Council - Regular Meeting

Your life. Good afternoon. Welcome to. Today is Monday, March 23rd, 2026. It's approximately 1 p.m. I'm now Eric Enriquez. We will start with a moment of silence for the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces as they protect our interests around the globe, as well as the courageous men and women of the Cruces Police and Fire Department. If you join me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So first on the agenda item 1.1 fiscal year 2026 2027 Budget Review. And before we get started, I just wanted the stats that are here in the audience today with Sabina Hirschauer and her students. Thank you for being here always. Yeah, always glad to have her. Okay, let's. Good afternoon. Mayor. Council. Leslie Doyle, for the record, today I want to talk about the

budget priorities that you guys have given us over the course of the last couple of months. I also am going to be speaking to you with some very preliminary numbers on both budget and both revenue and expense. And then we're going to have the departments actually come up and share with you specifically how the budget budget priorities that you guys have given to us are incorporated in the budget. So we do still have some time. So again, these are preliminary numbers because we still have a final work session in April and then budget adoption in May. I wanted to make sure everybody is aware that we still have, you know, some time before we finalize. So we have been talking about the themes that you guys have provided to us, specifically a budget retreat, but also from the dais. So these are the things that we have identified that have been mentioned across the the board by different councilors as well as in the budget retreat. We heard multiple times as we started to evaluate the data that we got. So we've got youth engagement, affordable housing, traffic safety, pedestrian safety, infrastructure improvements, muni court improvements, animal welfare partnerships with the public schools, utility preparedness, communications and mental health expansion. So these are the things that we saw that we wanted to make sure that we're addressed today. Because these are the priorities that we heard multiple times. Also just some highlights that are currently in the budget. We have the Snap program Pal Boxing Community Schools agreement with Las Cruces Public Schools senior nutrition utility assistance, out of school time programs.

And you can see there, the reason that we broke that out is because while we do get some revenue from out of school programs, by and large, the expenses is much larger than the revenue that we would receive. The transit transfer, this is the required transfer that we have for our match, for our transit grant, and then $100,000 to address gun violence. Also, Sia Valley, Community of Hope outreach, mano y mano healthcare services. Fire station repairs. This is not the only money that is allocated to fire station repairs, but this is one specific area that was specific to those repairs facility maintenance. Various projects across the board. Traffic calming and fix it fares. So these are things that are currently already in the budget and will do address some of those priorities. So what you have before you is our preliminary general fund revenue projection can see it's about 185 million. For context, it was adopted in fiscal 26 at 166 million. And then recently you guys did a budget adjustment because we wanted to bring it into more actual. And it is now a revised budget of 178 million for gross receipts tax. We looked at, you know, a couple of different things across the board. But ultimately what we settled on was a 3% increase year over year for gross receipts. Tax fees and charges are actually those revenues that are budgeted by the departments for their programs. And then property tax is about $1 million more this year than it was last year. Keeping in mind that we do not yet know the effect of the veteran's exemption. So I'm a little conservative there. But as the year goes on, we may adjust

that franchise fees of 4.1 and then cannabis of 5.08. So that is our revenue projection preliminary for the fiscal year 27 budget. So now I want to talk about expenditures. You can see here we have personnel operating capital and net transfers personnel at 130 million operating at 52 and capital at 477. One of the things that I do want to point out is that net transfers is we budgeted it last year about 37 million, and this year it has been brought down pretty significantly. So that is something that we did talk about at the budget retreat as one of the priorities that we wanted to do. And then just because transfers is such a big area, we wanted to show the bulk of it is debt service. Then we have transit, which is the 4 million that I just mentioned, capital and other and other is inclusive of like our prisoner care. What else? I know my budget team told me, but prisoner care and liability insurance, things like that. So total expenses about 205 million. And that is actually all that I have for you. But I'm happy to stand for any questions. Yes. Council Leslie, if you go back to page, I think it was page four. You made a comment right after looking at the youth out of school time program. You know that it's quite expensive. Sometimes I

like to see how many people are reached based on the expenses. You know, sometimes it looks expensive, but if you're reaching 15,000, 20,000 children and you do a little bit of division, you know that it doesn't become too expensive. Maybe if you could just give me a breakdown if you have time to, you know, the impact. How many people are we serving when we spend so many millions? Mayor? Councilor Mattis absolutely. That's information that we will get for you. Maybe it won't look quite as expensive that way. Councilor. Thanks. I have a question on slide six. So the gross receipts tax here, that's. This amount includes the increase that we're seeing that we've been talking about for. Is that somehow accounted for separately? Mayor? Councilor Harris no, this is accounted for separately. This is general fund only. Okay. That GR is actually a special revenue fund. So it's in a completely different fund that we will be bringing detail for, I believe, on the sixth. And then seven. Just because that focus is on here, I think something that came up the back of the tree is not rolling. The next set of funds. Does that impact things for 27 or for 28? Mayor Councilor Harris, it does not have a huge increase this year because, again, we do have to roll those bonds off. Once that debt service, once the debt is paid for, we'll see a larger, larger increase. But it is not something that you would see really an impact of in fiscal

27. Okay. That's it. Thanks. Councilmember. Thank you. I just wanted to add, I think the GPAs are in other. Also or clarify, I guess. I think that's where those are. I'm not sure. Sorry. Vanessa. So actually the operating that's actually included in the 52 million. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify where the JPA were. So thank you very much. Mayor Councilor Leslie, I think for the. Over here, just for the public so that folks are clear, can you talk a little bit more about why the new GR funding that the voters approved lives outside of this? Yes. Mayor Councilor Bencomo, this is the GR that was just recently passed. It has a very specific. Use that we can use. And so we do isolate it as a special revenue fund so that we can ensure that that is used for what the voters intended it for. Okay. Thanks, Alyssa. Thank you. And I will turn it over to Christine Rivera, city clerk. Mayor, City Council. Christine Rivera, your city clerk. So at the budget retreat, we did hear the common theme of everyone's favorite. And so I just wanted to kind of go over where we are right now as it relates to our request. So in 2024, we had over 3000 requests. Last year, we had over 7000 requests. And as of last Wednesday, we are over 3000 already anticipating to be on

target for about 15,000 this year. So we spent approximately 500 hours as an organization collectively researching, reviewing and redacting releasing documents to the public. So what that doesn't include is the processing of requests. And so I want to kind of walk you through what it takes to process one request. So this morning when I logged into our gov portal, which is our records request portal, we have over or almost 2000 open requests right now. So we are a little backed up when it comes to requests. A lot of those requests, I will say, are for PD video, and those take a significantly more amount of time to do than a document to redact. So for every one hour of video, it takes staff approximately three hours to redact. And that's just for one video. So you can see why we're progressively getting backed up in the number of requests that we're getting. So we get about 40 to 50 requests a day. I know last weekend my staff came to me, we got 150 requests over one weekend. So then on Monday morning we have to start processing. So what does that entail? Well, we receive requests via different avenues. So we receive them through our QA portal or we receive them via email or in person. Now if we receive them via email or in person, what we do is then we just put it into our gov QA portal because we track that and that's how we release documents most of the time. So after we enter into the portal, we do what is called the three day response, which is required by law. So we have to send each individual requester a response saying that we will get to you in three days to let you know the status of your request. After we do that, we start sending what we call our activities to departments. And so that's where they try to research and find all the documentation that is required.

