City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay.

We'll call this meeting to order and later on we'll have a roll call. We'll have the prayer by Councilman Perullo and Councilman Johnson will be the So, Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll?

Councillor Armstrong?

Present.

Councillor Heldenbrand?

Present.

Councillor Gass?

Here.

Councillor Arnold? Present. Councillor Corn?

Here.

Councillor Moore? Here. Councillor Maruco?

Here.

Councillor Johnson?

Here.

Councillor Oropesa? Here. Councillor Halverson? Here. Mayor, you have a quorum.

Okay. All rise.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you to give you all glory and honor. We thank you for all that are present, Father God, out in the audience, also the council members and our mayor, Father God, the city clerk, and so forth, Father God. We ask you to bless our firefighters, our police officers, our state police, Father God, our military, Father God. We give you all glory and honor for them, Father God. Father God, we want to lift up 9-11, Father God. What a miserable day it was, Father God. We lift it up to you, Father God. We thank you for all you've done in our lives. We give you all glory and honor. In your name we pray. Amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We are jammed. I'm dead set in the middle.

So, sorry. Okay. Okay. Moving right along, we have a list of people. We have seven people who have signed up to speak. Moving right along, we'll have the approval of the agenda. Councilor Warren.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to ask for full item 14 from the agenda. That's to do with the utilities update. Utilities not on for the standard source.

Oh, yeah, I understand. OK. Is there any objection? Seeing none, item 14 has been pulled. Any further discussion? Call. All right. All those in favor, roll call. Okay.

Councillor Armstrong.

Yes.

Councillor Helfenbrand.

Aye.

Councillor Gass.

Yes.

Councillor Arnold. Yes. Councillor Corn.

Yes.

Councillor Moore.

Yes.

Councillor Marunco.

Yes.

Councillor Johnson.

Yes.

Councillor Odombeza.

Yes.

Councillor Halverson. Yes.

I vote 10 for the amendment and the amendment is adopted. Item two, approval of the consent agenda.

Councilman Korn. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I approve that we adopt all items number three through 10 on the consent agenda. Thank you.

On a motion by Councilman Korn, seconded by Councilman Rubio, We have a motion to approve consent agenda. Is there any objection? Seeing none, we move to council roll. All those in favor call the roll. Councilor Armstrong? Yes. Councilor Heldenbrand? Aye. Councilor Gass? Yes. Councilor Arnold?

Yes. Councilor Corn?

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Okay, next we have the Veterans Innovation Center. The show prior, I guess, that were Craig Duncan. Down here, okay. So next we have airport updates. Come on, wonderful, come on.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. I have just a quick update for you guys. Finding the time to get all this together has been pretty hectic over the past month and a half. I don't know if you guys are aware, but there's an air race about the next week. Um, but that's what we've been, a lot of our time has been spent getting that ready. I don't know if you've cruised out, you know, I mean, taking a trip out by to the base areas and all the RV parks, the RVs are getting full. Everybody's coming in. Um, it's going to be, it's going to be nice this, this year. Um, but first of all, I just want to talk about some of the, the projects that we have, um, that we've been working on 1166. I know you guys have kind of wondered about the air conditioning there. We got one of the ACs fixed, replaced. The other unit is kind of limping along, so that unit's probably going to need to be replaced here pretty soon. They do have air over there, trans-aeros in that building, 1166. But we do have roads that came out, looked at it. They gave us a quote, so we're kind of working with them a little bit on what we're going to take the next steps on it. ILEA building, I guess it's, It's a common theme right now, right? All the ACs are going out in all the buildings. ILEA, their ACs started to act up, so we're going to have to look into that one as well. We do have a couple other buildings, 1081, where the museum was going to go into. That building is just, we've poured a lot of money into it, so we're trying to find other options to go and just keep putting money into it or or what are we gonna do with it? We've talked about maybe even possibly selling the building. We've gotten an appraisal for it. We've had somebody come and he's asked us if we would be willing to sell the building. Right now, we just see more money going into that building and I just don't know when it's gonna stop. It's just one thing after another. We fix one thing and then something else pops up. That building's been vacant for so long that it's just, it's hard to tell what else it needs, right? uh so we got we've gone to the FAA we've had the FAA come down and they you know we've discussed with them a little bit the possibilities of getting some funding for a new ARF truck so uh we did purchase an ARF truck about a year two years ago a year ago a year ago a year ago um and the other two ARF trucks that we have are over 20 years old so I don't know if you know anything about the ARF trucks, but everything on them is expensive. Just getting a brake job on the ARF truck isn't like you're going to get it on your car. It's about a $20,000 expense that the airport's having to come up with. Next meeting I can have, if you guys want, I can have a list of everything that we've poured into the two ARF trucks that we have. So that's why we're looking to see if we can get possibly some funding from the FAA to purchase a new ARF truck to go along with the other new ARF truck that we have. They operate, but they're just minor things that need to be done to them. I say minor, but they're costly.

Omar, didn't you other offer them that they're worth about $6 million or $5 million? 1.6. 1.6 is all? Yeah, it's 1.6. That is, in the state of the art, if anybody hasn't seen that, really, it looks like one person can operate the whole thing at once. It goes right up and then It can dispense thousands of gallons of that foam and everything else. It really is a really up-to-date piece of equipment. Had we not gotten the other truck, we couldn't have any federal planes here. So we dodged the lightning there because we would have lost all our Navy pilots and a lot of the other planes that come here and refuel. So those trucks are... They're extremely expensive to have, but they do allow an awful lot of use for government planes here, and we have a lot of government planes that stop here. Right.

And not only government planes, but also the passenger planes that we do have, the two United and American Airlines, which have requirements of the ARF trucks that we need to have on site. Right now we're meeting that requirement, but the fear is if something was to happen to one of the trucks that we really can't afford to fix, being that it's over 20 years old, that's why we're looking into possibly getting that one replaced as well. Yeah, that ARF truck, though, I've seen that. The other ones, it takes maybe, what, three people to use to operate it, but this, the new arm truck, I've seen them use just one person, just sits right in the middle of the truck, and they can operate everything on that truck, so it's a pretty nice truck. The other updates I have for you are the, let's see here, these are in the packets that I gave to you guys a while ago. The top plate tavern, For the month of August, it was $10,850 reported. So it was a slight dip from the month before. But I see that going back up. But just today, I know that they made $1,700. And it was pretty busy, partly, because I think it was American was delayed all day long. So the passengers kind of hung out in the terminal all day. They had the restaurant and the bar to hang out in, so that was pretty good for them. On to the airlines. United, for the month of August, reported 1601 on their passenger reporting. And American reported 3960 for the month of August. So that's it for that. And I do have a picture on the slide. So one of the other things that I did talk about last time was the taxiway Lima project, the BLM that's been going on. So they came out and they drilled into the concrete slabs. There's about eight slabs that have cracks on them. And you can see in this, the hole that when they drilled, the cracks go all the way down to the bottom. It was so bad that he didn't drill all eight holes, all eight slabs. I mean, he did two or three of them, and then the guy said he'd seen enough. He knew that all eight slabs were the same. The next slide. So there's about eight slabs that have the cracking on them. I did ask the Lochner, you know, why did he think that the Concrete slabs cracked, and he did say that it was possible that they didn't put the coating at the very end in time. They kind of waited until the next day, so it didn't harden the concrete all the way. So it did start cracking. They're going to be here on Tuesday, constructors, Inc., to look at those concrete slabs so we can start moving forward on getting those replaced.

Two feet thick. I think it's probably about two feet.

Right. They're pretty big slabs, so it's going to delay the finish of that taxiway again. But this is another picture of the drilling that they did on one of the slabs right in the middle.

Did they check the composition of the CMS? I mean, did they have the core samples?

That's what they did is the core sampling on it. The only thing they could come up with is just that finish, whatever it is that they put at the end of concrete after you're done with it. It's supposed to put a protection on it. It's supposed to harden it a lot quicker. And then for whatever reason, it didn't get done.

Yes. Did constructors put them in originally?

The concrete slabs? Yeah. Yeah, this is where they're working on right now. Okay. This is going to be a new taxiway. It's a taxiway.

I just wanted to know. So they're coming back to look at work?

Yes, they're coming back on Tuesday so we can discuss getting them replaced. Thank you.

Councilman Corn, I've got two questions. Since we're talking about this taxiway, this is on their dime, right? We're not out any more money.

The replacement? Yeah. Right, it's on their dime.

Okay. And you've already had that conversation? We have. And it's already decided? It is. I don't want to hear it. Right.

Okay.

Now, your dollar figure on what he called the top flight cabin tavern, this is gross amount or net?

I believe that's gross.

Okay, thank you.

That's all I got. That's not for any more questions. To replace these concrete slabs? I don't have one yet, but I can get that on Tuesday and I can let you know what we discuss on Tuesday.

They're going to have to cut them out and then remove them.

Right. Right.

Face the sidewalk.

I mean, Paul and I were out cutting in asphalt, and that took a long time today. So I can imagine what that two feet of concrete is going to take.

Maybe in time for the fire station next year.

Hopefully.

Any further questions? Anything else? Any further questions of Omar?

Thank you very much. Yes, sir. I'd like to say on behalf of the airport staff, I hope to see all you council members out at the air races next week. Thank you.

Anybody, when you go out there, Omar and the staff, and all city staff who have been working out there, it's been incredible what they've done. And when you look at the 26,000 feet of highline that they buried, and, you know, so it's... It's amazing the work that all our people did, got together, and how straight up the whole thing we did with that back road barrier that flies while it's 49 inches or five feet, whatever, five feet, they have to be buried. And so they've really done a good job. And going out there on the taxiways and everything by the bleachers and All the work that's gone in there, they've really done a fantastic job in how well everything's coming together. So, Omar, to your staff and all the city employees that have been working out there, thank you very, very much. Okay, next, Mr. Collins, the head of the Archipelago Championship.

Mr. Mayor, thank you very much. Honorable members of the council. So, at your place, I was delighted to put the new stem brochure, give you an idea of what all these kids are going to learn and just arrived yesterday, a copy of the program. You'll have time to study your leisure, but it gives you background in all of the aircraft. But I'm delighted to say we've got some opening letters from the mayor, from the governor, from Secretary Lansing, just to make it clear how deeply we appreciate all the support we've had from the city and the state. Now, when you go through your program, obviously people like me are often most interested in the airplanes. But I would draw your attention when you get through the program that one of the pledges I have is selecting the recipient for the Chairman's Award, which this year went to the Honorable Bobby Thompson. And our persons of the year, usually per se, are the Hollywoods. Because as you well know, without the support of their branch, Roswell wouldn't have even been in contention. So it's been a beautiful partnership. With their support this last year, they've authorized the emergency runway. Bobby, I apologize. I realize I should have sent a picture of the brand on the runway, but I didn't get that to Angela in time. My apologies. The 5,000 foot by 60 emergency runway is now completed. 500 feet overruns at both ends, and the Holyfield Branch brand is at both ends of the runway. The runway is exceptionally visible from the air. In the future, we'll bring you some more pictures of the race because you won't see it unless you're flying, but the truth is with a What are the two colors, Bobby?

Turquoise border with hot flamingo pinks.

