[Music]
john
okay well good afternoon everybody
welcome to the
teleconference work session of las
cruces city council today is monday
april 13 2020. it's approximately 1 pm
um
joining the pledge of allegiance please
pledge allegiance to the black united
states of america and to the republic
for which it stands one nation through
god indivisible with liberty and justice
for all
okay so we've got uh jennifer martinez
from our communications office is going
to
introduce the pet of the week
good afternoon mayor and council
i would like to introduce you today to
our pet of the week who is
benny
benny is a
two-year-old
uh
neutered male let me see if i can
bring up our presentation here today
there we go
okay benny is a neutered male two years
old he is
a big ball of love he is perfect for any
active family and it makes him great for
long runs or any short hike you know
what jennifer i don't see benny oh
let's try this again
there you go there you go okay
he's too cute not to show off so
um he has a big ball of love perfect for
active families makes him great for long
runs or short hikes
and he does love to cuddle he's one of
the longest residents at the animal
service center of the messiah valley so
you want to make sure to take a look at
them really closely and see if you want
to bring them into your into your home
and also into your heart
the hours of operation are as follows
noon to 6 pm monday through friday noon
to 5 p.m on saturday and sunday they are
taking appointments by um taking
people actually in by appointment only
the number is three eight two zero zero
one eight you can make those
reservations anywhere from eight a.m to
noon prior to those opening hours of
operation off-site adoption events are
canceled until further notice and again
there are limitations at the animal
service center which are as follows
there are free adoptions you can go to
ascmp.org
adoptions animal control is only
bringing in emergency cases to the
shelter that is sick or injured animals
and also accepting only sick or injured
owner surrendered animals they're taking
emergency health appointments from
adopted or fostered animals only and
they have reduced on hand staff
now more than ever you're asked to be a
responsible pet owner we see a lot of
things online about picking up a
a
covered 19 pet if you're going to be
home a little bit longer and you want to
bring a pet into your home we ask one
that is suited to your home and
lifestyle you keep only the type and
number of pets for which you can provide
appropriate food water shelter health
care and companionship and to remember
to commit to the relationship for the
life of your pets
again our communications office would
like to take the time to bring you some
answers that you may have about clover19
face covering in late february the
surgeon general dr jerome adams said
masks don't offer any benefit to the
average citizen those were the facts at
the time the department of health now
recommends new mexicans were cloth
non-medical masks when traveling outside
the home for essential outings
the centers for disease control say that
they do
offer additional voluntary public health
measures they say
the use of simple cloth face coverings
to slow the spread of the virus and help
people who may have the virus and don't
know it from transmitting it to others
you can get those tips at
covid19los cruises.com or at our website
lost cruises.org on the top right hand
you can
top left hand rather you can see the
covid 19
alert center where we update all of our
news releases related to covet 19 and
any new findings from the department of
health thank you mayor
jennifer before you go can you clarify
what you said about a covet 19 pet
you um obviously these pets don't have
uh
oh
those who are looking to i believe
they're called pandemic pets they're
families who are home spending a lot
more time home right now and they want
to take a pet into their home and these
pets right now at our shelter are free
so if you want to take in one of these
pets because you do have this free time
now you do want to remember that you do
need to commit for the lifetime of the
pets so when you do go back to work or
your kids go back to school they're
still going to be a pet in your
household and you do want to remember
those tips just want to clarify it so
that people don't good call thank you
mayor okay thanks thank you uh
appreciate it jennifer
okay so
looks like the first item is going to be
1.1 which is the 2020 legislative
session summary and updates and i think
larry horan is here as well as amy
johnson bassford
uh thank you mayor this is larry haran
um and we're gonna have a powerpoint
presentation so uh miss bassford uh is
going to share her screen and she'll run
the powerpoint for you as always feel
free to stop me if uh um if you have any
questions during the presentation or
we'll take them at the end however you
uh prefer to proceed um
if we could take them at the end that
would be great
that's perfect mayor uh no problem so uh
the 2020 legislative session was a
30-day legislative session that began on
on january 21st
and ended on february 20th uh and
for those who don't know or as i always
like to remind you a 30-day session is
limited in scope to what the legislature
can consider uh to revenue matters
appropriations and messages from the
governor um this year as far as
legislation went it was a relatively
light session for um
policy matters with 404 bills introduced
in the house of representatives
and 323
bills introduced in the senate
at the beginning of the session and
during the session it was it was a very
good and optimistic
year for the state of new mexico
the legislature
passed a budget of 7.6 billion dollars
which was a record budget for the state
of new mexico
we had a projection of 800 million
dollars in new revenue for fiscal year
20.
