proceeded into what we're calling part two. It's the more substantive portion of the application process. We currently have one active Part two application.

We have another active Part two application that's waiting county is waiting on some additional financial information from the applicant. And then we have one pending Part two application. The applicant is working through some outstanding financial issues. And once they get those cleaned up, they intend to proceed with the application process. And then for regular LEDA and MRA, as you know, we recently awarded a LEDA loan to Ubiquiti.

We also have three additional LEDA applications under review. We're currently working on the PPA for one of those. And then of those three, two of them are also pursuing MRA funds. One applicant is in East Downtown Los Alamos and another applicant is in White Rock. Next slide, please.

City's work, it's a group that we've been working with since I arrived here at the county. I spoke to Chad Reese, our counterpart at CitiesWork, in late January of this year. We discussed some of the topics likely to be included in the report. Some of those include better communication and visibility of our performance metrics. They are very impressed with our permit turnaround times and felt like we should do a better job of providing that information on our website through some sort of data dashboard.

We'll talk about that some more here in a second. They also suggested adding to the services we provide online and providing more remote access to the department. And then they also acknowledged some areas where we're demonstrating leadership. One of those that we talked about was drone inspections, specifically for reroofs. As you know, we have a lot of sort of dangerous conditions, steep pitched roofs sort of dropping towards canyons.

And so in certain conditions, it's much safer for our staff to be doing these inspections via drone. That's something they encourage in a lot of other jurisdictions, and we're pretty pleased to see that we're already doing that. Not included in the topics that we discussed was the need for in house MEP, or mechanical electrical plumbing, plans, examiners, inspectors. We had anticipated that that might be one of their comments. However, that did not show up in sort of the initial conversations we had about the report.

To do so would probably be pretty costly, I think, to bring those services in house. We'd be looking at at least two new additional FTEs. And we feel like the current arrangement with New Mexico CID is largely working well. As you've heard, it is the cause for some inconvenience, but by no means is a major source of major project delays. Next slide, please.

Something else we've discussed recently is the online business directory. That's something we launched February 2. After launch, we held two trainings, one on February 4 and the other on February 18. This February 4 training was held in the Boards And Commissions Room across the hall and the eighteenth training was held virtually. That training was recorded and is now available on the web for anyone who couldn't attend at the time.

As of today, we have 57 businesses and 10 nonprofits listed on the directory. And we also have 72 special events advertised, and several of those are recurring events that happen throughout the year. Since launching in February, we've been focused on populating the directory. So that's meant a lot of direct outreach to business owners, nonprofit owners, as well as folks that that host special events, really trying to populate that directory so that starting next month, we'll really start focusing on promoting the directory to residents and visitors. So that, you know, now that we have it well populated, we're hoping that as we're driving more traffic to the directory, folks will see value in what's provided there.

We've also launched an online development guide that went live late last year on December 3. It provides information on who to contact for various application types. It's fairly bare bones at the moment. Staff has been working on adding more detailed information. One of the things we'd like to put on the site is sort of process flow charts that sort of have a decision tree built into them.

So potential applicants could kind of see what the process would look like for the various types of projects they may be pursuing. We're really trying to highlight some of our most common application types on this website, things like new development requiring site plan approval, change of use is something that we hear can be a somewhat opaque process, so we're really trying to provide some clarity there. And then we see a lot of tenant improvements on the commercial side, So we want to make sure we're providing a lot of information on that. We hope to host a focus group with several of our commercial applicants here in the coming months. Something we were hoping to do earlier in the year, but due to some staffing changes, it's something we've had to push out a little bit later, but something we hope to tackle here in the coming months.

And then earlier I alluded to an online data dashboard, this aligns with broader county efforts to provide performance metrics on our website. Things that we would like to share would be things like business licensing, newly issued licenses and renewals, also sharing our permit turnaround times for both commercial and residential permits. Since I've been here, we're consistently averaging three days or less on turnaround times for residential applications. And we're consistently meeting our five day turnaround goal for commercial applications. And here's a sense of the volume we're dealing with on an annual basis starting in 2023 through 2025.

The set of numbers at the top there are permit volume. So we're seeing a sort of consistent between about seven twenty nine to eight thirty in that range. And then inspection volume, we're completing you know, anywhere from two twenty seven to 200 or excuse me, 2,227 to 2,416 inspections throughout the year. And that includes both residential inspections as well as commercial inspections. And then lastly, I just want to highlight some of the additional online resources we intend to bring forward later this year.

I've been working with staff in the CPR office to develop some rep videos. We have scripts for several of them. We have not had a chance to record those yet, but some of the topics we hope to cover will be a general introduction to the department and an overview of some of the services we provide, some more detailed information about what it takes to start a new business in the county, an opportunity to highlight our very fast turnaround times for permitting. And then something we're seeing is we feel like it'd be good for folks to have a better sense of the types of things that would be discussed in a pre application meeting. This is more on the planning side of things.

So we just want to provide some things to know when scheduling those meetings to make them as productive as possible for our applicants. And with that, I'd happily stand for any questions.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Isaacson. Do we have any questions or comments from council? Councillor Wrigg? Thank you, Chair.