We also send those to PD who do their own redacting and then provide stuff back to us. After we get the documents back from the departments. A lot of times we still need to review them. And so at the three days, we have to send an additional letter saying, now we have up to 15 days to respond to you. And again, that is also required by law. After we receive the documents and we review them, we have to apply any exemptions that may apply, and then we make sure that it's all up in the portal for them to review and receive. After we redact the documents, we then have to send a subsequent email or letter saying, these are exactly the things that we redacted from your document, and we have to list out every state, statute and exemption. So most of the time at that point, if it's electronic, we can close out the request. Here's your documents. We're done. But sometimes people request that the documents be printed or they be put on a jump drive. So we do charge for that. We charge for printing copies or the cost of the jump drive only. So then what we have to do is then we have to create an invoice in the system for them. So that's an additional step. Then they have to come into the office to pick up the invoice, pay it, and then give us receipts of what they've paid. Then we have to go back into the system and mark it as paid. And at that point it's closed out. So if we are not able to disclose stuff at the 15 days, which is becoming more prominent, especially with video, we have to send another letter updating them, that it's going to take us this amount of time to get to your request, and we try to do what is called rolling disclosures. So every month, every couple weeks, we're producing stuff. But like I said, as we're producing stuff minimally, we're getting more

requests and we're getting more and more backed up. And so I just wanted to explain the steps of just one request and how many hours it takes my team and also PDS team to get through API requests every day. And so with that, I will turn it over to Mandy. Hopefully she has something more exciting for you than me. Thank you. Mayor Council. Mandy Leatherwood I'm the communications director. And so there are a couple items brought up at the budget retreat related to communications that I wanted to talk about with you today. The first is a communications plan. And so we do have a we will be putting in place a communications plan in the next fiscal year. There will not be additional budget for that. We have a lot of the pieces already social media. We have a social media policy. We have a news policy. We have brand and brand standards and guidelines. And so it's just a matter of pulling those into one place. So that is easy for Council and our community to understand what we're doing. So we will be doing that in the next fiscal year to address as part of that communications plan, the Council strategic plan, the the last one I know that's being updated now specifically called out several hard to reach audiences. And I just wanted to address that. We are consistently improving how we reach some of those audiences, one of which is Spanish speakers. And so one of the things that we recently implemented was allowing for there to be Spanish captions for city council meetings that are broadcast there. There was a cost to that. That was in this year's budget. It'll roll over. So we're not asking for an increase. We're also looking at several things related to Americans with disabilities. We

do things such as captions and alt text for people who who need it. We also are looking at now some audio descriptions that also will have a cost, but we are not asking for a budget increase. For that, we're going to work within our current budget to to make that work. Another audience that was called out as difficult to reach is our youth. And that was a theme in our budget retreat. And so there's a couple things that we currently do to engage with youth. We have increased some of our social media on TikTok, and I want to call that out because we have Instagram and Facebook, and we look at our analytics and the top performing posts. Oftentimes Facebook and Instagram are similar, but TikTok has a very different top performing posts. Last year, some of our top performing posts were the mayor and councilor Karen doing basketball challenges with teenagers. So I do think that it is reaching the audiences that we are intending. We're also consistently working in partnership with the schools and with Nmsu. In addition to those summer rec being high performing. A recent video that had very good analytics was a partnership with Nmsu, where we shared transit options between New Mexico State University and downtown. And so working with our partners helps us get a higher viewership. I called out on the slide a couple of programs that our community engagement team does now. One is know your local government, where they work with students that come in and learn about different things that we're doing, and then they actually do an engaged activity where

they help us work through some issues that we're looking at. And, and in the fall, we do a developing youth leaders program, which is during fall break, and we bring in high schoolers and they spend a week learning about different things that our departments do. They spend a day at Parks and Rec, a day at public works, a day at utilities. And so really trying our best to make sure that students are engaged in, understand what we are doing here. One more thing, and we do have some budget related to that, specifically in social media and then running those programs. But again, those are already budgeted. So it's not going to be a new ask in the next fiscal year. And then one thing that came up in budget retreat was our Las Cruces program. That is the city's 311 system. So you can report if you have you see a pothole or there's weeds in the median or something, there's a streetlight out. All of those things can be reported so that we can fix them. And we actually relaunched that app this month. It just went live. It has hopefully it's a little bit more intuitive, easier to use. It has a fresh look. And so that's really exciting because we've been working on that for a very long time. We there is some budget related to promoting that. And so we will be promoting some of it in this fiscal year. But we've also requested to we have requested to increase some advertising budget in the community engagement line item so that we can do advertising so that people understand what that program is. And hopefully we'll use it and, and share more of those issues with us so we can address them and fix them quickly. And so those were the communications items that were brought up at budget retreat. We are not asking overall to increase the budget for communications, but we'll be allocating things specifically

to those items. All right. And with that, I will invite Chief Daniels up here. Good afternoon. Mayor. Council Mike Daniels, fire chief. I appreciate the opportunity to come up and just talk about some of how the fire department's programing aligns with the council priorities. And truly, we've we've always felt very supported by city staff and council. So it's much appreciated. Youth engagement. This is one of those areas that I think has been a really big part of the fire department mission is engaging with our youth, getting education out there. Some of it's actually mandatory through our ISO and scoring. So but every year we have a summer youth camp. We bring in anywhere from 10 to 20 teenagers and just teach them about the fire department, try to engage them. And it's been really successful and, and actually getting people going down the career path in, in the fire service. So I know we have one kiddo right now who's, who's an, A student who started in our summer youth camps. And he's 100% intentional on, on joining the fire department when he graduates high school. So we're excited for that. We also do ace throughout the year. We have students cycle through stations. They also cycle through some of our other divisions like M, I, h, they, we really don't have them respond on light type calls, but in the m I h world, they have gone through their same with our, our operational support and logistics. And now as we start to expand in EMS services with our single role providers in transport, I'm looking forward to opportunities to, to get them engaged there. Summer internship programs or the summer program where they are paid internships that we've

partnered with Dona Ana County for every year. We've had students through that process. I think last year we didn't because we had some carryover from our Ace students who ended up in a paid internship program. So but also so one of the requirements every year or through ISO and it impacts our ISO score is early childhood education and elementary. Second and third graders is our primary target for visiting every class in every school every year. So that's one of our goals is to engage their and then community event standbys. Believe it or not, we get a lot of engagement in our Special Olympics standbys, where we're working with the community pal boxing. We try to engage and provide all the medical support there, but also getting several of our members who have come up through the Pal system and are now firefighters, we have I it's not just 1 or 2. We have several people who have who have come up through the Pal system. So we like to remain engaged there and ensure we're. We're supporting that. And we've we've always had the support. We're not asking for any additional support in those areas. Those are already part of our operating goals. LCC partnerships. So we. The state is generally responsible for fire drills and fire inspections in government buildings. One of the issues that we generally see with that is you have you don't have the same level of resources that you can commit, because there's only a handful of inspectors throughout the state and they cover the entire state. So we've actually entered into an agreement with the state, I believe, that started under former Chief Enriquez, now Mayor Enriquez. But but we're we have started working toward. Now we do 100% of all the

public schools within the city. We do their fire drills. We do their fire inspections to make sure we're there, that the school facilities are up to par. And they're meeting the intent of our our fire safety requirements within the city. It's something that we enjoy doing. We like being a part of it, and it just continuously gets us in the schools. Additionally, with the opioid, some of the opioid funds, the Keeping It Real program is, is getting back is going to be getting back into the schools. I'm not entirely sure where that is right now, but I know they've been working toward getting that reengaged on mental health inspection expansion, which I think is one of the bigger areas that I think that the fire department has been involved in over the last few years with, with respect to light, we're still only responding to about 50% of the entity or the calls that light is responsible for responding to. Naturally. That number is it's a little concerning in that we would love to be close to 100%. Some of that involves overnight and in the absence of a facility to house them overnight, we're just not there. And that's the honest truth. But I do want to highlight that there are several cross-functional programs across the city that I think often get missed when it comes to mental health awareness and how we're engaging. So Mi light, our partnership with Lcpd, with with Bluebird and their community, community advocacy Muni Court in and their management case management, where they're helping people get to court dates, helping them access resources. These are things that realistically, I didn't even know existed a year ago. So I'm really happy to see that quality of life, senior programs, their social

