County Council - Session - workshop

Okay. That's funny loud, I guess. So, well, welcome everyone to the the 03/17/2026 County Council Work Session. So tonight's meeting is in hybrid. So we're gonna have council presenters and public participation either in person or on Zoom.

Attendees can participate virtually via computer or other devices, and also we have phone lines available. Public comment will be accepted at the beginning of the meeting on items that are not on the agenda, and we'll accept public comment as we're going through the agenda tonight. During public comment, mister Rial will look for virtual attendees that use the raise your hand feature, which is star nine if you're on a phone phone star six if you're on a phone line. Just request that people limit their comments to three minutes or otherwise directed by the chair. Our goal is to conclude the meeting by 10:00 tonight, and we'll check on our progress at nine if we're still meeting at that point.

So given we have counselors in person and online, can the clerk please call up the roll?

Counselor Hand. Here. Counselor Reidy.

Here.

Counselor Call.

Here.

Counselor Neil Clinton.

Here.

Councilor Havamand? Here. Councilor Herman?

Here.

Alright. We have six present with four remote and councilor Rigor absent.

Yeah. Let the record show we have two councilors in chambers or in the works at the fire station for online. Councilor Rieger is accused for this evening. So got the pledge of allegiance now. So if you're willing and able, please join us in pledge.

Okay. So now we're on to item number three, which is public comment. Is there anyone present here in the fire station that wants to make public comment? Please come up and and, we'll get the timer ready for you. And you have to make sure you press the button that looks like kind of a person talking. It'll light up green then.

K. Thank you. Thank you, chairs and and, counselors. I wanted to bring something to the attention of the of the council. Can you hear me?

She needs his name.

Oh, can you just state your name for the record?

Oh, yeah. My name is Robert Day, Bob Day. At any rate, I wanted to bring something, up to the council because, well, first of all, if you wanna upgrade your home, like putting in a walk or something like that, you have to, like, for paving stones, have to remove a lot of dirt. And then you put in base course, and then you put in sand, and then you put in your paving stones. But what you're left over with is a lot of dirt.

And so you have to get rid of that dirt. And so I've done this in the past and took it out to the landfill. Well, the last time, Friday, I, went to the landfill and they don't take dirt anymore. And I mean, this is just normal dirt that comes right out of the ground. It's I've been called older than dirt, but, this is actually older than me. And, it was here before I got here and before all of us got here. And there's nothing wrong with it. It has some rocks and maybe there might be a little, concrete from past, building that had gone on. And so I was amazed. I could not find any place to put this.

So I asked where could I take it? And they said, well, maybe Santa Fe or Espanola. Neither one of those places would take it. So I went to the county helpline and asked them if there was a place that I could dump this. And they said, no, I'm sorry. You're out of luck. So this is strange to me that we don't have any place to dump dirt in this county. We used to a few years ago. I dumped a lot of dirt when I did this kind of construction. And so I would like for something to be done to enable us I'm sure I'm not the only person in this county with this problem.

And I don't know what the landscapers do, but at any rate, I would like to bring this up so that maybe it could be addressed at a future meeting. On a somewhat related topic, the nuisance code still has penalty provisions of thousands of dollars and up to six months jail time. And, I haven't talked to anybody who thinks this is a good idea. And I would like to see that addressed. Is a provision for liens in there, which is what, basically what the government used to do when the government owned the town.

So I was just, I would like to see this addressed where these penalty provisions are taken out of the nuisance code. This is the maintenance code. And the nuisance part of the maintenance code, this could be taken out of that so that we don't have these, very, dramatic, traumatic actually, penalties for a nuisance violation. So I appreciate your attention to this. Thank you very much.

Thank you, mister Tate. And as you correctly noted, we can't discuss those topics tonight since they're not noticed, but, thank you for bringing them to your attention. Do you have any other comments? Okay. Is there anyone online, miss Rael? You're online, and you'd like to make public comment this evening. Please raise your hand.

Not seeing anything, chair.

K. Thank you. So we're gonna go on to item number four, which is approval of their agenda. So so councilor would like to make a motion regarding the agenda.

I move we accept the agenda as presented.

Second. Is there a second?

Got it. Second.

Okay. We got thank you. So we have motion by, councilor Hetman, second by councilor Call. Is there any discussion? Can we please have roll call?

Councilor Haberman? Yes. Councilor Reiting?

Yes.

Counselor Hand? Yes. Counselor Cull?

Yes.

Counselor Herman?

Yes.

Councilor Neil Clinton?

Yes.

Motion passes six zero with counselor Rigor absent.

Okay. Let the record show the motion passed unanimously with one absence. Okay. So now we're on to item five, which is presentations, proclamations, and recognitions. So five a is item two one one four six dash two six, proclamation designating 03/29/2026 as National Vietnam or Veterans Day in Los Alamos County. It will be accepted by Ms. Alt, and counselor, Avaman will read the proclamation for us.

Thank you, chair Reidy. Whereas the Vietnam War, during which 9,000,000 Americans served in the military, saw fifty eight thousand Americans lose their lives and another three hundred thousand wounded in the fighting that lasted more than a decade. And whereas 57,000 New Mexicans served during the Vietnam War and three hundred ninety eight New Mexicans were killed in action ranking New Mexico third nationally in the per capita casualty rate. And whereas upon returning home, many soldiers were not welcomed as patriots who dutifully answered the call to military service, but were instead met with scorn as participants in a publicly unpopular war. And whereas today, we honor all who served and sacrificed during this challenging war and reaffirm to give re and dignity to all who serve or have served The United States.

And whereas 03/29/2012 was initially proclaimed National Vietnam War Veterans Day nationwide in honor of our men and women who served during the Vietnam War era. And five years later, was introduced as an annual observance. So now therefore, on behalf of the Council of the Incorporated County of Los Alamos, I do hereby proclaim 03/29/2026 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day in Los Alamos County. I further encourage all citizens of Los Alamos County to honor the service and sacrifice of Vietnam War veterans by proudly flying the American flag on this day. Dated this March 2026 and signed by our chair, Randall Reidy.

K. Thank you, councilor. Miss Olsen, do you wanna make a couple remarks?

Good evening. My name is Linda Alt, and I represent the local DAR chapter, the Valle Grande chapter as its regent. Since my tenure began, I have found it very important, as part of our mission, is to recognize our veterans. In particular, this upcoming proclamation, our Vietnam veterans and their families. This coming day, the twenty ninth of this year, I encourage you all to perhaps lend a hand, reach out a hand, do something special for someone in your family or among your friends who served.

I will be posting a Vietnam veterans flag, and it will be suspended over one of the pedestrian overpasses on Diamond Drive. And it will be there for a couple of weeks to remind you if you forget to honor one of your Vietnam veterans. Thank you.

Thank you. Did you wanna get a picture?

Okay.

Okay. Thank you. I see that councilman Yanklin would like to make a comment.

Thank thank you, chair. As a veteran, although not a Vietnam veteran, my father-in-law as well as my father were both veterans in the Vietnam War. So I I thank you for coming forward, and and we're honored for the twenty ninth to be a day of celebration. So thank you.

Thank you, councilor Nagelman. Okay. So think we're ready to go on to next item. So we're on to five b, which is two one one three two dash two six. It's briefing to council by Brian Watkins, chair of the Parks and Rec Board.

And Watkins will also have the vice chair as well, mister Callan.

Good evening, council chair and council members. I'm Jerry Cowan, vice chair of the Parks and Rec board. The members of the Parks and Rec board and its three working groups had a busy and productive 2025. They attended public meetings, reviewed numerous presentations, and recommended several projects and programs to county council for their consideration. Together with county staff and their design consultants, the PRB worked to ensure that the voices, concerns, and desires of county residents were incorporated into all the Parks and Recs projects.

Early in the year, the Parks and Recs heard presentations on the Rose Garden fence, the Wahi Pine Cemetery expansion, and the New Mex New Mexico State Road 4 pedestrian crossing plan and approved all three of those by unanimous consent. The open space and trails integrated master plan was a more involved and slower evolving process. Incorporating input from the community at large and especially from the open space working group, Site Southwest eventually released a final plan document. The open space working group members then submitted several pages of suggested revisions to that document, most of which were accepted and incorporated into that plan. Eventually, a final open space and trails master plan was approved by the Parks and Recs Board.

The Parks and Recs board hosted two presentations and public engagement meetings on the ice rink shade structure plan. Both meetings were attended by overflow crowds of community members representing the hockey league, the roller derby teams, and other ice rink users. The design options were discussed and a vote was held with the winning design a clear favorite among community user groups. So finally, that's gonna become a reality. The artificial turf study came before the Parks and Recs Board, and after much discussion, that motion to approve was tabled to allow the Environmental Sustainability Board time to consider and comment on that plan.

The study was eventually approved by a vote of four to one and sent on to county council accompanied by the input provided by the Environmental Sustainability Board. The Brewer Arena Improvement Plan originally bypassed the parks and recs board and went directly to council. The plan was then returned to parks and recs board to allow for input from the community. A special session of the parks and recs board and two separate public input meetings were held to discuss this project. Both the Equestrian Livestock Working Group and the Los Alamos Stable Owners Association provided extensive input, some of which was included into the project plans.

The plan eventually passed the Parks and Recs board with a vote of four to two. Site Southwest hosted three public meetings to gather input on the North Mesa recreation master plan. These meetings attracted 60 to a 100 people from many different user groups within the community. Through a collaborative effort, priorities for the park were chosen and a survey was taken to pick a preferred design option. When the final plan came before the Parks and Recs board for approval, many county residents desired to see further revisions to the plan and the motion was tabled.

After further deliberation, Site Southwest delivered a final design plan to the Parks and Recs board that passed with unanimous consent. The three working groups under the Parks and Recs Board were very active, producing thoughtful presentations and making important contributions to the projects, policies, and programs under consideration. The Open Space Working Group focused much of its efforts on contributions to the Open Space and Trails integrated master plan. They also developed a plan for an updated and improved Adopt a Trail program and presented that to the Parks and Recs Board and County Council. The bike park working group conducted a survey and outreach effort to engage the community at large in an effort to find a suitable location for a bike park.

These survey results and more were part of a dynamic presentation seen by both the Parks and Recs board and county council.

The

Equestrian livestock Equestrian and Livestock Working Group continued considerable input on the North Mesa stables and arena website design, the policy seventeen thirty five changes, and several other projects that came before the Parks and Recs board. They collaborated with the open space working group on designs for equestrian and multi purpose trail options on North Mesa. They lobbied extensively for their vision of the Brewer Arena improvement project and gave presentations on that subject to the Parks and Recs board. This is a very short list of the major accomplishments for the year, although by no means a complete accounting of the year's activities. The Parks and Recs board would like to thank county parks and rec staff for facilitating and coordinating all this year's events and meetings.

The Parks and Recs Board is especially grateful to the hundreds of community residents who took time to attend meetings, answer surveys, and provide valuable input towards the design and scope of the many parks and recreation projects and programs that were considered last year. Thank you for your time, and I'll stand for any questions.

Okay. Thank you, mister Cowan. Do we have any questions or comments from council? No. K. Excellent. Somebody's gotta have some some sort

of No. I'm fine. I'm good. I kept it short and sweet, hoping to please you, and it worked.

Okay. I guess we're gonna let you go with just your written remarks, but I wanna thank you for everything you've been doing and everything you'll work on this year. And I know that there's a lot of interest in a number of the projects that are kind of gone through the the planning phase, and we'll see which ones are how when and how they could be funded. So I think that's kind of the next question. So thanks for being here tonight.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Now we're on to, item 5C, which is twenty one thousand one thirty three-twenty six briefing presentation to counsel by Beth Steli, chair of the library board.

Thanks. I'm Beth Stell. I'm the chair of the library board. We currently have four members on our Board, but we recently, just in the last couple of weeks, interviewed an applicant for our vacancy, which will be going to Council at the end of the month. So we hope to be back to a full roster soon.

On the next slide, we wanted to give just some highlights from our work plan, starting with what we did last year in 2025. One of our main responsibilities as a Board is to gather input from the community. We do that at both of the library branches as well as events around the county. We also share news and library highlights by local media outlets, which is facilitated by library staff. And importantly, we participate in National Library Week.

So I encourage you all to keep an eye out on the Overpass banners next month for the 2026 celebration and drop into the library and thank all of our wonderful library staff for everything they do. We also had an opportunity last year to help out with testing the new library website, which hopefully you've all had a chance to look at. This was an opportunity for Board members to test the website as it was being developed, provide feedback on the information that was on there, and assist in sharing the community survey that was sent out by library staff. On the next slide, in terms of what we have planned for 2026, this is a late addition to our work plan. You may remember from 2025, there were an outdoor classroom design.

This is for the space between Mesa Public Library and the Senior Center to be used by those two groups, as well as other county members. And last year, the Library Board endorsed one of the designs, which did go to council. But the library recently learned that there is a utility line running across the area where planned where the architects had planned for that space. And while it doesn't require a completely different design, it's different enough that the board agreed with Gwen, the library manager, that it would be appropriate to go through a community feedback process again to get input from the senior center, library staff, and the community in general about the changes to this design. So the Library Board will be looking at that design and helping to gather feedback from the community for that.

On the next slide. We will continue to be out and about talking to people in the community, promoting library services. The library does a whole lot of great things, and library board members try to share that information with community members. We also try to get feedback. And one of the ways we'll be doing that this year is helping out staff at the library with their community needs assessment.

This will be getting feedback from the community to help library staff plan the next update to the strategic plan. And so the Board will be contributing to that National Library Week, as I've already said, and also just generally promoting all the great things going on at the library and getting input for other things that community members would like to see. Finally, you will see us at various places around the county. Atomic Con is a big one, and you'll see that on the next slide. It's always fun in August, but last year, library staff also attended summer concerts and library board members helped out with that and other events around the community.