some of the kind of the highlight areas
that the legislature considered was
across the board raises for state
employees teachers increases in
education funding
including
raises for state police officers and
correctional officers above that of the
regular state employees
the legislature considered and created
an early childhood education trust fund
by funding
that fund with 320 million dollars in
one-time monies they considered the
legalization of cannabis
they passed an extreme risk protection
act that's sometimes known as a red flag
act for for gun control they considered
in past para
reform and also changes to the public
employee bargaining act which were some
some of the big ticket items we dealt
with
for
for capital outlay for the city of las
cruces if you'll recall last year
we we adopted or kind of went back to
a
a method of of coming up with capital
priorities with input from the council
so we had individual meetings with
councillors and city manager staff to
come up with
legislative priorities for us to present
to the legislators to consider for
capital funding
we have total requests of just over 31
million dollars
this year
unlike last year the legislators had
about half of the amount of funding they
had last year just over 532 million
dollars
of that 532 million dollars 361 or about
362 million came from seven sex bonds
and the remainder came from general fund
um authorization general fund revenues
of just under 143 million dollars that
becomes important based upon what the
governor did um as we as we started to
enter into the issues with uh covet 19.
so we'll get to that in just a minute
for total funding
from the city requested projects list we
got over just under uh 5.5 million
dollars
and uh with community group
requests for capital outlay which is not
unusual
we the city of las cruces received a
total of just over 10 and a half million
dollars for our priority projects
some of the highlights uh and and we
have the list at the end and then um amy
can and amy and i can go through any
specific questions you have but the dona
ana trail move project we received 290
000 in funding for amador hotel
restoration 225 000.
the state park renovation and
construction we received 945 000
um and what i will say i'll comment on
that one specifically because
the advocacy groups for the state park i
mean for the skate park
were active and they they not only
worked and lobbied the city council but
they showed up in santa fe and they had
discussions with our legislators um
trying to gain support for their
projects so that was
um and i got i
was privileged to to meet a few of those
um advocates who were there and and they
were great advocates for the city of las
cruces and for their project and it was
really a really kind of a cool process
to be part of and the soccer complex we
received 856 000
for capital funding for the improvements
and again
that
the group uh the advocates
were very active and and worked very
hard to obtain legislative support
for their funding i mean for their
project and then as we've had on the on
our capital request for the past several
years our ongoing acceptance
septic system replacement um we received
five hundred thousand dollars in funding
and that's that's a project we've been
working on for years we continue to have
a lot of work to do so
um i would imagine it may be on our
our list again next year
um
and so
there was also a capital outlay
reauthorization for cinematic
infrastructure to to
extend the deadline um to 2022 to to
spend those um funds
so
right at the end of a legislative
session the governor has 20 days to act
on legislation and she can either sign
veto or if she does nothing at the end
of the 20 days legislation is considered
to be
pocket vetoed and so the reason i bring
up how much of our capital projects were
general fund revenues
is right at about the 18th day of of
funding is when we started to see
problems starting to emerge with the
state budget and also with what was
happening with covet 19.
so the governor vetoed
109 million out of capital outlay
projects that came from primarily
general fund revenues
and um
that was
that was done in an effort for her
to find general fund revenue
that the state will be able to use to
plug the budget hole
that had that has developed because of
covet 19
and then also an amy we can go to the
next slide for this
the plunging of oil prices so the state
of new mexico about 40 of our budget um
comes from
um
from
oil and gas revenues right now it's
primarily oil revenues in the permian
basin in the southern part of the state
um and amy the next and you can go to
the next one as well please thank you
and
for every dollar
the
a price of oil goes down per barrel we
lose about 22 million dollars in revenue
at the state
so the f
fy 21 budget was based upon 50 dollars
per barrel of oil
uh because of covet 19 we have continued
uh
um excess oil on in the market and also
the the price war between russia and
saudi arabia oil prices literally
plummeted they approached almost 20 a
barrel which was record lows
um for the for the world and also
um for new mexico at least it's a
20-year low so it would be it's a
it created a a lot of anxiety and we
created a big budget hole
just recently over the weekend the
saudis and russians and other producers
came to an agreement
on
production of oil so that will help
keep oil out of the out of the market
and we'll keep the prices up the problem
is because of covet 19 no one's using
any oil as you as you probably see since
we're all at homer
and so we have
low oil prices and a glut of oil on the
market so we that creates a real
um
issue for the state budget and you can
go and move to the next slide i mean and
then so the governor at the same time as
this oil crisis started as as i know
you're aware and i had a chance to watch
your meeting on on friday that the city
is
is dealing with um the
the covet 19 stay-at-home order she
issued the the stay-at-home order and
the closing of essential businesses and
that continues as you as you well know
that continues to be tweaked
and uh essential businesses the list
actually is getting a little bit smaller
so that's that has a direct impact on
state revenues and as as i'm sure you're
painfully aware has a big impact on
gross receipts tax revenues that the
city will see
because of the lack of economic activity
um in the coming months
and so a lot of the discussion um and
and which makes this presentation
different than what we usually get as a
post session is a lot of the concern is
what's going to happen what's the
legislature going to do and when are we
going to have
a special session there's a lot of
issues on the table that the legislature
will have to deal with first of all how
do we create an economic stimulus
package for
the state of new mexico to help combat
covet 19.