workers do an amazing job in their annual visits, and then our NGO's that we have throughout the city, they I think we often look at specifically what is the city doing? And we forget to take into account the the broader picture of what mental health looks like in a community and whether or not that's immediate access to counseling and care. What are the barriers to immediate access or access to regular care? Is it a lack of providers? Is it a lack of transportation? Is it a lack of getting people to or getting people engaged? Because like, the reason we have an Ma program is the healthcare system is pretty convoluted and difficult to access sometimes. So I think it's important for us to take stock in all of the services that the city has, not only provided by the city, but through our partners. Some of the challenges that we're navigating is or not really challenges, but things we're starting to really look at navigating and talking to. Alyson Stoner, our, our program manager for, for NIH and light is, is how do we, how do we leverage the 911988 system? How do we tap into there? There are two crisis teams in our county that that they operate through the 988 system and 911 and 988 don't really communicate well. So those are some of the things that we have upcoming. I don't know that there's an immediate solution or really a monetary thing that happens today, but mostly just gaining a solid understanding how we can integrate our systems, create efficiencies amongst all of our partners without losing effectiveness. So that's, that's our goal for this upcoming year is really to start understanding a lot more where we're seeing breakdowns within the system so that we can make a very intentional recommendation when it comes to expanding that service or

expanding mental health programs. So with that, I stand for any questions. Oh, okay. I got kicked out. Sorry. Questions are after everyone presents. Yeah, we can do we can do questions at the end. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Members of council. Natalie Green for the record. So the general fund represents about 2% of our total budget. So our plan with the funds that we are given is to continue to leverage state and federal funds for affordable housing development. So we do the development through special revenue or grants. This year with the general fund, we are expanding the emergency Handyman services program. So we're raising that by $20,000. As part of our Cdbg funds, we increased funding for home rehabilitation, and we're also expanding that to include some essential services in partnership with our utilities program. We are anticipating the winter opening of Amador Crossing, so we have a small set aside for that opening. As the rental income comes in, then it'll become a self-sufficient one of the big priorities that's come out of our consolidated plan and our affordable housing plan is expanding single family home ownership program. So there's some new revenue sources coming out of the state. So we'll be exploring those to bring those to Las Cruces. And one of the big ones is up to $50,000 down payment assistance for new homeowners. If it's an entry level housing product. So the lot has to be less than 5000ft, and the home has to be less than 808, 1800 square feet. We are launching next month a request for qualifications. So we're looking for a development partner to work on a downtown mixed income, mixed use facility. This is intended to be a higher income than our

traditional low income housing tax credits. And that's to encourage investment in the downtown so that RFQ will be out April 1st. We also have a couple projects in the queue that are small scale missing middle housing. This has been an ongoing discussion in both elevate and our housing plan. And so we have some pilot projects that we'll be working on. The general fund will cover some of the due diligence that's needed for those, but then we'll pursue some special revenue funding, primarily out of the state, to fund those. And then we do have continued support for our nonprofit partners out of the Telshor fund. So that includes the healthcare public services funding, and that funds a variety of programs, including youth nonprofits, food, nonprofits, some basic needs like shower services. And then we have some special revenues that are assisting the community of Hope campus, both facility improvements and then operations. So things like that, state funding for the active transportation, the Hawk system. We have some funds coming in for the reroof of one of the facilities. And with that, I will turn it over to parks with Steve Bingham. Thank you. Natalie. Steve Bingham, parks and recreation Creation. We we have a number of things in the budget. A couple have been touched upon, but we are reclassing one of our aquatics maintenance workers to Aquatics maintenance supervisor. We're looking for someone who has plumbing or electrical license and has more experience related to the more intense aquatic maintenance issues, so that we

can increase our online time. Just a highlight. 4th of July celebration is 235,000. That doesn't include wages and overtime for the police. That's your stage, your entertainment, your fireworks, your security and a number of things there. The Pal boxing bout 100,000 individuals. It serves 40 people a day in the boxing. And then we have what's the out of school time. So it's after school programs, teens. We expanded this last year from one site to the process of expanding to a second site. The weed and Seed program. It's safe haven and the youth development and diversion. And I will provide you some specific numbers. I don't have all those numbers on me right now. For example, the after school program has 420 slots with 81% fill rate. The teen connects has 72, but I don't I don't have full comprehensive list of numbers. I don't have the numbers on me for the weed and seed and the youth and development and diversion and that. So we'll send those over to you. A little bit about the youth development version. For example, they hold things like dating violence rallies at various schools. They have classes on healthy relationships. They the juvenile Probation office gives us referrals and Cruces public schools, the SROs and the

parents all provide references and referrals for youth for the more intense programing. Good afternoon, mayor Council Jaime Moreno, interim assistant director for Public Works. So I wanted to just talk for a few moments on some public works key initiatives as part of the budget. One, dealing with traffic safety is expanding our traffic calming program to include more mobile and easily deployed devices. This will also include pilot programs for those cases as well. Similar to the the pilot program we installed there on Melendrez. So similar similar items. Also, as part of the traffic safety, we're going to use the pending traffic safety action plan from the safe streets for all analysis to target infrastructure expenditures. So that will help us target with our heatmap and be able to target some of those specific zones where we're seeing some some recurring issues. Also, we would like to pair grant opportunities with city funding based off of our overall system, pavement condition index, PCI. So hopefully that'll start getting those PCI numbers to, to climb and get higher. And then that's mainly for our traffic safety and horizontal construction, our roadway as part of our facilities infrastructure, general facility repairs to include roofs, Hvac systems, electrical systems, mold and bestos abatement, all sorts of general facility repairs that that are

needed throughout the city. Also, security, fire line generator upgrades and parking lot repairs. Some of our parking lots are in our in dire need of of rehabilitation. So Wesley only allowed me one slide. So that's all I can I can speak to, but I'll be happy to answer any questions at the conclusion. Good afternoon, mayor and Council Carol Bray, director of the Quality of Life Department. And we heard a lot of great feedback from council at the budget retreat, much of which we can respond to from the quality of life department. So happy to use my one slide to do that. First, I wanted to mention there were, of course, many references to youth programs. We've heard this from you multiple times, and as you know, our department provides a diverse array of programs for all ages, ranging from storytime for preschoolers and movement programs to steam programs, science, technology, engineering, art, and math for our elementary school students and teenagers, as well as weekly programs for teenagers. And we have two makerspaces actually at our library right now at the library. And we do make our activities at the museums as well. So that's great for our future computer scientists, etc. But we also we heard a lot about youth programs and teen programs, and I want to focus more on that. We are working on a pilot project, a teen hangout pilot project at our Branigan library. We already have a designated teen space there. We've been doing some work to upgrade it. It needs some more upgrading and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we also have our Teen Tuesdays every week at the museums, which have been very

popular and keep growing in number. So what we're hoping to do is capitalize on the teen hangout space, our teen space at Branigan Library, plus these teen museum programs and will include activities such as video games are very popular. We have computers available, particularly at the library. We have homework help available crafts. We have the two makerspaces. As I mentioned, the library's do something called punk, DIY, punk, do it yourself, which is very popular. And food. Of course, food is very important if you're getting teens into the space. And sometimes we even use food as a bit of a draw, I would say. But once they get there, they find out how great our spaces can be. So we do have a few needs to make this happen. We're looking at some deep cleaning needed of the space. A little updating, probably some paint, maybe some new lighting, some better shelves. For our manga collection, especially, I'm told by our teen librarian and better food. We are told the museum serve pizza. The library does not. So we're going to have to work on that, but we will. And then in terms of communications, you know, obviously we're on social media a lot. We talk with our teens as much as we possibly can. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Instagram and TikTok, but we've also begun some discussion. I think we have Mandy with our communications department about some potential videos of teens at the at the library, at the museum, showing the kind of good times they're having and posting those on social media as well. So we'll have more to say on that. We're going to present something of a plan to our Assistant City Manager, Sonia Delgado, and see how we can make that happen. We'll make it happen either way. It just depends on how much budget we'll have. So we also maintain a close relationship with the community. Schools, as you know, Las Cruces Public schools, community schools, we have councilor McClure currently