So we'd be happy to take any questions if you have them.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for the presentation. Are there any questions? I guess I forgot to take public comment last item, but I didn't see anyone jumping up. So, any comments or questions from counselors?

Counselor Nayaklynn?

It's always a pleasure to see the library. Our library is so busy, and I cannot talk about it enough. I it's a good thing that I don't work there because I probably just leave all my money, in the bookstore. It's it's just you guys are doing such an amazing job. So I just wanted to give you kudos for that and to continue doing what you're doing.

Thank you. Thank you, councilman. Any other k. I'm not seeing anything else. So I did have I was looking at the work plan, I guess, and it mentioned the semi quintessential coordination on art. I wondered if that was still because I remember there were being some issues with that project. Is that still happening?

That won't be happening. No. So we had originally planned to support the art in public place board in that activity. But since that won't be going ahead, we'll be looking for other opportunities to collaborate with that board.

Okay. Thank you. So see if there's any public comment on this or the previous presentation. Any commenters online, Israel? If you're online and you'd like to make public comment, please raise your hand.

Not seeing anything, chair. Okay. I wanna thank you for the presentation, and and great to see everything that you're continuing to work on. It was always it was a great experience to be your liaison a couple, I guess, couple of years ago. So looking forward to what you're gonna do this year and actually get some nice kudos from one of the presentations coming up, I think. So the inclusivity task force appreciates some of the things you're working on. And so I don't if you wanna stay around for that. But okay, so thank you for being here. So I think with that, we're on to item six of business. So six a is two one two five seven dash two six.

It's action suspend council rules for the work session. Is there a councilor, interested in making a motion regarding the work session rules? Councilor Cole?

I move that council suspend their procedural rules for this work session, 03/17/2026, so that formal action may be taken.

Second.

Okay. Was that, counselor?

That was counselor Hand.

That was counselor Hand. Okay. Thank you. With a So motion by councilor call yeah. That's what always happens when you're term. Okay. Can I motion by councilor call, second by councilor Hand? Any discussion? Not seeing any discussion. I can use call to roll.

Counselor Cole?

Yes.

Counselor Hand? Yes. Councilor Havamand. Yes. Councilor Herman.

Yes.

Councilor Neil Clinton. Yes. Councilor Reidy.

Yes.

Motion passes six zero with counselor Rigor absent.

Okay. Let the record show the motion pass unanimously with one absence. So now we're on to item six b, which is two one three one six dash two six. It's gonna be approval of county council minutes for the 02/26/2026 special meeting in the March session. Do we have any questions on the minutes? Comments? No. Okay. Is there a counselor wanting to make a motion on the on the two sets of minutes? Counselor Cole?

I move that council approve the 02/26/2026 special meeting and the 03/03/2026 regular session. Second.

K. So we have motion by councilor Cullen. Believe it was a second by councilor Herman?

Yes.

Okay. I see no discussion. Can the clerk please call the roll?

Councilor Herman?

Yes.

Councilor Havamand? Yes. Counselor Cole?

Yes.

Counselor Neil Clinton?

Yes.

Counselor Reidy?

Yes.

And counselor Hand?

Yes.

Motion passes six zero with one absence.

Okay. Let the record show that the motion passes unanimously with one, make one, absent today. Okay. Now we're on to item six c, which is two one two fifty eight-twenty six. It's a presentation and possible acceptance of the Inclusivity Task Force final report. So we'll have Rachel Kezier, one of the Inclusivity Task Force members presenting for them tonight.

Good evening. I'm Rachel Kazir. So I appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak upon behalf of the inclusivity task force. We've been at it for a little over a year now. Stood up, I think, in November, oh my goodness, '24, and and finishing up here in February.

And we will be I'll be presenting our final report, an out brief of what we've accomplished and recommendations going forward. So the way this is going to go is we'll look at our objectives from the charter. They're kind of in order by of the charter and not necessarily by priority. We'll take a look at our short term proposals and needs from the data collected, long term proposals, lessons learned, and a little bit about what's going really well that we found in Lincoln County. Okay. So for our objective, our first objective, we're gonna jump right into this. Oh, go you go back the slide. That one there. Okay. It was to determine the overall perspective of inclusivity within the community through various methods.

Listed there are some of the many ways that we did this, not to an exhaustive point, but to a qualitative point rather than quantitative point to understand kind of where we were. And I'll be talking about the data that we collected in future slides. Okay, next slide, please. Another objective, objective two, was to identify practices from other communities. This was not something that we were able to accomplish in our in our year of service.

There's work still to be done and probably a great opportunity. Next slide, please. This is objective number three, to review the efforts and actions of the REI task force. This was the task force that preceded the inclusivity task force. We were able to have the REI co chair present and find their findings and their lessons learned.

That was a great kickoff to the work that we began and also to make sure that we didn't have an overwhelming amount of overlap between efforts. Next slide, please. Okay. This next objective is a little bit long and intended to be because this is where the majority of our data collection came from. This is to propose near term actions as well as longer term efforts. When we talk about near term actions, think of them as low hanging opportunities, things that are very reasonable to put in our grasp in a quick fashion. Next slide, please.

K.

Okay. So there's so so I'm gonna have to explain some of these a little bit to make sure to get some context around them. They're not necessarily self explanatory, though, in the report, the full report, that there is a little bit more information. So education on Native American culture. This is specifically around, yeah, things like trails and mountain names, little places where we can that are that end up being big in the long run, where we can integrate Native American culture and with the the the county as it is now.

Second one here is building community empathy. Then we have looking for cultural contributions really to the community, accessibility, land and labor acknowledgments, and Jewish contributions. Finding opportunities, again, to promote and identify awareness in these areas. I will show in some of the future slides some of the ways that we can meet these needs. This is just a list of the needs identified that came up for us in our efforts.

Immediate stabilization options for housed individuals, especially those that are living in vehicles. And improved access to affordable and emergency housing while long term supply solutions are developed. There's some examples there. Okay. Let's go to the next slide because some of this will make a little bit more sense as we talk into the proposed solutions.

Here's some more needs, better coordination and navigation across social services. I do want to acknowledge that the social services hub is in the works. That's a a really great activity that is already underway. Reduced barriers to housing access, including rental application fees and landlord residents to vouchers. Supportive services that intersect with housing stability.

There are a lot of accessibility issues. I want to make a call out to the work that Kauk Young did. There were several there there there were more more than what we were what we wrote down here, but those are listed in the addendum that was provided to you of the multiple opportunities that exist within the accessibility space, being a very broad space, but quite quite a lot of effort was detailed in in that addendum. To include a and I'm just gonna just one more thing on that. She was also able to lead a survey, a qualitative survey to gather a great deal of data that's that's listed there.

So those are some of the opportunities. The what are some of the solutions? What are some of the things that we could hand to to y'all today to and and they could be accomplished? One, the first one here is improve county communications about how to report accessibility issues. This a website opportunity to really just make it more clear that, hey.

There's there's there's there is an accept it's already there. It just needs advertised a little bit more so people know that it's there. And and that's something a small, simple thing that we found that could be done. Continue working with tribal governments to determine the need for a Los Alamos County land acknowledgment. We understand that that's complicated in some ways, but and it's underway.

So determining a need was kind of where we left that. Making the Pueblo culture more visible, street names, street trails trail names, the putting putting mountain names on county maps to peak. Again, in taking advantage of some of the small spaces to bring our Native American culture and integrate it with with the county. There's an opportunity to pilot transitional housing solutions, overnight safe parking tied to case management demonstrating effectiveness before pursuing broader policy changes, And then also working with PEAK to develop a local outdoor accessibility rating system and work with the county produce brochure focused on accessible outdoor recreational opportunities in the county. This is, again, just that that would go hand in hand with the work that's already being done by some of the other groups out there.

But it would be really helpful to actually implement a rating system so that people know what they're getting into before they get into it. Next slide, please. There's minor adjustments that have been identified already to several trailheads that would greatly improve accessibility following through with that effort and supporting those efforts. And I know there's been other presentations to the county about these, but actually following through with some of those efforts would be appreciated by by the for for accessibility. And apply an accessibility checker to the county website.

This would be just automating it, make making life easier for for everybody. Greater awareness of keeping sidewalks clear of road signs, debris, and vegetation. Seems like a small thing unless you're unless you're blind or unless you have a stroller, you're trying to get down get down this get down a known sidewalk. There there are a lot of things in the way that that can range anything from construction kind of overlapping into that space to kids' toys being left out on the road. But there's no real way to there's no real way to patrol that or to keep up with that unless it becomes important on a little bit bigger on a county level.

More accessible crossings, including louder signals and more flashing lights. The ones we have are great and more desired. Establishing sensory booths or time for large county fairs and events. This is just time with no loud music. The library does this, It's and it's very appreciated, especially to our, as Liz would say, our neuro neurodiverse community.

Insist on a microphone use whenever possible at speaking events and considering rolling out countywide education about Sunflower Project for Neurodiverse Populations. If if you're not familiar with that, I can I can give a little bit more context to it? On a personal note with that one, I've had I have a neurodiverse son. I've had amazing interactions with the police and and other county officials here in regards to just being open and accepted and and wanting wanting my my child to be part of the community.

Me. I can I interrupt for a second? I just I want so you're using a term that I've never heard of before. So neuro Go ahead.

No. Go ahead. I

just don't know what neurosurgeons mean. Can you give me some other

I'm gonna give you some examples.

Yeah.

People with autism, people who just think differently. Sometimes they can be people who are

said, like, maybe on

the agency

or something maybe too? Does that include

Yeah. It could be it could be somebody with ex with a extremely high intelligence or extremely low intelligence. So that is it can be a it's a very broad term and intended to be broad for a a spectrum of people.

Okay. Thank you. I I just had never heard it described that way, and and just wanted to have a better handle on what what we were talking.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah. I I hope that helps. Thank you for asking.

Thank you.

Okay. Can you go to next slide, please? Okay. Continuing minor adjustments to sever oh, did I do this one? I did this one. I went backward. I haven't done this one. Okay. Here we go. Thank you.

So long term solutions, things that take a little bit more effort and doesn't minimize the importance of them. But developing a standing board to continue inclusivity work, the purpose would really be to be a liaising board. And a little bit more surface level, but really making connection and communication and helping with connection and communication throughout the county, existing groups, boards, etcetera, a place for people to get to go with their inclusivity needs. We bid off a lot, and I think that's the temptation is there's there's a lot that can be done, and and there's a lot that we wanna do in in any in any group. But I think being very a little bit maybe a little bit more conservative on on that front and a little bit and and being a little bit more advisable, there's an opportunity there's an opportunity in that space.

Offering community education in the form of inclusivity training and community conversations, that's something that that board would be ex I think, expected to do, helping with inclusivity training community conversations. Continue to build stronger relationships with tribal governments. That's something that we do, but continue to head that direction. Consider the creation of a Native American culture center. Throwing it out there is is an is an idea that would be, again, appreciated.

The improve social service coordination through clearer referral pathways and accountability mechanisms and developing resource maps, things like flowcharts and whatnot, or navigation tools to help residents and providers understand available services and just to be able to increase the ease by which services that are available can be accessed. Next page. Continue cross board, cross department collaborations to address interconnected cost of living issues. We recognize that there's efforts underway for this, but to keep that those efforts going. This next one here is came up over and over again, expanded bus service from people of varying accessibility spectrum of needs.

So transportation, I think they're working on that. That's something that came up from the community over and over again. One that I don't think made it on here that I kept seeing too is additional bike lanes. But the I I don't think I don't think that made it in here. It it did in the addendum.

Considering options for creating car free walkable corridors downtown or periods of walkability down in the downtown area was another concept that came up multiple times. Developing a system of regular surveying of building for accessibility, including ramps, automated doors, restrooms, changing rooms, and follow through on the fixes. What we found here was and this is buildings that are maintained by the county. They haven't necessarily gone through what we'd probably consider to be common sense upgrades make them more accessible. So I think just a survey out there, that's something that kind of needs to start immediately, even though it's a long term project to be able to update the maintenance on them.

Collecting more data on emergency and transitional housing needs. There's a gap in data here in this regard, and there's that was an opportunity that we'd found. Work with art and public places board to incorporate more inclusive art in the county, including considering the possibility of returning the peace statue to Los Alamos. Food for thought. The next slide, please.

So lessons learned that we had in this process. The scope of inclusivity is extremely broad. We struggled to narrow it to focus into accomplishable chunks. We did to some degree, but I think that there's more opportunity there. Because it is such a broad topic, it's kind of difficult to address all topics within the course of a year.

We took on several topics and were able to accomplish a portion of them, not all of them that we wanted to. But we were able to look at a portion of them, and additional the effort would yield additional results. The very large task and unlimited time frame require a much larger time commitment than many board members were able to give, It of comes to the second part of that, just bandwidth, bandwidth of the task force to be able to accomplish this broad range of what does inclusivity mean and then be able to actually tackle that and accomplish something that was deliverable to you. Like I said, I'm very proud of what we did accomplish. I feel like there's things hanging out there, though.

There's opportunity hanging out there that we did not get to. And then the relative inexperience of the board made gaining momentum difficult. We got better, but it took us a few months in just all honesty to become very to become productive and to be able to to get off the off off off our get moving into a a defined goal and defined objectives. And once we're able to do that, then we started then we're able to produce. So it's a more cohesive working board.

Again, those are all all all points to say if we if something was a little bit more long term, that it it would it would probably have longer better long term results. This work is important and should not be solely reliant upon volunteers. It'd be much more impactful with dedicated staff for hours of research, communication, collaboration. I just wanna say the staff that that that that was we did have Jacqueline and and and others. It was they're phenomenal.