So when you said one of the leaders has gone through, are you referring to the Ubiquiti leader? Is that That is correct. Okay. And then all the retail ones are in process, but none have gone through?

That's correct. So three are in process, and, one is is, probably the most active, and we're working with, the applicant on sort of clarifying what some of the security would be, for that loan, or that grant, excuse me. And then the other two, as I mentioned, are sort of working through some of the financial aspects of the process. But we have not finalized a LEDA for retail grant at this time.

Now there's a project in White Rock, but I don't know which category it's in. Is it LEDA for retail or LEDA general?

So I believe you're referring to The Rock in White Rock, and that is a just a regular LEDA

Regular LEDA. Application.

It's beyond the $100,000 threshold we set for retail for LEDA. That's going be a larger amount. And that's also a project that's looking at potentially leveraging MRA funds as well.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, councilor Rieger. Take maybe councilor. And then councilor Nayaklund, why don't you go ahead and ask your questions?

Thank you, chair. Regarding the data points that you brought up, mister Isaacson, I think that if we could figure out another way to promote that and show those numbers, I think that would be helpful for the community. Because sometimes we don't tell what we're doing well. And I I just think that that would help support staff. It would help support community. And if we could promote that, I think that would be helpful.

I agree a 100%.

That's all I have, Chair.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Nicollin. Councillor Ehrmann?

Thank you, Chair. I want to applaud all the additional online resources that you have coming along. Question about the online data dashboard. So the numbers, is that just kind of, for instance, the commercial permits, the numbers are down. Is that just kind of variability? Or I mean, do you read anything into that? The residential permits are up. I was just wondering if you see any pattern there.

Chair Reidy, Councilor Herman, thanks for the question. It's hard for me to draw too many conclusions from such a small sample set. I would say the commercial is probably more variable than residential on the permitting. A lot of the residential permitting includes, you know, pretty small projects, fences

Mhmm.

You know, small home improvement type projects where the commercial projects tend to be more substantial and are associated with higher dollar amounts. But it's hard to say from just looking at those three years whether or not there's a trend there or if it's just sort of, you know, reasonable variability from year to year on on the permitting.

Gotcha. Thank you. Any question?

Councilor Herman Nacht. Councilor Herman.

Whoops. Thank you, chair.

And thank you, mister Isaacson. On the, attachment in the staff report or on the, I don't know somewhere on here, there was the table about all the leader retail applicants. It's really comprehensive. And then there's that dreaded column that says pass or fail or TBD for some of them or maybe in process or something like that. And there were reasons given which I think is super helpful to have that.

The ones who just didn't qualify after that first questionnaire of step one, Do you have a sense of whether or not those business owners understood, you know, why they didn't qualify and what they might do to consider different avenues to take advantage of leverage these resources? Or were they mostly disgruntled and pissed at the county for that and think our rules are too strict? I know one was someone's and then there was the ones that were kind of in process or TBD, like one's going go and work on collateral and one's going to resubmit. And then so kind of a second part of the question is, the ones who are going to resubmit, is CDD staff proactively working with them to say, Hey, we haven't heard from you in two weeks and we don't want this to fall by the wayside, how can we help you, etcetera? Because we want this to be successful, right?

It's a win win for everybody.

Chair Reidy, Counselor Haberman. So let me take that kind of part by part. So the passfail TBD, that is in reference to the screening questionnaire. And we thought about this as we were sort of developing the program. We really wanted a very low barrier of entry at the beginning.

And so what we heard from a lot of folks, whether they passed or didn't pass, was that, you know, it was so easy to do. I just wanted to throw my name in. And that's why we set it up where we met with everybody. Whether you passed or you failed, we met with everybody because that was an opportunity for us to make connection in the community, but also to sort of walk through why an applicant either made it through to the next phase or maybe didn't. And the folks that didn't make it through, that stemmed from sort of not meeting some of those initial tests that we put out there through the questionnaire.

And so, you know, I'm thinking back to some of those initial conversations. And a lot of a lot of the ones that didn't make it through were sort of putting forward projects that were really more about deferred maintenance to their buildings, not so much about expanding economic activity in the county. And so the LEDA funds are really about growing your economic impact, not about maintaining where you are or maybe taking care of a facility that's been ignored for however many years. And so that's why a lot of folks didn't make it through. But through those initial conversations, we were able to steer some of those applicants that maybe didn't make it through the first time towards projects that their business could pursue that did sort of fall within the parameters that we set forward.

So, you know, instead of applying for new HVAC system, look at maybe applying to expand the outdoor seating capacity at your restaurant so that you can serve more customers and generate more revenue. And so we use that as an opportunity to educate a little bit and and steer folks towards projects that would work with the program because I agree a thousand percent. You know, we really want to distribute these funds. We see it as a benefit to the county. We see it a benefit to our local business community.