The two colors that Sarah and Kerry and I feel like the most. And so if you couldn't see the runway, you sure as heck are going to see those brains at the end of it. So to start off, I'd like to say, obviously, I am second to none, even the mayor, in my admiration for what the airport staff and many of your public works and other personnel in Parks Department and other places have done to improve the facilities for this year's races. I do agree with Omar that I hope you are all out there in the city, shall I have an opportunity to see what's been done on site, which is extraordinary, including significant improvements to drainage, which as a result, I keep hoping, will ensure we have no rain. I'm only dismayed because I've looked at the weather forecast and the odds are rising right during the races. Clearly, my prayers to God are not being met. Just a quick overview. Today at 3 p.m., we had the mass inbreed. Two and a half hours. We nicknamed the briefing from hell because it takes two and a half hours. Actually, we only did it in two and a half, which is less than usual. It starts Pylon Racing School, which begins tomorrow. We have roughly 55 aircraft in. Comes Friday afternoon. For Saturday's PRS, we begin the sport class, which for them is mainly familiar as engineering because they already went through PRS. So we have one more briefing on Saturday. They'll bring me another 15-year class. Then on Monday, we have the unlimited surviving. Another 14-year class at this point. We just had one have to drop out or unfortunately dusty down with a prop issue. So they will have another briefing on Monday. Then on Tuesday, Owen will have another briefing for Stoll, and one on Sunday for those who didn't make it today. So poor Owen has got five briefings, each roughly two and a half hours long. The Thunderbird arrivals, as I reminded you the last time, will be next Thursday, the 17th. On Friday evening, the 18th, in front of the county courthouse. We will have a reception for the Thunderbirds. It'll start roughly at 6. We'll have an Air Force band and a National Guard band there. 6 roughly till 7, 7.15. The Thunderbirds are having dinner at your favorite place, Tia Sophia's. And then they'll walk across and be there for about an hour and a half, meeting and greeting everybody. There's a short ceremony, but it'll probably only be 10 minutes. We present a trophy to them. They present some Thunderbird pictures to us. As a result of all these arrivals, if I could have the first slide, we have a new arrival chart. It's called the Main Street 1 arrival. And our plan is when the sport and the unlimited is coming, just try and make sure the town knows we're here. They'll fly straight over Main Street at about 1,000 feet, preferably 1,001, so the FAA doesn't get upset. And then, as you see, for that circular area, when they get the lower part, they'll be back in touch with the tower, and they'll make arrangements for them to either land on the 1-7 or 3-5. So the Main Street 1 arrival is a new addition to the arrival route to Roswell. We're really excited about it. The B-52 is arriving on Tuesday. It will not use the Main Street 1 arrival route. I don't think the downtown tenants would be very happy with the number of windows that would likely get broken if they brought down about 1,000 people. So we have all seven classes of racing. Racing will begin Wednesday afternoon. As I said, the Thunderbirds will begin on Thursday. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they're performing and racing goes on. We have had very good cooperation from both American Airlines and United. It was a little stressful for a while because some of their arrival flights would have been a barrier to the Thunderbirds' time. So we really needed them to move it. They did. I'm glad to say that with Bobby's help and others, we've managed to work through the airline issues and I think have put ourselves in a better position for coordination next year. So that's all I have. I'll be delighted to take any questions. And I look forward to seeing every one of you there. And I'll quiz you routinely about which airplanes you like best when you get there. Any questions that I could take? All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate all your support. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Long.

we have gone out and 4-0-K in order we have we have the 7 people who signed up for the meeting and the clerk has informed me she has your addresses so you don't every person who signed up she has your address so you do not have to um or tell your investors where you live if you don't want to. That's up to you. So the first we have, probably to public participation, so we have an agenda item turned on at two times. The first one we have is Vivian. I am Vivian Moore. I am coming to all of you as a voice of hundreds upon hundreds of your constituents here in the city of Roswell.

Now, I do commend each and every one of you for taking the positions of power that you have, but I need for you to understand that my fellow Roswellians are suffering. People are dying. The crime rate is very, very high. We've had multiple murders. Our police officers are tired. Our firemen are tired. There have been multiple homes that have been burned down. I've seen two in the last month and a half. People are losing their incomes and not able to pay their water bills. And you all, and I'm putting this on you all, are losing over $300,000 worth of money. Now, while we are trying to figure out whether we can pay for food or water or gas, you guys are having meetings at 3 p.m. You know how this city runs. Parents are picking up their children. They cannot come speak to you on financial matters and figure out what's going on in our city. While you have block cameras watching us, we have to go through hoops and bounds to be able to come to you. Now, I have had a couple of you individuals reach out to me. And unfortunately, because I have been speaking to so many of your constituents, it has been hard for me to get a hold of you. I will be doing that here within the next week, so just be expecting some calls from me. Right now, our crime rate is above the national average, and that is according to the Roswell, New Mexico website. While we are going throughout our daily lives, we cannot take our kids to watch the air show. Not the Roswell, It's very, very nice for you guys to be making Main Street very, very pretty and amazing. And we have had the flooding back in October of 2024, and many people are still suffering from it. I need for you to start thinking about your constituents and what's happening with them because people are losing everything right now. I would like to meet with all of you individually so that I can show you what's happening. The water department is in shambles. There are so many different individuals who are having to pay over $4,000 in water fees. We can't do it anymore. And you guys are losing money. I don't know what happened with the fishing scam. I don't know. I don't know how that mess up happened, but it happened and it's on all of you. Your constituents are upset and they're suffering. And I just really need for you to understand that. Now I have a bunch of statistics that I can get into. Like, when the crime rate rises, that means that the economy is going down. And it is. Now, with everything that you're trying to do with the zoo and doing Main Street Roswell and the air show. Excuse me.

Your time is up.

Thank you very much. I will speak with y'all soon. I'll let you know the rest of the stuff. But your constituents are upset. You're failing.

Thank you. Sorry.

Next, we have Carrie Moore.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Councilors. My name is Carrie Moore, and I am the president of the Friends of the Spring River Zoo. I want to be very clear tonight, I support removing the animals from the Spring River Zoo, all of them, and doing it as soon as reasonably possible. There has been discussion about keeping some animals so zoo staff still have work to do. I respect the staff, but staffing should not drive animal care decisions. If better placements are available, the animals should be moved. Keeping animals in a minimally funded facility simply to preserve work is not responsible. Our staff still have value and can be part of the transition on whatever comes next. But the decision to move the animals is separate from the decision about what permanently replaces the zoo. And that is where I think we need to slow down. Because of the flood, Roswell has an unusual opportunity to rethink several major public facilities at the same time. We should not respond with piecemeal planning, placing buildings and amenities on a property simply because we have projects that need somewhere to go. We need to get this right. One of the biggest unanswered questions is the future of the Roswell Museum and the Planetarium. There has been discussion about purchasing or leasing property from NIMBY for a future museum. Before this city takes on the additional cost of property it doesn't own, we should first evaluate suitable property the taxpayers already own. The museum does not have to be on Main Street to be successful. Its location should be based on what best serves its long-term needs, exhibits, collections, classrooms, parking, educational programming, and room to grow. And that decision matters before we permanently commit the Spring River recovery to other projects. The museum already provided classrooms, education, and family programming. The Adult Center provided classes, community activities. There are opportunities to share compatible spaces and create something better than simply replacing individual buildings. We also need to remember what we are taking away. Closing the zoo removes one of Roswell's few attractions specifically for children and families. If we take that away, what are we giving our children back? The carousel is also part of that conversation. It's not just another piece of playground equipment, it's an antique and a work of art. Once it's refurbished, it deserves better than being returned to a metal storage shed. It should be protected in a temperature-controlled environment where it can be preserved, enjoyed, and treated as the historic community asset that it is. That is another reason why I believe the possibility of a children's museum should be explored. It could complement the museum, provide year-round educational activities, serve schools and families, and potentially open opportunities for grants and outside funding. I'm not saying my proposal is the answer. I'm asking you not to decide on the answer before we have fully explored the possibilities. Excuse me, your time is up. Okay, I'll go ahead. Carrie Moore, 2700 Cornell.

Thank you, Ms. Moore. Next we have Larry McGregory.

That's all right. My name is Larry McCreary. I was coming on Resolution 17 about the Roswell Adult Center. I thought I would hear information before I spoke, so I don't know that I can speak intelligently at this point other than to say I don't know that there's enough information out there for any resolution to be passed. Maybe it should be put out while we have more time to understand what's going on and who's going. And I guess I'm partially speaking for the Roswell Adult Center Foundation, which I'm vice president. So at this point, since I don't have any information, I would only ask that it be postponed. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next, we have Richard Sweet to talk.

Hi, my name is Rich Sweet.

I'm out of Work 1, represented by Mr. Arnold and Mr. Oropesa. I'm just a normal guy. I pay my taxes. I support local business and use sports. I vote, but I'm not particularly political. Until a flock camera appeared on my street, I attended my first city council meeting last month, and I just thought I'd appeal to your better senses and just ask you a question like, just because we can do something legally, should we? Do we think that we should really have cameras on our citizens? I now understand that you are more akin to Klingons and only understand strength. So I'm here to demand that you remove the camera at Washington and College. Your own police lieutenant came here and said, we have no cameras in neighborhoods. I challenge you to go to Washington and College. That camera is 300 feet from my property line and less than six feet from my neighbor's neighbor's neighbor's property line. So if I am not in a neighborhood and my neighbors aren't in a neighborhood, then where do I live? It is zoned R3 and R4 after all. There's a saying that goes, young men bleed in war and old men plant trees. What that means is if you are lucky enough to make it past your war fighting years, that you will plant trees for a future generation knowing full well that you will never sit under the shade of its leaves. What trees have you planted? Where are the great cathedrals or public works projects? What we have is weed shops up and down Main Street, vape shops. We have bums, beggars, and tweakers sleeping in the field of honor across the street from the courthouse. Convention Center, trashed. Planetarium, trashed. Senior Center, Spring River Trail, trashed. and your great contribution to our children and to our children's children is to invite the Orwellian surveillance state? That's it? That's what you want? You want to perpetuate a culture of fear and mistrust, a condition I didn't ask for, I didn't vote for, and I can't opt out of? Shame on you. If you're afraid, of your constituents, your neighbors, or your friends, that you have to put spy cameras all around our city, you have bad policies, your policing strategy is broken, and you are too weak for political leadership. When you go back to your executive meeting and you talk about the poors, the bourgeoisie, whatever segment of society you feel you can subjugate, remember the same people that voted you in? We'll vote you out, and half of you are up in 2027, and the other half is up in 2029. Thank you, and good night.

Good evening. Ed Kafka. I'm here to talk about number 15, the proposed ordinance on the fines and penalties. I'm against increasing any of that because the economy here is really poor. A lot of people here are struggling. And I'm even more concerned about the extra revenues going toward that $559,000 that are necessary for those acts on cameras. And the way I see it is really revenue generation. It really is in governance. And it's going to get to the point where we're going to have these cameras all over the place where if somebody has a burned out taillight at 11 o'clock at night, the camera's going to pick it up. It's going to be connected to computer. Computer's going to be mainly tickets to people. Somebody's on a small street, no traffic. They jaywalk 2.30 in the afternoon. Automatic. Ruedoso recently put in a bunch of these license plate readers and they've been generating well over 400 tickets a month. And I was wondering if you've given any thought as to how many tickets you're going to be generating every month because of these extra cameras. I just think it's a real bad idea. In addition, I know that Mr. Nierman has been very busy prosecuting traffic zoning and other ordinances, and I'm sure he doesn't have to work on either.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you, sir. Next we have Marilyn Mitchell.