I'm like, I I just a a call out to the county staff. Some of you guys are here tonight. The county staff was has been was amazing. The question there is is would if if if we're continuing on with this, would more be needed? Lessons learned continued. More training on community engagement and surveying would have been helpful. We we did okay in the end as long as I just have to caveat everything was qualitative, not quantitative. We did not do a quantitative survey on anything. We did do quite a lot of qualitative work, though. It's difficult to balance the urgent needs with a cautious policy regulatory environment.

But by this, this is the Open Meetings Act. Essentially, is being a small group and everything, there's probably more opportunity for us to just work collaboratively as a group and produce more. But we're very restricted, of course, by quorums and and process to to be able to kinda get in those groups and and and and just hammer things out. I I don't know a good way around that unless it's some unless there we had a working group that was outside of the the constraints of the county. Not sure how that would work, but something to think about in terms of productivity.

So more work needs to be done on balancing urgent needs with long term structural change. Further, we just need to continue clarifying those low hanging fruits versus long term impacts, which I think we've laid out pretty well overall in this presentation. Next slide. This is the last objective that we had that was all related to objective four. But this is evaluating the need for an ongoing advisory body to study inclusivity in Los Alamos.

Our comments are you know, there's plenty of work to be done, and the long term plan is needed. I I think it's an amazing thing that in these times that we're that we're focused on inclusivity, that inclusivity is important to us as a county. A volunteer board would have to reduce its scope to be effective but could still be very impactful. Volunteer board with dedicated staff support would be much more successful than in an acting a structural change. Again, the the support that we had, like Jackie and Linda, call out to to to both of them.

They're they're amazing for us. But we're we were a we were a very small slice of their much bigger job. So I think I'm sure that they felt some limitations as well. Next slide. We're getting we're getting to the end here.

Things are going well that came up again over and over again in our efforts. These are just the highlights. I I wanna wanna well, I'll just go ahead and start here. The social services division division's client centered case management approach, particularly in support of housing stabilization efforts, the cross board collaboration that increasingly acknowledge equity impacts of policy decisions. Utility discussions recognizing disproportionate cost burden on lower income households and exploring more equitable financing or assistance.

And a call out to the shout out here to the library. His their their dedicated staff, and they even have a kind of a diversity equity inclusion specialist. It's clear that they are very dedicated to creating an inclusive system, and they're very open to opportunities for improvement. The other thing that, you know, we found we found going very, very well was the was in the and this is located in your addendum for accessibility was there were more positive comments than opportunities out of the data that we gathered. And I want that I want you to hear that feedback that overall, there was more more positive feedback than not.

Not that everything's not to say that everything's perfect. It's it's not out there, but but a lot of good feedback from the community. Go to the next slide, please. Few more items of going well. Parks and rec, they've done a ton of work on identifying ways to make the trails open and more inclusive.

I I hope that some of the work we've done can merge with that and make them more even more success successful. And we've received overwhelming support from the community and sharing cultural knowledge. We feel providing a platform for this knowledge will honor the community's efforts. And the county social media presence has been effective in keeping the community informed. We found some small opportunities to make it even better, but but it that's all appreciated out there. With that, I'm getting to my question slide and open it up for for questions. I've got James here too. Thanks, James, for being here, and I and I know we have Zeph online. I don't know who else is online from the task force, but we'll do our best.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for your work this last year and presentation. Do we have any so since we'll be taking a motion on this, we'll just have clarifying questions on what was presented tonight to start from council. Are there any questions council has on the presentation? Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you, chair. Thanks so much for your time this past year on this important topic and being so articulate with your presentation tonight. It's greatly appreciated. Just to refresh our memory, can you tell us how many people were on this task force? Active members, would you say?

Seven? No. It was nine.

I thought because when we added

Was it 11 people?

Out of was nine.

Okay. And how many would you say were, you know, pretty engaged throughout the process?

I I think everybody was engaged to some to to some extent. Right? It it was a matter of being engaged every every month or every every meeting. There and because the way that we broke out into working groups, there was a lot of expectation on kind of working group liaison members, right, to to be able to set up their working groups. So for instance, some of those working groups, like the accessibility work group working group and and housing, I'm a give you some kudos here.

The the they they were able to get enough people on their working group to be very productive. We we had and then I'm gonna say, you know, we also had we had a couple others that that were able to do that. So just those are examples. Then we had a couple that that did not take as much traction, mostly just because of bandwidth of of those individuals just weren't weren't able to to put as much effort into it than needed to be. Some some were a little bit easier to stand up also because there are already some existing groups out there or existing people out there in the community who were pre kind of preidentified as good contributing work members.

And so it depended a little bit. Right? But I'm not gonna say that anybody was totally out of the scene. It's just so we've got we had different bandwidths from different people.

Yeah. Thank you.

And I was the oddball, I'll be honest. And I was the but but I really appreciated my time on this task force. I appreciated working with this task force and helping helping give a little bit of a little bit more organization and drive to it too. That was just

a little bit of what I did. So and I know there's just only so much bandwidth and time and Yeah. Volunteers in our community, but it would be something I was looking forward to knowing more about is what other communities, especially of our size in our region, are doing on this topic. Because to me the thing I grapple with is the risk of ever I would never ever want to be characterized as someone who would be not supportive of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, empathy. You know.

And I know we've seen that in community surveys that some of those things are indeed concerns for certain members or maybe a lot of members of our community. And on one hand, I feel like without a body going forward who makes this a high priority, it could then emphasis, objectives, even budget to support the values of these things could fall by the wayside if there's not a body to keep reminding and keep reporting and keep identifying needs. On the other hand, when I look at the list of needs you presented, it seems like those could be addressed by other boards and various departments as long as future county councils and board members and county managers and staff and department heads on down agree that these are priorities and they get built into work plans and our budgets, really. Because, you know, show me your budget, I'll know what you value. So that was just a long winded statement to kind of say I struggle with how do we really proceed with a new board to focus on this?

Or do we try to drive it and drive some of these core values and objectives in other ways? Because you do acknowledge a lot of success. I apologize. I realize as I say all this, I don't know if I had a clarifying question in all that other than I'm just struggling with how to balance that. I did have one specific question though. You mentioned that the library has a DEI specialist. Do you know or someone here might know if that's that a full time position dedicated entirely to that?

I don't think so. I can tell me if I'm wrong. But I I believe I believe that's somebody who's just

trained in it. Okay. So someone who has other responsibilities at the library, but also has some some experience and skills on this.

Library is still here.

Oh, Glenn's still here.

There. I think

that was one of the that was one of the things she recommended is everybody speak into a microphone.

So, no, it isn't a a full time person specifically devoted to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. It is something that this person is in interested in, has learned about, and studied. So and so she leads efforts in the library to make sure that we are as accessible as we can be.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Can I offer a clear clarification to the to your statement?

Please. Please.

Thank

you. So as as we looked at how to kinda capture our recommendation on this, the reason we went with talking about kind of an advisory board was for all the reasons that that you said. Because how do we how do we ensure that we get cross communication among and and how do we ensure that the things are are important? And is that a whole board, or is that I I or is that somehow a champion within the county? Those are some questions.

But how do we champion this as a county? It becomes the fundamental question, I think, in ensuring that those cross board coordinations, that everyone's out there working really hard on a lot of different things. And it almost just needs somebody help weave it together a little bit to meet inclusivity goals.

Yeah, I hear you on that. Thank you. I appreciate it.

I guess I saw the councilor's other hand up, since you've had the issue, I just wanted to also clarify since I was there most of the time as your liaison. So I think you got a lot of good training. So they had meetings, but they also had several trainings. And the trainings, I think, wouldn't have happened except for having the task force. I I'm pretty sure about that. So I not to try to make a comment now, but I think there was other things too that you didn't cover because I I forget how many different trainings there were. Half a dozen?

The the yeah.

Maybe it was not quite that many, but

Those those are listed in the final report.

Yeah. So so there's a number of trainings that occurred and I think yeah. So we'll have to have the discussion about what to do next, but I think it's not, you know, and so I want to go to the counselors that had their hands raised. So the counselor hand and counselor Nicollin.

Thank you, chair. I guess I'll try to, frame this as a as a question. The so so, basically, council's action tonight is to accept the report and also identify any other action. And I think accepting the report would be easy to do. Identifying other actions would be more difficult, in my opinion, because there are so many different actions that are suggested, and and there are very many good there are a lot of good, suggestions of things that we can do and things that are overlapping.

That sounds like a statement, but it's it's working into a question. So the question is, can we get a cost associated with keeping, an inclusivity task force, continuing on? Or can you, and I I should say, and as well, can you develop alternatives such as how you could, merge some of the the different suggestions into other boards or possibly merge training or, inclusivity types of, priorities into other board activities so that, you know, as they as the other boards continue to, look at at their scope, that they're considering inclusivity and accessibility as they move forward on their projects. Because, you know, I think there's a lot of, communication that's necessary to be able to do this, and you have to look at a variety of different, aspects of a project, and inclusivity would be one of them. Accessibility would be, you know, an aspect of a project.

All these projects would need to be developed further so that it actually could have a budget attached to it and eventually presented to counsel for approval. And I don't think we're gonna get there, you know, by the time we have our next, budget hearing, which is in April, but we could possibly get some information from you, if it could be developed, you know, as here's our task force, here's how much it'll cost, put it into the budget as well as other alternatives. Is that something that could be done by the the current inclusivity task force?

I'm thinking of how that would need to happen, and I'm I'm looking over here at mister Reedy.

I don't know if that's I think the inclusivity task force is actually sunsetted. So they're so we sunsetted them to basically prepare this report and recommendations. And we don't have a motion on the table, you know, yet, but I don't know that motions always have a number in them. They have direction

True.

To go. So that's that's me answering is just so I think we we could do go that way. I don't know. So I think the the task, from my recollection, the task force was not interested in in developing a budget for this activity for us since they didn't know, like, what is the scope. Like, is it main mainly gonna continue as

a I think that

or is it have some other, you know, staff augmentation on it or or what? So

maybe maybe

you can answer that. Clarify that for councilor Hanna.

So so I guess what I would ask is if we were to keep you know, you're saying that the inclusivity inclusivity task force is sunsetted. I'm saying, okay. But one of the, options is to keep it going. And could we have this task force continue on to at least develop, you know, more information on, you know, how much it's going to cost to keep this task force running. You know, I don't know if we want it forever, but, you know, I think have it run at least until we get an idea how we're going to implement some of these ideas.

And and the most logical group of of people to do this are the the current members of the inclusivity task force because they're the ones who have had all the training and all this background. And for us to just end it now and say, oh, yes. We're going to accept the report. Where does it go? Who's going to take care of it from there?

Do we have people within the county staff that are going to own this? You know, I don't I don't, think that we can make a decision on that tonight, within council. You know, I I just think there's a lot more work to be done to bring it to, a level where we can make some some decisions. You know? And, so, you know, I'm I'm just asking if we have them extend out their activities a little longer to to get more concise information so that we can make a decision based on budget as well.

Because it it you know, budget is important, especially right now. We have a lot of things on our plate, coming up, and we need to determine what the priorities are. I see that some of these items are things that, are already probably a priority with some of the other boards. You know? The transportation aspect, I think, is is something that, many different count there's the health council.

There's the transportation board. Now here's the task force. There are a number of different, you know, committees, etcetera, that are interested in this transportation piece of things for inclusivity and accessibility and, you know, extending this out. So I'd like to see it happen. But who's going to take the lead on it?

How do we get this running? Where does the money come from? What what department in the county is going to be involved. I mean, there are just so many questions that we don't have answers to, and we're not going to be able to answer those questions tonight. We're not going to be able to do it unless we we could just extend out, the inclusivity task force to, you know, give us some more concise information for our budgeting decisions coming up in April.

And and that's a you know, we have something that's, you know, a more concise time frame, you know, to get to get more results out of the out of the task force. So I I'm just wondering if the task force would be able to do that or if they're already disbanded, or if they'd be able to come together to do this, and if this is something that we can put together as part of the motion tonight.

Jared? I

I have a I have a couple comments, and and then I'm gonna pass it back back to you. But the In terms of budget, there were a lot of different budgeting components that you mentioned there. The first one that I think would just need to be tackled is the budget of a task force for another year. That can probably be pretty probably fairly easily attained just looking at the cost that we that we were in this past year and running it forward.

And I'm not even saying a whole year.

I Right. I I under so the it does So that's clear. That that that could be that could be manipulated. Right? Do we does this task force have the capability to produce a good budget for these activities?

I'd say probably not. That's that's probably not the ex we're not probably not the right group of expertise to do to really run all of them through. And additionally, as you mentioned, there you know, a lot of there is a lot of crossover between other groups that are taking the lead on some of these items, and that's probably where those should be. So there's an opportunity, I think, for liaising and organizing some of what we're some of what we are leaving here. But I I ultimately, it comes back to the the kind of the first fundamental issue, and that's that we're sunsetted as of February as as a group.

So those are I I I think that there's op I think that there's opportunity, and I think that there are I think that there are members who who would step up into that, but we we would need to be very specific about what the ask is.

What what was department, within the county that that, you were operating under?

Under the county manager's office.

Under the county manager's office. So who was, like, the liaison from the from the county, who was going to these meetings?

It was it was, Linda Massa.