serving as the chair of that partnership board. Councilor Harris serves on it. The mayor is going to be attending. I understand we also work closely with the community schools. I attend those meetings every month, and our museums provide regular activities for second graders at the community schools, and we're working on a fourth grade program as well. Plus, we're just really kind of in constant communication with them about outreach programs they're having and that kind of thing, and participating in those. And then another group I want to mention is our neo divergent individuals. So the museums have stepped up to serve another group of patrons, really those with neo divergent traits. And neurodiversity is a term that refers to the natural variations in human brain function. It really embraces the fact that people have different ways of thinking, learning, and processing information. So some people are, for example, very sensitive to excessive noise, light and smells. So we've created these neurodivergent nights on Thursdays to create kind of a quieter experience at the museums, less light, less noise. And we're finding it's extremely popular. We've had upwards to 40 people a week at these nights. I think people enjoy the fact that the museums are open, first of all, on Thursday night, that they can have a different kind of experience. And we're working with a national organization called Culture City that is helping us with this. And it's really transformed our our museums on Thursday nights. It's pretty cool. I also want to talk a little bit more about just physical and mental health. I want to thank Chief Daniels for mentioning our senior programs and our case managers, and what we do there to promote mental health for our seniors. Also physical health. We have, as you know, a wide range of activities at our senior centers from line dancing, which is extremely popular, ballroom dancing, our just our, our chair yoga, you know, stretching exercises, all kinds

of programs, but we also promote health at our libraries and our museums. We've had a number of programs. There's a program the libraries have right now called, I think it's called aging for aging for adults or something like that. You know, so because it's not always easy, we've had our pull up a chair programs at the museums where we've talked about difficult subjects, such as when we had the Downwinders exhibit about what happened after the atomic bomb testing in New Mexico. That was a tough exhibit, but it was really well received in our community. So that's something we continue to pursue, and our senior programs will also, every year, they promote and support prevention of abuse in later life. Health fair that's held at the Munson Center each year. And I want to say that carefully prevention of abuse in later life. But it's really very popular. We bring in lots of agencies to that every year. And last but not least, I just want to mention our many infrastructure improvements that we're working on that are in various stages of development. We have, of course, we've just finished the Munson Center addition. We have our Branigan Library renovation and expansion project, which is by far the largest project we're working on right now. The purchase and renovation of Eastside Center Sage Cafe expansion is getting ready to start now. We have. The funding has finally come for the final phase. We'll be able to build another 4500 square foot addition at Sage Cafe for our seniors. That will be great. And then, of course, we're doing some improvements on Branigan Branigan Cultural Center. We have about $1 million in funding to do the stucco and painting on the exterior. We received legislative legislative funding for the Mona Museum of Nature and Science Nature Center improvements. And of course, we're working on the amateur hotel restoration. So all of those projects are in some state of funding at this point. You know, I forgot to mention on Eastside Center, we don't have quite enough to do everything we want to do, but we'll have enough to purchase the facility and do the initial

renovation. So, you know, as was mentioned by by Jimmy Moreno from Public Works, it's so important to keep our facilities in good condition. And we do work very closely with public works and facilities to make sure that we get repairs as we can do them as we have the money for them, but also that we're thinking about the future and how we can accommodate our public. So that's it for me. And I will introduce Adrian Whitmer from utilities. Mayor Council Adrian Whitmer, utilities Director. Thank you very much. Well, as you know, utilities is an enterprise funded department. And as part of that, we budget to meet service and operational demands with each of the lines of business. And so we have four of those. And that's what the revenues from water, wastewater, natural gas and solid waste. This year, we're going to be focusing on finalizing the energy transition plan. So we're hoping to do that before the end of the calendar year. We're not sure it will be completed before the end of June. We'll be reclassifying some positions, specifically contract positions. And those even though they're contract positions, because we are requesting them to become full time employees, they're considered new positions. And we're mainly doing that because it's very difficult right now to hire people on a contract basis. People would really like to have a full time job. So, you know, a few years ago, we added three new people for a crew for water, and those have not been filled specifically because they are contract positions. So if they're FTEs, people feel more inclined to go ahead and take that because of their expertise. We are, however, asking for one brand new position, and that's going to be for a regulatory analyst.

And that's because of the increased regulatory requirements and or review of new and existing regulations. We're also going to be utilizing utilizing loans and grants for our capital improvement projects this year. And we're we're requesting minimal minimal vehicle and equipment replacements this year. And then we are working on rate reviews. It's been nearly ten years since we did water and wastewater. Both of those are under review right now. They should be coming out shortly. And then we will follow with solid waste and natural gas. Our overall proposed budget will be taking that in front of the utility board in April, so that it can be incorporated into your budget come May or June as that works. So. And that will be coming as a recommendation from the Utility Board. Thank you. Again, mayor City Council. With that, we will stand for any questions. I'm hopeful that now that you had an opportunity to hear from all of the subject matter experts that you are comfortable with, the things that we have already incorporated into the budget. Thank you. Leslie. Thank. I have many questions so everyone will get a chance to come back up. I think the the first question since you're already up and I guess the elephant in the room, our general inquiries are less than our general fund expenditures by quite a while. So I guess what more should we

be concerned about? Yeah. Well, yes, mayor Councilor Harris, that is definitely the elephant in the room and something that I have been working close with my team as well as the city manager on what that will look like going forward. So we have done budget reductions both this year in fiscal 26, as well as people submitted budgets for draft for proposed 27. We did go back and ask them to reduce those. We are continuing to look at transfers and where we can reduce those. You mentioned debt. That is a huge part of our transfers. Unfortunately, until that debt pays off, we aren't going to reap the benefits of that, right? There are lots of things that we are looking to do in fiscal 27. I just am not. We don't fully have those fleshed out yet, and when we do, sooner rather than later, because I hear you when you say it's definitely the elephant in the room, but there are a lot of different avenues that we're we're working on. I will say that we have made a lot of progress in, you know, that line that we talked about at the budget retreat that is kind of crossed where revenue and revenue did not match expense. We are much better in this budget as well as in this fiscal year. So when I bring that to you next time, that, God willing, that line will look much different. Okay, all of that to say, I promise we are are addressing that. Yeah. No, that's that's great. I just want to make sure that everybody, everyone understands that. We all know that those lines are crossing and we're trying to not have that

situation because yeah, that's not good. Not good for a city. So. My next question I think is for Christine. I'll just go in order. So first question you mentioned that you said the major thing is for police body cam footage and. The I have personally seen starting to cross my Instagram and YouTube feeds channels that are kind of slow and just are like gone with those body cam footage that we got from random police department. Are we seeing a bunch of that from us? Yes, mayor. Councilor Harris, we are seeing a huge uptick in requests from YouTubers and TikTokers requesting video. We have a huge amount of requests for that right now, and it's becoming difficult to balance those requests over a citizen requesting a police report for an accident. So it's becoming very difficult for us to manage. Yeah, I figured I mean, the public has a right to get documents and requests, and there are other kinds of requests too. So that is unfortunately, we are in an unfortunate position because of the state law on that. But you mentioned that PD does some of the redacting do are they able to do most of the redacting? Is it shared by you? How does that split work? Yeah. So, mayor, Councilor Harris PD does redactions for their documents and their videos. Then we received them and we just kind of make sure that all the correct exemptions were applied.