Hi, Councilors, and Mayor, thank you for letting me be here. I have been the president of the Roswell Adult Center Foundation for almost 20 years now. And I have, with our board successively, done a lot for this city and the adult center when it was still available to everyone to use. We've all moved to the aquatic center and trying to make the best of that. It's filling up. There's not room. I'm in the yoga class, and there's over 20 people in there. in the largest part of the building. We need to have a facility that will accommodate our adults. Based on this map and what I've seen, this does not really have an adult center in it. It's got some scattered places where there's classrooms. Nothing that's close to a parking lot, by the way. I'm just concerned that not enough thought and input was put into what this piece of paper and all of the, what, 12 things that are saying that they're going to put into the area. I'm glad to hear that the zoo is, people at the zoo are willing to go along with the plan. I don't know how that space is going to be used, but I have had a lot of consent and people that are worried that it's not the place for the new adult center, which we feel in our parts should be located in the sports complex close to everything else where people recognize that Roswell has a place for sports for all people. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mitchell.

Next we have Ashley Keith.

Hello, and thank you for allowing me to come up here and speak. I wanted to just correct something that I've seen floating around online and in the papers, and there was a phrase used in relation to item number 19 the fraud that took place and it was claimed to have been a sophisticated fraud and I just want to clear the air and let everyone know that this was not sophisticated fraud this was some of the easiest fraud to prevent as far as internal controls so the fact that it was allowed to take place reflects on the internal controls of the city and so really It's a concern that, as item 19 shows, we're supposed to be allowing the same person who supposedly fell for this fraud to implement policies to prevent this kind of thing moving forward. That's really not standard. And I think it's something that shouldn't be taking place. We need to have objective analysts come in and provide guidance, and it should not be handled THROUGH THE CHAIN OF COMMAND THAT ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. OKAY.

NEXT PAM.

ITEM 15, ORDINANCE 26.08 OF THE WHOLE PUBLIC HEARING ON ORDINANCE NUMBER 26.08 REMEMBERING THE FINES AND PENALTIES TO THE RULE OF THE CITY by Ordinances. Councilor Andy Arnold.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to hold a public hearing on the proposed Ordinance 26-OB, amending fines and penalties in the City of Baltimore Board of Ordinances.

A motion by Councilor Arnold. Is there a second? Second. Second by Councilor Marrubo. Okay, so, Councillor Arnold. I'm sorry, we have one city attorney. City attorney. City attorney, Josh.

We're on the 18th. 18th.

18th and 84th.

good evening mayor uh city council this is uh the proposed amendment to the penalty assessment charts uh for the city for various traffic infractions as you know part of the uto or the uniform traffic ordinance as adopted by the city of roswell um when we adopt the uto we of course have the option to set certain things as assessments and those penalty assessments have been what they are since long before I've gotten here and at the request of members of the governing body, former members of the governing body, I drafted a adjustment to those that reflect that some of these penalties were deemed to be way too low or insufficient to with the idea of deterring the activity. When you don't have a penalty assessment, the general interpretation is that all infractions become 90 days of incarceration or a $500 fine. So as far as the penalty assessment chart, the purpose there is to increase those fines to sort of keep up with the cost of everything. If you're going to have a $25 fine for pretty much everything, people are perhaps going to see that as a significant enough deterrent in which to perhaps curb their behavior. On the second part of this proposed ordinance is addressing the issues that I think we all realize here. directly related to reckless driving or exhibition driving or racing on the streets that is causing serious injury and fatalities. I know the judge takes these types of things seriously. However, the UTO, which is largely based on the state statute, uniquely drafted in a way that creates some issues. So I redrafted it to make it much clearer to everybody what the expectation is and what the penalty is should you be convicted of reckless driving within the city of Rosswater. That's right there at the bottom of that ordinance. If there's any questions, I'm happy to do my best to answer them.

Okay. Questions from members of the council? Is there anyone that wishes to speak for or against this? Anyone wish to speak for or against it? Anyone who wishes to speak for or against it? Is there any questions from council members? Is there any questions?

Running a street light, is that on here? That's a good question. We've had fatalities because people are going through street lights so fast, and they're running red light, and we have people kill. I can't find it on here. We're ready.

Number seven on the table.

Straw pipes. Goods.

Page 87, there's line 7, it says stoplight signal lamps and signal devices. I don't know if that's what it is. No, that's on your card.

It does. So I think to answer your question, the conduct that you're describing, which would result in fatality and just falls under very clearly just the reckless, you know, driving aspect of this. That said, running a stop sign or a stop light or whatever is generally covered under, like, stop vehicles approaching or entering an intersection. They're supposed to adhere to those...

Sorry about that, counsel. Under

Number six on page 86. Vehicles entering a stop or yield intersection.

50 bucks. A couple weeks ago, and I said this in a committee meeting or something, I was at Main and 19 by Dairy Queen there. I stopped in the left lane. I had six cars pass me on the right going 50. after the light turned red six and i mean cars could have you know especially for the fourth fifth and sixth could have started in that intersection but you know we've had multiple deaths but if you even if you don't have a debt we've got to stop that and i and i think it's worth more than 50 so just so you understand my process here yeah i

I took the fines that we had, in most cases doubled them or increased them even more. The focus in my initial drafting of this was for public safety. The officer has certain charging discretion as to what they want to charge should they witness this activity. But what can also happen is you can have a law that covers a lot of different actions. And the question is, will the officer charge it under this or say under reckless driving? And if you have a light that has changed red and this person is speeding through that light, you know, and there's other traffic, that seriously and arguably, you know, you have a culpable argument there that that is a reckless driving infraction, which is a jailable offense.

So they could ticket them for reckless driving?

You could also have somebody who was daydreaming and going through a stop sign by accident, nobody was around, and that would also be, you know, in theory, fall under this if the officer saw that and sighted the person. So it's really, and part of that is from the the judge to have some, you know, discretion. It's also part of it for the officer to have discretion as to what's the appropriate charge to put against this person, not the penalty assessment nearly makes. Otherwise, every time somebody maybe runs a stoplight or runs a yield sign, you know, or doesn't yield appropriately, the default becomes And then the judge has to tell them at arraignment, look, this is 90 days in jail and a $500 fine. And the people are like, well, I guess I'm going to get an attorney for this because I don't want to go to jail. Under my reading of the Supreme Court, there's two cases here. The judge can't say, we're not going to consider jail time for this. The judge has to advise the person of the maximum penalty and minimum penalty that could be, and the judge's hands are tied in arraignment for that purpose. And then the other side of that is if this person is advised that they have the potential for incarceration, They're going to perhaps say, I would like to have an attorney represent me. Then they're going to ask the court to appoint them, and the court will do an evaluation to see if they qualify. Now, I will say that this has been before you before. It was referred back to legal. No changes were requested at legal, and it was voted to come back to city council. So that's how it gets to you again.

Thank you, Josh.

Some of the things I said at the vehicle before, I don't understand. Like starting the parking vehicle. What do these things mean? Prohibited acts. What exactly is that? Prohibited acts. I mean, some of the things I understand. It makes sense now, the things for safety. But I think if you're going to ride, they need to be clear and understandable. Or if you tell me where to go at the vehicles, and I'll go these numbers in the middle. I'm sure that's what that is, right? This being called East 12th, whatever, whatever.

So, Council Member Warren, no, they're not in the state code, all right, because this is charged in a municipal ordinance. It's in the uniform traffic ordinance as adopted by the city in its ordinances. You can find that at the court's website. The court posts a copy of the UTO. I believe the police department's website also posts a copy under their traffic tab, if you will, because I will acknowledge that the municipal league who It promulgates this uniform traffic ordinance. It is somewhat hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for. Because you'll hit, you'll pipe it in, and Google will give you the wrong thing. So that is why the court and the police department have requested an acquiesce to post the relevant uniform traffic ordinance so that to make it to aid people finding out. So if somebody is charged with that, they have the code number, and they have what's called the common name of the offense, And therefore, they can look that up, and they can go, oh, that's what that means. And then they can be so informed for their arraignment and enter their pre-reporting. I will also be candid with you. A lot of these are not often charged. This is why, if you look closely, The thing I left two blank spaces down here in case somebody wanted to add particular ones out of the UTO to add different, you know, amendments to this penalty assessment chart.

So some of these things are just, he said a catch-all, so they're not going to catch-alls. They're specific. So, and who's going to be coming up? Yeah. The municipal, they go, if something happens to one of these, they go to the municipal.

If the officer has discretion to charge traffic offenses under the state statutes, chapter 66 in the state statutes, or under the municipal ordinance, which would be all of these 12 things that you see, those are the uniform traffic ordinance. Only the uniform traffic ordinance, if they're charged under that, ordinance, it has to go to municipal court.

So they would assess these fines?

If the person entered a plea of no contest or guilty and the judge decided to assess the fine, the judge has option to defer the matter, having heard from the defendant, maybe they have a reasonable explanation. If the person likes to go to trial and is convicted, they Again, they would have that, you know, the judge would have the discretion. This is a maximum thing. This sets what the sort of judge's maximum they can do, not the minimum for the penalty assessment.

Because I heard someone complaining about this, but this would only affect if somebody did something wrong. So it's not like everybody's going to get the $500 fine if you did something. You know, somebody was complaining about these fees, but I'm just saying if you didn't do anything wrong, then you might have to pay a fee.

Well, I appreciate that, you know, there are paying traffic tickets is, I think, unpleasant for everybody and it affects, you know, fines affect certain people more than others. This is just a penalty assessment chart that is raised and with to increase those fines to be meaningful as well as to increase them even perhaps more than doubled because it has been so long since it's been done. And in some cases, even more than that, if the conduct is such that it affects public safety or affects the public.

Like this driving on mountain streets, we don't have mountains.

Not to disagree with Councillor Horn, but I would say that they're catch-all. They do all have elements to prove, from the officer's perspective, a lot of conduct prohibited acts, for instance, could leave a lot of room for the officer to make the case that, you know, it's beyond a reasonable doubt this is a criminal proceeding, that, yes, that does fall under that particular code section or ordinance section. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. That was great. Any further questions? Staff, we're moving on.

So, our goal with this is not to hurt a certain income bracket, but I personally, like you, Mr. Gass, I've seen like the school loan, I've been on one on Union, and I've seen probably more than 50% of them don't need to slow down. People flow right through the school loans, and I think that And police officers, there's not enough to cover every school zone in the town. And I know you said you've seen people go through that sunset. So I think increasing the price, hopefully we can stop some of that. And the street racing, I know it's been really bad lately too. So I just want to make it clear that the LPRs, they are not, they don't use them to take and get tickets. There is no direct enforcement from them. They only take pictures of a licensed place to help find stolen vehicles, or child abductions, or anything like that. There's no tickets issued.

Our cameras are not blocked.