So I'm wondering, you know, is that another option? If if we don't resurrect the inclusivity task force to go through this exercise, can we make part of the motion to have staff come up with budgets, etcetera, to be able to do this and other alternatives, to, you know, hopefully get some of these things, you know, these suggestions ready for implementation or, you know, further decision making by counsel because it's not ready yet. I mean, they're great ideas, but we're not ready. You know, it it's, needs a little a little more to be able to to get it to a place where we can say yes, I think, without I mean, if we say yes and there is no budget attached to us attached to it, then, you know, I don't think that that that's the way to go either because we have so many things that we wanna do that are budget, you know, they're budget sensitive. You know?

Counselor Hand, I think, any manager would like to make a comment.

Sure. Counselor Reidy or or, sorry, chair Reidy, counselor Hand. I think the the if there are areas of interest where you'd like this directing through me to bring back some additional information, that's certainly appropriate. Okay. Thank you. So

that's for when we get to a motion, assuming we want to do anything. We're gonna be accepting the report, and I we know that. So appreciate all the work everyone's done on this. So I think I've seen different hands raised. Maybe they don't have anything to say now.

No. I I still do.

Okay. Thank you. Please go ahead, councilor Nicklin.

I appreciate you. Thank you, chair. And, thank you for for the work that you've put into this report. I I have a couple of questions. So the this working group has been tasked with community education and engagement. Would you agree?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. But the impact actually really depends on behavioral outcomes, not just the outreach. One of the things that that's running through my mind is when I was actually on the other side sitting where you were not on council presenting possible speakers to come to the county. And and everyone listened, and I did the research. And now I'm gonna tie in with something that councilor Han said.

Everything is wonderful and fine, but if there's no budgeting, there's no bite, so nothing's going to happen. So as a result of that, my question is and you may have answered this, so you're gonna put meat on the bones for it for me. What specific steps are being taken to ensure that the that the community adopts, what what you're trying to do as well as behavior changes?

So there were I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna answer this in a a in a broad way. Some of what we had recommended were small things. Right? Like I like I said, and put it putting putting things in small spaces. I I do believe that cultures change that way.

It's it's some it sometimes can be a big sweeping thing. It sometimes has to happen a little bits and little bits at a time. So much of what we recommended was in kind of the small spaces, things like making maps more accessible, making the something that came up in the accessibility group was having basically the potential of an opportunity to put a tactile map in on public facilities. That didn't make this communication here today. That the so it it but it comes down to a lot of small things.

Right? That's how we that's how we change culture in a community. And And so the other way to do it is through education, which we did not broach into that deeply. We broached into education starting at the leadership level. So we did have several presenters come in.

Some of them formal presenters, some of them a little bit more informal, but representing different groups in the community. To make us more aware, but also those invites went out to other board member, other boards, other members of other boards, and were videoed so that people could watch them on their own time. Because that's what we could affect in the time and space that we were given. Ultimately, would it be nice to have something then that the community could come and tap into? Absolutely.

Education opportunities for the community, etcetera. That was a reach a little bit too far for what we were able to accomplish in this year. I hope that answered your question.

You're wrapping your hands around an elephant. It is a very big topic. And and then lastly, how will you measure your successes?

So I'm gonna measure it by I know that we came up with a a lot of ideas. Okay? We weren't able to implement those ideas. It took this long to come up with the ideas because they weren't done in a bubble. They weren't done just by us getting together in a group and saying, what are the good ideas in our heads?

We went out and actually engaged with the community engaged with the community to get their ideas on what are the community's needs. This is a list of community needs, not from the perspective just of this task force, but from an actual actual community interests of of individuals in the community of people. If you guys have time, one example of that is I really highly recommend you to take a quick read of the accessibility addendum, because it has a lot of and reach out to us, because we have pages and pages of anecdotal stories and experiences from individuals in the community, your constituents in the community, that talk about what they see as gaps in the community. So that's where I would like to I want to take credit in that space, that this list is a summary list of things that the community was finding as opportunities to improve, not just us sitting in a room being smart. The other thing is, in terms of successes, was just the fact that our group was able to come together and really dive into this in a way that we were able to have that level of engagement with the community to be able to pull those results.

While we weren't able to go as far as expanding those to budgeting or or things of the the things to implement them, I think that's a next phase for this. Some and some things are are it wouldn't be, say, a a a inclusivity task force to do. It would just be follow-up with some of the other groups who are already doing the work and making sure that they've included some of the inclusivity concepts in what they're already doing. So it's that communication that that was an opportunity that that we that we started, but we're not we're not able to get to completion on. So I that was a half an answer to your question, but that's where I am.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, counselor Nixon. Councilor McCull?

Yeah. I guess I have a a couple of questions, but, probably most important, I'd like to know what you think will happen to all of the recommendations in the report if if council chooses not to move forward with a with a a a board?

I I I think that there's different ways that council can can look at implementing these. One is is a board, and and that's what we've recommended here that but I think but if you guys collectively wanted to talk about other ways to do it, whether that be, you know, somebody on the staff championing. It's really about being a champion for for inclusivity. And how that's accomplished can be accomplished by different mechanisms, but how do we create a champion for inclusivity for Los Alamos County to follow through with to follow through with these items? I have a lot of concern about that if nothing if if nothing happens.

And then I have a lot of concern about about the where our progress will have taken us. I think it could could very well fall flat on its face, and that would be unfortunate for everybody. But if but but the real but the real concept here is how do we champion going forward? Do we and do we do that in a do we do that in a board? Do we do that in in the staff? I I I I I don't have the full answer to that.

If you had to prioritize, would you prioritize staff over the board or board over the staff? Or do you think one's really dependent on the other?

I think the staff will cost more than the board in the long run. I I I don't I'm I'm saying that without any any proof. Okay? So take it for what it's worth. But I think staff is probably going to to cost more money too.

When you talk about, you know, a half time or full time FTE, you're talking about some pretty big bucks. And I'm not sure what the what the cost was of the board to as as a volunteer board. However, it would need to be recognized that the scope would need to be very clearly delineated for a board so that what they could do is accomplishable in in in the time frame given for to to to until it had a next revision. But and and with with that regard, the it would be about it would have to be about liaising and communication. And I think that that's probably making more sense with the conversation that we're having.

I'm not I'm not saying liaising is a small thing. I think liaising is everything. Because I do think that most of the actual actions actually belong in other boards. A lot of them do. A lot of the accessibility stuff does. Think that there's opportunities already out there in the housing that that can be accomplished by other entities, but it needs some it needs some connected tissue, so to speak, to bring it together so it's working so it's all working as one.

Thank you. I'd agree with that. That's all, chair. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Cole. Do we have any other questions? So I had a couple questions. So I guess one question is why did you have a board being a long term objective?

We we were it was one of the requests actually from the initiators for our group was to evaluate Yeah. Was to evaluate it was to evaluate the the board as a long term with long term consideration.

I just meant as opposed to, like, not do one right away. Because the way the recommendation came back or I read it is that we should the long term objective is to create a board, not that we should create a board right away or within some reasonable amount of time as opposed to right away.

I've written it better.

So that because that's but that's what you meant. Was it gonna create a board not as and not wait?

No. No. Not not wait.

Okay.

That that was a it's just a bigger long term wouldn't have been wouldn't have been the word probably choice I would use, but rather, it's it's it's a bigger effort as as we're seeing here in the discussion.

I I understand the gap that

you Okay.

It may be wind up being long term because it takes a while to it's like, what do you think it takes a while for the county? Okay. That's a good question for people.

We're involved.

Yeah. So the other thing that came up that was real specific

Mhmm.

Was the Girl Scout troop came to counsel and requested some specific kinds of play equipment.

I

don't know if that made it all the way over to you in the task force.

Hold on one moment.

I didn't get that. Wheelchairs?

Yeah. Briefly. Yeah. I believe it did it did make it to us. Let me answer that question first of all. It was really around, a wheelchair swing. Uh-huh. And that's come up in a couple settings beyond just the the Girl Scouts. Okay. So that did make it to us.

Okay. Because that is obviously really specific. Yes. But I know at least some counselors are really struggling with what would this board do. But it seems like it would be a place where people could go. They became aware. It's like, here's where you can go if you have an issue with some sort of inclusivity accessibility issue, not that you couldn't go somewhere else. You know, people come directly to council for actions on their streets. There's a tran there's a transportation board they go go to also, but we don't we don't disband the transportation board because people come to council. I guess that's common.

Let's see. So I I don't think I had any other questions about the report. Let me just double check here. Okay. So I think see if there's any members of the public. Oh, did you have a question, counselor Hand, or or do have more questions? Actually, it's not

a question. I'm just putting my hand up because I I drafted, the second part of a proposed motion when we get to that point of, you know, how we could address what we've been discussing. But but, you know, please, move forward with the public comment, but then I'd like to

Okay.

See if anybody would would be interested in, this motion.

Okay. I appreciate the enthusiasm this evening. Okay. So I we I would see if there's any I think we do have a couple people who want big public comments, so just have to move that microphone over. So let's get the timer up and just state your name for the record.

David

Hampton. Councilor Reidy, counselors, I strongly support extending the work of the inclusivity task force. I think what they've done is great so far. But it's not done. I mean, there are certain elements that it looks like they didn't even have time to address certain elements of the community.

And I think that I see two possible models. One would be the model with the Environmental Sustainability Board, where their first task, I think, was to produce the LARES recommendations, which became the Climate Action Plan. And we could do the same thing with inclusivity. We could take what they've done now, add to it, refine it, and in a report, and then create an inclusivity action plan. The other one is what the chair recommended, in that they continue to liaise with the other entities, which are pushing for all these things individually, like transportation, health, and other parks and rec.

And either way, I think it would work, but I think it would be more effective if we follow one of the models, which we seem to have had a lot of success with on the environmental sustainability board. So I'd really like to see this reconstituted as a board to continue the work. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, mister Hampton.

Good evening council and, chair and council. My name is James Wernicke. So first, I wanna thanks, Parks and Rec and the park staff for all their engagement this year. Didn't get a chance to make public comment earlier. Jerry did a great job engaging with the bike park working group, and I know he worked with the other working groups just as much.

So he must have been doing it as, like, a full time job. But I really appreciated all the North Mesa project engagement from everyone on the board and staff. Same with library board. I was on the accessibility working group as part of the ITF, and Gwen showed us around, and and we really got to see, like, all the work she and her staff have done making the library accessible and making literature accessible. They they really just go above and beyond.

Alright. So getting to the ITF stuff. So there was that bullet up there that was talking about, like, the challenge of balancing urgent needs with a cautious and complex policy and regulatory environment. And one way we have made progress is with this overnight parking program. Kind of doing it sort of like extra judicially, I would I would say, is more of a community effort.

But working closely with social services, you know, we've had this partnership between social services, primarily social services and faith based organizations. They have these huge parking lots that are empty six and a half days a week. So they're, like, the perfect place to have people who have to sleep in their cars be be housed in a place that we are going to try and and protect them and protect the community and, you know, do the best we can for everyone. So we have made some progress there. We've had people with the ITF, with planning and zoning, with health council all engaged in this.

And I just I just wanted to bring back this whole cautious and complex policy environment, like, makes it really hard to make it like a formal program because then you get a bunch of red tape, and you can't address a jur detergent needs in that environment. So so we have to work outside of the county, but it would be great if we could find a way to work more quickly and have the county be more responsive. So to address some of the questions councilor Haberman, you asked about, you know, like, do we have the time, how many people were engaged and everything. You know, I really wanna see this effort continue, but the reality is, like, all of us on the board, our time we are really spread thin. You know?

Everybody's kind of willing or and and people in the community are either willing or able, but not both. And and that I hope I hope I would like to challenge you as counsel, the ones that are elected to represent, to represent the people that can't represent themselves. You know, they can't come to these meetings. And this is across the board. They they're here in the community. You know? You can seek them out. There are plenty of spaces. You can find them. There's people sleeping in cars and parking lots. Right? Just go to any of the RV parks. You can find them. You can talk to to to Gwen at the library. Sorry.

I have a few things here. You can talk to Jessica at social services. Corey at CSD, he'll tell you about, like, accessibility efforts. Jill at SammiesDot, you can talk to her about community safe spaces. Jjab, Teen Center, or you can just email any of us, anyone on health counsel. There's lots of passionate people that you can just reach out to. One more response for councilor near Clinton on, as you said, it's about changing behavioral outcomes and how are we gonna measure success. Well, like this land acknowledgment. Like, I can't think of a more low hanging fruit thing than writing up a land acknowledgment. City of Flagstaff has a great one.

But, really, you can just go to Sinai and ask them. Right? What what do you want us to acknowledge if if if you really don't know? The wheelchair swing, right, that's like a clear clear win right there. It's just, again, navigating the liability issues. We did, like, some, what was it, like, some awareness trainings that were, like, held with county staff and members of the community. So there was some of these tangible efforts. The accessibility group put out flyers and surveys. And even though surveys are getting feedback, they also make people aware of what's going on. And, again, counsel, I would encourage you to engage more with the public.

You know, write letters to the editor. I think our leadership has to lead by example the values we want to promote. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, mister Farkey. We have anyone else present? Mister Rael, can you look online? Lisa Reeder, you are now unmuted.

Thank you. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great. Hi. Chair Reidy and counselors, I was a member of one of the subgroups of this inclusivity task force, and I will say it was a very large and heavy lift. And I wanna personally express my gratitude to Kok Yong, to Rachel, and to James because they were really the wind beneath the wings of the many people who were impact who are impacted by this by this topic, and I really appreciate you guys having having kept it going. As far as recommendations, I don't really have any.

This was so broad. I I do like what James had to say and also what what mister Hampton had to say on some possible ways forward. But in general, I just wanted to say thank you particularly to those three for the amazing job you did herding cats and getting this report out. I look forward to assisting, when I can, but, at the moment, I am back in North Carolina on yet another time zone. And and as Rachel indicated, it's been very difficult, to, you know, to herd the cats and and keep everybody going and meeting. But thank you for all the work you guys did. Really appreciate it.