And if there's any corrections that need to be made, then my team does that. My team focuses on just all the other city requests. And so they're redacting all the other city requests. Okay. And then do we have any like duplicates? And does that result in duplicate work or like half duplicates? You know, if somebody says, give me all the body cam footage from 2025 and someone says, give me this specific case, or do you have a portal? Like how do people go and maybe find some of that stuff that's already been released? So, mayor, Councilor Harris, we don't have a portal really where we kind of make that available for everyone to go view. What we do is we do get their requests. And so we will get, for example, multiple requests for an officer involved shooting. And so then we have to reply to every single request, and we have to provide the exact same stuff that they're requesting to every single request. So if they're requesting 30 body cam videos, we have to go through every single request and send them a link for each of those videos. But it's at least you can handle them like the same. It's just copy and paste to all the people who are requesting that. Okay, that's good to know. And yeah, I mean, those, the number, the amount of hours and the work that's to be done. I mean, that's like almost five FTEs worth of time. And we're kind of required by state law to do that, lest we incur financial penalties. Correct. And mayor, Councilor Harris, I only have right now three FTEs in my department working on requests. And then PD has, I believe, five. They have five. So yes, we're down a little bit. Yep. All right. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. That was

my last one for you. And then I think Mandy was slide nine maybe. Slide nine. Yeah. I started writing down slide numbers after this. Yes. So are we, I guess kind of following the social media trend. Are we talking for a lot of ads to push our stuff on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube? And the other part of that question is, are we saying that those ads are worthwhile? Because personally, in the industry I'm in and things I follow, the ads seem maybe like an expense that could be cut. So. Mayor, Councilor Harris, yes, we do have funding behind our social not all of our social media posts, a lot of things are organic, but we do certain things that we want attention on. We will put money behind. I would say it's not it's probably one of the least expensive types of advertising that we do. And we do get good return on investment. Oftentimes when I pull the analytics, when I pulled the top. Posts or videos, the ones that we've put money behind consistently come at the top because we they have more views because we've paid for them to be there. And are we tracking? I guess, conversion from post post to, you know, whether boosted or not to something actually occurred, like a person showed up for a thing. And I know it's a very, it's a very difficult thing to try. But. Mayor, Councilor Harris yes, we are. And I'll just anecdotally tell a story of the Neighborhood Leadership Academy. We have seen dwindling number

of applicants this year. We did a video, we paid money and we had 50 applicants, which was the most we've had as long as I've been working with it. So they it is working when we're targeting those types of projects. Cool. That's that's worth that's all I got for you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Chief Daniels. So I think you mentioned that. I think all of us are very pro lite and m I h that's a huge problem in the community. I'm glad that we're working to solve it. You mentioned that we're kind of dependent on a facility that that's the main barrier to expanding the number of calls that can be can be addressed. And I know we've been talking about that facility and accepting grants for it. So I just wanted to make sure that that's really kind of the main barrier. Yes. Mayor. Councilor Harris, Mike Daniels, I just. Sorry. That's correct. So the facility right now, and when we did our tours of the station, we have our entire NIH and light team crammed in a, in a classroom. Yeah. That, that, that has some cubicles built into it and a couple offices that were transformed. So, so space is, is a very, very big issue right now for us. So expanding the, the program wouldn't, wouldn't be pragmatic until we have that facility in place, which is fully funded. We're just going through finishing up historic preservation that just got done. And now we're in the waiting period. But but we're actually at a point now where public works is going to be moving forward with, with, with trying to get a contractor for demolition and, and to build

the station. And that should align pretty, that should align well with our hopeful projected growth. Cool. Yeah, looking forward to that new facility. I know we've talked about it many times before. And then something else you said was trying to do more integration with between 988 and 9 one one, and I have actually been sort of on the other end of one of those calls where somebody called nine, eight, eight, and then nine, eight, eight was like, we need to help this person. And they reached out, you know, eventually got back to me in my private capacity, trying to like locate this person to find them, which is quite a desperation from just, you know, being able to call police and, and things like that. They couldn't, they tried to contact police and work with them and it just wasn't working out. So they were trying all these other avenues. So yeah, I'd be interested to know kind of what a little more about that. Maybe not so much. I'm taking up a lot of time already and I have more questions. But no, not at all. Mayor. Councilor Harris so nine eight, eight doesn't integrate necessarily with the 911 system. They can transfer 2911, but we don't really see good communication through the two. And what that leads to is communication breakdowns between the the crisis response teams that are in the community. So I know FYI and Allison have talked and the goal is to get them together and go like, what truly is our capacity and where do we have gaps in, in, in these response times, whether it's nine one 1 or 9, eight, eight. And really what we have to figure out is through the system, if our our light team

is out of service and it's not urgent, right? The person is not actively harming themselves or others. And they're, but they're, they're in a, a, a variation of crisis and they need services. Is it appropriate for us to try to get that call into the 988 system, as opposed to sending. PD officers a fire truck and transporting them to an E.R. where they're likely not going to get the care or the services that they need. When we could have gotten. Now, crisis triage is beneficial in that when we're somewhat destination agnostic in that in the private ambulance model, what we would have experienced is this reluctancy to maybe transport to a facility like that, because it's non-reimbursable. Well, for us, that's not the important thing. The important thing for us is ensuring that a person gets to the appropriate level of care. So we will transport directly to crisis triage when we can, and that is an available service in the community that that is really just starting to pick back up because it because of how it's ebbed and flowed and its service capacity. Cool. That's yes, I was thinking that exact same thing. So thank you very much for answering that. Yes, sir. Okay. I'm good. Thank you. All right. So I guess one question here and maybe a comment. I'm hugely in favor of the handyman, the emergency handyman and the home rehab programs. And. We're definitely interested in I know this is hard to quantify, but kind of

our ROI on that, like if we're able to help somebody fix a problem, with our best guess on how much that has saved the system as a whole. You know, going on, or have we kept them out of needing other services, you know, because we helped them fix some problem? And that that might be more of a question for later, but. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Harris So I believe we're about 45 people that we've helped. Some of them has fixed an immediate issue. So it was like an Ada or a water heater issue. We've done a patching of a roof coating, and that helped a permanent issue of many of the things that we're seeing is a life in like a life safety issue. So we're able to provide a temporary air conditioner in partnership with M-i-a, right? So they identify clients who are at risk of heat related incidents. So we see that as the win that we're preventing a potential heat related death. But we can start looking at some of those data points to quantify in the future. Okay. Yeah, I think I mean, I know that we've started doing that in response to actual deaths. And so I think that's important to to keep in mind with the community that like, this isn't something that we're like, oh, this would be fun to provide. It's like, no, people really need these services. And a lot of money that we put to it is, is actually like saving people's lives. So. Okay. Thanks. That was fun. And then parks. Thank you. So you mentioned that other

afterschool programs, we have like an 80% fill rate. Yes. 81. Yes. And what do you see as the barrier to getting to 100%? And where could we put resources to get there? Well, you, I know that Robert's specifically speak to that. Right? He's coming down. I will give you some information. The typical afterschool program nationally costs between 3500 and 5500 a year per child, and our current cost per child is $3,588. And so we are on the low end. What you do see is, is our fee for service is at the very bottom compared to what you see nationally. We charge very little for that service. Okay. Robert Nunez, Deputy Director, Parks and Recreation Mayor councilor Harris, I think what we see at some of our locations, we have four locations that are at capacity right now. The other three locations there is the community schools in in two of them, as well as century 21 and some other afterschool programs at the schools. Host. But traditionally it's been Alameda, Loma Heights and Cesar Chavez that have had the lowest rates. Okay. And is that is that like a transient issue that people have a hard time getting to the schools, or is it fees or just people aren't participating in the community? Mayor, councilor Harris, again, our locations are at the schools, so they there's no need for any transportation. Prior to Covid, our fees were about $400 per semester during Covid. Of course, we. We eliminated our fees. We're currently at $100 per semester.