And so we were really looking for ways to support folks as much as we could. So that, you know, that's kinda how the initial process came through. And then as we've worked with folks that did make it to the sort of second phase of the application process, you know, we've encountered a lot of different feedback. Some that are sort of discovering some financial sort of challenges that maybe they weren't aware of through this process. Others who are sort of reevaluating their confidence in just the larger economic climate and saying, hey, I don't know if I feel comfortable committing to growth over the next three years just based off what I'm seeing in my business and revenues and things like that.

So we've had a lot of really interesting conversations with business owners through this process. But to your last question, yes, we are following up with folks. We are being proactive. You know, we're making ourselves available to anyone who has any follow-up questions. We recently had a meeting with one of our applicants at their restaurant. We're really trying to be as available as we can and work with folks as much as we can to really support them through this process.

That's good. That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, counselor. Guess I'm not seeing any other. So I was interested in a couple of things. So the business directory is something that we're doing so that we can promote businesses that sign up. Like, we can have code.

People can go sign, you know, scan and here's businesses. I'm just wondering about do we know that that's what people want to do? Because like, not I can pick up my phone, but I can pick up my phone and I have any number of apps on my phone that will tell me all kinds of things about Los Alamos that are much more extensive than what's in the directory might, you know, but there then the business owners have to maintain another item because I assume that, you know, when they have their open hours or whatever, they're that's coming from somewhere. It's coming from them. So now we're asking them to put something else up.

Idea is that the threshold is small and then it's able we can just like, here's the code. You want to do something in Los Alamos? Here's the code for because it's a little cumbersome. It's like, I may just want to have something to eat. I don't want to have to go and search on restaurants. I would rather just know what the restaurants are. So is that something you're thinking about? Like categorizing it? Like we had the buses. They categorized it by like, where people are dropped off.

Right? So just it seems like there needs to be some advantage to just because right now, it it's more general, like, I wanna have a roofer or I wanna have something to eat. And I might find either or neither because they didn't sign up for our directory. So I'm just wondering about the, you know, getting enough critical mass that they're in there so that people would view it as a resource and therefore it's worth their time to maintain it. Maybe that's not a question. But if you have any thoughts on that concept.

Chair Eddy, I you know, I think your your initial question is, I think, was is the list or the directory searchable, sortable, filter certain things out? And the answer to that is yes. So you can take those 57 names that are currently on the directory that include hours of operations or what they provide, goods and services, you can sort by restaurants or contractors or dentists or things like that. So it is a sortable list. You know, I think we we have asked business owners to really maintain their profile on the directory.

I think there's a lot of really good reasons for that. If you were gonna have seasonal hours or something like that, it's really, I think, best, you know, the business owner's best position to update that information, not not county staff. And so that's why it's been sort of designed and rolled out the way it has been rolled out. You know, I think there's other obviously, there's other ways, apps, websites, whatever it might be that you can use to find the restaurants in Los Alamos or contractors in Los Alamos, whether it's Google Maps or, you know, other, you know, Apple Maps. I use that quite a bit to see what's around me when I'm when I'm traveling or where I'm visiting somewhere.

So, you know, it's not necessarily meant to replace those. I think it's really meant to sort of complement those, and it's a way for business owners to have a very simple, no cost way to be able to promote themselves in a sort of forum of of their businesses and other, you know, nonprofits and and events here in Los Alamos.

So but the request came in. I so I understand what we're doing, but the request was actually, isn't there some way that we could like, some people go some places, there's like a code for like a whole I mean, if you wanna put up codes for your restaurant, you can pull one up. It would be like more physically. You could see it. And there'd be something, you know, intriguing about, like, wanna scan this one. I want, you know, this kind of food because it's nearby. And we just didn't wanna have to charge. So this way it's there's no cost to us really for doing it particularly, right? Because the businesses are the ones maintaining it. There is

a nominal cost associated with the platform. It's a module that is provided by our current web provider. So there was a small cost associated with sort of unlocking this additional module, but it's it's really negligible.

Okay. But anyway, I'm I'm just struggling a bit with the request versus what we're doing. And when you're out talking to businesses about their stuff, maybe ask, is there some way? Because I know with the, you know, just like even at the visitor center, there can be cards for like more attractions or things like that. But I know some places that you can there's other things in the stand you know, the card racks.

And some people still like, you know, the card, right, as opposed to. So, like, for people that already wanna use, like, technology, they don't necessarily need our directory because we they already have access to any number of options. So I'm just I'm just trying to go back to what they had asked for and say is this what is this serving what they wanted or not? I don't know if we've gotten feedback from any businesses that asked for this. Yeah. Please go ahead. Okay.

Chair Reidy, I I have we have had ongoing conversations with the chamber and LACDC. They were one of our beta tests. They've been spread helping us spread the word. And I I agree that it's not exactly what was being asked for. We got a few different comments during this whole period.

One was I want to I wanna be able to advertise for free on the buses, or I wanna be able to advertise in some of the county seasonal recreation guides or some of our other publication tourism publications. And what we found when we looked back at what we've tried to do in the past in partnership with the chamber and others is that we've tried to sort of consolidate some of this information with maps and information, and it's just very difficult to keep it current and be successful. Excuse me. Something's cut my throat. But this was our attempt at trying to trying something new and being able to advertise it wherever we can.