Okay. Thank you, miss Reeder. Do you have anyone else? Phone number ending in 1713. You are now unmuted.

Phone number (505) 490-1713. You are now recognized. Yeah. How do you do that? Hello? Hello. We can hear you now.

Okay. Thank you. This is Karen Edwards, and, I served as a member on the inclusivity task force. One of the barriers that I perceived was that not everyone on the task force had a voice in the report. Only a few spokespeople who were members of the group had that voice.

And if another group is convened, would hope that all members have an equal voice in presenting recommendations. I wanted to just share I have some some concerns that I think I've heard echoed among the the counselors present, and that's how we can bring something like inclusivity, which is a very abstract concept, into a more practical something we can put our hands on. And that's why I don't think that a board is the way to proceed to enhance inclusivity in our community because inclusivity is how we do our business. It's not a what we do. So when we provide transportation, we we can do it in a more inclusivity way.

When we offer library services, we our efforts should include more people. And so I really feel like a lot of the recommendations included in the report could be divvied up among staff where where they apply, whether it be social services or the library, and they could take a look at it. But when I took an example of wanting as a consumer who's blind, I wanted some maps that I can use in my work on the transportation board. And so just as a concrete need that I have for a county service, I approached the library, and there's a lot of willingness to produce the maps. I have the material to make the maps.

There was even a lady who knows how to draw raised line maps. But there what we don't have is a process in place for for addressing needs, identifying them, then making sure they're tracked through the system. And then we also don't have a pot of money to apply to any given need, for example, the swing you all were talking about. So I know at the lab when I worked there, we had a centralized accessibility fund. So if somebody needed a sign language interpreter or braille materials, they could apply to a fund in the organization that covered all of the different departments, and then it could be evaluated as a need and prioritized with other needs.

But I I really think we'd be doing a lot of flailing about again if we don't have a more specific task if we're to continue as a group, but that's all I would have for right now. I, thank you for all your support because we have had consistent support from, counselor Reidy and others on our group. So thank you very much.

Thank you, miss Edwards. Do we have anyone else on line? Not seeing anyone, Chair. Okay. Well, maybe I should start out by saying a couple of things since I since I was the one that kind of asked for this to happen originally.

So this is basically following up on the racial equity inclusivity task force from '20 I think the 2020 to finish in 2022. We accepted their report, and, of course, there was a recommendation there to have an ongoing community engagement. And we didn't do anything for, I guess, a couple of years. And then we created this group, which then one of their recommendations is we have an ongoing community support. I know we can we'll have the debate about that, but I just want to that's the reason why we're doing this is because we've had a previous community group that had identified some things that we could work on.

So so I think I have no other public comments. So, councilor Han, did you want to go ahead and read your motion? Sure.

We'll put it out there on the table. Let's see. So I move that council accept the inclusivity task force final report. I further move that council request county staff to develop an estimate for a tiered implementation plan of task force recommendations.

Okay. Is there a second? Councilor Cole, did you wanna second, or did you want to

That was change something. Suggest a a second a different motion if nobody seconds that one.

K. I'm not I didn't hear a second on that one. K. Did you want council Cole, please make your motion.

I move that council accept the inclusivity task for final report. I further move that council direct county staff to draft a charter for an ongoing board or commission to address inclusivity issues.

Second.

Okay. So we have motion by councilor Cole, second by Neil Clinton. So the the the additional, x was to request that, staff develop a charter for a board. Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. So, is there a discussion?

Yeah. I can just I mean, I I, appreciate, David Hampton's, referencing the environmental sustainability board. I do believe that a a board or commission on inclusivity could take the recommendations that were provided by the task force and, move forward with those, deciding I mean, working with staff to develop a plan if necessary. Another option, if if we if we feel like it's gonna take a while to establish a border commission, is for either a working group or county staff to put together an action plan to address the immediate actions or the immediate recommendations. Short term, I guess, they call them.

So those are some other things, but I I I do think that there is a need in this community for an ongoing board to address all of the aspects of inclusivity. And and, yeah, it it it probably is not a board that necessarily does all the work, but it's it's a board that would would find out what's happening in the community, listen to issues, and then, work with other boards and commissions or with staff to, to make sure those things get addressed. So it's more of that liaising role that we heard over and over again, and I think that's important. I also think there's there's ways that this this court could measure, success or status of inclusivity within the community, and I think that would be important as well. That's all.

Thanks.

Okay. Thank you, councilor Cole. Miss Laurent, did you want

to Chair

chair, councilor Cole, it was just really a request to maybe clarify because a charter would be for, like, a a task force, I think. And if you want to create a formal board, it would be an ordinance. And and it would be helpful if a counselor wanted to work with the county manager's office on that and the attorney's office as well.

Okay. So I'm willing to amend

my motion to say draft an ordinance, yeah, instead of charter. Do I need to reread that

for for the court? If you wanna, we can go ahead and do since it has to be an ordinance, I think we should do that now. So if you're why don't you reread your motion, then we'll go with the second again

Okay.

Just to get it correctly in the record.

Okay. I move that county council accept the inclusivity task force final report. I further move that council direct county staff to draft an ordinance for an ongoing board or commission to address inclusivity issues.

Second.

Good. Okay. So, we have the restated, motion that's requesting, ordinance. Okay. So I think, councilor Han, you you want to speak?

Yes, chair. What I wanted to say is that what counselor Cole just said in her comments earlier is that, you know, she also mentioned that we would have some sort of a a involvement from staff, as a as, you know, one of the initial, steps before a board is or a task force is developed. And so I think that that would call for kind of a merge of what I had in in the original motion, along with her suggestion for an ordinance for a a board or a, you know, a task force, you know, whichever way you want to go. But I I think based on some of the comments we heard from the public, you know, they they you know, and and from the person who made the the presentation is that we cannot just depend on the board to come up with the final recommendations that will get approval, by counsel because they are not really able on their own to develop estimates, etcetera, of how much things are going to cost. And and, you know, I believe that it's very important that we can't have these open ended, you know, boards or, you know, you know, say that we're going to do some particular action without some cost associated with it, especially when we're really looking at our costs on everything that we're doing right now, and we're prioritizing that.

So how can we, at this point in time, come up with something with no cost associated with it and say, oh, yes. We're going to create this other board. We, you know, we have no idea how much it's going to cost and that it's going to basically supersede other things that we need for the community. I I just, I I feel that we need to have some consistency in the way that we approve our, how we implement our different ideas and that we can't just have these open ended, you know, non budgeted ideas, you know, for approval. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, councilor Ann. So I don't know if it's appropriate for me to make comments. So we so we had had what? So we had actually, it was before it got in council, but there was the community development advisory board was created and then sunsetted.

So boards aren't necessarily permanent because they're boards because you can repeal the ordinance to create them. So that's one thing. So this would be an effort that would last as long as it was useful if we do create a board. And I was thinking that, we should probably see a budget option associated with this because that was when we had the discussion, trying to remember what year it was, about creating additional boards, number of years ago, which I believe is when we had the community development, we sunsetted one board. We were talking about creating another board, but we didn't.

But there was a cost estimate associated with just what does it cost to run a board? Because there's a staff cost of hours. And if I'm recalling correctly, it's somewhere around a quarter of an FTE, maybe that's a little bit high. It's not it it's maybe because there's more multiple people and something like that. So there's some amount of time associated with having a board. So we could ask for the ordinance and for an estimate for providing an an option on staff support, and this wouldn't be in the budget book. I guess that's a question from us. At this point, it's not in the budget book. It's it's not it's not a budget item. But

Chair righty, counselors, I think there are items related to this list that are already included in certain projects or initiatives or programs to make enhancements. There may be other items that come up that may not be. Yeah. There is sort of a precedent where we could put a placeholder for things that may come up. The question is whether there are capital or whether they're operating more programmatic.

Yeah. Just onetime costs or Mhmm. Because it was the training is more of a continuing. Mhmm. So that's there's some training budgeted. We proved that a while back. That's correct. So okay. Okay. Are there any other comments or questions about the motion on the floor? So right now, the motion on the floor is just to to create the ordinance. I I would suggest that maybe having some budget with some budget information. I don't know if their motioner would accept that as a friendly amendment.

Budget information on the cost of the board itself or all of the Well, the cost councilor Hand was Not

on all not on all the things there, but just the the cost of the board. Just if we're gonna do this, then you would know that you've approved you're gonna have to approve funding for this or figure out where it sits. I think that's part of the ordinance is that that basically, you know, where it sits. Does it sit in the county manager's office or somewhere else? So council councilor Hammond?

I'd like to make a comment then, based on that. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but we have we have other boards that exist that we don't allocate budget for every year. We have FTEs of various departments with staff liaisons to boards. But we don't revisit every year the merits of having a Parks and Rec board and what that costs. We just have an ongoing Parks and Rec board, as an example.

So that's one thing. I think that if we decide this is really important and one way to achieve some of the attributes of what have been recommended here, then probably proceeding with the board to keep this on the radar is probably valuable. And I think that's kind of the point of it, to keep it on the radar. Because while I agree very much with what Karen Edwards, one of the public commenters tonight, said that it's not so much like I think to paraphrase, said something are not like projects. It's more of a process, a way of thinking.

And I think of that in terms of operational excellence and customer service. Every department head and every employee of the county knows that implementing any activity, you're always doing that in terms of customer service and operational excellence. Those are just guiding principles. So to me, I would like to see this organically become a way that we always think about accessibility and inclusivity, etcetera, when anything is done. Almost kind of like how I would like the climate action plan to always be that way.

How is this going to impact our carbon footprint on our surroundings, on our environment, on our residents? But I feel like because there are some tangible recommendations and because there are some identified needs and this is not the first time we've heard these needs, I think accomplishing them with a board makes sense. I think trying to identify a budget to go with it, it just doesn't make sense because we don't do that with other boards. It's just going to cost what it's going to cost. That's stupid thing to say.

I reversed that. If we decide it's important, we're going to have to figure out a way to identify a staff person to support it. And then we can decide going forward if this board is adding value. And I think one value of it from my standpoint is that this board then informs future councils and future county management and and keeps this on the radar.

Well, I not to debate the point too finally, but I think when we had, LOREZ and then we converted ESB to basically the more broad sustainability, we did actually sign some budget for, like, the climate action plan. Because I was like, you need to do a climate action plan, and so we put budget in for that. We do have some funding, some places for this, but there's not like and I know we'd be hiring a different person, but I think think it would be a matter of, like, are we gonna actually have a whole FTE that is doing this countywide? Is that the plan? Or is it just gonna be that's why I think it's a budget option because we're talking about we're not adding staff.

So we're talking about within within the staff we have, we're gonna figure out how to get the support we need like we did for the task force, which is more ad hoc. So to me, it's it it has more of a it has more back my backing for it if council says, yeah. Plus, there is some funding that goes with this as opposed to just the ordinance. There's no ordinance with no funding. That's okay. But I see it's better if we could say, well and maybe they're not at a point where they're ready to do that. Right? So maybe they're they're not ready to say, here's we need, you know, an eighth of an FTE or whatever. This is how we're gonna fill this position. And is it gonna be like, what department?

Because that was one of the questions that came up. Is it in the county's manager offers? Because it's more like, you know, sustainability. It's a cross cutting thing. So I'm happy if we move forward with the board. I'm happier if we have if there's some budget associated because it seems like there are things that need funded. Some of them are already funded. You know, they could be rearranged. So that's just my thinking on I I'm I'm not going to not vote for it because it doesn't have a budget. But I think that if we had budget, then that would be more credible to that we're actually doing something.

Of course, the board is good, but I think that was one of the things I had heard in the report was I think that the the community members felt like their efforts would be greatly, you know you know, amplified if they had staff support that was dedicated to kind of this area. But I'm I'm happy going either way on that. There's hands raised. I don't know if people raised them recently or not.

I raised mine recently.

Okay. Yes, ma'am.

So I just wanna say that, you know, anytime that we have a board or any of these task forces, we have staff, county staff assigned, and that is associated with budget. Whether it's buried, you know, or not. It it is a cost because that staff person is devoting time to this particular effort, which means they're not able to devote as much time to their other assigned duties. Okay? So if we're adding scope to their job, it's costing us one way or another.

You know? Because they're focusing on more things. They're spread more thin. Okay? No. We don't go through each board and allocate budget for every board every time because that's already part of the staff's scope, that they do this every year. Okay? And so we don't have to, you know, look at, you know, assigning a budget to them every year because they're already assigned that as part of their job. Okay? But this is a brand new effort that we're proposing to do.

And, you know, we have had other efforts that some of the other counselors, haven't been involved in, you you know, because it was before you were here. But we had, you know, some discussions about how many of these boards we we really need. Let me also rememb or, try to remind everybody that it wasn't too long ago that we just talked about whether or not we wanted community involvement in some of the business, types of decisions. And and we decided that that was gonna be a council decision making process for the I think it was the MRAs or something, that oh, we we didn't want any kind of a council for that. We didn't want any kind of a board of citizens for that.

Oh, it'll take more time. Well, this is the same kind of thing, and you are looking at it a 180 degrees, different than what we just discussed a few months ago. You know? So I I don't understand the logic. The other thing that that I think is really unfortunate is if anybody decides that they are not going to vote for this motion, it will automatically look like those counselors do not believe in inclusivity and accessibility and and the types of things that this particular task force was involved in.

That's not true. You know, I think all of us believe that it's important, but maybe we don't believe that we just do unfunded mandates. And and that's what I would hope that you guys will consider, with your decision is try to be consistent with the kinds of decisions that we're making from one, you know, type of situation to another. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, councilor Ann. So I don't think there's any more discussion.