We have scholarships available that can assist families. I hope that they're going to other activities. Okay, maybe privately or whatnot. But we we try to accommodate as many families and youth as possible. Okay. So since they're not the schools, are those limited to just students who are in those schools or if there's another location like referral and somebody can get their child to, you know, Alameda from wherever. Conley say, you know, would they be able to participate in that program? Is that like a way to start filling up those programs or. Mayor? Councilor Harris, we do allow families to transport their kids to other. We have, I would say, about 4 or 5 families that that transport their kids to those locations, to various locations. I'm not sure specifics, but we do allow that. Okay. Cool. Good to know. That's what I had for parks. Thank you. Can I add one thing? I think one of the things that is important is, as part of the piece of the puzzle isn't just after school programing, but it may be a time class or a dance class or karate class at another site where the youth may be involved in programing, but it's not an after school programing per term. So. All right. Yeah. Good to know. Public works. On site 13. Oh yes. Next one. So you mentioned that we're expanding our program to include mobile and easily deployed devices.

What are some of those mobile and easily deployed devices? Councilor Harris So some of those. Devices include like speed monitoring devices that can be easily mounted, let's say, to a street light or easily moved around to different locations depending on on hotspots, collect data as well. So we can see if, if, if those are empirically helping to calm some of that speed. So some of those there's different speed tables that are, that are deployable, a bit more mobile, less permanent in nature. And so that allows us to, to rotate between different hotspots. And then we also coordinate with PD on those locations as well to do like some blitzes and different stream monitoring through, through enforcement actions as well. So, okay. Yeah, it's the, the speed tables and things I am highly in favor of, like the ones that you can just go bolt to the street and not have to do a huge, a huge project to get them in. I think there's lots of places that we can use those. So looking forward to, to a lot more funding and, and maybe a shift towards more of these things. I guess the mobile speed monitors. I'm personally skeptical of how well does work, especially long term, like we put them up on people slow down. I mean, I've heard PD speak to this too, that they see the study goes in slow down. All the studies are then it leaves and now things are exactly back to the way they were. And there's been no real change. But for more permanent things that are quicker to design and deploy and pilot programs like on the interest. I don't want to steal Councilor Bencomo spotlight. But somebody did ask me about

it the other day and they said they hated it. So. And pedestrian, they ride their bike. So anyway, but but I guess the point is that that's I'm a little more like, it's okay to put in a bunch of text posts and have them hated or not work well than it is to put in a bunch of curbs or like permanent modifications that also don't work well. So, you know, I like the fact that we, we're, we're trying. I'd like for us to try the cheap things and rapidly iterate on them. So I think that's, that's a good direction. And then I also wanted to just highlight that several departments have been doing in a lot of in-house work. And I really appreciate the work that like Public Works has done with that. To really kind of bring our costs and response times down across like to, I guess, you know, having that indigenous capability and wasting a little less money on overhead and contracting. And I'd also like to see, I guess just more, more of that like museums. And they had some problems with a door at one of the museums. And I was thinking like, well, could the door just be repaired by somebody else who knows how to repair a door? So yeah, just, just interested in looking more at that. And likewise with food. I know you guys have a great food shop where they do, they do other stuff. Public works has a fleet shop. So I just wanted to, to kind of close by highlighting that the more stuff that we can do in-house and, and we get these full time positions and, and expertise in materials and tools that saves the city money in the long term. So thank you and thank everybody else for

presenting. Thank you for putting up with all my questions. Thanks, mayor. Thank you. Mayor Pro tem. Thank you mayor. A couple of comments and then a request. So on the on the on the Las Cruces announcement, I think it's important to, to communicate and get that out there. That's that. Is, is super helpful as far as engagement, I know the cost and I get it. There's another cost that I'd like the staff to consider in our councilors and mayor to consider. I'd like to. Talking more about the Las Cruces app and reaching out to people. So a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to have interns from the hospital and high school age. And so I was showing them, hey, can you give me feedback on this Facebook ad that we were doing? And oh, Mr. Morales, that's a, that's for old people. We don't really want it on Facebook. I'm like, wow, okay, for the webinar. And, and let me tell you about TikTok. And I just gave it to my partner and we laughed at them because they call it Tik Tok. So obviously I need to be educated on that as well. But I think, you know, that's something that's appreciated. And I'd like to do is look at approval rating has been has been where it gets a little bit more robust. We'll have a daily and we'll have a stronger portal that can lay over Las

Cruces for our, our staff who want to be of service and provide timely service. And it'll be also a greater a much better experience for our constituents. And so maybe look at, you know, sometimes life like that can overlay that that service. Mayor and Councilor Munoz, I would like to say all those things are valid about Facebook. We actually have interns that are college interns, and our college intern is who put our Las Cruces advertisement together. So we're hoping to get a younger and fresher perspective on that. The other thing I want to give a thank you to the our IT team as we're they helped us update that app. So it should be easier to use. But if there's additional improvements or ways we'll continue to make improvements, it is not a one time thing. We are continuously improving that app. Wonderful. Yeah, I think the three one will be super helpful. And you know, again, for that spectrum of young adults and, and that range from, you know, 17 to 70, 90 and all ranges. Thanks. Thanks for doing that. The other other piece is on Parks and RECs and you all are going through this budget discussion and other budget discussions. Want to ensure that that all our standings, all our residents have access to those parks. And you, Steve, you and the team have been doing a great job of adding additional and Ada compliant PlayStations and other equipment around the parks. I want to aggressively look at that. The numbers really range, and I wish there were a little bit more solid numbers. There's about a range of, you know, nine to about 15% of our residents Cruces are Ada,

and those are great spaces. Those are third spaces. And I would love to see more access for nine year olds to 90 year olds and older in our parks. I Steve, yes, I mayor pro tem and council. I agree with you. It's something that's been our forefront as we did the East Mesa playground. Not only did we make it a regional, but we really went after more adaptive, inclusive features. It's something we talk about all the time. There's a broad range of disabilities, and it's really hard to be able to serve all the disabilities at every location. It becomes very expensive. One of the trends in this country is going to all ability park a location where you can bring a lot of things together. And for an example, is a child with an ocular implant can't go down a slide that's metal or plastic because it blows it out. And so departments are putting in cement slides, but you can't put in cement sliding everywhere. And so they're doing it at what they call their all abilities park. But we do want to make accessible. Those. So appreciate that, appreciate your focus on that. And then as, as we're getting into this discussion, another budgets that we discussed as we work on the library and museum's quality of life, there's so many amazing things happening in our, in those spaces, you know, from guitar lessons to ceramic ceramics and

just, just a general in our community. And as our trail, you know, just, you know, one of the constituents, you know, came up to me and says, John, I'm glad you're talking about youth engagement, but also talking about senior engagement. You know something? I've got something to do. Everything is dancing off the fire department, Chief Daniels. So please continue that program. And that's absolutely something that she looks forward to and enjoys. So as we work through that. What I want to do, I work with, with, with public works and the library, as we expand and for the more aggressive that we can be to with quality and with safety, get our projects done so that we don't displace those programs because they are a huge benefit to our community. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. And then I closed by saying, thank you, Leslie. And thank you to the department chiefs for putting this together. I'm glad that. The youth engagement, Community safety, Behavioral Health Library and Museum's economic development and community development all together so that we can move forward. I know the budget is what it is, but I'm sure creatively and as you work your magic, Leslie will make things happen. Thank you. Thank you madam. Thank you. Councilmember. Thank you, thank you Leslie. I to you especially, but your whole team. I know, you know, leading this budget search starts much before the the budget retreat, especially in a difficult year. So thank you very much. I also just want to thank all the departments for being so intentional about connecting what you are doing,