We don't share information in the same room. Any further comments? You know, I would like to have some kind of penalty for excessive sound. I know that we have in some ways, but some of the cars that race are really loud. and then you have the cars with the mufflers that are very loud and then that's one thing but the others are cars that uh pull up next to you and make your windows vibrate and everything else with the noise i have i don't think that's really healthy for a lot of people and i don't know that's really kind of an intrusion on other people's space, in my opinion. So I think that when you look at, oh, you know, you used to have all those kids that used to park outside of City Hall, and you could hear them take off and go up from City Hall up to college, and you could hear them whining the whole way. And, you know, taking off and, you know, there's It didn't seem like a terrible change of year. And I don't know, I just think that some of them, and then the ones that shake your crop and pull up next year and your father wouldn't shake, I think that's too much noise in my opinion.

Mayor, if I may.

Yes.

So, no necessary disagreement there. This is just one small portion of the traffic code. Okay, and there's an expansive traffic code and the UTO is much more expansive than this just penalty assessment chart. In the traffic code, there is a provision for exhaust noise. And what is also in the city's other ordinances is nuisance activity related to noise, of which exhaust noise, excessive vibrating cars from base drums or whatever is also in our ordinances and are not infrequently charged. It's just not something. And it becomes a 90 days in jail, $500 thing. And so therefore, it gives the judge certain discretion to read the complaint, look at the facts, and decide what is an appropriate penalty for the conduct. Because there's a lot of variables in that type of thing.

OK. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any further questions? OK. We have a motion by public hearing. Is there a motion? Dr. Arnold, do you make a motion? Do you have a motion whether we move this ahead or move it to the next meeting? Or would you like to have us... Make a motion now. I thought I did make a motion, yeah. We have a public hearing, okay. All right, on the motion, if the motion is worded and not correct, I'll pass it. All right, if on a motion by Councilor Arnold, seconded by Councilor Marujo for item ordinance number 26.08 for the public hearing, We've heard of this ordinance, and so if the clerk would call the roll on passing Orders number 26-08, amending the fines and billings of the City of Roswell Code of Ordinances. Councillor Armstrong?

Yes.

Councillor Hellenbrand?

No.

Councillor Gass?

No.

Councillor Arnold? Yes. Councillor Korn?

Yes.

Councilor Moore?

No.

Councilor Marrugo?

No.

Councilor Johnson?

Yes.

Councilor Oropesa?

No.

Councilor Halvorson? Yes.

Next, we have item 16.

It's approval for a commitment to a lease agreement with the Rollins Motivators for use in operation of the Joe Bowman Stadium and field for up to five years.

Counselor Yarham. Yes, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion.

for approval to enter into a lease agreement with multiple invaders for the use and operation of the Joe Bowman Stadium for a term of up to five years?

We have a motion. Second. Second? Yes, sir. Yes. Yes. OK.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. I just wanted to say that this was incorrectly printed on the agenda. It was amended to a two-year lease with three one-year renewals. So if the motion could be restated. Sorry. This was amended, and what was actually sent to the Council was a two-year lease with three one-year renewals.

That's correct, and I'll amend that.

Thank you.

So, Mr. Chair, I'd like to amend my motion. to note instead of five years, a term of up to two years.

Do you have the three one-year extensions?

With the three one-year extensions, thank you, sir.

Okay, there's a second? Yes. So the motion item 16 would be approval for a one-year lease with the relative advantage of use of the operation for a two-year lease with the possibility of three one-year extensions. That's correct, so. Okay. Yes, sir, go ahead.

Already, Councilors. Hello, Mayor. Good afternoon. What I have to present for you is the lease agreement. The only real term that we changed, the only amendment that we changed was the term. Everything else is going to remain the same. Just to bring a little bit of the Councilors up to speed, I know a lot of you weren't there for legal committee. This is already an agreement that we have with the Raw Zone Vators. It is a property use agreement done through the Parks Department, and we're just transferring that over. I will now maintenance it as a lease agreement to alleviate some scheduling with the Parks Department. So that'll alleviate some of the scheduling for them, and I'll be maintenance in it moving forward. I'll stand for any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wondered if you have discussed the amendment

Yes, Mr. Dunn. I have spoken to him after our legal committee. I did give him a call. I spoke to him about the change in terms that you guys wanted to do. He had no problem with that. I also brought up the issue with some of the things we spoke about legal committee with the field being kind of on level. He let me know that that is going to be situated before the season does start. So I did touch base with him on that, and I'm trying to build a good relationship with him to be able to give him a call. Anything that we have for him, he can kind of work with us on that. He did also leave with me that he does plan on doing some sort of development in the near future. I'll collect some more information on where that funding will come from, and once I have that, I will present that to you, counselors. Thank you.

Councilor Johnson. Yes, sir. I know it's nice to take care of your own field. Oh, yeah. I know all about that. Oh, yeah. I've been at Ryan's Hondo for many years, taking care of the field. And I know you have an off-season. Who takes care of it in the off-season?

It would be the responsibility of the leaseholders, the Roslin-Bayers. And they are aware that that would be shifted over to them as part of their responsibility.

Okay, so that responsibility is going to go over within as well. Yes, sir.

Yes, counselor.

Good. Dan, did you guys have a good season this year?

Well, if I'm going to be 1,000% honest with you, counselors, I'm not the biggest baseball fan. I may get some boos on that. I watch a lot of basketball, a lot of football, I understand. But now that we signed this lease agreement, I'll definitely be out there watching a few games this next season.

That is just kind of weird.

I know. Hey, Councilor Burroughs, maybe me and you could go to a game one time. All righty. No, I know they did pretty good this year.

Playoffs and everything.

Yes, yes. And I'll have more information this next time around. Awesome. Hey, thanks. I just need to put you on the spot. Oh, no, no.

That's OK. That's OK. Can you probably comment? You know, I don't know that this would preclude us from getting I don't think this would, unless a legislator or something would help upgrade some of the bleachers. They're very, the bleachers are very unfriendly to handicapped people. There's another number of people that only have to sit there and it's very difficult, especially older people, to go up. You want bleachers because there's not any hand riddles for anything. Okay. I don't know if a legislature is listening or something. That might be a way to find.

And, you know, maybe moving forward, I can probably get him in talks with our, I don't know how, you know, everything works, but maybe get him in talks with our grants department or maybe, you know, look into some grants for them, helping out with things like that. But do plan on building this relationship over the next few years.

Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, Mr. Kirk, call the roll.

We can do a voice vote in here.

Voice vote after all, then? All those in favor say goodbye by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? If I have no opinion, none the negative. Item 16, the leasing agreement for two years with three options of one year renewal for all innovators for Joe Bowman's statement has been approved. Next, we do the next item. Thank you, Councilor Smith. Thank you. Item 17, a Resolution 26-54, adoption of Resolution 26-54, the new multi-generational area in the Spring River Zoo in Robsonville Dome Center, Peppermint Park. Counselor, you're on.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to make a motion to adopt Resolution 26-54, NEW MULTI-GENERATIONAL AREA SPRINGROADER ZERO ROOF, WELLSVILLE DOLE CENTER, AND PEVERMONT PARK.

A MOTION BY COUNCILOR HARNOLD. SECOND. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND.

SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS.

SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS.

SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS.

SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECOND BY COUNCILOR GAS. SECON

Okay, yes. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we table Resolution 26-54 regarding the new multi-generational area of Spring River Zoo, Roswell Adult Center, and Peppermint Park. Second.

I'm not quite finished. Let him finish before you. Would you please notice, Councilor Armstrong?

Yes, so I would like this table so that a public hearing could be made within 30 days of today's date.

All right, there's a motion. Is there a second? Is there a motion? Second. No, can we do one more? I don't want to take too long. Okay, second by Councilor Gadd. Can I say something? I know. Okay, so we're on that point of discussion. Do you want to say something? Yes, Councilor Halverson.

So, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about this. The idea behind this is we wanted to start actually rebuilding Roswell after the floods. So this was a good starting point. I want to make it clear that the planned method, you saw Ms. Mitchell and Mr. McCrary, that is not a plan. That was just to give an idea of what could be. So as he wants a public hearing, that was the whole idea. This is just to get things in motion. I don't think, as long as I'm a counselor, this will ever happen while I'm in office. This is going to take years to come. We want to hold public hearings, more than one. We want to see what we want to build there, but we need to be built. And a lot of people aren't understanding we cannot rebuild or build things that weren't lost in the flood. So everyone would say, well, use the money to fix the zoo. Well, we can't do that. We can fix the pond like it was, but we can't rebuild the animal enclosures. And people are mad, well, you're building there, and it's going to flood. Well, no, the area that you see up there, that didn't flood. It was on the other side of it. And I just want to make it clear, this is not the plan. The plan is to start retiring the animals to homes that will take care of them and to start having public hearings and working with engineers to come up with an actual plan to rebuild the zoo and to rebuild the adult center. There's a lot of places that need to be built. This was just the start so we can actually start recovering from the flood. Because I'm really disappointed. I know it takes long. And our consultants, you could say, it's going to take up to 10 years. But we need to start somewhere. And this is where I was trying to start with. That's all I have.

Yes. Thank you, Councilor Allen. Councilor Moore.

I struggle with this, because you all know that I haven't battled without the zoo for a very long time. Now remember the animals, you can't have a struggling zoo if no one, y'all start taking all the funding away, all the staffing away, all the money away, and then you won't know why the zoo fails. So we stopped funding things, and so of course now the animals are neglected, no zookeeper, no things like that, so. I struggled with that, first of all, especially for me and Rosal and Peppermint Zoo. The zoo has been there as long as I can remember. And all the things that we talked about, we had many forms about the zoo, we're going to do this, that, and the other, and none of that stuff came forward. The money just kept going away and away and away and away, and the staff kept going away and away and away and away. So I struggled with this. I understand the multifaceted or multi-generational thing. I can see that. I understand what the young lady right there said about the adult center not being there. I kind of get that a little bit. And I also struggled because I felt like, what are you thinking of so many things? Like somebody else said from the kid, what are we giving them back, okay? And y'all probably know me, I'm an avid sports fan. So I'm not saying it about being a sports, There should be more to do in Roswell for the Youth Stopping League. There's other things. There's adults that want to do things. There's more exciting things that we want to do. And so I understand about rebuilding. I do. But at the expense of some other things, the expense of stuff that's, are we talking 10 years? You said 10 or 12 years down the line before we see any of this. I'll probably be good and gone somewhere by then. But I just think that we We had talked about this in several committees that this would not even come here. We were supposed to have discussion before this even came to the community. So now we have three people stand up and say they disagree because we didn't give them a chance to have any discussion. And so we always said we want our constituents to be involved and we need to Make sure there's an avenue for it to happen and not at a 3.30 meeting where most people are at work or the kids are at school. We have to do that sometimes where we can get some input. We pretend like we want input, but do we really want input? And so... No, no, no. No, we don't have public display in the meeting. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Everybody's free to have their open expression. Please. I mean, it has to be that way without... Everybody can speak without fear of retribution from anyone or acting.

Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead. And so that's just kind of where I'm about to zoom. I just think we need to, we do need to rebuild. But I think as a city, we need to rebuild in a fashion that the city feels like they're being part of the rebuilding. And so I just think that I'm not afraid of just doing it. I don't even want to discuss this right now, but I guess if y'all have to, y'all have to. But I'm going to be a no for this because I feel like there's no input, no conversation, and people that are planning these things are not even going to be around. People that put this on the table won't even be around in two weeks to even get it done. So there's a lot happening that I don't think that we did this, we went about this one properly. And so that's just kind of where I am. I stand with that. I do believe in the building. I really do. And I do believe in the sports and the young people. I really do. But I think we need to think through this a little bit more since we've taken so much away from the city. And the flood took the rest of it away. The stuff that the city didn't take away, the flood took the rest. And so I just think we need to think through this a little bit better. I think there's more for us to do than start right there. Because to me, I think if we could start with the museum first, that's where I feel, but that's just me. And so I yield.

Thank you, Ms. Moore. Next, we have Councilor Arnold and Councilor Rovesa.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to try and organize my thoughts after that. I have several questions, and that's why I was actually, instead of voting on postponing it, I had questions for Mac and Mr. Eintema, if I could ask some questions. And Matt, Mr. Eintema.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I would be neglecting my ancient duty as parliamentarian to note that there's typically no debate on a motion to table. So if there's a motion to suspend the rules, that would be appropriate. And the only superseding motion.

So I make a motion to suspend the rules.

Second. We have a motion by Councilman Arnold to suspend the rules so we can discuss this matter. And a second by Councilman Arnold. Is there any objections? Objection. Objection. I don't think we have two objections. Three. Okay, the first to call the roll. If you'll call the roll, ma'am.

This is on a motion to suspend.

This is on a motion to do.

Two thirds.

Suspend the rules so we can have a discussion.

Councillor Armstrong?

No.

Councillor Heldenbrand?

No.

Councillor Gass? No. Councillor Arnold? Yes. Councillor Corn?

No.

Councilor Moore?

No.

Councilor Rubinful?

Yes.

Councilor Johnson? No. Councilor Oropesa?

Yes.

Councilor Halverson? Yes.

Okay, by a vote of six to four, the motion has failed. We're back on motion. Yeah, I was in the center.

I guess the only thing that I would really like to say is that, and this isn't a debate, this is a statement. There's a flood task recovery meeting every month the following Wednesday after city council and I've learned so much by attending that every month. And so, and I'm just saying, it's available online. You kind of get an idea of where they're headed or why they're doing the things that they're doing. There's so much information and this is so complex that it doesn't necessarily fit into everyone's world package and vote with a vote. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. On a motion to table count, Mr. Adler, most of this is a motion to table. So we would vote, proper procedures to vote right now. That is correct without having any discussion. And that's, I'm sorry I was trying to err on the side of, I think we're all on the same page mostly. So that didn't help much. So I motion to table, but I, Councilor Armstrong, seconded by Gass. The clerk will call the roll.

Seconded by Councilor Gass. Yes. Councilor Armstrong? Yes. Councilor Hildebrandt? Aye. Councilor Gass?

Yes.

Councilor Arnold? No. Councilor Corn?

Yes.

Councilor Moore? Yes. Councilor Muddlepole?

Yes.

Councilor Johnson?

Yes.

Councilor Otovesa?

Yes.

Councilor Halverson? No.

I vote to make the motion has been tabled. So that's the question, isn't it?

Yes. That motion, his motion was to table and hold a public hearing within 30 days, I think.

That's correct.

So that's what we're going to do. Yes. Okay.

Thank you. Public hearing.

My motion stated the public hearing to be held within 30 days from today's date.

So I don't understand what that establishes. Well, you think a town hall or something like that.

So to keep this moving forward, my idea is to table it so that we have a public hearing within 30 days.

Well, we could use the term public forum, but that's incorrect, I think, in this case.

The city attorney can state that I think that the public hearing is at...

I think it's the verbiage you worried about. It's not a hearing. What was the verbiage you worried about?

I think the more common practice is that of a town hall, but I think the intent, which you've described on the record, gives the clerk enough information to

carry out promotion i believe so and uh that's just you know after corn thank you mr mayor something popped in my head if we're going to have a public hearing we've got to advertise this sucker so do we need to are we just going to hold my hand in the budget to advertise it Is that what's going to happen, or do we need to make another vote on that? Because we're going to have a public gathering. I don't want to get into this deal about what we're going to call it. It needs to be advertised and not just on the city's website.

So it's my understanding, and I may be incorrect, but it's my understanding that 30 days allows us enough time to advertise and hold there. If that's not correct, then we amend it. But I've been told 30 days is enough time.

I just, if we're going to have a public gathering, for lack of any other phrase, we need to have enough money to pay for an ad in the newsroom. Or It's too late to put it in the water. There is a public hearing.

It should be in the first budget to call for a public hearing. And she would have to advertise. And I think if she runs out of money, then you'll have to put her in debt or something. OK.

I'm just making sure we had it covered. That's all. I'm just making sure that it was covered. You say yes, Counselor? The first budget's gone.

OK. OK. Can I answer that ahead? Councilor Armstrong, are you here?

Yes, and I apologize for interrupting.

That's all right.

OK. Councilor Armstrong, from what I'm understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're not looking for an actual hearing. You're looking for some type of a forum to get public input about how they want to rebuild these facilities. It's not an actual hearing. It's more like a forum or a town hall to get input.

Okay, so it could be a town hall. There is a legal difference between a forum and a hearing. So I would yield to the city attorney to state what is best. I just want, however it comes out in the law, I just want input from the public.

As I understand you, Councillor Vermeer, if you just want input from the public, there's not as such a need to go to a public hearing, which is sort of a term of art, requires certain advertising and certain procedural rules. The intent is to get it out there so that the public can appear and you know, give their input, then a town hall would be more than suffice. And it would just be whatever the city, whatever mechanisms the city uses to get that word out to people so that they can arrange to be there and participate.

So what I'm looking at is like they did when they did the master plan, like you said. I don't know the word. Charette. Charette. So if we have a charrette like they did for a master plan, the public comes in, gives their input, and then we build on that. The staff has to be prepared as well.

In any event, what we call it, in the motion, it is for a public hearing. If the clerk puts out the information for a public hearing, and we can have that, and we can cover whatever the topic. So we were talking about in this, in the public hearing. I think we can get into semantics, and you're going to have to repeal what you just passed. And that's something else, again, with different words in it. I think that the intent is there, and I think we're bound for our city park together.

If I may add, I think with a public hearing, we're going to hurt ourselves because, as I understand it, people are limited to only speaking for three minutes. If we have a charrette, people can get up and speak for a longer period of time. Because some may have better ideas, but it would take longer than three minutes to let us know.

You know, and so... You know, I don't think that anyone is going to be there. I think the attention is understood. If you want to make all the motions to put them back and start all over again, we can do that. But I think the attention is.

We've already voted on it.

It's a hard way. It's a hard way.

Can I make a motion to change the motion?

I think that.

Yeah.

I think you might have, to address your concerns, it may just be appropriate to suspend the three-minute rule. That would be simple enough to do at that here.

Okay. I'm sorry there's so much confusion, but you have to realize that we're dealing with, one of the buildings we're dealing with was a building that was built for the youth revolving by the the veterans that returned from the war. And then in about 19, when they closed the base, they took that facility away from the youth in Roslyn and gave it to the Senior Citizens Center. And so there's been a lot of confusion in this for a long time, but that's the whole history of that building. Some of us went to the Roslyn Youth Center. Margaret Ford ran it. And so then it all went away. But in any event, the intent of what the discussions were with the city manager and the people that are going to get input about what we build and where we build it. It's really bad if we have, and the adult center had, it was there, there were a number of, activities that could have been expressed and taught to younger people. And you could have a lot more intergenerational things here, like lapidary or woodworking and things like that. And so we want to put everything together and not necessarily have everything in one location. We have parks around a different place, so we have playgrounds and everything around. The carousel is a big draw. when we have it up and running, but we have to get it up and running. And so that's, I think it's a perfect idea for us all to get together, bring your ideas, and we'll get together in a public meeting. And in that, I'll do my best. If we get, if it's a five to five tie, then we go and suspend the time for more than three minutes of comments. Okay, so I think that is where we are right now. The motion's stable. and we will go on to item number 18, and that is item resolution number 26-55, adoption of a resolution 26-55 for dissolution of the Keith Roswell Beautiful Board. You can see Councilor Arnold.

Mr. Chair, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to dissolve the Keith Roswell Beautiful Board.

Second.

We have a motion by Councillor Arnold, second by Councillor Armstrong.

Mayor, Councillor, good evening. Thank you for your time. Before I get started, I do want to thank TJ for all the work she's done to get this program to where it's at. She put a lot of work in, and it was pretty impressive. And also the board members that contributed, really great work. We look forward to working with them as well. I'm going to do a lot of reading, and I apologize. I just want to be clear so you guys can understand what you're voting on. So, Keep Roswell Beautiful board was established to maintain an affiliation with Keep America Beautiful, which is a federal, on the, a federal. It helps beautify litter prevention, environmental education, and related volunteer initiatives within the city of Roswell. with the support of the New Mexico Tourism Department, New Mexico Clean Program, in order to maintain the city's affiliation to Keep America Beautiful, which is the federal assignment. It requires an advisory board, an annual affiliation fee, and an ongoing reporting administrative responsibilities. While the affiliation of Keep America Beautiful provides access to potential grant opportunities for specific projects, as well as opportunities to attend the annual Keep America Beautiful conference, and network with similar programs nationwide that was held in Washington, DC. Staff has carefully evaluated the benefits, continued participation, relatives, and resources required to maintain the affiliation. Over time, many of the operational responsibilities, community programs, historical association with the board have transitioned to city departments, local organizations, and community partners as well. Based on the assessment, Staff has included that the benefit to the potential return, sorry, based on this assessment, staff has included that the benefits and potential return investment of maintaining Keep America Beautiful affiliation do not sufficiently outweigh the staff time and administrative resources. There's a couple of bullet points here I want to point out as well. Board meetings, which include preparing the agenda, meeting minutes, PowerPoints, communication to the board. Out of 12 meetings the last fiscal year, two meetings were held. Six were councils and four did not meet the quorum. Affiliation reporting, which includes event reporting, community enhancements, study with no return on our investment at all. And tracking of the volunteer hours. Out of five cleanups events, Arbor Day being our biggest one, one board member out of five showed up to help the events. At this time, staff is recommending the dissolution report. Given these administrative demands and current staffing considerations, the city did not apply for the New Mexico Clean and Beautiful Grant for the fiscal year of 27. This is the state level. The Clean and Beautiful Grant also extends the reporting obligations on top of the Cape American Beetle affiliation as well. It's important to note the distribution of the board does not constitute the solution of the Keep America Beautiful program. Rather, the proposed action will eliminate the need for a separate advisory board and its associate administrative requirements, which, while allowing the program services, initiatives to continue under the direction of the Solid Waste Department. This approach will enable the city to maintain its commitment to community beautification, litter prevention, environmental stewardship, and volunteer engagement through a more streamlined and sustainable organizational structure. So under the solid waste department, we'll be able to facilitate that with the help of TJ and the PIO office and also some of our volunteers and local organizations we'll do here. We'll have a lot more flexibility. One of some of the key items that we want to maintain, and we can expand on these and we can contract them, but these are the core things we want to hold on to. Arbor Day, providing flowers for downtown Robles planners, the Main Street Roswell. Taking out the trash events, where right now we hold three events in March, we can expand on that as well, especially coupling this with the Solid Waste Department, which we do on a daily basis. This will be an extension of our duties as well. The Great American Cleanup will be able to support that as well. It's a direct relation to what we already do anyways. Library cleanup kits, we'll be able to provide those, provide funding to the library so they can develop the kits, work with the community, and reach out to specific communities, depending on which board is there, or input that we get from the public as well. Provide cleanup supplies for community groups, such as gloves, trash bags, and grabbers. Provide trash bags for event trash cans, or purchase with New Mexico Clean and Beautiful Grab Monies. So what that does as well, we'll be partnering with keep Chavez County beautiful as well. Sometimes when they go out to relief routes, Second Street, they have a lot of bags that they put out. We'll go behind them and we'll pick them all up as well. So it's a partnership as well, but then we extend that to the county as well. The City of Roswell match right now is $25,000 for 2026 New Mexico Kingdom Beautiful Grant. If given the opportunity to maintain this level of investment, additional projects could be introduced. to further enhance the public spaces we all enjoy, such as murals, community gardens, additional apartment spectacles, and other beautification initiatives. With supplies remaining from FY2026, we will still be available to provide local groups with cleanup materials and continue hosting community cleanup events to support and clean Roswell. Additionally, the Clean and Beautiful To Go trailer will remain available for large-scale cleanup events as well. And that trailer does belong to the City of Roswell. So we're all clear. And with that, Mayor, Council, I will take any questions. Myself and TJ will try to field as many as we can.