Councilor Han.

Oh, did you have your hand raised again, councilor Cole?

Yeah. I did. I mean, I I have to disagree with councilor Han that I mean, the MRA commission and an inner inclusive, board or commission are two completely different things, and and should be considered separately. And they're not voting for one and not voting for another has nothing to do with consistency. So I I mean, I would just I mean, if if it if it makes y'all feel better, I'm I'm willing to modify the motion one more time to basically add, three words, four words.

I I would say I move that that council accept the inclusivity task force final report. I further move that council direct county staff to draft an ordinance and a cost estimate for an ongoing board slash commission to address inclusivity issues.

Second.

Okay. So I think we've had I'm not going to see if there's any more discussion unless anyone really wants any at this point. Okay. So can the click please call the roll on that second revised motion?

Councilor Herman?

Yes.

Councilor Haverman? Yes. Councilor Cole?

Yes.

Councilor Neil Clinton?

Yes.

Councilor Reitie?

Yes.

Councilor Han?

Yes.

Motion passes six zero with one absence.

Okay. Let the record show the motion passed unanimously with, counselor Reger being excused tonight. So I think it's 08:06 before we get into the so we wanna thank you again for all your work and for being here tonight for the task force. And so we'll make sure that everyone gets the information on what we decided tonight from an inclusivity list. And so thank thank well, thank you again, and we'll take a we'll take a short break now.

I just wanna say say thank you to the board, and thank you to chairman Reedy for all of your support for this.

K. You're welcome. How

long is a break?

We're gonna do ten minutes.

Thank you, chair.

Oh, k. We're I guess we're back in session. Yeah. Looks like we have people back. So now so now we're on to item six d. 21147Dash26, presentation of possible acceptance of the community wide electric vehicle EV charging plan. And we have, miss.

Good evening, council. Tonight, I'm joined by our Stantec team, which are online. Our community our county staff and community volunteers, to present the fleet conversion plan and community wide EV charging plan. These efforts have been driven by county council, and they align with our climate action plan. I'd like to recognize the team who supported this work, our Stantec team, Anali Castillo, our zero emissions technical lead, Greg Wallingford, our senior energy management consultant, Josh Schott, our EV infrastructure consultant Sue Barnes, who is a member of the environmental sustainability board and our Pete Wandragon, our fleet manager and Mariano Valdez.

He's a DPU engineer who helped. They've all helped, with the biweekly meetings leading up to this effort. So these plans are tools meant to help guide thoughtful, data driven decisions over time. And our goal is to use them as a road map, regularly evaluating fiscal responsibility, prioritizing the investments that we're making, building partnerships to further expand EV charging, and expand EV infrastructure in ways that support EV adoption, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and adapt to our community's needs. With that, I'll turn it over to Josh, to walk us through the community wide EV charging plan.

Great. Thank you, Annalie. And thank you, chair Reidy and members of the council. It's, great to be here. And, virtually this time, it's great to see all of you again and to be part of this meeting. Give me just a moment. I'll pull up, the slides that we have or actually, you've got them there. Great. Thank you.

Perfect. Give

us one second. Okay.

Give us one second, Josh.

No problem.

There's two. It's the one right before it. The the bottom one. Yeah. Perfect.

Great. Okay. Well, I'd like to start and introduce this as a a two part project as you are all very well aware at this point. And first, we're going to be spending some time looking at this community wide EV charging plan, which public charging component. And then, later, we'll also pass to, my colleague, Annalie Castillo, who will talk about the fleet conversion plan. And just briefly, Annalie, I'd love for you to introduce yourself before we start.

Yeah. And I think, Angelika gave a really great intro to the group. But, my name is Annalie Castillo. I'm the senior mission technical lead with Stantec. And what that means is that I've been working with this type of projects that incentivize the development of zero emission technologies for transit fleets and municipal fleets, private fleets for the last seven years in the industry.

And before that, I obtained my PhD studying this very same, you know, technology transition and supply for implementation. So we're we're really happy and pleased to be here. I will give a quick warning that we had the pleasure of presenting to the board in several locations, but recognizing that there will be potentially new members. There will be probably some background that it was not gonna be shown in in this presentation, but we'll be happy to answer any questions, regarding the scope of the project or more details, from the presented final reports. Up to date, we're here presenting the final draft and and seeking your, support in, the process moving forward.

So, with that, I'll pass it out to to Josh. So thanks for the quick intro.

Great. Thanks, Annalene. And, yes, to echo that, I'm going to move straight into the revisions that we've made since the last time that we presented to you all. If there are any other questions about the methodology or the approach that we took to get here, please feel free to to interrupt me and or ask questions at the end, and and we can spend some time revisiting those things. So, just to start, I wanna frame these revisions that we've made, all of which are, part of this process to either increase or better clarify the equity of this report.

I say increase and and clarify because we made some some changes that are changing where we recommend charging, or rather adding locations where we're recommending charging. And so that's what I mean by increasing the equity. And when I say clarifying the equity, a lot of the changes that we've made to this final draft are just how we talk about, the process that was used to get here. And through the presentations to all of you as well as to other boards and to the public, we have highlighted some ways to better clarify, that approach and highlight how it has been equitable and in what ways it's been equitable. So those those are some of the things that we're gonna go through today.

The three areas that you see on the screen here, we're gonna dive into each of them, later in this presentation. But, just to, overview, we have multifamily housing, public charging, accessibility, and education and engagement. And so, as a quick overview on multifamily equitable charging piece, what we wanna highlight here is that this analysis forecasts the needs of, people in Los Alamos, not necessarily houses. And so multifamily properties are accounted for in this process, and then the load projections that we have. And so as land use develops and changes over the coming years, those projections will still be accurate.

So that's one thing that we wanna highlight. And most importantly, what we'll spend some time on later is that, multifamily housing was all along one of the key factors that drove where chargers were recommended. And so, something that we'll go through is is further expanding on that and and clarifying that for you as we did in this final draft of the report. The second piece, access to public charging, and many of you have heard this in in the previous presentations, but, the draft version focuses on multifamily residences, on commercial spaces, and on places where people are leaving their vehicles for long periods of time, like at the grocery store. And we on top of of that draft, proposal, we heard requests to focus more on a few places that were still missing from that suitability analysis.

So those have been added. So we've increased the locations that are recommended, specifically in some of the more, residential areas and in White Rock. And then finally, education and engagement. Two in person sessions were held to share the approach and and gather priorities. And, again, locations were added based on some of that feedback as well as the, the model site suitability.

And all of these together are helping us, ensure that this report and these recommendations are are grounded fundamentally in equity. So you can jump on to the next slide there, and we're gonna drill into, one of these these first priorities and these first kind of buckets of provisions that we made, and that is, adding clarity on the prioritization of multifamily housing. And so, what I would say is that based on the conversations in the previous presentations we've had, the draft report previously did not sufficiently describe the emphasis that that process had put on multifamily housing. And it's really important for us to note that housing density has always been a big driver of this model, one of the the largest drivers of this model. And in this final revision, we significantly built out how we how we talk about that and how we describe it.

And what you see on the screen here is a helpful demonstration is this map suitability model as you've seen, in the past. As a quick reminder, the dark orange areas are the areas that are more suitable. And what we've overlaid here is in the purple are the multifamily parcels throughout Los Alamos. This is zoomed in just to to downtown Los Alamos. But what we're hoping to show here is that you can see the correlation between where these multifamily properties are and where the the model is identifying suitability.

And so, this is just to show that, suitability is in fact driven by this multifamily, property and and has been, and so we put more meat on the bones in the report, as part of this revision to explain how that has been part of this process. And, we've also included, as part of that, some, references to other forms of charging, like light post chargers, that we heard recommended from the board of public utilities that can help address the projected demand, with cheap and small scale solutions. Can jump on to the next slide. And so this one is focused on adding more charging in residential areas. So, again, the, the next revision, this this final revision, added four new chargers to the recommended locations.

And, what we did is we looked at all the locations where through these presentations, we've, received a lot of feedback and a lot of emphasis on areas that still need charging, and we cross referenced that with the areas that are suitable for charging. And so we found, these four new areas, two locations in Los Alamos at Urban Park in the Hilltop Shopping Center, in the North community, and then two new locations in White Rock at Smiths and at Overlook Park. And the the White Rock locations, align very heavily with the and we'll touch on this in the in the next slide, with the the cap. And so we can actually jump to the next slide there. And what we wanna highlight here is that, again, what we heard what what we heard from you and from other, boards as well as the public is that White Rock was underrepresented in the initial drafts.

And so this final version has added these locations to respond to that feedback. So these are two areas that weren't in there before, but that are now and that are also recognized as highly suitable by the model. The Smiths, especially, had a lot of really strong requests from the community. And, Overlook Park is the one that integrates very well with the climate action plan recommendations to install charters at, sports complexes. And these are in addition to the previously recommended locations there at the visitor center and the fire department.

You can jump to the next slide. And so here you can see, the full map of recommended chargers. And so what we revised in short, in summary, was, increasing the equity in the placement of these chargers and better describing the process to communicate how that charging was selected. And all of these, what we wanna highlight with this map is, all of these align with the suitability model that we used, throughout this process as well as the community feedback and that focus on equity. We jump to the next slide, we'll see the chargers that are specifically in phase one.

So these are really the next steps for the county with these phase one charger locations. These are the ones that are most suitable, most highly requested, and the most logistically important to install in the near term, which is why they are identified as phase one. So if you jump to the next slide, to kind of wrap these recommendations in a nice coding here, this plan is about proposing a network of chargers. And so the exact implement implementation of these chargers, is going to demand, data that is not yet available. And so seeing how much these first charters in phase one are used, what the return on investment was like for those sites, as well as the sites that you already have underway, and how these new sites in phase one impact equity, and then adjusting your future implementation based on what is learned from those.

And from a communication standpoint, that means continued external engagement to tell people about these chargers, how to use them, help decrease those barriers to, obtaining an EV and and charging with an EV. And it also requires the county interface intentionally with many of the recommended private locations. Right? Because these are locations where the county doesn't have the jurisdiction to build the chargers themselves. But like the Smiths location, this is an opportunity for close collaboration with those privately owned locations to, show the demand that this, report has found at those areas and encourage them to be partners as part of this process.

And this will, clearly be a very iterative process of installing infrastructure in these highly suitable locations that, the people have asked for and that the the model shows are needed, seeing how that's used and how it impacts network, and then installing more infrastructure based on on what you've learned through that process. And in the next slide, you've seen the slide before, but we continue to emphasize the need for streamlined permitting, internal coordination, especially with board of public utilities, and other community groups, as well as continued funding and communication with the public to, overcome some of those adoption barriers. And, with that, I'll I'll pause for questions and also invite Annaly to to add anything on that, she may have.

Okay. Do we have any questions from council? No? So I do have a question. So the phase one locations, how many are in White Rock, and how many are in Los Alamos?

Great question. You may be able to pull up that slide just so we can

slide seven from what is being shown.

So it's six locations in Los Alamos, two locations in phase one in White Rock. And to be clear, these are county owned locations. So some of the other locations that were identified in White Rock, like

the

Smiths, is, again, highly, highly requested by the community, highly, highly suitable in the model, but not in the jurisdiction of the county. And so, those are other opportunities to increase the number in White Rock, but these are the two locations that scored the most highly, that are county owned locations.

Okay. I just was looking at the number of chargers, I guess, per location too. So White Rock Visitor Center has two, and the Overlook Park has four. I know understand they're different. They're level two and three. I would let's not worry about that. But it seems like there's a a much larger number in Los Alamos. So I appreciate that you did, try to, spread them out a little bit more. But since we're actually sitting here in White Rock tonight, I imagine some White Rock residents might feel like they're a little bit underserved by six out of the total. So what flexibility is there in these allocations? Because there's there's an awful lot in Los Alamos.

Yeah. Great observation. I'll turn right in.

So there's there's 7,000 people who live in White Rock, roughly. So it's, what, 35%, something like that, of the county. 20,000, 7,000, something like that. So seems like I would expect, like, one third of the chargers to be down here if they were population based.

Sure. Righty. So a lot of the locations are based off of density and where people are charging their vehicles. So what we learned from this study is the majority of households in Los Alamos are single family homes. Uh-huh. And if you own an EV, you're typically going to charge at your own home.

Yeah.

So the sites were selected based on where people are traveling to Uh-huh. And where density is Yeah. Is the highest. And I'm sure Annalene and Josh has something else to add to that. But that's why there's such a between White Rock and Los Alamos.

Yeah. Well, there's

currently no

more to go and yeah. Go ahead, please.

Yes. Sorry. To you're right. I I was gonna add to Helica's point that there is also already existing charges as well as the at the senior center, and there is, like, plan ongoing plans right now to convert a few of the existing charges and re renovate the existing infrastructure. So I would say that one slide, it's not necessarily, like, doing justice to just everything that's already there.

That's why it's in phase one. And just to give ease that it doesn't mean that these chargers are not coming to WireRock or that there is no support, to incentivize the same level or of adoption of EVs. It's just that there is a lot more data at the moment that can support the utilization of the charges on Los Alamos, which is one of the, you know, criterias that we used to identify the priority of implementation. To echo Josh recommendations, as the utilization ramps up with the existing charges in White Rock, that priority is likely to change, if if the data is supporting that. Additionally, the other phases already do include the additional locations to White Rock.