um we have a significant we have a
potential budget shortfall in fiscal
year 21 which begins on july 1st
um in our current fiscal year we have
rev we had a about 1.7 billion in
in reserves and so there's not a lot of
concern about the current fiscal year
for state operations but we need to look
into fy 21 and then also into fy 22 it's
a pretty grim picture
um for the state budget
and of of immediate importance is how is
the state of new mexico going to
implement its june primary
with the stay-at-home order you have the
issue of in-person voting
and having large groups of people to
show up at
polling places and additionally
a significant majority of election
workers are over ages the age of 65 so
they fall in a high-risk group
so a glue a group of county clerks filed
an emergency petition with the supreme
court to ask the supreme court to
consider
um allowing mail-in ballots
uh
for the or making this a mail-in
election
that petition was opposed by another
group of county clerks and also the
republican party of the state in new
mexico asking that they just utilized
absentee ballots
for the election and so there's hearing
tomorrow at the supreme court where
they're expected to make a decision as
to whether or not they're going to make
the decision about how those the
election will be handled or are they
going to punt the issue to the
legislature and ask the legislature
to convene and consider
how to handle
an in-person election and so there's a
lot of logistically as you all have been
dealing with similarly the legislature
has to decide can they meet using zoom
or technology or do they actually have
to be in person and at least in the
senate the rule is that they have to be
in person and so again you run into the
problem how are we going to deal with
with convening the legislature for a
special session
um to deal with these issues so we'll
know more on that at least later this
week because that's the most pressing
issue the um i had conversations
in preparation for to make this
presentation to you spoke with senator
john arthur smith chairman of the
finance committee and then also senator
mary kate papen the president pro tim
they're anticipating that they will have
to have
a special session to deal with the
budget issues in late june
possibly early july so it's not too
pressing and so they can kind of wait to
see if the
if if matters have changed but that
could change depending on what happens
with the with the decision on
um
i'm sorry on the election um coming up
uh and the real concern for
for um
for the state budget is in fiscal year
22. so we can go to the next slide amy
and the reason for that is because
between vetoes for capital outlay
funding and the other thing that the
governor did
is they had what they call they call it
a junior budget bill meaning they had
excess revenues and so they passed a
budget where they allowed legislators to
identify
local road projects that they could fund
and that was just over 50 million
dollars so the governor vetoed
just about 110 million from capital
outlay and she vetoed that
that local road
funding bill and so we lost some of our
appropriations in that bill for the city
of las cruces
but she
what she did was she gained about 160
million dollars they can use from
general fund to fund state government
and additionally they're they
following the last economic downturn
they created what was called a tax
stabilization reserve fund or the rainy
day fund and that currently has funding
just at 1.3 billion dollars
and then reserves for this fiscal year
as we talked about were 1.7 billion
dollars
and then they also built in about a 25
was a reserve in the fy21 budget so for
the for the near future
the state of new mexico there's doesn't
look like we're going to have to have a
lot of cuts or reductions in operations
but in fiscal year 22
with the oil problem and then also with
the with the fallout from the covet 19
and we don't really know what's going to
happen to the economy that's when we're
really going to have some lean
um budget years
and so
the other thing that the state will
consider is economic stimulus what can
they do to help businesses and
communities to deal with
the fallout from the coven 19
part two real problems practical
problems is the state has its own budget
issue so they're going to be short of
funds to fund basics of state government
and constitutionally the state is also
prohibited from deficit spending so they
have to balance their budget every year
so
they have to have funding for basic
services
and they can't deficit spend so we have
a much more finite pot of money of what
we can provide to business entities and
then also and and i know you all have
been dealing with this
the anti-donation clause prohibits the
state
or governmental entities to make grants
to private entities so that's why you
see like the state investment council
passed a loan program a 100 million
dollars but they're having to issue
those as loans that are repayable with
interest rates because they're
prohibited from just granting
um
or i'm sorry granting money to private
entities
and capital outlays so what we always
worry about at least what we saw in the
last bad economic downturn
is the state legislature swept back
funding for capital projects
um
typically what they will do is they will
go to the oldest unspent pot of money
that they have they'll sweep those those
monies back and they'll work their way
forward to more current year projects
at least at this point
there is no talk that there that the
legislator is going to consid
legislature will consider
taking back capital funding for projects
we've received
uh one of the things that the
legislature would like to do is to
inject money back in the economy by
funding our capital projects so you have
construction
um and so that you have that you have
that um
that desire by the legislature and and
also um as we talked about we're not
looking until fy 22 or where we really
see a problem
but what what a staff and i have
discussed and what we would recommend is
that we
that we're very diligent in spending
money for the for the projects we've
received funding for and encumbering
that money as you move forward so that
so that we don't run the risk of losing
it as the as budget issues get worse