Apologize. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you. So so that's good. I I just wanna bring that up that it's good to be benchmarking what we're doing compared to what people wanted and asked for, some of the issues. But there are other so we have like Main Street, right, which we can we brought some funding to, right? But Main Street can do certain things that maybe we can't do.

And then there's the RDC. And I remember I think it was Santa Fe County, maybe even city, but they basically plussed up the money. And then RDC like so some of these things doesn't qualify. Like, it's a question of like what what are their metrics? But some of the things that are on this big matrix that don't qualify because they're not adding jobs or it's not a new location or whatever the case may be, it's not an increased business activity.

Are you aware of any of these other programs that don't have that like requirement? It's like you can it's a facade improvement. I don't think that I mean, that does lead to looking nicer and maybe more people come in, but that's not the expectation. Right? I don't think. Maybe I'm asking to answer my own question, but aren't there other resources too? And so when somebody comes in and you say, no, don't go out for this. It's like, well, should go and talk to, you know, Pat Vanderpool or you should talk to, you know, Jacqueline Connolly, there's opportunities someplace else for funding. Is that correct? I mean, when we say no, it's not like it's a bad idea. You shouldn't do it. It's just that this this kind of money is restricted.

Chair Reddy, that's correct. And so, you know, saying, sorry, LEDA for retail, for instance, doesn't work for the project you're proposing, is by no means the end of the conversation. We do try to steer folks to other resources, as much as we can. You know, Main Street does have things like facade improvement grants. I think they also have a theater, like a a local theater improvement program as well.

But that would be something that, you know, Main Street would take the lead on, and maybe the county could participate in support of Main Street. But I don't believe we'd be participating directly with the business owner in that scenario. I did follow-up with RDC after their presentation to counsel at the work session earlier this year. The additional grants that RDC provided for the city, and I believe it was maybe also the county, but definitely the city of Santa Fe, Well, they partnered with another organization that was a fiscal agent for the city to distribute ARPA funds. And so it was a slightly different pot of money with slightly different allowances and restrictions associated with it.

And so, that is not some that was something we were interested in seeing. You know, how could we replicate that here in Los Alamos County? And due to the nature of the funds, that was something that, you know, we can't, you know, we've expended our ARPA funds, and so we're not in a position to to replicate that program up here. But, you know, we are actively promoting, RDC's micro grant program. They're doing some technical grants as well as some tribal grants that are open right now.

We sent out a press release just last week informing local businesses of that opportunity. And then in June, they'll be opening up their micro grant application period. And, you know, obviously, we'll do our best to promote that as well. And and those are grants, I think, of, I wanna say, maybe 33,000, 3,500, somewhere in that magnitude that can go to local businesses. And I believe last year's round of of grants, I believe it was 11 Los Alamos businesses that received microgrants from RDC.

April 14, RDC will be doing a small business workshop at SALA from 10:30 to 1PM. Miss Laurent and I will be there and participating on a panel at the end of that workshop for folks that are interested in attending that. And and that'll be, I think, some really good information. I think one of the things we'll be focusing on in that workshop is marketing and really trying to work with small business owners on how best to market their business and the services and goods they provide. So that's, I think, well worth attending if folks have the opportunity.

Okay. I think that's all questions and comments from council. Let's see if there's any we lost a lot of our public after the last item. So see if there's any public here that want to make any comment. Ms. Vanzin can check online.

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

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, miss Eisenstein, for the report and, answering the questions. Thank you. So I think now we're on to item 9B. It's 21,440 seven-twenty six, amendment number one to the purchase sale and development agreement for real property located in the Incorporate County Of Los Alamos commonly referred to as 88 A. And we have mister Osborne here.

Good evening, chair. Dan Osborne, Los Alamos County Housing Special Projects Manager. I'm here to present the amendment, to the purchase sale and development agreement for a eight a, and the county manager is making a recommendation for approval of this. This is a very simple amendment. It inserts section 12.8 which is a reversionary interest back to the county into the existing development agreement.

This is not a material change to the agreement and it's something that's already included in the deed restriction. We're just clarifying it toward is in both documents. Adding this additional provision to the agreement has been requested by the New Mexico Self Insurance Fund as part of their effort to qualify this property for casualty insurance under their program. Having this clause placed in the development agreement improves the chance that the fund underwriters will find this agreement is fundable and that they will then roll us into their insurance portfolio. If the fund can provide this casualty insurance, that will also then lower the cost of insurance to the project and the overall cost of the project.

All other terms and conditions of the original PSDA remain in effect, and there are no other changes. Fairly simple and I'd be happy to stand for any questions.

Okay. Thank you. Are there any technical or clarifying questions on this item? Not seeing any. So just, I guess, disclose I am a member of the Board of Trustees for the Self Insurers Fund. I don't think that represents a conflict of interest since I'm here as the council chair tonight. Okay. So there's no questions. So is there any public comment? Not seeing any chambers. Is there anyone on the mic?