Okay, questions. Councilor Arnold, Councilor, no, Councilor Arnold, and Albertson. Anyone? Okay, Councilor Arnold.

No, actually, I just want to say I'm actually kind of excited for this. I think sometimes the administrative burden of the national requirements was actually hindering the growth of Roswell-Beautiful. And now that we actually have, if we, should we pass this and dissolve that, I think it will actually give TJ and the whole group a lot more freedom to create more and more connection. And I'm looking forward to working with you. Very good. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor and Council, I do want to add something else. Inside of our monthly report for the Solid Waste Department and infrastructure, we're going to develop a new heading. We'll be community outreach, and we'll report back to you conversations we're having, areas we're targeting, and things we're initially just bringing to the board. And they're open for discussion, and we look forward to working with you.

Okay. Mayor and Council, how are we doing? So first I want to say thank you for all you do, because I'm involved with your child plan and your project, so they've been great. And not to disparage anyone, but I know they've had trouble with getting a quorum for the board. And I hope people get this. So I think this is a good move, and you guys are going to continue doing a great job. Thank you.

Any further comments? I would just like to point out two things. I hope we can keep going and maybe either we need to work. on an established tree farm to replace the trees in Roswell and in a big way. And I think we need to do that. I think it would be good if we could do that and tie that and make sure we don't lose our Arbor Day commitment on being Roswell being a tree city. And so I would hope we either do that at the cemetery or if you have the water bill, we can plant that out at the If you got real good dirt out on the hondo out there by our waste facility and really get into having some significant tree growths, I'm talking about, you know, you know, a thousand trees a year or something. So we can sit down and get trees, get them up and then figure out when we get them up in 10 years, we can have a tree space down and move them into areas where people, where we've lost trees. And we need to do that, and so I hope we can do that. The other thing is that one of the things I would hope in conjunction with this, we don't recycle cardboard near enough. And in some of the cities, they have a big, huge container that is only wide enough for you to slide cardboard in an inch, and you slide it in there, and you cannot put a little trash in there. Nothing but cardboard. I've talked with that, with the fire chief about the possibilities of putting those maybe at fire stations. And then he would make the money from that into the funding for parts from sales of cardboard or whatever. If we can't do that, if it has to go into the city landfill to keep the price down for the income from the cardboard, that's fine too. I just want to get the cardboard out and... Now that we have our own Amazon place, then maybe we could talk them into helping us provide those containers at significant places around the city where we can recycle the cardboard.

Sure, I can talk to my leadership if they're okay with it. I can engage Amazon and the council knows I'm full of ideas, so.

we also do have a lot of room at the landfill we have been talking about trees out front and we do have plenty of water rights i did transfer quite a bit of water it would be a good place to catch some papers and mylar balloons and things that go by so you got it so seeing no other comments on a motion by councilman arnold uh and a second by council armstrong for A resolution 26-65, the adoption of 26-55, the resolution of King, Proudmoore, Butteville Program Board. Is there a call? You want to do a voice vote or not? Call the roll, okay.

Councillor Armstrong?

Yes.

Councillor Heldenbrand?

Aye.

Councillor Gass?

Yes.

Councillor Arnold? Yes. Councillor Corn? Yes. Councillor Moore? Yes. Councillor Monopole?

Yes.

Councillor Johnson?

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Resolution number 26. Thank you, ma'am.

So 26 as 55 is newly passed for the dissolution of the beautiful board. Actually, I might have 19 resolution 26-57 adoption of the resolution disclosing the unauthorized disbursements and to the corrective action.

That's a no for gas. Mr. Mayor, I move that we pass resolution 26-57 adoption of that resolution disclosing the unauthorized disbursements and the corrective action has been taken. Second.

Mr. Pink. Yes, we have a motion by Councillor Gess, second by Councillor Hilton-Burnett. I'd like to be accused from this being an employee of the bank. Okay. And, uh, uh, okay, so we have a motion for, uh, for adoption of this. Councillor, uh, um, Calverson is asked to be excused from voting. Okay, well, let me ask, do I...

This doesn't affect anything with my employment, correct? So I could be recused? Is that correct?

I think you should recuse. And, I mean, best practice is to, you know, remove yourself from the forum entirely. And, Mayor, I would say the same might be appropriate here as well.

All right. The only thing this adopts, all this does is it discloses about the internal, what has happened, and it announces the internal controls that we are putting on to stop. I don't think, I don't think, I'm sure anybody, I don't think we have to recuse ourselves, but I I would certainly be able to, if a member wants to, that's fine. And if they don't, I did not attend any of the briefings here. I am also on the Finer Bank Board. I did not do that, but I, this is not my first rodeo with things that have happened. I think we have come with a solution about how to fix and make sure this never happened again. And I think that's what this is about. And so I don't feel I shouldn't be blaming myself. That's my personal opinion. I don't think I'm not aware of any action by anybody to sue anybody or anything else. The thing is the city staff and the bank got together and they figured out how to make sure it never happens again. And I think that is something, as I see it, is a win-win for both sides. And the internal auditor is the one who brought this to us. And in working on that, she brought us the problem. And she and the bank and everybody worked out the solution. And I think that's, in my opinion, this is about fixing the problem so it never happens again. and so that's where i would go on that so i'm not going to ask to be refused i yes i don't know uh

I hate to disagree with you, but I... Oh, please do. So, Mayor, if you don't feel like there's, you know, any conflict here for you, then you're not required to refuse. I'm just letting you know that you may wish to, and that may be appropriate. But that's into your independent judgment to make that call from yourself.

So, okay. So now we need Counselor Corpeson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have several concerns concerning this resolution. But more importantly, is that the resolution itself is the process. So first, let me say that I assume that the council, like me, are very concerned how this issue concerning the fraudulent withdrawal of money from Pioneer Bank to the tune of $375,000 of which $25,000 were recovered has evolved since it happened and it concerns me a lot. And I want to make sure to let the people know I raise these concerns not to assign blame or accuse anyone of wrongdoing But to seek answers and clarification is for my own comprehension. So the first question that I have of concern is, you know, we signed a contract with the internal auditor. And under that contract, the internal auditor, as far as I understand it, is supposed to report to the council, the mayor, the city manager, And her report goes through the Audit and Review Committee, which was established. And the Audit and Review Committee consists of all the chairs of each committee. And from what I understand, the auditor issued an internal audit report 26-003 on the morning of September the 3rd, 2026. And the finance committee discussed it at its committee meeting at two o'clock that same day. So I believe that I can safely conclude that the report was not addressed by the audit committee. And based on that, My question would be, and I don't know whether we want to discuss it or make it a question that we can later get a response on, but my question would be who received the report? Why wasn't the report sent to the audit committee as required by the auditor's contract before the finance committee discussed it? And if the audit committee's step was bypassed, why wasn't the report sent to the full council prior to the finance committee meeting and the special city council meeting? And if anybody wants to address it, fine. If not, I can go on. A special city council meeting was scheduled for September the 3rd, 2024, I mean, 2026 at 4 p.m. Immediately after the finance committee meeting. The meeting included a closed session to discuss limited personnel issues concerning the city manager's issue and the $350,000 withdrawal with possible action against the finance director.

In my opinion,

I believe that the special council meeting was premature for a couple of reasons. Number one, the process in place was not followed. Number two, there is an ongoing investigation that has not reached a conclusion. And the fact that we nevertheless held the special meeting given is even more troubling to me for several reasons. Number one, neither the city council, I mean the city manager, nor in particular the finance director, which this resolution addresses, was given an opportunity to explain their side of the story in closed session or in open session. Number two, in my opinion, We acted on these two matters even though we did not have all the facts. And I don't recall hearing Tony's side of the story in closed or open session prior to voting on the motion to the motion that was brought forward at the special city council meeting. So my concern is I wonder how many of us, and this is obviously rhetorical, I wonder how many of us on the council realized or were even aware that releasing the city manager before his resignation date would have cost the city approximately $300,000 to buy out his contract. Presumably this money would be coming from general fund. Given that fact, I find it puzzling that we were willing to incur this $300,000 expense while also seeking to discipline the finance director over what the internal auditor according to a September 5th, 26th newspaper article referred to as a sophisticated fraud against the city. And moreover, the same newspaper article reported that the internal auditors, excuse me, written findings concluded Tony had made a genuine, good-faced effort to verify the color and recommended steps city staff would take to prevent similar incidents. And my last concern is after reviewing the internal audit report 26003 several times, I am quite concerned with the following statement that was made and I hope it states an immediate review at the time fraud, at that time fraud was not authorized. There was no authorized activity. However, the two unauthorized transactions posted against the city general operating account the following day. This statement is very concerning to me, and it raises questions, and like I said, it is concerning. And I think we, again, we were premature in taking actions, and we should have waited for the review. for the investigation to be completed. Nevertheless, I am going to support the resolution, but I did want to voice my concerns based on the process that played out. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Any other councillors here to speak? Any other councillors here to speak? Seeing none. Thank you. Do you want to speak, ma'am? Yes, sir. I'm sorry, you need to raise your hand.