what you're planning for with some of the things that Council presented on at the retreat, I appreciate that. I don't think today you're looking for any guidance on anything in particular. Okay. I just have a couple of questions. Leslie, since you're up here, I am curious about municipal court. I know that there's a bit of a odd sort of way we. Because the city is responsible for their budget, but they're obviously the judicial branch. And so that's separate. But I am always curious to hear from them and their needs. I, you know, want to understand more about how their SOS program is going and those kinds of things. Is that something we're prepared to hear from them at all? And before we make our final vote, mayor Councilor Bencomo, I have not reached out to them, but I absolutely can. And. Okay. So we can see if they can present and find out what their needs are. That'd be great. Obviously, you know, something multiple councilors brought up is municipal court, their actual physical building. But obviously I know that they have other needs as well. So I want to make sure that we get to hear from them. Brad, are you leaving? Can I ask a question? Yes. Thank you. This this might be for you. I think it'll be for Christine or for you. Sorry I had to catch you before you left. I'm so sorry. Yes, that would be my request, Leslie. Thank you. Yes, I can do that. Thank you. Christine or Brad. This one could be for either of you. I am, you know. I know we're not necessarily seeking guidance on anything today. I think I just wanted to put a finer point in why at least myself had ipra on my priority list for budget, not only because of the things that Christine just presented on about the serious increase that we're seeing year to year. But to me, one of the biggest consequences of not being able to meet those things is their civil liability risk. And wondering if you could touch a

little bit on what it means. Yes. Okay. So it is Brad, on what it means for us not to meet those requests spread. Mayor Councilor Bencomo yeah, that is something that I found. My thoughts about what we're looking at are pretty extensive backlog right now. We're looking at, you know, Christine and I might have access. And we're trying to find crowd notions as far as I started my blog, but I think that what we're going to find at the end of the day is that the format of the it's going to require, sorry, for the gendered term, but manpower that's that's going to require people power. There you go. So staff is we're trying to help as much as we can, but we're looking at a pretty tall task right now. So anything that it's probably not my place to do this, but I will anything that the government can do to support the clerk's office, please consider that. Thanks, Brad. I really do have concerns about our civil liability risk in general as a whole, and I think this really feeds into that. So I understand we're in a tight place. I just I think as far as priorities go in terms of staff, this is one of them. In order to prevent any further debt in the future. Thanks, Christine. Thanks. And then my last question is for utilities, simply because just last Monday, Adrian, I brought up a couple of the things we talked about during our utilities board, which included Walnut Griggs and the cost allocation conversation. If you could touch on both of those, I want to make sure that council hears directly from you on the importance of something like,

especially the Griggs walnut. AM I saying that backwards? Walnut? Griggs yes, but I knew what you meant. You know what I'm talking about. Thank you. Mayor Council Bencomo, thank you very much. So the budget for Griggs Walnut has been cut to 200,000 instead of 400,000 from the GR. And based on our discussions I did get with Dominique and reviewed how much of the general fund has actually been used over the last few years. So the nice thing is, is that there has been enough funds in the. When we settled with the United States, that we can use that money for anything above and beyond what our operational needs are. That is not paid for by selling the reclaimed water back into the system. So that part is good. There does need, though, to be the complete and total understanding that there if there is going to be budget changes moving forward in Griggs Walnut, it needs to be coordinated with me as the project director for Griggs Walnut for the City of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County. And one of the things that I have thought about is that perhaps I need to refresh, because I really think that there's only one of you, which would be Councilor Mattis, that is fully aware of what occurred with Griggs walnut Superfund. So that is a joint powers agreement between the city of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County for the Superfund project, because the federal government. EPA said that the probable responsible parties were. The city of Las Cruces due to the Crawford airport and Dona Ana County because of their vehicle maintenance that occurred

nearby. So with that, the county and the city joined together for the joint Superfund project, and the city is the fiscal agent utilities offered to operate and maintain it, because we have level four operators that can do the work and that we would cost share 50, 50. And so throughout the years prior to us settling and us being able to get money from actually another responsible party that we brought to their attention, which happened to be the National Guard, the city and the county were splitting everything, e.g. which is the environmental gross receipts, taxes and the general fund were put in together to actually pay for those. So after our settlement and we did get some money, we've been using that particular money. But any changes in the budget really do need to be brought to the attention and get the concurrence of the county without actually having discussions. So moving forward, Leslie and I have agreed that we will have those types of conversations with Dona Ana County and make sure that that is very clear and understood. Understood. The other is the allocation plan. The draft MOU is with legal and with finance that we need to finalize. We've been going back and forth, and we need to sit down and have serious discussions. Currently, utilities budget does not include specific things within the cost allocation, as I am holding those back because I want the MOU. Okay. And MOU should be done before we vote on the budget. Yes, theoretically that would be nice, but I don't know that we're going to be able to get through that based on other

timing issues. I think if our budget gets recommended by the utility board and brought to you all and you say okay to it, if we get the allocation MOU agreed upon and any changes, we can bring that back as a budget adjustment. Okay, thanks. It's not going to kill the budget either way. Got it. Thank you. Adrian, I appreciate the additional context. You got it. Thank you, thank you. And then just a couple notes. These aren't necessarily questions. I just want to make sure I shouted out the brand new S-Class Cruces app. Good job over there you are Mandy. It looks so much better. It's so much. It's just updated like to the 21st century. So I really want to appreciate that. It looks really good. I really want to do think public works for the traffic, the traffic calming, the ongoing priority on that. You know, part of the stuff on the pilot. So folks don't like this one. They didn't like the previous pilot either. So I think one of the things I've learned is that there's never a win win. We just have to try our best. And I do think this pilot program. I think it looks nice, and I hope that it yields the data for us to be able to do something more permanent there. So thank you very much. Public works. And then this just a slight note, because I it just happens to be on my heart. I, you know. Councilor McClelland I met with staff a couple of weeks ago. This isn't don't panic, Leslie, this isn't a request for this year, but I do want to put this out in for you all for the future. That staff deserve higher salaries. And I think it's really important that when we talk about salaries for people, that when we talk about the the biggest assets that we have in the city is people power. And we just, we should just be taking better care of our folks at all across the city, of course. And that just was heavy for me because we recently met with them. And

given the conversations we're having about young people and juveniles, they're the folks on the front line doing a lot of that work, especially with quote unquote, at risk youth. And that just feels an important conversation for us to have in the future. Thanks, mayor, and thanks everyone again. I don't see any others, Leslie. Thank you. Thank you all, staff for the presentations. We appreciate it. That's good. Next we'll get to item two Capital improvement program. Cynthia. Okay. Good afternoon mayor City Council. My name is Cynthia. I'm the capital improvements program manager. So today I'm going to start just with what is the capital improvements program that we normally refer to as the Cap. The CIP is referred by city charter, meaning that we are obligated to complete that program. It also helps us prioritize capital needs and identify potential funding sources. It informs the selection of legislative priorities. As we know, every year we have the opportunity to go to legislation and propose projects to be considered for funding. It informs the public of the city infrastructure investments, and it provides a view of both funded projects and unfunded needs. The CIP

program actually produces a CIP document that spans six years, all for infrastructure projects. You're one of the document is funded and the five outer years are unfunded. The projects are included in the CIP are guided by city adopted plans. We elevate Las Cruces. The comprehensive plan taken priority and then followed by all other adopted city plans, which includes and is not limited to, the action plan. We also have El Paseo footprint and we have recently included the MRI adopted plans. The CIP also includes multiple funding sources from local funds, grants, bonds and loans, and it's approved by city council. And every time there's a change or an amendment, it has to also be passed through city council. Now, this is the final document, the CIP. So I'm just going to quickly go over it as to how to look at this document. You have the first column which lists your projects, followed by the department that's related with that project. The green column will always be the funded that has been allocated to the project, meaning those are the funds that the project has. The fiscal year. In order to move forward. The next five columns are all of the outer years. Those are funding needs. Those are the the estimated costs for projects that they need to be completed. So this is how we communicate to the community what we need to complete projects and how internally we work as to how can we secure additional funding to ensure those projects get completed. The last column is just the potential funding sources and actual funding sources. Now, right now we're doing the work