Chair, I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Okay. So is there a councilor interested in making a motion? Councilor Huffman.

Thank you, chair. I move that council approve amendment number one to the purchase, sale, and development agreement for real property located in the incorporated county of Los Alamos, commonly referred to as a 8 A. Second.

Okay. So we had a motion by councilor Heavenman, a second by councilor Han. Any discussion?

I don't

see any. Come on click. Please call the roll.

Councilor Herman? Yes. Councilor Havaneman? Yes. Councilor Cole?

Yes.

Councilor Rigor?

Yes.

Councilor Nell Clinton? Yes. Councilor Reidy? Yes. And councilor Hunt? Yes. Motion passes seven to zero.

Okay. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously.

Surely counsel, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Rosenberg. Okay. I think since it's not going to be really quick, maybe we should take a short break and finish the meeting. So we'll take it, let's try to keep it to ten minutes.

Okay. So we're back in session. So we're now on to item 10, which is council business. 10A, general council business. 10A one two one five one one dash two six.

Discussion and possible action to authorize the council chair to sign a letter to the NEOXCO Environment Department Secretary on DOE cleanup priorities. So this was something that had been come up as a result of the Mexican Environment Department issuing some direction and fines to the cleanup programs, environmental management and indirectly N3B on some of the priorities. So one of the items had to do with the what's called Material Disposal Area C. That's over on off of Parita Road. Can't drive down there anymore unless you have a badge but it's over inside the lab and this was one that basically there had been reports evaluating some remedial alternatives and the state had selected the remove option.

So and then the DOE then came back and said that it's actually an active facility so we're going to defer it. So then the state came back with this direction to you you can go ahead and clean it up, remove it anyway. So we had previously weighed in on the cleanup options. Probably should have found the date we did that, but it was probably roughly three years ago at this point. We submitted a letter indicating that we did not think it should be removed.

So I think the concerns we expressed at the time were just the number of trucks that would be leaving with material that would most likely having to go through White Rock. There's really no other way to get it to an off-site facility. So we had already been a record of that we didn't want them to go and remove it. We had preferred the cap and soil vapor extraction. So basically there are some constituents in gas phase there.

They're going to remediate with basically pumping out the poor gas and treating it. So that was, that's one of the two items. The other item is the hexavalent chromium plume. So we've been, I guess, advocating for, you know, a focus on that. You know, I don't think there's probably actually disagreement on that, that we like everyone would like to see a focus on the cleanup of the hexavalent chromium plume.

It's just a matter of some of the interim measure whether or not we can need to collect some more data, if we need to shut that off, find some other ways of disposing of the treated water. So that was one where the state they didn't say you had to stop removing the water and treating it, but you couldn't reinject it. So they had shut down the injection about three years ago, maybe a little bit longer, and it was shut off for a while, like eighteen months. So that's already happened once. And then just recently, was basically the injection is not allowed so very well management said that they're basically shutting down the treatment because they don't have mechanism to dispose of all the treated water.

So, without us getting in the middle of all that, it's obviously it's our interest to make sure that the treatment, you know, the flume is mitigated and we've had a concern about our best water supply well. So PM3 has been shut down since 2022. So for almost four years now. And so we haven't had access to that water. So thing I noticed the letter doesn't say anything about a new well, which the State Environment Department, which wouldn't have much to do with.

So I can understand why we're not mentioning that to them. But that is one of the things we've highlighted with when we went to the federal meetings last week, we talked a lot about funding for a replacement well. So that's something in addition that we've been advocating for. So I thought it made sense to have the council aware of the issue and to see if there was support for us sending a letter. If you've read the letter, you feel like it's responsive to our main issues, if there's anything else that is missing or if there's things that we would rather not put in the letter, then this is the time to have a little discussion about the letter.

I don't know that we have to go line by line through it, but I just wanted to see so that's the background on it. So it's been something that's we've been talking about for a little while and then there's a separate issue with WIP which we do allude to a little bit in here. So there's another issue about basically the state wanting only waste from Los Alamos to go to WIP. That's a different topic that's not covered here. That's going to be something else.

We're going have some discussion about that tomorrow with some folks from the Energy Community Alliance. So Carl's been in addition to the other communities that are sending waste currently to WIP. So we may be looking at another letter coming up maybe even next week. So that's kind of where we are on this and a little bit of background. So hope that provides some rationale for why we're doing this.

I just I think it makes sense that we state what we would rather see the government department asking the DOE to focus on, right? And the consent order was attached. I'm not sure if anyone really expected to read the whole thing. But that's there for completeness. That's what the it's a modified consent agreement that was modified, I believe, at the 2024.

Councilor Ervin?