And I would say to one critical item for us to address on the equity side was that just because they don't have a place to charge their vehicle doesn't mean that they would not have an electric vehicle in the future. So we acknowledge that through our plan, and we made, the required kinda, like, recommendations to support that to the residential charging to having, the capacity available for shared charging locations, for additional, light pulse charging, for example, as well as, continue to incentivize, the the public the private entities location as well. Obviously, while there is a difference in population, there is also a difference in the level of adoption in the way that the community travels between Los Alamos and White Rock. So I believe that's what our recommendations are reflecting in the level of priority, not in the quantity or the level of care to say incentivize the same adoption in in the communities.

Okay. Thank you. And then and I'm trying to remember from in the plan, you talked about, basically, private property. Currently, we have no development code incentives for properties to install charging. I guess that's correct. Right? There's no development code saying you get some sort of benefit to your project if you install charging. K.

Sure. Alrighty. So I do believe we have one item that incentivizes parking minimums. Right? So that might be an incentive that we heard.

In the downtown Right. In in White Rock Town Center Downtown LA, you get an incentive if you install charging. Correct. That would not include a eight day.

Okay.

Right? Because that's not in Downtown LA. So there's no incentive for that project to put in.

I thought it was all new Yeah. New development.

Okay. Well, need to check on that maybe. So okay. Any other questions? Okay. So I think we're we're done with this. So we can see is there any public comment? No public comment, Israel? Nothing online, chair. Okay.

So we have as usual, there's a motion in the package. So is there a councilor interested in making a motion? Councilor Heavenman.

I move that council accept the community wide electric vehicle charging plan as

presented. Second.

Second? So there was a motion by councilor Hetman, second by councilor Neil Clinton. Is there any discussion? K. Not seeing any discussion. Please call the roll.

Counselor Neil Clinton.

Yes.

Counselor Hand.

Yes.

Counselor Herman?

Yes.

Counselor Reitie?

Yes.

Counselor Rigor?

Counselor Haberman? Yes. Councilor Cole?

Yes.

Motion passes six zero with one absence.

Let the record show the motion passed unanimously with, councilor Brieker, absent. Okay. So now we're on to the next item, which is six e. So, 21399Dash26, presentation and possible acceptance of the fleet conversion plan. And we ask miss, the contractor.

Good evening. I'll hand it back over to Analie.

Thank you, Helica, and we'll get right to it since we had a a quick round of introductions. I will I will start by saying thank you for the support, in that prior plan. I feel like that was a a good deep breath to get, and I, were happy that we have addressed some of the concerns and comments that were really, received, from the the prior engagements. And to that point, I wanna start with the the public comments. So in the second slide, we can go to the third slide.

As you are aware, after we presented the draft of the of both plans, we presented all this to, yourself, the board of public utilities, and the board of sustainability. We also held an in person community engagement, that was in December 3. Unfortunately, that was the very first day that you guys got a beautiful snow, kind of sunstorm. So we kinda had a low attendance, in the evening, but we still got a good batch of comments, from the people that were attending online and the people that were still present. Additionally, from December 3 all the way to December 17, both plans were made available to the public for public comments.

We received a total of 41 comments between the council and the additional boards in addition to five comments from the public. So we were really pleased to see the level of engagement and passion from your community and the really great feedback that was received. That was one of the key pillars for both plans since the beginning that the plan was created. So we went back. We revised all of the comments and the scope to address.

It was agreed upon, the team that I had, like, presented how to address and incorporate those changes, and then we, are here presenting that final plan. So in summary, in the next slide, you saw a lot of the comments that, my colleague Josh focused was in addressing equity across the community, which, again, we are grateful for the Notion and and the support. That also included a heavy support towards more charging infrastructure and its locations in White Rock, which, again, was addressed. And lastly, one of the critical comments across specifically for this Leap County conversion plan was to have more actionable steps, and that's what we're gonna be focusing on today. So diving into the fleet conversion plan, in the next slide, you'll see that the main goal for this is to, have a pathway for Los Alamos County fleet to transition to Sierra Mission Technologies.

So in slide six, thank you. To do so, we evaluated, all the operations of the county fleet, and we compared two different strategies for that transition. The first one, we call the EV policy, which is what the county is currently doing. That is transitioning two new electric vehicles, per year. If that were to continue, the county will get to a max of 31% electric vehicles by 2050 of the total fleet.

And then we proposed a new policy, which is called, the climate action plan policy because it's aiming to, contribute directly to those same goals of, carbon reduction and carbon neutrality by 2050. With this plan, we reach about 80% of the total fleet to be a 100 emission by 2050. The only reason why we didn't reach a 100% is because we did classify certain vehicles and their operations as critical exceptions. It doesn't mean that they will never transition, but it's some of those more dedicated, services and specialized equipment that require more, ongoing assessment for a potential transition. So in the next slide, having these two plans and being able to assess to what degree is operationally feasible to do a transition, we combine, you know, several criteria that we kinda presented in the past.

But at the end, the one of the main components is how fast that procurement needs to happen for, the cap policy compared to the EV policy. So as you can see, there is, like, a slow, and a steady procurement of EVs throughout the first years, but then it really ramps up to increase the electric vehicle count, also reaching, again, that 8686% by 2015. Having this kind of timeline of transition allows us to simulate several items. So in the next slide, we had a simulation, of what that financial impact will be under both. So assuming the EV policy and having, like I mentioned, just those two electric vehicles per year, in addition of, replacing any EVs that are already existing, we have an increased cost that is very comparable very substantial, excuse me, to the cap policy, which is more aggressive in the procurement and also in the infrastructure.

So this was assessed at the total cost ownership, which consider the level of utilization of the vehicles that they have, fuel consumption, potential savings, maintenance cost, facility modifications, equipment, as well as inflation. In all, the cap policy is about 25% more expensive than the EV policy, which is a difference of about $21,000,000. I and this is cumulative between now and 2050 to complete the transition. And in the next slide, one of the key comments that we received during, some of the board presentations was, why some of the savings in maintenance were a a bit conservative. So besides, you know, kinda going back to initial assumptions and revising the sources, we also conducted a sensitivity analysis.

So, initially, we had assumed that the EV maintenance is about 90% of the cost of maintenance from an internal combustion engine, and that resulted in a 1% savings for the EV policy. However, once we increase that percentage from, you know, being 90% of the cost to only 75 percent of the cost, the savings only go, up by 1%. So in in in summary, while there our projection was, you know, conservative, even duplicating that projection of maintenance reductions was not causing a significant impact on the overall total cost of ownership between the two policies. So that was just an additional maintenance sensitivity analysis that was run, to to see how critical that factor was to the total cost of ownership. The next slide, another key item that was evaluated, was obviously the environmental impact of these two options.

So this considers the trans the emissions between now throughout the adoption all the way to 2015. So you can see in the yellow line, that's kinda like the status board if nothing else happens. The blue line is if we implement the EV policy, and the green line is the cap policy. So in general, while the EV policy does, save about 9.5% of the cumulative emissions between now and twenty twenty fifty, the cap policy achieves three times that, so 30% lower emissions throughout the transition time. Once you have reached that transition in 2050, the emissions per year are significantly lower for the cap policy compared to the EV policy.

So it's quite a significant impact into the carbon neutrality goals as well as the benefits that that brings to the air quality and emissions overall. And then the next slide, it was very critical for us to not only assess what the transition will look like in terms of number of vehicles, but also anticipating what potential power capacity and energy requirements that we're gonna be at each of the locations where the fleet is located. And this was also combined with a lot of the, projected load from the public charging infrastructure across the sites that were identified. So as you can see, the EV policy does have some peaks because we do reach, you know, a a decent decent amount of, implementation. However, the projected power at each of the locations, is quite significant for the capital.

And what's great about this information is that allows some of the early engagement and planning, to make sure that the power is available and that there is some proactive planning for the grid capacity and implementation of the chargers. And in the next slide, as a direct response to a lot of the comments that we received during the the public engagement was to have more actionable, recommendations. And in this case, the first phase of implementation, has, like, a detailed timeline that is suggested, for the infrastructure. This was directly informed by the vehicles that have the highest match to do an EV transition without affecting operations. So we prioritize those vehicles that we know, you know, they're one to one in terms of operations, and they're commercially available.

And then we identified how to try to centralize that implementation by site. So here is, like, an initial road map for the county to help identify the locations, where these vehicles are coming and to start planning proactively the implementation of the chargers. And I would also, wanna mention that in addition to having this report, the county now has, like, a interactive tool that has all of this information in, digital base. So if there is certain things that change, you know, for example, let's say we don't get enough funding to buy as many electric vehicles as we wanted in one year, through this, dashboard, they can go and modify that instead of coming in 2027. Maybe these vehicles are coming in 2030, and how will that affect the implementation of infrastructure accordingly.

So having that dynamic tool is, also gonna ensure that the county has the ability to plan at their own pace and implement at their own pace based on, the success of implementation as well as the funding, in their operational feasibility that they're observing. And in the next slide, just as a quick summary, the very key takeaways was that, the fleet conversion plan under the cap policy really support and align with Los Alamos time and action plan to get try to reach that 100% carbon neutrality by 2015. The the additional phases, have to be focused not only in charging infrastructure, but also workforce training, really proactive funding strategies, because that's really critical for implementation. And, overall, that has a a very substantial environmental benefits for the overall community. And while there is a big gap in terms of the the financials, through proactive planning and engagement, some of those gaps can not only be closed, but continue to be evaluated as the price of vehicles and charging infrastructure, could start tending down.

And lastly, as Angelica mentioned, really, the goal with for this plan is to give a a a road map and a track to have what are those first steps? Where do we wanna prioritize not only what vehicles and what departments, but also what infrastructure has to come first? And it does have to be an ongoing assessment of the fleet operations, not only at the technology level, but also the utilization that the different departments are gonna be giving to the equipment and to the chargers. And it's, again, cannot make a a critical enough point about the active funding to support the procurement of chargers and and vehicles. Echoing the communication aspect that was identified in the other plan, streamlining permitting, procurement, and internal coordination is also gonna be critical, not only for the fleet, but also for the hand on hand coordination with the electric vehicles with the charging infrastructure for the community.

It's also really critical to have engagement to identify barriers and other opportunities for the implementation, not with the public, but with the actual users of the county that are gonna be, you know, putting these vehicles to the test, and make sure that they're not they're not aiding the community and not harming it, from disruptions in their service. Very critical was identifying some of those, next locations. Angelica and her team have been amazing at procuring, funding to increase the availability of chargers. And with this plan, they are able to not only support the community, but also have a road map into what are the the first key priorities for the fleet as well. So kinda like where do we start?

This plan has a lot of information and resources to guide that. And lastly, one of the critical recommendations that that we wanna make aware to to the the county and the the the council is that in order to have a success implementation, there really needs to be, an overarching master plan, for the facility and the procurement of the vehicles that it should only align or just with the team that was actively engaged with us, but also with all the different departments, that have so many activities, and ongoing projects that can be successful. And a critical item for that is sometimes when we sell chargers, we don't wanna install, you know, the full 50 chargers that might be at one location because we're not gonna get the 50 vehicles set at once. But knowing the pathway and the timeline can help do future proofing, and at the end, save money because there has been proactive planning not only for what stages they're being done right now, but because they also know what second and third step is ahead. So that charging infrastructure and those initial planning can be a a lot more comprehensive, and effective in implementation.

And very critical, this is a living document, and this all this information or assumptions are encouraged to be revised periodically at least every five years, not only to make sure that their assumptions are holding, but also that there has not been significant or very impactful changes to the technology and the the market in general. So with that, we just wanna say thank you again to the amazing group that worked with us to make this a reality. It was really an amazing experience working with people that are so dedicated to their community and that they have so much going on, but they still, made a huge priority, to create something like this that is gonna bring long lasting benefits, to the sound. So thanks again.

Okay. Thank you for the presentation. So we'll have action on this one in in a little bit. But are there any technical or clarifying questions on the report? Councilor Admin?

Thank you, Chair. Thanks to the team for the presentation. I was trying to maybe request a little bit more detail into why what's the verb? Converting to electric vehicles under the goals of the climate action plan, why would that be 33% more expensive? You say it's because of projected higher vehicle purchase prices and also additional charging infrastructure.

So I'm curious, is that a fiftyfifty split? Half of the 33% additional cost is infrastructure charge you know, charging infrastructure, and half of it is anticipated increased vehicle cost? Or is it mostly charging infrastructure? Because I just wonder how does one really know that EVs are going to be more expensive? Why couldn't you assume they're going to be less expensive? And are we really just talking about cars, you know, that our staff use to get all around and do their jobs? Or are we talking about the buses? So that's my first question. I got a couple more.

Sorry. You're on mute. Sorry. I'm so excited. Thank you, Sharon, board members. So to answer your first question, the financial and I don't know if it's handy to pull up a slide number eight. That does focus mostly on the light duty vehicles and heavy duty vehicles operated by all departments of the county, but it does not include the public buses. However, Stantec did have the pleasure of, working with Atomic Transit to develop their transmission transition plan. So they have a similar projection, for the procurement of their buses already. It was not incorporated here, because a lot of the funding just works very different for for public buses.

Now to answer your question, why the increase in the price? The main thing for sure is that we're being conservative in terms of, like, the price trends for EVs. You know, throughout my twelve years of being studying these vehicles, I have seen so many curves of projections where, you know, EVs and hydrogen are projected to go drastically, you know, down in price. While we have seen great improvements into not having increased prices and not being way more expensive than that they could be because they're emerging technologies. We have not seen sufficient data to show that there is gonna be a declining.

And, additionally, one of the main reasons why we also don't project a steady trend down for electric vehicles is with all emerging technologies, we always have, like, a a bit of, like, a curve where, you know, the technology is expensive because it's emerging, then it's gonna go down because it's established, but then it starts going up again because now you have to continue to improve. Right? Like, you have new generations. You have new safety features. So, that's kinda always the case that, you know, there is a bit of up down, and then it kinda turns out again.