um they they could be looking at what
they're going to do with the salary
increases they passed in this last
budget year for state employees for
teachers
because one of the one of the issues
that they will see when they come back
for a special session is you have
record unemployment you have a lot of
people who have been laid off from their
jobs and and
are they going to be served or giving
state employees salary increases while a
lot of people are just worried about
having jobs at all
um there will be reduction in budgets in
the state budget overall uh as depending
on how how long this goes on
sweeps become a problem because then
they go and they find money that's
sitting around
and they sweep it from different um
sources and also that's where we as a
local government have to be very careful
that we we are working to protect
your revenue streams your gross receipts
tax so the state's not trying to take an
increased portion of taxes to fund their
um to fund their operations
um so now i'll just i'll quickly we're
getting into more policy issues that
that the city council took
um an active position or stance on and
i'll go through these i'll go through
them kind of quickly but if you want me
to go back or ask any questions i'm
happy to do that but in the interest of
time because i know you have a big
budget presentation i'll just go through
these quickly they did pass as i said
the extreme risk protection act
allowing um
a law enforcement officer to file a
petition with the court to seize the
firearms of someone who poses a
significant danger of the to themselves
or others and um there's a hearing
process put in place and that order can
be effective for up to to a year
um
and then we have legalization of
cannabis which i know you took
past a resolution on that legislation
did not move during the session there
was lots of discussion on it um that
that will be back and and again as as
things change especially as the economy
changes um the consideration of
legalization of cannabis it can
generate a lot of revenue for the state
so that will also be i'm sure that will
be considered in this next 60-day
legislation legislative session
there was a change a significant change
to the public employee bargaining act
and that that has to do with the
republican employee unions and how they
how they negotiate with local labor
boards when they have issues and also
negotiate with local governments
that this bill went through significant
changes um we worked on it along with
the municipal league and the association
of counties to put to to
to pass a piece of legislation that
would be fair to both collected to the
collective bargaining units and then
also to the local government
um pera reform which we've been talking
about
um for several years the governor's pera
reform
legislation
did pass that includes an increase in
employer and employee contributions
the state of new mexico will pay their
contribution increases starting in fy 21
which begins july 1st local governments
don't have to begin that increase until
fy 23 but that's going to be phased in
over four years for a total of a two
percent
um increase by in both employers and
employees and they made changes to the
cost of living increases um for retirees
and and also when you
when you receive
your cola and additionally the
legislature put
76 million dollars in cash into the fund
i think that's on the next slide amy
um
a cash infusion to help pay for short
term
um cost of living increases anytime i
see numbers like that out that that was
included in the budget when the
legislature comes back in special
session they could look at those types
of pots of money to try and take them
back or or wait to infuse that kind of
cash they can use
some
one-time cash money
to tell fund their their budget issues
the next piece was um had to do with an
appropriation
um to deal with the lower rio grande
depletion management pilot program i
worked with
dr garcia and and other stakeholders
this was discussed before the session
about recommending
money for the
pilot project for the lower grand
depletion there's an additional
recommendation of 30 million dollars
ultimately we received the philo project
received 17 million um in funding in
this year's budget again that's one of
those things i i don't
have anything to indicate that that
funding itself could be at risk but if
the legislature is going to go back and
consider possible changes to the state
budget that 17 million is one of those
one-time
funding
issues that we'll have to work to
protect in a special
legislative session um the elimination
of income tax on social security
multiple pieces of legislation were
introduced ultimately none of them moved
or were passed but there was significant
discussion so this is one of those
issues that
the city council you all took in a
position in support of
and that will be back in coming
legislative sessions although again
now anytime you're talking about
reducing
tax or reducing income the state gets
from tax sources in a time like this
it's going to be much more difficult for
them to pass any legislation like that
and then there was some
discussion about legislation endorsed by
coalition of sustainable communities so
i just went through community solar did
not pass this session electric vehicle
income tax credit
um that fell victim to the filibuster
politics on the last day of the session
so that failed to pass
community efficient development block
grants did not pass
but they uh solar
market development income tax credits
passed and was signed into law
and then also energy grid monetization
roadmap was another issue that was
endorsed by the coalition
coalition of sustainable communities and
and passed and was signed into law so i
know that's a lot of information but now
i'm happy to stand for questions and
talk about any of that
um or any issues you'd like to talk
about potential special session um
additionally i've been in close contact
with the municipal league
just
as things get moved towards a special
session and also to help
provide some information to staff and
anything that comes up on any of the
federal legislation that's that's
pending
coming in to help
local communities deal with what's going
on with covet 19. so