Thank you and thanks for taking initiative on this. I just want to make sure I've got it clear. My takeaway from it is that you're wanting to send a letter on behalf of counsel in our community to NMED to state that, hey, while we agree really with all the priorities and we think they're all important, clean up, you know, legacy clean up is always going to be a priority. If we have to choose and we have limited resources and only so much budget, we hope that you're going to be hounding, for lack of a better word, an NSA or M3B as your contractor to focus first on the ramifications of the hexavalent chromium plume, which means funding for replacement of our lost well, the PM three I think it is, instead of making it such a high priority or or prioritizing higher than that the MDA C and I think it was T also in there, two MDAs, material disposal areas. So while that's important of course, not as important as the chromium plume cleanup or solution in a new well.

Is that really what it's saying in that letter?

Yes. We're asking that they make sure that the priority is exomelan chromium and that not that we don't think other things are important, but right, there's going be limited ability to fund all these things. And especially if especially if, you know, the cleanup of MDAC was required, you know that's somewhere $800,000,000.

Depending on whose estimate you're looking at.

Depending on

what estimate and how you know current that is. In addition to so it's going to be they would take the budget if they just dedicated the budget it would be three plus years probably of their budget just to do that and that wouldn't allow them to ship any waste to WIP either. Unless it was from MDAC that they're digging up. So I'm not sure that's not allowed to go to WIP. So yeah, that's right.

So that's basically my point. And yeah, so we've been asking for obviously things that can support land transfer so that's why MDAT wasn't there. But that's not happening right away either. But yeah, we hope that they could reach an agreement on the hexagon chromium plume process and get refocused and work on that. Councillor Hin?

Thank you, Chair. I'd just like to say that I read the draft letter and, I agree with it. I think we should move forward with it. There are a couple of typos here and there that we can fix, but other than that, I agree with the content.

Okay. Thank you. We have a couple online. So, Councilor Cullen?

Yeah. Chair Reidy. I also agree with the prioritization that we're suggesting, the health and safety of our community versus a MDAC, which is kind of in the middle of, the laboratory and is generally okay with until we start disturbing it. And so, I and also I was gonna ask a question about the the bolded statement on or the bold item on the third bullet says, please correct the list. But I think this is it's a draft letter, so I know whatever it was meant.

And there are a few typos that just need to be corrected in the document, and it should be ready to go, in my opinion.

Yeah. I think the yellow highlight was a holdover from a previous draft

Okay.

That we didn't catch. So that shouldn't be in there.

Okay.

I was gonna say that, what I was gonna say was something that councilor Cole already said, so I'm not gonna, rehash that, but it was about the prioritization.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So there had been actually the the EMLA had a whole strategic prioritization process that was kind of complete or maybe it wasn't was 80% complete at the '24 and then we haven't heard anything further about it. That was certainly one of the things, messages we were trying to provide in that, make sure that you're addressing contamination that is more available to the public than, you know, sites that are managed on the laboratory where access is controlled and exposures are controlled.

So unfortunately that didn't go anywhere. So maybe that's one reason why we're sending the letter. So yeah, if there's no other comments or questions, Councillor Rieger?

Thank you, Chair. Well, I had a little problem with bullet point two, and I don't know why that's in there. Accelerate the final remedy of the cleanup of the chromium plume. That sounds like it's kinda contradictory in the first one, which is the restart, the intermediate measures. So I would think we want to but the rest of the bullet points are great, and they're very very much addressing, exactly what what I think we all think, and just following with the other counselors. I'm just kinda questioning bullet two. That's kind of a huge grand thing like MDAC. I don't know. Does that go on our list of immediate priorities? So, I

guess we could word that differently. But the interim measure is not so it's it is an interim action. It's not meant to be the final remedy. So in the cleanup world, have the state approves the final remedy, which is probably going to be some kind of pun and treat, but it's the scaling of that how much water are you pumping and treating and then most likely reinjecting outside the plume. So the debate really is about the interim measure may not be adequately pumping out, pumping back in outside the plume.

If our well PM3, that getting into the weeds, is actually outside the plume, you could use our well to reinject the water as opposed to so there's other things that we've offered without getting into the details, but that was the reason for having the first one is first the interim measure has been operating and seems like it's been helping to protect the groundwater as a resource and health and then just make sure that you don't delay in actually getting a final remedy as opposed to there's indication that we can take our time studying this and I think we would rather them not do that. There was an adaptive management strategy that they were trying to do which would be basically you can take the inner measure and they could scale it a little bit. Right? So it doesn't have to be done all at once. So that's why there's a second bullet about the final remedy and we can look to clarify that, you know, so it's clear what we meant by that.

You're saying without that sentence it seems to endorse additional study whereas you're endorsing Actually action. Action on the final remedy.

Action on the final remedy as opposed to Oh,

I didn't catch that in this wording.

Yeah. So we'll make sure that that's clear. So Okay. Thank you. Councilor.

Thank you, chair. And on that same bullet point, it's, funding to replace the PM three drinking water well?

I'm not sure if the letter we're gonna send to the environment department should address funding for the well. Okay. Yeah. As I mentioned it, I'm sorry I did, but it was part of the bigger picture that we're not so we're not gonna talk about that here.

Okay.

We'll talk about that when we talk about the trip to DC.

Okay. Thank you.