I didn't see it. That's okay. Anyway, this right here is difficult for me. Very, very difficult for me. And I understand the resolution, and I'm kind of like Councilor Press about not understanding why we were voting so soon. I don't agree with the resolution, but I do understand that the community is concerned about the loss of $350,000. I do understand that. I don't understand that we try to blame, we want to blame someone else. We want to blame only the auditor or only, you know, there's enough blame to go around, including us. I guess if we didn't get the information, because I didn't get the information until we were at the meeting that day. So I knew what had happened. So I knew those type of things, but I still struggle with this. This is not a personal thing, and everybody can be mad at me if they want, but I just feel like if anybody else had made this mistake, that we would not be in this position we are right now. If I hadn't misplaced the dollar, I would be fired. If I overrode my check for $2.50, I would be fired. Did she do her due diligence? I don't know. If not, we lost $350,000. But i don't think you should hinder her whole career i'm not saying that but i do feel like that if we as a council had got the information in time we're able to discuss it and disseminate it and do those things if we were making the decision i think it should have been we have a meeting at two o'clock we vote in three o'clock i don't i don't i don't think that's that was adequate now mr mayor please don't get mad at me but i feel like if you had the power Mr. Hempstead, if he had the power to make a decision about what was going to happen in this incident, does he have the power to make a decision? I'm sorry, Mr. Johnson. It didn't have to be you. I'm sorry.

Yes and no. So the state law provides that the council effectively has a veto over any officer of the corporation, manager, attorney, director of The mayor can discipline up to a 30-day suspension, but that is subject to a council review if not accepted by the officer of the corporation. So the council can go up or down whenever it wants.

Based on that person's position? Right.

So the five appointees.

Okay. Thank you. But I just don't feel like we were given that opportunity to do that because everybody came in on 10,000 by the time we had this meeting, everybody was, you know, in their feeling, handing a piece of paper, here, we did make that decision, here, we did this, and now we have a vote. But I promise you, this is not personal. It's just a question of I think some people should be held to a higher standard than others. I don't think like the lady at the bank, the president of the bank is held to one standard than the teller is held. There's two different people that are held to different standards, and so I feel like that position should be held to a higher standard. And so I strove with this resolution because I feel like It just felt like a slap on the hand, a slap on the wrist, and not even a $350 slap. I think it's a 50 cent slap to me. But I just feel like, I think this should have been handled a little differently. And I think after we voted to make a decision, then the mayor comes back and said, okay, okay, you'll get this and this is gonna happen to you. And I spoke with that, I felt like that should have happened. If that could have happened, it should have happened earlier without all this understanding and the community just now hearing what's about to happen three months later. I deal. I'm struggling, and so y'all just forgive me, because I just think this is wrong. I'm sorry, y'all.

Mr. Mayor, thank you. And actually, I do want to actually thank the finance director, Councilman Gass, for attempting to really address this. However, I believe it was all premature. I'm not even sure of the purpose of disclosing this and adding remediation to it. I actually believe that when I first saw it, I thought it was a resolution to actually create a corrective policy that we have as a whole. However, so I'm kind of confused on this. I do not support it because there again, every step in this whole process I believe has been extremely premature. Do I understand what the point was, was to address the certain actions of our city treasurer? Absolutely, but there again, I don't think we should be writing this until the investigation is because then you have policy that isn't thorough. So, I mean, I'm not understanding the reason or the purpose of this, but I personally would like to either table it and send it to legal, so we can actually be a little more thorough, because I don't understand the reasoning behind it. But either way, whether I do understand it or don't, I'm a no, because, again, I have felt rushed through the whole process since day one, starting with the auditor's report, not receiving it, not hearing anything about it until that meeting and then having to vote right thereafter and not being able to process any information or ask a lot of questions. I yield. Thank you, sir.

Councilor Hildebrand, any from anyone else?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I see this resolution doing something that was not done, and that is creating a set of procedures. That's what we're talking about here, creating procedures. Whether the loss was there or not, take that now. Now all we're doing here is creating, making sure that we have proper process and procedures put in place so this doesn't happen again. That's not rushing anything. That's just making sure we've got good governance. That's all we're doing here. We're not rushing into a dang thing, you know. Maybe the external auditor and the city auditor and the treasurer should have already had these processes and procedures in place. I believe that. But those processes should have been in place long before this ever occurred. So I can go down that road too, but I'm not going to. But all this is doing is not rushing a single thing. All this is saying, get these processes and procedures in place. That's all we're doing here. So I support this wholeheartedly as to having these processes and procedures in place and That's the council saying, that's not the council's job to make sure that we have these in place. This is not a policy issue, this is a process issue. And process issues are to be done by the administration, in my opinion. Policy issues are up and down to the council. So this should have already been put in place. I don't see where it's promised me nothing to be rushed. Should have been done years ago. So, I yield, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Now, anyone else who has spoken one time? Councilor Corn.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, I've heard several people comment that we were rushed in coming to meetings. We've had two meetings. Two meetings, one right after this happened, if I recall correctly. And I think that same room right over there, if I remember correctly. Yeah. And then we had a special meeting here a couple weeks ago prior to having an open meeting. So we've been discussing this for a while. To get down to the specifics, I agree with Councilman Hildebrand that this is a process that should have been in place. But you know, I'll tell you, it's hard to have enough processes in place where somebody can't figure out a way to weave around the process. It's very difficult to do. You do your best, but there's always somebody that can figure a way to sidestep And it's unfortunate that we've lost this kind of money. That's a lot of money. I wish I had an extra $350,000 and I could go buy a new house or something. But this is not, I mean, it was a shock that it happened, but I think everybody was on notice that something needed to be done. And this may not be the last time we visit this. We may find out that this, that we need to add something to this at a later time for future city councilors. But this has stepped in the right direction. I need to get it done. Let's get this thing moved on to the next layer or whatever's gonna happen as we proceed down this path. Thank you, Mr. Brayer. Thank you.

Have you spoken yet on this? Anyone else that hasn't spoken at one time?

I'd just like to address a couple of counselors' comments that we did prematurely or too fast. First of all, this resolution, all it does is say we're acknowledging the loss. The odds of it getting back any of that money is very, very slim. Second, to say the investigation isn't completed, they're going to try to go after these people for years and years. This case probably won't ever be closed because when you have people that take this money in today's wire fraud the way it is, you're not going to get that money back. And they're not going to close it. Maybe they'll find something 20 years from now, but we're not getting that money back. You know, to say, oh, we have to wait until an investigation, the investigation's never going to be done. Third, it happened June 25th. I notified the internal auditor the 29th, which is Monday. I was out of state, found out about it, was called by a couple people and called Monday morning and asked for an investigation. It's our job. to be transparent to the public, to go after. I called the special city council meeting on September 3rd because it's our job to notify the public and be transparent. Something happened. We did have two. We talked about it. We closed session twice. So everybody knew about it in July. So to say, well, I really didn't know, I don't think, I don't agree with that. And then we got the audit report and We called for a special meeting and we disclosed it to the public. And now all we're doing is recognizing the fact that we have a loss. And we've gone through different procedures from staff, through the internal auditor, and the finance committee had some say in the final draft. And we have internal controls in place now. I will say, even though they're in control, If somebody calls up and we give them our credentials, that's not going to stop it in the future. Just because we have internal controls, it's not going to stop it. But all this resolution does is say, we have a loss. We're going to recognize it. We've got internal controls in place now that hopefully will prevent this from happening in the future. That's what this does. And we've got to be transparent to our constituents. And that's why it was done September 3rd and not waited longer than that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, Councilor Preston for a second. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do have to push back a little bit on both. I agree with the majority of what you stated. But the fact that we did the final procedure that is already in place. an audit review committee was the first mistake. Because somebody decided that they were gonna take it upon themselves and do it on their own. Instead of getting the audit committee together, discussing it, come up with a result of what needed to be done, and then put it out to the council. The fact that we got it one minute before the meeting started is not enough for me to be able to review seven pages, six, seven pages of the report. It took me like two or three times to go over it to kind of get a good idea of what the report consisted of. And the thing, Councilor Gass, with all due respect to you, you don't know whether the investigation will come to a termination or not. You have no idea. The investigation can be terminated tomorrow, could be terminated next month, 10 years from now, who knows? But it's still out there. And without the results, I don't feel that we need to move forward. It is better to err on the side of being fair than to take the action without having the results before us and making a mistake and punishing and ruining a career. Because that's what the motion was to demote. And I feel that anybody that is going to be, whether it's Tony or somebody else, it doesn't matter. Anybody that is going to be penalized has every single right to have representation to defend themselves. Just because we say this is the way it is, doesn't necessarily mean that this is the way it is. If we can provide facts, a decision, or at least in my mind, I wanna have facts in front of me before I make a decision, whether it's for or against, it doesn't matter. But it has to be based on on the facts that are before you. And so, you know, and again, Councilor Gans, with all due respect to you, I disagree with the majority of your statement. So thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Any further comments? Okay. Okay, so I just would like to point out that this resolution But it does what it says. It does say we lost the money. It does, and it, I think, between the bank and everybody we've gotten together and the auditor, everybody got together and we fixed solutions to the problem. When there's people, when we talk about if someone, what happens to people, this is not the first time this has happened. Because luckily enough, last time, it happened years ago, the Pioneer Bank got $2 million back. This time, they didn't get it all. And the thing about when you look about some of the things that happened, there were enough things that happened where it was a great possibility that A lot of people could have been easily duped in how that the phone system where people actually thought they were talking to Pioneer Bank and coming up on the phones and everything else from what I understood. It showed up on the phone who was there and everything else and going all the way through it. I don't have to go through that anymore. What's done is done. It's true. But I'm going to tell you that I have confidence in our staff. There were some problems, and I think the new methods that people have found out for fraud and ways to deceive people on the computer are exceptionally large and generally don't use so much on this little funny little thing here that There are so many things that happen that it's very difficult to stay ahead of those people that are coming up with ways to rip people off. And that's very hard, and it just happens time and time again. Because the average intelligence level, I think, of most of the people that use that is not as high as the folks that we get that are out there finding ways to deceive you. And you can see that in everything that happens in any war or anything else about the different ways things are going on. So I think this is a good document to have because now we totally 100% have all the places, the matters to stop any more of anything like this happening again. when working between the bank, the internal auditor, and our staff. When we couldn't get through on the phone, there were people that knew the individual cell phones of the staff at the bank. So they were able to get through and come up and find a solution to make sure and determine that this was fraud. So there was a lot of good things that our staff did, and yes, might have made a mistake, but you know, they stayed on top of it, and the potentials could have been a lot larger if we opened off. And if you look about it, everything is going along well. The bank is working well, I think. I believe our city, we've all learned and had an expensive lesson. but we've gone through that, and now this puts us all back with an official policy and everything else, and Lord, if it hadn't taken us so long to hire an internal auditor, maybe we would have already had this. Who knows? But, you know, I think this is a good, I think this piece of legislation puts it all in a proper order for the technology and the things we have today. Now, tomorrow might be a holy game But today, I think this is a worthwhile piece of legislation to do. And so, with that, any further discussion? Okay, the clerk will call the roll.

Councillor Armstrong?

Yes.

Councillor Hellenbrand? Aye. Councillor Gass?

Yes.

Councillor Arnold? Yes. Councillor Corn?

Yes.

Councillor Moore? Yes.

Yes. Councilor Johnson?

Yes. Councilor Orofesa?

Yes. I vote nine for renaming Councilor Patterson to abstain.

All right. Next we have item 21. Here's item 20, adoption of resolution 26-59 in support of the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security Emergency Management for a possible community development block and a disaster funding application. Okay, council born. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Move to adopt resolution 26-59 to support application to the Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Management for a possible community development block grant for disaster recovery funding.