i'm happy to answer any questions
thank you larry councillor avata stevie
thank you mayor and thank you mr haran
um i appreciate all the work that you've
done for las cruces
during this time
um
as you may know in my background this
was the first time that i attended um
the session as an elected official so it
was interesting to see that side of
things
um
i have a few questions regarding the
process
um of
our role as elected officials but i'm
going to back up real fast and ask
um during the vetoes um what were the
projects that
were um vetoed um
for us um
i heard there was some discussion
on the skate park was any of that money
in jeopardy from the veto
um
mayor and council student know that that
that funding was um
um and that that funding remained intact
okay
fully
and
do we anticipate that there might be any
issues with us actually obtaining all
that money now that we have that um we
have cova 19 to think about
mayor and councillor debate the student
no i don't think so because that's
that's all severance tax bond funding so
it's that cannot
with or proviso it cannot be used to
fund operations and so it's very
difficult for the legislature to to
convert that into operational money and
that's what i asked that's that question
specifically of senator smith and
senator papen at this point there's no
talk of of any problems with severance
tax funding
okay great thank you
um i'm gonna
i'm gonna let some of my colleagues
speak and then i'm gonna come back with
um some of my other questions but thank
you thank you
and before i get to another council
member it looks like david dalahan wants
to speak and and david thanks for um
sticking around i i kind of scared me
when i read the paper on sunday that you
had
left but i'm glad you were able to
clarify that and and i'm glad that
you're
you're a very valuable member of our
organization so i just want to let you
know that david
so go ahead you got the floor
thank you mayor um councilor beta steve
i wanted to clarify one thing related to
the skatepark there was roadway funding
adjacent to the skate park that was
general fund funded in the road uh
roadway bill and that was vetoed by the
governor so
we got most of it for the skate park but
we didn't get the money for the adjacent
roadway
okay thank you for the clarification
okay thank you and i believe councillor
vasquez
and then counselor sword
thank you mayor
thank you larry and thank you david as
well for for that clarification
uh i do want to
just thank representative lara caldena
for
including some additional funding for
the skate park as part of the
uh the roadway fund that unfortunately
was vetoed but no she wanted to chip in
um and perhaps pay for a parking lot or
landscaping or lighting adjacent to the
skatepark project so um unfortunately
that that um
that was vetoed but for a good reason
considering the economic situation we
find ourselves in now i thought that was
a um
a prudent decision by the governor to
veto that while she still had time uh in
the midst of what what we see now as a
pretty big economic recession that's
coming up for us
um
on that topic larry
we talk about the boom and bust cycle of
oil and gas quite frequently and i think
in the last two years we've had
some pretty good revenue from the
windfall of rising oil and gas prices
rising production
but to me this year
with the market crashing
uh you know just tells me how how much
we really need to be thinking and
focusing on diversifying our state
economy
uh in the years to come
and so i'm wondering given how low oil
and gas prices are given how much
artificial kind of market manipulation
is going on right now overseas to
stabilize this particular
uh revenue source and and mostly to be
honest for the benefit of oil and gas
company ceos not so much for state
governments
what role
or what are the conversations that you
see happening
um in the next year or two years or even
in this emergency legislative session
uh as it pertains to
uh both diversifying our economy
but
you know what what is the state
realistically thinking about in terms of
the oil and gas industry uh you know
decisions that they might have to make
are are they thinking about some type of
stimulus are they thinking about some
type of bailout for local oil and gas
production companies
um or what's the conversation do you
think is going to be like in santa fe
coming up on this
thank you mayor and councilor vasquez
a lot of the legends
a lot of the legislators who are there
for this session have not gone through
one of these economic downturns
particularly in the house there's been a
lot of new members and a lot of
turnovers so they came in
when things were pretty rosy but it
hasn't it's been
the recent past we just we just came out
of
of a 10-year
downturn that included
an oil um
decline that that created a big problem
for the state budget so under governor
martinez
we had cutting and we had sweeping of
projects they took we had a lot of
revenues taken back and so a lot of the
legislators who who have been there and
the governor who was in congress and
also was part of state government during
those times so there's some
institutional memory about
what happens with oil and how you have
these downturns because every time we
have we have record revenues
if you've been around you'll just know
that within five
five or ten years you're gonna have
another downswing and so
already a lot of the discussion in the
legislature particularly when you're
talking about um
education reform
um the the early childhood trust fund
the discussion the creation of of that
that has been going on um trying to find
new ways to to attract new industries to
our state cannabis the cannabis
legislation and discussion on revenues
those areas they've been talking about
because there's a recognition that we
have an increase in fact our dependence
on oil is increasing last economic
downturn was about 30 to 35 percent of
the state budget now it's 40
so
i'm sure that those discussions are
going to continue the discussions i've
had with legislators
at this point they don't necessarily
have a package yet of economic stimulus
that they want to pass
for new mexicans but it's the focus
right now at least is on those
businesses that's been closed those
small businesses not necessarily oil