That's okay. And we'll clarify the language here and okay, so if there's no other questions, we can see if there's any public comment. Don't see anyone coming forward in chambers.

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

Okay. And so, yeah, just in terms of the motion, it just needs to reflect something as amended as discussed tonight in language. If anyone wants to and councillor is intercompeting a motion? Councillor Heffmann?

I just smile a

lot. Yeah. That's you have to be careful.

Gotta get the glasses.

I don't know where it went. You got it? Somebody? Thank you. Sorry about that chair righty.

I move that council authorize the council chair to sign and send a letter on behalf of the county council to the New Mexico Environment Department secretary regarding the county's perspective on the DOE's cleanup priorities.

Second.

Okay. But don't know if you want to add the words as amended. Amended as discussed tonight.

As amended

as discussed

tonight.

Okay. There's people are smiling and shaking their heads. Shaking the correct way. Okay. So we have motion by Councillor Herrmann. Do we have a second?

Second.

Okay. We have a second by Councilor Herman. Okay. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Can the clerk please call the roll?

Councilor Haberman? Yes. Councilor Reidy? Yes. Councilor Hand? Yes. Councilor Cole?

Yes.

Councilor Regoer?

Yes.

Councilor Herman? Yes. And Councilor Noe Clinton?

Yes.

Motion passes seven to zero.

Okay. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. So now we're on to item 10B, appointments, which we did during consent. We don't have a Board and Commission vacancy report tonight, although we know we have less vacancies. So item D is Board and Commission reports. Do we have any tonight? We just had I guess we had a meeting two weeks ago. Seemed like it was just last week. Okay. Not got one? Yeah. Councilor.

Oh, okay. You, chair. Yes. The planning and zoning commission met last week, and, the main ticket item on the agenda was the site plan adoption for the 125 DP Road, also known as Coyote Mesa or aka A8A. And there were you know, it was the whole quasi judicial proceeding and hearing with presentations from staff and the applicants representing Servitas and their partners.

And I'm super excited about it that that it passed 300 and it passed unanimously 380 unit residential development, 6,200 square foot amenity building on an almost 22 acre property. The three principles we're gonna be following is good quality living space, high quality outdoor space, and being a good neighbor. And it sounds like they did a lot of homework in that arena. So that was good. And then in the department staff report, they said the comp comprehensive plan process is going well.

A survey is in process. So remind people to please respond to that survey And, we will have case or not we. The Planning and Zoning Commission will have cases to review at the next two meetings. And oh, if you wanna learn more about the comprehensive plan, you can go to plan@losalamos.org. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Hapman. Okay. Do we have any other? I don't see any other reports. So I think now we're on Chair. Just sir.

Really quickly. The art and public places board met and they're talking about deaccession of a few things. One thing is the the baseball statue next to the library, which has been very popular in history, I guess, but it's falling apart, and it seems to be very hard to repair it. So they were starting a discussion of whether or not it maybe had to be removed because it was too difficult to work on. So, that was a surprise for me.

And also the cranes in the pond that there's also they're falling apart and gonna fall over soon. So, they're concerned about maybe removing things, of that character. And then the last thing that we're talking about is, the lion sculpture, which we did a big survey on it with 400 responses, but the, the lion sculpture next to the police station is not getting much not getting as much support as you might think. And, people were complaining that it wasn't a puma or a mountain lion. It was an African lion.

And they couldn't figure out how it fit with our town. So anyway, that's a summary of the, art in public places board.

Okay. Thank you, councilor Brieger. Okay. So now we're ready to go on to we have the county manager's report e one item one two one one one four dash two six. County management report for February 2026.

Thank you, chair and counsel. I'm gonna just use this opportunity to highlight some just things that are going on currently, but I'm certainly happy to answer anything in the report. I just wanna let everybody know that the fiscal year twenty seven proposed budget during this meeting was published online and is available to start reviewing. Also wanted to let folks know that our public works department completed their regrading of the Rendilla Road all the way through the Pueblo property as well and very much appreciate their continued cooperation with giving us access to grade that road in the unfortunate event we might need to use it for evacuation. And, I wanna highlight that, on May 12, before the work session in White Rock, we're planning to hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the community brand project down in White Rock, so, some details will be forthcoming.

And on April 8, I'll I'll, we'll talk about this next week as well. We have the Manhattan Project National Historic Park tenth anniversary. It's a little late, but the tenth anniversary was during the federal shutdown. So we've rescheduled it, and that's gonna be at Fuller Lodge at 05:30 to seven. Couple more things here.

There's no set open date yet, but the pinion pool that we're renting to provide some outdoor pool services while the Olympic pool and therapy pool are closed is gonna is in the process of being filled and getting set up with a May target May to to open to the public. And with the Camp May Road with the The Pajarita Mountain Reservoir project or the pipeline project and electric project, The ongoing work is going to continue, and we'll be still have the closure of Camp May Road Monday through Thursday through the summer with just opening on Friday in the weekends to allow campers to go up there. And let's see. And then I'll just say that, we've been just very busy with the DC trip. The chair, Danielle Duran, vice chair, will be putting together a report for you all for next week's meeting.