Okay, is there a motion by Senator McCormick for the 26th Executive Session? I count for aye. Okay, Mr. Mack.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councilors. This resolution requests Council support for applications to the state DHSCM for CDBGDR funding. There is no match for local funding requirement. We're seeking funding for the following projects. The FEMA project involving the riverbank slope repair in the amount of $2.8 million, which is the local share, not FEMA's share. The FEMA project for the walking trails in the amount of $500,000, which is also the local share. And then the Brasher Road drainage project phase one in the amount of $13 million. And then airport perimeter road drainage project in the amount of $10 million. It wasn't made clear by the state that this resolution is required, but We thought it best to submit one anyway. The state has about $25 million, their need to distribute, and half of it needs to be spent in Lincoln and Chavez County. Sam, for any questions?

Yes.

Mr. Roger, how did you come up with the Crasher Road and airport? Were there other items that for a discussion that could have been put in. Can we amend this application and add additional items, or are we just limited to what we've got here on the table? I'm curious to have a brash road got put on here and how the airport perimeter road got put on here. Yeah, I think that's... Maybe what we were talking about earlier about the zoo area could have been put on here.

Those are really good points. I would say that we have discussed these projects that are at our Flood Recovery Task Force to support the Brasher Road project. So that was part of our drainage master plan, and we have that fully designed. And we've made considerable progress on the application itself, and the deadline for applications is imminent. We've also submitted... Yeah, and as Mr. Antemmo points out, a project that is fully designed and shovel-ready ready to be built increases our chances for funding we've also submitted applications in the past for airport perimeter road and you know we had we had a lot of the documentation needed for that project as well that that one is not designed Both of those projects address areas of flooding. Our cemetery is flooded twice in the last decade. A lot of the property owners along 285, I guess that would be on the west side, had flooded because the water couldn't cross 285, as the mayor's pointed out. Our air center has also flooded twice last decade and so the idea there was you know we have we have a lot of information on these projects Brasher Road has been designed and is ready to go so these give these give us the best opportunity to to get these funds

So real quick, can we interchange walking trail and bicycle trail? Does that walking trail contain the bicycle trails too? Yes.

Yes.

It's the same thing.

Anybody? I can answer a lot of this question. When you look at the flood commissioner, okay, Rocky Arroyo and the Hondo Channel, each dispense 450 cubic feet per second. Out of those, and it goes down the Hondo River Channel. That's 900 cubic feet. It comes out of those two aroidas, okay? And the capacity of the Hondo Channel is 1,100 cubic feet per second. That leaves 200 cubic feet to cover nine and a half miles from the edge of Rock Hill Voyage to the corner of the base. In that, you can get over 10,000 cubic feet per second going down across that And there is nowhere for that to go. And what happened in the last thing, you saw the Hondo Channel overflow right there. One of them was on Aspen Street, I believe, and the other one was on Wyoming. And that went all the way across town, went across all the way down the bypass. And then it went under the bypass and then it went across and it joined into the Spring River Channel. And that's what flooded an awful lot of the Spring River, too. water that would have gone down the hondo but there wasn't space for it and uh highway bypass channeled that water right down there and then it uh went uh under mcgaffey and then it went across and down over into the stream river uh channeled port over but that 10 miles it goes there there are nine point nine and a quarter miles and the ten thousand cubic feet That's where it floods all that. It goes to Main Street, which is a natural dam, or southeast Main 285, and that stops the flooding there. You've got to get water under Brasher Road and get it to Atkinson Street, which is a drain that takes it down to the storage pond on McGaffey, just south of McGaffey. between McGaffey and Atkinson and the Old Venster Highway. And the base, it flooded across the base, washed out two fences on the airport side, one on each side, one on the west side, and that flooding, we still have a huge amount of water that has to be gone somewhere. If you look at on Brasher Road on 285, The 24 inch culverts that go across there go uphill at the capacity that they should because they were installed wrong. But all the way to the base gate from all the way to the base, all those places flooded because there's no way to get water under Highway 285. And then when it gets under 285, it goes over to the railroad track, which floods again, because there's no way to get water under the tracks. And that's where we have a huge problem. But the capacity of the hondo channel is already full, which is what comes out of those two channels out of those. If we can go behind the base, if there's a way to constructed, which there it is, you can go and get water towards the Pecos River. You still have to cross, no matter what happens, you've got to cross 285 and you'd have to cross the railroad to get it out. And the railroad will not work with you on putting a channel under the railroad. They haven't for years. Okay. Any further comments? Okay, item 20. I want a motion by Councillor Korn, seconded by Councillor Arnold. Clerk, call the roll.

Councillor Armstrong?

Yes.

Councillor Halverson?

Aye.

Councillor? Yes.

Yes. Councillor Arnold? Yes. Councillor Korn?

Yes.

Councillor Korn? Yes. Councillor McAdoole?

Yes.

Councillor Johnson?

Yes.

Councillor Alvesa? Yes.

Councillor Halverson?

Yes.

Okay, thank you very much, Mike. Next, we have out-of-state travel. Everybody gets a chance to look at out-of-state travel. The police department, we have Officer Lieutenant Jimenez. He went to a conference on the 31st of September 2nd. He went to a conference in Phoenix.

Okay, next we have

Oh, do you know? Any comments? Comments from our city manager?

I believe council comments are persons from there.

Council comments. Yes, council, go ahead.

I just want to thank Bobby and Cass for all their service to the city. Somebody's going to have big shoes to build. This is your last meeting. Thank you for all you've done for us.

I'll still be calling you guys. I don't know about Bobby's shoes being that big, but well, certainly, yes, sir, but she has agreed to stay with us and help us with our contact bases with the airport. Having been out there today, we had, it's amazing to see how many friends are out there and how how far along our airport is going and the air races are going. It's phenomenal. This is going to be a really, we're going to have twice as many planes as we had last time. It's going to be fantastic. And thank you, Bobby, for all your work. And we are still going, Bobby and I are still going to meet with the FAA in Denver, or in Dallas. We're working on our air service to get better. Some of these are our air service. It's going very, very well. Yes. Counselor.

Excuse me. Former counselor. Counselor Meredith. All right. Thank you. So this is the last one, but it's after 830, so I will be quick. I want to thank everybody that I've worked with for the city and staff. You guys have been wonderful. I think in three percentages, I can sum up a job that's been done in the last four years or five years. 49th meeting. So between 2011 and this fiscal year our expenditures have gone up 53.6%. Our revenues have gone up in the same period 85.24% or 26% and our cash reserve or cash balance has increased 152.13%. We've had unbelievable strides in fixing what had a number of issues we encountered when we got here. For those of you who didn't know, I was the one who drafted the initial letter that got the special audit done, and I think for the most part we've done a very good job at cleaning house in that way. Now, I wouldn't say we're Heston perfect, but we're still not quite perfect. In any case, since, and I kind of put the team, the new team came in, we've had $48.7 million in surplus total based on cash balance. Now, there's two things that I want to report that were very nice this week. One, $25 million has hit our bank account on flood recovery. That is good to go. You have 24 months to spend it. Godspeed. I think you're in unbelievably capable hands with the city engineer and our city project manager. That leaves us with about 50M dollars left in tap tapable reserve just from the in today's dollars and future dollars. Similarly, the refinancing of the smart meters, the astutely named smart meters did happen. So that's 700,000 dollars in net savings for the city. The city treasurer processed that yesterday and the day before. Presently this year, we are now 8% above budget in terms of GRP. That's roughly $900,000. Now, this isn't to say go spend it all, of course. This is to say that we're finally in a manageable position. A couple things that I would really, so that's the good. And here's my, what I'd say is, The last couple of years, union negotiations make it unnecessarily difficult in my view to actually help our employees. Last year we were able to have some great accomplishments with the police and it looks like we will actually be up to 97 next month with luck. I'm looking forward to the police coming and asking you for a budget adjustment, potentially to hire one more above what was budgeted. Similarly, two years ago, the fire department got a big change. We have not seen the success we wanted to there, but this year, what should have been blue collar's turn. And when we crunch the numbers, it's very difficult. to get where we need to go if we were just to put all city employees making less than twenty dollars an hour to twenty dollars an hour with compression we're talking over four million that's something the city can't eat but i hope that um unfortunately our our comp study has not been finished up yet i was hoping to present that to you this month but that didn't happen in any case i hope the council takes a very long hard look about how we make sure that city employees have the correct rate of pay for a dignity that their jobs entail I don't believe and I think you all agree that 1639 for somebody digging our ditches is not appropriate and that's just something we couldn't get to unfortunately I'd also note that I think that the I think we can work on our decorum as a governing body. I've seen counselors yell at staff. I've seen counselors yell at each other. I encourage you to do better because the public wants better from us. And as somebody who also is now an elected official, albeit on the school board, I think we all can do better in local government. I think we can do a better job of following our own rules. I think a good example today actually had to do with what Councilor Pace brought up. The audit committee very explicitly exists to handle these things. It did get bypassed. No, I'm not saying the audit was wrong. I'm not challenging the results in any way, but the... In December, we all got here and we agreed, I think it was a unanimous vote actually, that part of the reason the audit committee hears things first is because it could be in a closed meeting to discuss sensitive items. We've had three audit reports, but the audit committee didn't forward the second one to the rest of the council. Feel free to ask for it. that gets to the second audit report found no findings that's probably why it wasn't forwarded so you know if you look at augustine or the aristotelians they'll tell you that justice is giving every man his due and i think the council and i'm guilty of this too when i got in here we were too busy trying to shake every problem out and we forgot to say thank you to the people who have stuck around with us and have done a great job so remember to give due as well praise as well as In any case, fundamentally too, I think where my failures, partly as a manager, and the resulting, the tensions that I've had with some of you, are fundamentally tied to the overarching and extreme power of the position of the manager. I've said before, and I think you've all heard it before, that I don't actually think there should be a city manager. it's too much if you were to look at the state law by simply by having a city manager the council is signing away significant authority as well as taking it away from the mayor so 312 to feel free to 312 3 simply says that the council cannot possess powers conferred by ordinance to another officer of the municipality and I think that I find it and as the city attorney I've got a probably been more progressive I don't want to say more progressive I could have been more I could have had more hustle about looking at what we do. And I think that if you look in the city code, there's an unbelievable authority vested in this office. And as a governing body, as well as a constituent, I highly encourage you to think about moving to a charter and having a more modern form of government. The way that the system we are under Modern government from the state's perspective was created in the 60s and it's for towns that have been incorporated recently This was never supposed to be the structure we had whether it was such a large government body or a manager with a ton of authority So I hope you guys in the future will seriously consider a charter commission Home rule is going to be a big component of that and you're the electives on that one So I'm not going to make a comment because there there's plus or minuses in any case at its core that I've tried to be a lawful manager and I've tried to steward the money carefully. And when I was counsel, I tried to keep us out of trouble as best I could. I think I did an all right job. I probably, in hindsight, I definitely could have been better, but that's 2020. So thank you guys. Your success is Roswell's success. So I wish you all success. And thank you again to everybody I've worked with.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Okay, any further comments? I still don't have a hammer.

Here's your hand. All right, well, stand to turn.

Thank you very much. Thank you.