So we apply some of those, kinda, like, vehicle and technology trends to to the projection of EVs. I will say, I do believe we are being conservative, and I do hope that this is gonna be the case, where we're gonna see a significantly, decrease in purchase. But the other thing, to keep in mind or why this is expensive is not only because we are transitioning more vehicles. Like, think about if you went from having 30% of the fleet to being converted, now you have, you know, 86%. So it's, like, three times the number of EVs that are gonna be expensive more expensive, right, to to a different trend.

And not only that, but, like, the vehicles that were already EVs, at some point, they're gonna have to be retired between now and 2050. So those retirements of an EVs also is gonna impact, the price. While that also kinda counterbalance because the longer you keep an EV, then you're also gonna be seeing higher savings in terms of, like, the fueling. And even if it was, you know, conservative, still some savings into the maintenance. So I would say those kinda are, like, the main factors that are assuming this.

And the other item, obviously, we did account for inflation. Right? So just think about a a steady inflation between between now to 2045. Even if we are projecting a conservative, steady trend of EVs, just that itself is gonna make the vehicles, you know, more expensive because of of just inflation between now and those twenty years. So there were several factors.

And just kinda keeping in mind that, again, we're implemented three times the amount of vehicles and infrastructure, only having about 30% of more expensive total cost of ownership does kinda, like, show the impact of that fuel economy that is gonna bring for the EVs that we're only hoping is gonna continue to increase as well. Sorry. I'm getting too passionate about it, but hopefully, I answered your your question from a technical perspective.

That helps. And I think but it it seems like some of those factors could be applied to combustion engine vehicles as well. And it just I I just worry that this conservative so called conservative approach is gonna hamstring us because we're not gonna plan or budget for a more ambitious goal that aligns with the climate action plan that this community has decided is important. And other communities have already led the way on this. Just I you've got so much more experience in this space than I do, so I feel a little bit out of turn.

But other municipalities are way ahead of us on this, especially in California. And I'm just really disappointed in the I feel well, maybe I should back up. If if we accept if we just vote to accept this plan tonight, does that mean that all we're committing to is just kind of slugging along at I guess I you know, I'm throwing my opinion in there, obviously. But just two EV conversions a year for the next thirty years? That's it? And and and I just don't I I guess I just also have a little bit of a hang up with characterizing this as an emerging technology. I mean EV EVs have been around for a long time now.

And

you could throw in like, look at what's happening with gasoline prices right now. And that's unpredictable. And we're making a huge investment with Foxtail Flats. I think it's a tough area because there are so many variables on both sides. I hate that we're only putting all the variability on one side, the cap ambitious policy, but we're not putting any variability on the more conservative, slow slog in it approach.

Yeah.

So I threw in some comments and questions in there. I I I realized that I stupidly did that.

No. I love that. And to to to Ride and board member, I will say, I will wanna give you some ease that the same way that we were being conservative with the projections of electric vehicles, we did consider that same trend. So we do, for example, consider that absolutely gasoline vehicles are gonna start continue to increase in price because, again, there's always gonna be improvements. There's gonna be regulations in terms of clean air and and just, you know, in general, that same trend that I explained.

We're applying the same trend to that. We also applied a trend of increase for for gasoline and diesel, you know, a bit aggressive from that regards because we have seen the trends on the last, you know, just even this last five years kinda shoot down the projections, to the trend that you you're not gonna be saving money from keeping the diesel or the gasoline. So I just wanna give you ease that we're not trying to, disencourage the implementation. If anything, I would feel that we're doing it as a service to not prepare the county and any adopters to know the realities that they're ahead. In terms of the fact that it's more expensive doesn't mean that it's not possible.

It just means that there has to be more dedicated resources to go after the funding that is currently available. And if you miss that train now, then you're not gonna catch it up later. Right? To to your point that there are already others that are way ahead not only with what they have implemented, but also they're actively pursuing, funding to do that. Now from my perspective, again, the fact that it's 30% more expensive, I will say does not cause any concern from my regards that could that this cannot be implemented.

It just means that we have to be more cautious about, one, making sure that we have the correct funding, to go after and to start something that we know that we're gonna be able to complete. And like I said, the fact that this is a living document, and then, you know, in the next three, five years, we might starting to see a way bigger trends that are gonna con gonna ease that constraint from the funding. But if that doesn't happen, then, you know, at least you're prepared for that worst case scenario. And I will say, you know, from the great work that a Helica team have been doing, they have been amazing at securing funding and securing vehicle procurements and charging procurements, even being ahead of those two electric vehicles, with how proactive they're being about it. And in a way, the climate that we are right now can be a positive because while there are less screening about where the funding is going, it's also less competitive.

Like, just from my clients outside of Los Alamos, there are several that they kinda pump the brakes. So while there is a little bit of less available in terms of funding, it's also being way less competitive than it was, you know, even a year ago. So this is a good time for the county to proactively implement those things. And then the other item that I will say is that it's really hard to put a price on all the environmental benefits that this brings. Right?

Because, like, yeah, I mean, it is, you know, 20% more expensive, but it's also three times the the savings that you're gonna see from implementing this while we're ensuring operational continuity. Because what we don't want is to have somebody that rushes too hard into implementing EVs that they don't work, and then they just spark them and they decide, hey. This is a bad idea. Not because the technology is bad, but because the way they went about implementing was not completely planned out. And so and the very last item that I wanted to describe was, we are not categorizing every single electric vehicles on emerging technology.

We actually created a scale for EV maturity for all the different vehicle types. So of of course, like, you know, light duty vans, even buses, and all of them, they're established, But there is still a lot of specialized equipment for the county. Just just without being too crazy, like, there is still not a heavy duty pickup truck that is equivalent to the f two fifties, which is kinda like I I wanna say maybe 30% of your fleet is pickup trucks that are, you know, a 200 and keep my correct me on that. But from that perspective, there's still things that are, you know, maybe emerging for the specific applications that the county is looking at, and that's why we're being, you know, protective. We're not saying don't do it.

On the contrary, I don't think anybody was just encouraged at least from the team that was directly involved. None of them were necessarily, like, just encouraged by this. I think if anything, it's just better to have that information ahead and be prepared and continue to improve from from that information. So I will encourage the board members to to see that way, not to see it as a way that, oh, just because it's expensive, we're not gonna do it. No. It just means that you guys have more information so that they can be proactive to ensure the success of the implementation.

That was all very helpful. Thank you. My pleasure.

K. Thank you, councilor. Councilor Hand?

Thank you, chair. I just wanted to mention that, I have been, attending the, North Central Regional Transportation Board for a number of years now, and this has been something that, you know, they they have had an initiative to transition to EV for a variety of their different buses and vans for on demand service, etcetera. And as miss Castillo had mentioned regarding Atomic City Transit, they are very aware as well as NCRTD is aware of the higher costs and that it is difficult to always justify that going this EV route is is the more cost effective route, short term and long term. And they've they've had a number of other challenges with purchasing these EVs because, you know, suppliers have gone out of business right in the middle of contracts. And, you know, then they had to get different suppliers, and there's long waits, like years.

You know, we're not talking months. We're talking, like, two year waits to get vehicles. And so they're they're noticing a number of different challenges with doing this transition, you know, to EVs. And I think it's more challenging with the bigger buses than the the smaller vehicles. But, as miss Castillo mentioned, you know, some of the vehicles, you know, we're just really not seeing, you know, you know, a an equal comparison, like f two fifty trucks versus an EV that is able to, you know, perform at the same level.

And so, you know, for, you know, equal cost or just a slightly, higher cost. So, you know, this is something that is known, and it's been known. I reported this to the transportation board in Los Alamos probably a year ago, you know, that that we're seeing this kind of trend. And I think the new executive director of the NCRTD had recently mentioned that they're reassessing, you know, their original plan for the transition to EVs and seeing, you know, the cost effectiveness, especially within our current environment for, grant programs, etcetera, for doing this. They're just not available like they used to be.

You know? So, I I agree with what, miss Castillo is saying, and I would just like to ask her if, she also has heard stuff about availability of vehicles, you know, wait times for getting vehicles. You know, I think, you know, our our plan of getting two vehicles a year is probably reasonable, you know, that that a high rate of replacement may be challenging just because of supply availability. So, I was just wondering if you could expand on that a little bit.

Yeah. Chair of ID and board members, I would say we definitely saw a slowdown in some of the procurements about two years ago, in when, you know, a specific manufacturer was, a year and a half lead time for procurement. I would say since then, this last year, that has been eased. So I wouldn't say there is a significant hold down in, delivery. We did account in our planning for, like I believe it was twelve or eighteen months lead time for the for delivery.

So that is accounted for. It it just means that the team has to be, you know, getting this piece a lot sooner to make sure that, you know, they're not putting their staff with vehicles that are, you know, ready to go. Although they're doing an amazing job of maintaining their vehicles. It's it's truly amazing. We saw vehicles that they've been operated, you know, for, like, twelve years, and their cost of maintenance is, like, really, really low because they do so good with their preventive maintenance program.

So I would say I I don't necessarily think that's a concern in terms of, like, the procurement. Again, we we know this. We accounted for this into the plan, and the strategy is just being to procure these vehicles with that timeline in mind. One item that has been a bit of a holdup in terms of implementation has been the lead time for transformers, but I'm sure the board of all the utilities and and the staff, is aware of that. So, again, to the point of being able to plan very proactively, with the staff, to be able to say, hey.

It's not just two vehicles. If if anything, that makes it a little bit complicated at times to implement. But if they already know, you know, between now and the next ten years, we're gonna have this amount of vehicles, those transformers can be put in place and save money because then you don't have to go and retrench little by little. You know? Like, you actually save a lot of money by knowing what's ahead because all that groundwork gets done.

They put those pull out boxes, and then when the vehicle comes, they just pop the chargers, like, literally. So we kinda strategize the implementation of the charging infrastructure that way to be kinda, like, in in phases, rather than saying, hey. We did two here. And guess what? In the next year, we're gonna have to come back again, and then we're gonna have to do another trench. Right? So that can get, a bit messy, not to say expensive. So I think having this plan with that long vision, is really gonna help. And I would say, I think it's a bit of, the right balance. Right?

Like, I do think from what I have seen the community, the efforts of the county, I do believe that two vehicles per year is is not matching to how proactive they can be and they wanna be. So I feel like having a plan like this that is one is ensuring a a transition while protects the operations, which is critical, and it's also matching the maturity of the EVs with what the market is looking. Right? If you see our plan, we're not suggesting any purchase of f two fifties for next year because we know they're not available. So all that is planned.

Right? But what happens is if you start challenging this the you know, not not even challenge, but if you start giving that opportunity for people to be engaged with this new technology, then it it opens the doors. Right? Like, Pete had some great anecdotals of people kinda like, I want the EVs, and they like them, and it's fancy. Some others, they don't. But they might never change their mind if they don't get that one vehicle that, you know, maybe they don't need to use, all as much as, like, as they will do for, like, alignment. But a supervisor might actually like it, and the fact that he likes it, now he's gonna be proactively supporting their staff to be like, hey. Like, we're doing this right. We we can. Right?

So I feel like that challenge of, like, going beyond the two vehicles and start having that low term transition that is already aligned with the goals that the county has, and it's also gonna proactively start exposing the staff, the, the the workers, the users, even the community itself. Like, you know, it it means a lot, I think, for when you would live in a community and you see Alamos County, and there's and it's an EV. Like, that is on its own is breaking barriers for implementation. Right? So I think there is so much more that that can be done that the cap policy is gonna be able to incentivize while being financially, you know, mindful, and while being operationally responsible.

Okay. Thank you. So, councilor Cole, do have a question?

Yeah. I just wanna go back to, councilor Hapman's earlier kind of question comment. If we approved approved the fleet conversion plan tonight, we're basically approving the cap, policy or the cap, schedule versus the EV policy schedule. Is that correct?

I don't believe we're no. The way it's ordered is we're not. Well, you could even interpret it as we're going back to a 100% gas because it's in the print it's in there for comparison too. But the the base case is the EV, two EVs a year. That's what's been in the budget. And then but I think we had budget options for

Okay.

The charging plus maybe looking more EVs. And so now we know what the price might be of those. Is that correct?

Will refer to I feel like I'm it's alright. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. I think tonight we're looking for acceptance of the plan. Right. And if council would like to look at a different strategy moving forward, we'd like to take that direction and come back with the proposed plan.

So you do want us to change the motion that's in the package to something more specific?

I think it says accept, but it's up to council what you'd like to do with it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Chair Reddy, I will say we, from a staff perspective, we're not suggesting, any kind of budget implications at this point. It is accepting the report. And then as we go through future budget hearings and future opportunities, we keep the the this report in mind and have a discussion about how, that aligns with our budget and our available budgets.

Okay. Thank you. Don't see any other questions. I can you pull up page 61 in the report? The the county EV adoption.

I guess it's, yeah, it's attachment b to the package. Page 61 looks like would be think it's the right place. It's figure six dash two. I just want everyone to look at that when we get get there. So there's a lot of good information in here.

And so it's a twenty five year plan. So I think it was a good point that was made about you need to revisit this often. Because I think one of the assumption was that right now, you know, we wouldn't have alternate fuels available in in Mexico. Right? So we wouldn't be able to do hydrogen because hydrogen is not available.

So plans reflecting what we know today, just like the price of an f one fifty Lightning is 1.47 times the price of a base, you know, gas f one fifty light light f one fifty without the right? So that's all that's just the what's we know right now. So is that the right page? That doesn't have figure six dash two. You're probably pretty close.

Yeah. I think you the it's the actual word the the actual PDF. You see that page is

I like that page.