and oil production businesses are kind
of used to this swing
because this happens to them
um on an ongoing basis as
production or prices go down they kind
of shudder and they go through these
swings but but mom and pop retail
restaurants small businesses throughout
the state are not used to that kind of
this week so i think a lot of what
they're focusing on is how they're going
to help those small businesses
and and
the difference this time in the the
money that was spent in the premium
basin is the primary investment was from
big oil so from chevron and exxon and
those their investments um so they'll do
what they can to help support the
industry that that helps support the
state so much but a lot of their
stimulus talk i think will be more on
small business and how they're going to
come up with a package to help those
kind of entities
thank you larry i appreciate that and
i'm happy to hear that
that that's what our at least maybe
initial conversations between uh the
administration and state legislators
uh that that's the focus right our our
mom and pop small businesses our local
economies
um at the federal level i know there was
a letter being floated around from a few
u.s senators at least two dozen or so
that had requested that the the
administration
suspend royalty rates for oil and gas
companies during the economic downturn
which in turn would not produce any
revenue for the state of new mexico if
that were to happen uh this was done
again in an effort to kind of save
save the skin of of billion dollar oil
companies
um but would have robs states like new
mexico and wyoming still has the
potential to do so honestly because i
don't know what the outcome of that
letter uh was
uh of valuable revenue while we do have
um this income source and so um i know
that that's been a priority at least for
for some federal uh elected officials
is uh and so i'm just happy to hear that
our state's not thinking the same thing
obviously it would be um
against our own interest to do that but
um you know i think that brings up the
discussion again of uh things like the
legalization of cannabis things like the
outdoor recreation economy uh investing
in in some of those different industries
that are going to be more sustainable in
the long term that are not going to have
this boom and bust cycle um you know we
talk about businesses not being able to
operate when they don't have the ability
to plan um two years in the future or
three years in the future and so i've
always thought it was so irresponsible
for for the state or even local
governments right to have to put
themselves in that same problem where we
don't know where what what the oil and
gas markets are going to do two or three
years from now and so
um you know in this particular case
legislators spent a lot of time uh
vetting those really important road
projects
that that now we can't do
and so you know the taxpayers pay for
that communities pay for that um and so
so that that continues to be something
that uh any any way that we could have a
leadership position to help diversify
our state's economy through things that
we're doing locally is an important way
to kind of show that it can be done in
particular with with outdoor recreation
i think
as an economic tool but also the
legalization of cannabis so thank you
larry for for your work on that um up in
santa fe
i also want to thank you larry for
fighting for our priority cip projects i
heard from a lot of legislators that you
were
you were in and out of different
legislative offices really pushing hard
for our projects and things that really
matter to the city council that we voted
on
including the skate park
and
so i want to thank you thank you for
your service on that um i do also want
to just ask quickly
um the anti-donation clause has really
prevented the city from responding in a
meaningful way um
that that i would argue you know legally
is not meant to benefit a private entity
but it's really meant to improve the
quality of life of of people and
businesses during this this
unprecedented crisis
and so i know we need a constitutional
amendment um that would have to be uh
via you know legislative effort that
would then have to be approved
uh by ballot by the voters
but could you explain that process a
little bit more but also maybe gauge
what you think the appetite is in the
state legislature to at least be able to
suspend the anti-donation clause during
an emergency declaration
um sure mayor and councillor vasquez so
procedurally what has to happen is they
have to introduce a joint resolution
and so joint resolutions go through the
legislative process just like a piece of
legislation
with the exception of the governor does
not sign or veto a joint resolution if
it's passed then it becomes a ballot
initiative that has to be approved
um by the uh by the voters and so it's a
long process and so even if they did
something in the special session
they wouldn't be able to spend it or do
anything until you have that election
and it has to be um it has to be in a
general uh election and so it would be a
november cycle so you would have
you would have time
it's probably not a tool that's going to
be available immediately um to help with
the kovan 19. if this goes on or then
they could use it
and i think if they were going to
consider something like that would have
to be very limited
a limited exception to allow for um
you know right now you can have economic
development you can use it for for
housing some housing issues you can use
it through lita so it would have to be
pretty narrow and i think that would be
good because you want to make sure you
protect
the revenues of of everything going
forward but i
in in a time like this
everything i imagine will be on the
table and so i don't think there's
anything that you would you know the
normal analysis of whether something is
a good policy or bad or whether or not
they would do it when you're dealing
with these kind of economic times i
think they'll consider anything
now whether or not they ultimately get
there we don't know but i think that
definitely could be a conversation
that's on the table
thank you larry i i appreciate that and
i'm wondering you know if
um
my feeling is that absolutely that we