And and then just we were successful getting reaccredited reaccredited for both the police department and the fire department. The police department the hearing was in Tucson, Arizona, and mister Rael attended that along with police leadership. And I went to the fire department accreditation in Orlando, and it was it was amazing. It was amazing to see how much work goes into all those accreditations. And for a small town like us, it's a lot of effort. And we were actually one of the first organizations to have thirty years worth of accreditation from the fire department. So that's pretty amazing. So with that, I'll stand for any questions.

Okay. Thank you, miss Brent. So any questions? Any of that or on the report? Let's see.

The Canyon Rim Trail phase three. Seems like I ask about that one not every month but commonly. So that one seems like it's a proceeding but it's unclear what I guess the whole look or schedule is.

I'm going to defer to Mr. Martinez.

Mister chair, members of council, with regard to that project, what we're waiting on currently is to do a bird habitat review in August. And because of the time of year that it needs to be done, that's that's what we're waiting for is to do a review of of bird habitat in the trees that are slated for removal in that project area. So and that was in coordination with Llano because a lot of those areas are within the Llano easement that we acquired for the project.

Okay. So we're talking about Mexican spotted owl? Yes. Okay. I think it's okay to mention species. I already did but that's not a secret I don't think.

I don't want to exclude any others.

No, any other. It could be a whole variety of species. Okay, well thank you for that. So that is progressing but just got delayed a little bit. Well, something else that I know we have an item coming from a petition next week, but a crosswalk safety I wrote down.

So maybe he's gonna make him come back. He's gonna get a couple extra steps in. As I believe that was something that we had gotten some separate comments about crosswalk safety and that related more to, I guess, Central. And I guess it's fair to ask, I guess, so we got some comments about that and so where are we looking at in terms of Central?

Mister chair, there's so there's several things ongoing with regards to Central and then other areas just because of some recent pedestrian accidents that have occurred and other requests that kinda have followed along with that. So what we're doing currently is evaluating some of those areas specifically. And and on Central, we have already done some evaluation along the pedestrian crosswalks there already. We're working to do a little bit more outreach on that because what we found is that there are some areas with the on street parking that could benefit from removing adjacent parking stall. So what we wanted to do is is also work with the chamber and with the area businesses to inform him of that, and get some feedback, because we know a loss of parking could be a touchy subject, but we wanted to, you know, message that that there are safety issues that we wanted to address along with that.

So that's something that we had already an evaluation that we had performed late last year, and now we're looking to kinda continue that on currently. So that's one thing that we're doing along central and looking at accident data, you know, the past several years and just to see if there's any common themes there. So we're doing that. We're putting together a list of other projects and activities that are associated with other things that that are ongoing. We plan to make a presentation to T Board in May and then at the council work session in May also to talk a little bit more robustly about all these things.

And in the meantime, we've also assembled a team of staff to including public works, county manager's office, police department to talk about some of these issues and formulate kind of a plan going forward, doing speed studies, things of that sort.

Okay. Thank you. I feel if we get too much more into this, we'll be in trouble with our agenda. We'll keep it just at that because I know we had gotten some questions from some people about that. So thank you. Nothing else? Okay. I don't see anything else. So now we're on to 10 f, council chair report. So I'm putting together a written report that's gonna cover the last, I guess, couple months.

So there was a couple different trips. So we heard about the advocacy trip a little bit. Then we also had our voice management trip with an energy community alliance. So a number of other meetings. So we actually met with the NMED Resource Protection Division.

And they are in charge of the RCRA program, which is what the consent order is under. So we had a little bit of discussion with them. It was mainly about the there have been some meetings with the county included along with the DOE and the Pueblo De San Alfonso, the various departments of the state and the contractor N3B to try to make progress on the exomely chromium plume. And so those were cancelled when the letters came. So that was another consequence of that.

But there was, I guess, a gauging of our interest in participating in the meetings. And I said on our behalf that we would like to be invited to those meetings if they were to restart. So, just to make counsel aware of that, I think that was important. So we and then there was the congressional delegation meeting in the last couple weeks, NACO West region meeting. And then, just earlier today, there was combating, anti Semitism had the a resolution about what is anti Semitism.

And so I haven't had a chance to study that in any detail, but I might think I'll attach that to my report so that you can see it next week. And then we could decide if that's something we want to do at a future meeting. So I think that was all the items I had to highlight. I don't know if there's any questions on any of that. Okay.

Not seeing any. So 10 gs is approval of counselor expenses. Okay. 10H, preview of upcoming agenda items. So you have the tickler attached And, there's several things at the next meeting.

So we have a citizen petition regarding the North Road Urban to make that into a four way stop. We have the single use plastics and the discussion of possible charter changes from the work group. And the end of the month, they're twenty seventh through twenty ninth are the budget hearings. Is there anything else that counselors want to highlight or would like to see in a future agenda? Okay, not seeing any?

Do any counselors have any comments tonight? Okay. Okay. No comments. If there are no objections, we are adjourned.