session, but I quickly want to go over the CIP process because it's quite lengthy in the in the fall time, we start with working with departments, with project intake, and we evaluate the projects that they submit for consideration to the CIP. We then follow with budget, with the budget slash CIP retreat, and then the work session which is today, followed by public hearing and adoption. Part of the process intake and evaluation is running the projects through a CIP project evaluation. In the CIP, we have a wide set of projects from a Reroof new extension to smaller and big projects. So we want to have something that will give us a way where we can evaluate all projects at the same level. Our criteria evaluates planning alignment that quickly indicates whether the project is in any of the city adopted plans, because we want to ensure that our infrastructure investment is taking the city in the right direction, we have a community benefit criteria where we identify and indicate whether the project will target a health and safety hazard, whether there's an equity component to it, whether that project will target those underserved communities, whether there is a sustainability or environmental impact, and whether there's a community engagement of public interest, which is basically, is there a community need? Has the community strongly advocated for this project? Lastly, we also have to recognize the operational impact of the infrastructure projects with our project will extend the life of a of an asset, whether after completion, there will be any operational impacts to maintain that facility or that investment. Are there any other funding sources that we can tap to to improve getting the project

move faster? Are there any regulatory compliance that we need to be aware of? And lastly, leveraging, are there any other projects that we can do at the same time to benefit the investment? So in big terms, large terms, I'm sorry, the CIP overview. Currently we have close to 300 projects. That means 300 infrastructure projects that the city has identified as a need. As I mentioned, the CIP spans five outer years. So if I ask the question as to how much money do we need to complete? All of the projects are listed in the current CIP, with the needs for the five outer years, we reach the 1 billion mark, which is significant, but that's why the CIP is a plan document where we have five years so we can find a way to space out projects and make sure we try our best to complete projects. Out of those 300 projects, we have 185 projects that have not identified any type of funding. So that means our projects that still need to be done, but we need to help them secure funding. And lastly, in this new fiscal year that we are planning on, 44 new projects were submitted for consideration. So the only increases the number of projects that we need to work on and, and bringing up the number to a much higher number. Part of the process is we verify and we clean all of the submitted projects. So at what time we were working with about 303 projects or line items, but many of them will be reduced. Many of them hopefully will be completed. Many of them are duplicate of projects, or many of them will be absorbed by by a larger project. To ensure that we have a complete scope

of work. But in essence, we have about 145 future projects. These are the projects that have no funding at all. As of right now, we have 43 annual projects, and these are the projects that we know that happen every year on a routine basis. For example, the reroofing of buildings. We know that certain time a roof needs to be replaced, the carry over projects. These are mostly our large projects that span across multiple years because of the the scope of the work. So this is, these are projects that are carrying over from one year to the next. And lastly, we have five newly projects that are receiving funding for the first time. For funding sources, the CIP capital infrastructure projects. And with that it helps. It captures its multiple funding sources. This is a preliminary breakdown for the next cycle of CIP. We have 66 million in bonds and loans, 33 million in grants, which includes state and federal grants, 28 million in capital outlay. And this has been appropriation that has been done in the past years. As we know, capital outlay. They usually give us a range of four years to fully spend the funds. We have tax incremental development district with 16 million. The Telstra for fund 12 million. The other, which includes a combination of fees, developer contribution and sometimes even donations, has 12 million. Our impact fees park water and wastewater with four, 1,000,003 hundred respectively. The CIP also has the projects categorized. This is to facilitate the how we

communicate what our projects are about. Here you can see that they're in order where we have the smallest amount in city operational facilities. This is, for example, City Hall or a facility that's not necessarily public facing. Midway. We have public transit with 6 million park improvements with a million. And then our categories that has the most funding right now will be public safety, which includes both fire and police public facilities, which includes all of our recreation facilities, the library and our senior centers. Attainable and affordable affordable housing. With 22 million street improvements, which includes all of our major reconstruction projects with 25 million and utilities with 72 million. So all of these are funding that. The projects have already have been. They have been allocated. So we're just carrying over the funding because these are multi-year projects. So we need to carry over the the funding so they can continue to move forward. It also captures the recently grants and loans that have been approved in the last past month. Now here's where we see the need for the following year's. So this is where we have to understand what is it that we have on the CIP. As you see, for fiscal year, 28 departments had to identify a funding need of 448 million. So that's that's significant. We recognize we have that. We have a long list of infrastructure projects that need completed as we move out in the outer years. The number remains in the 200 mark. So this is one of the challenges for CIP. How can we complete projects? How can we

advance and take care of our current infrastructure when the demand of funding needs is really high? With that, and with the conversation that we had at the budget CIP retreat, we recognized that capital infrastructure projects. We have a couple of challenges. We first recognized that there's funding limitations, but at the same time, there are new opportunities identified by the state and by grants. So we also want to make sure that we do our best to capture those opportunities. On the other hand, we're growing city and we still have capacity constraints and limitations. So while we want to move forward, projects, we want to complete, sometimes capacity will will identify the sequence of the projects. So we mentioned how we have a wide variety of projects, simple projects, complex projects, small costs projects, large projects, one time project versus multi-year. So how do we balance all of this? How do we decide which project moves forward? So our intent with the CIP program is to give you enough information, because we know that all of the projects are important. But the question we have is when we identify projects and their needs, how do we value the trade offs? We know that we have maintenance projects versus new. We need to keep care of the of the facilities that we have in place. But we also know we have emerging needs. Our city is growing, our staff is growing. We also recognize that sometimes there are small wins versus big investment. A small win will help us tackle something that's happening right now, but a long investment will put us in the right place in a few years. We have ongoing versus new priority. I just mentioned about 300 existing projects in

the CIP, about 150 currently have funding, but they're still not completed. Do we push them to get them going or do we recognize the new priorities are coming up that also need to be addressed, that also are important for our community? We know that we have unexpected urgent needs, but then we have to balance those against long term benefits for the community. And lastly, we have those visible versus essential infrastructure. We know visible will immediately impact the community. And it's a benefit. But infrastructure projects are under work piping all of that. We needed to maintain city operations. So infrastructure projects does not necessarily have to be visible to be impactful for our community. So all of these are current challenges that we have in place. And like I mentioned with the CIP program, we're hoping to bring in this information so you can have the best information available to make the decision that is best fit with the information that we have. With all of that, the framing for this next fiscal year of CIP, we want to continue prioritizing asset management. We recognize that we have to take care of our current facilities. We also want to continue investing in strategically. We want to maintain capacity for new projects while advancing initiatives aligned with funding opportunities. We also recognize that there are we need to reinforce our capital needs in mobility, traffic safety improvements, park library, public safety facility and utilities infrastructure. And lastly, we're going to continue working on continuing to strengthening the CIP to help with the sequencing, funding and delivery for maximum community impact. So there's a lot of things that we're working on. We want to

move forward. We want to help in completing projects and helping in the selection of projects as well. So with that, our next steps, we're going to continue refining our information so we can come back. But we the plan is to release the CIP document on March 30th. We have a work session with public for public hearing alongside budget as well, and then the adoption of the CIP on May 18th at our regular City Council meeting. I will also be doing a short presentation on the Council meeting of April 6th as a departmental highlight. So with that, this is our CIP presentation for today and I stand here for any questions you might have. All right. Thank you. Cynthia. Any questions from any of our council. I'm just looking at the next steps again. No that's good. All right. Thank you. Thank you Cynthia. Thank you. So those were the only two items. All right. I'll look for a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second. This is on the motion to adjourn the work session. Councilor McClure. Yes, councilor Mattice. Yes, councilor Harris. Yes, councilor Bencomo. Yes, councilor Curren. Yes, councilor Munoz. Yes, mayor. Yes.