should be able to to um to waive this
particular
part of our state constitution in an
emergency situation right when the when
the
state and uh concurring local government
declares a nation or a state emergency
that certain limited uses or certain
limited allowances within that
anti-donation clause
to preserve people's
uh welfare and property
should be should be an allowable use and
so um
i don't know if that's something that
you know the council might want to take
up in the form of a resolution of
support
as the special session comes up
for consideration of our state
legislature right for them to at least
start talking about this or even
introduce this joint resolution during
the special session knowing that this is
not going to be the only
emergency that we're going to have so
um
something that i've been thinking about
quite a bit you know in terms of what
works in government what works in
systems and what doesn't what do we need
to fix and so
some of our more long-standing
legislators i think you mentioned
senator papen and senator arthur smith
um
you know
i think should know where local
governments especially the second
largest city in in the state stand on on
something like this uh because as we've
seen it's kind of handicapped our
ability to really impact our community
in a meaningful way when we need it the
most and so uh something i'd like to
keep thinking about uh to see if it's
the right action or the right thing to
do if the rest of the council uh would
agree
uh my last question before passing it on
here uh larry is regarding the special
session uh that the governor has called
for do you have any more information on
a timeline related to that and also uh
you mentioned
preserving the loss of grt for local
government use right versus what the
state might need to do to shore up its
own operations um i guess those are two
questions one is uh what will be
discussed or what's the timeline of the
special session and then could you just
talk a little bit more about um what you
meant about protecting local grt sources
versus um
filling the coffers of of of the state
um
after this loss of grt
uh sure a mayor and councilor vasquez
so procedurally took there's two ways
the legislature can convene in a session
that's not regularly scheduled one is a
special session
and that is done with a proclamation
issued by the governor and so the
governor kind of similar to what the
power she has in a 30-day legislative
session decides
what they can consider so she'll issue a
proclamation which can include
limitations on what they're going to
discuss so for instance
if she she issued a proclamation just to
deal with the budget
then they would not be able to deal deal
with something like
um
like the election issue but if she
issues a proclamation says would deal
with budget economic stimulus and tax
related legislation and also election
issues then that that defines the scope
what they're thinking of is to do it in
in late june or early july
because
that gives the that gives time or fit
within the timeline of what the cdc and
others are recommending about how long
we think the stay-at-home order is going
to be
issued and then it also gives them
enough time that they can deal with
those budget issues
with the exception being if tomorrow the
supreme court says legislature you have
to come in
and deal with the election issue then
they would have it would have to be
called sooner so there also could be a
possibility
and this is there's nothing official on
this but just having talked to some
folks there there's a possibility they
could have to have two special sessions
for instance they could have a limited
special session to create a stimulus
package in an election deal with an
election bill
and then they could come back and do a
second one for the budget
and and procedurally and this is i
apologize if i'm too far into the weeds
for you
but the other issue is they may have to
have a special session so they can deal
with rule changes so they could do a
remote special session so there's so
there's a lot of factors but the big
issue will be
the budget and their timeline they're
thinking
probably
late june or july so we're looking at a
couple months still for them to prepare
for that
as far as as grt revenues the one the
one thing that still gives me
nightmares and cold sweats is whenever
we deal with hold harmless because the
easiest and the lowest hanging fruit for
the legislature to deal with
is to stop making hold harmless payments
to local governments
um we're in the phase-out period it's a
15-year phase out i believe it started
in 2015 so we still have significant
revenues
that would be at risk if they decided to
sweep those back
especially when we're dealing with
um a a time where we're we're so
dependent on grt and we're not going to
get grt we're going to have a big down
bump because of what's happening right
now
and the other place i always worry is
also
the the distributions are to out of the
state portion so you have the state
portion and you have locally enacted we
get a 1.225
gross receipts tax payment from the
portion that the state gets and then we
put all our local increments on top of
that so those are a couple places it's
really easy for the legislature to enact
legislation where it could impact us
the other thing that i would worry about
is we're right currently
um we are in the
the place where we're getting revenue
for internet sales but they're not
actually collecting and giving us a
portion of grt
and so what they did is when they passed
the big tax bill last session they said
we're going to give you a share and
you'll distribute it based on population
it would be real easy for them to do
something like change the date of when
we'll actually get that revenue and they
could keep the revenue and not give it
to local governments so those are just a
few areas where we would have to be
cautious and cognizant of them
of them trying to to take away our local
gross receipts tax revenue so it's
important we work closely with the
municipal league and also the
association of counties on those kind of
issues and also what your your
discussion of of um
anti-donation that's something where
it's good to have the league that
represents all the cities along with the
large cities to work together to try and
come up with solutions so that's
something we work closely with them on
thank you larry i appreciate all those
points and
sounds like maybe we we do have a role
to play in terms of a set of
recommendations that that us as a local
governing body can make to the state uh
in their upcoming conversations uh both
as part of an effort of the wider
municipal league
but i think also just as importantly
as an independent local government right
of some things that we might want to see
and might not want to see
both in the stimulus package but also in
these potential
clawbacks or things that they that the
state might want to do to
um
uh like you said to diversity or to
split up the way that the jrt is is
doled out i think those are some
important things for us to act on and
comment on when it's appropriate
so your guidance in us being able to
participate in that process i think is
really useful um and and one other quick
thing is i do want to give a shout out
to the mayor for you know i know he he
talks about the property we bought from
the city of albuquerque a lot for the
potential that it has for commercial
development and the lease opportunities
um and so those are those are some of
the really smart moves i'm proud of the
city for making uh for coming up with
those you know local grt opportunities
that help
that will help us weather the storm in
the long term so thank you mayor for
that i've been thinking about that as
well thank you larry thank you counselor
with counselor sword and counselor ben
cuomo
thank you mr mayor
and larry it's good to see you again
even though you're a little tiny square
on my screen
i wish i was there with you like i
normally would be this time of year yeah
i wish you were too
um yeah i've got a couple of questions
or at least a question and a remark but
before i do that i want to ask staff
um i'm missing some information
concerning the skate park
um
can you fill me in as to where this
skate park is going to be
built has that been decided
staff
mr maestas mr dalahan
mayor
yes amy
mayor this is uh mayor council this is
amy johnson basford grants administrator
uh the amount of funding that we
received was um
856. larry correct me if i'm wrong that
is going towards the existing skate park
in its
rehabilitation okay um
there is a hundred thousand dollars that
is going to go towards the new skate
park which can include the purchase of
property but i believe that the intent
is to do a um study first of the most
appropriate place for that park
um based on the needs of the community
and then um to possibly purchase
property if we don't own it already oh
good
extension um from that i've received
from parks and that we're putting
forward to um the board of finance for
the bond sale yeah that explains it very
clearly to me i understand now
um
yeah for larry i i would like to know if
you've heard anything from the
governor's office
about how the state may distribute
distribute
the
funding from the federal government on
the cares act that the state is going to
get as a direct payment
have you
uh mayor councillor
i have not yet um some of the
information i received on
on the the cares package and there's
also potentially an
another piece of legislation that
they're considering um that is going to
and i provide i forwarded some
information to staff this morning on
this
on this legislation that will actually
be for
revenue replacement not just for colgate
costs
and what they were talking about it was
it was depending on size whether it
would directly go to the cities where it
would be
funded like the cdbg block grants
and so there's there's still it's still
up in the air um okay still developing
but but we're keeping we're keeping a
watch on it and also if a new package
passes that may be more beneficial
because
in miss johnson basford um or david
correct me if i'm wrong but i think one
of the big issues was the initial
package was only for local governments
with with a population over five hundred
thousand that's correct that's not a
problematic for us and so um i've had
some conversations with the
municipalities larry
larry i was told by senator udall's
office that
the funding going directly to the state
and in the case of
new mexico getting the minimum amount
out of the total package of
1.2 something billion dollars with a b
um that that would be distributed to the
local governments some of it
or
a discretion of the state of course
so you haven't heard anything about that
then
no i don't know how they're going to
distribute that but i'll follow up
okay i'll let you know if i get updated
information
look looks like
i let me finish here
wanted to tell you that uh
experience in uh the boom and bust the
oil
uh market uh my experience goes all the
way back to the early 70s
and my experience
that the times where the bust where the
prices are low
uh for whatever reason seems to be much
longer than the boom times
on and that's the way it usually goes
and so um
yeah i just wanted to point that out
thank you mr mayor yeah thank you it
looks like david had a comment
um mr mayor members council quickly not
knowing
for certain how the state's going to
handle their allocation
there there's a certain percentage i
think that i saw going to large cities
such as albuquerque
there may be a formula
similar to cdbg
at the state level the state does get
cdbg but we're not eligible for that
because we're our own entitlement
community so i'll ask larry to make sure
that we're watching that um the um
cities like las cruces santa fe
farmington
and rio rancho all get cdbg entitlement
but we're not eligible for state
entitlement so if the state's leaning
going
down that path um we should uh keep an
eye on that yeah great good thank you
okay we have counselor ben cuomo
thank you mr mayor and thank you mr
horan i have not had the pleasure of
meeting you but look forward to working
with you for the 60 day session
um
um thank you for all you do as my
colleagues have said um
i you know i keep feeling it it's so
interesting i keep feeling more and more
frustrated about
um the
lack of political will to diversify our
revenue streams at the state
um we very much um rely significantly
and
too much on extractive
um industries
um that ultimately end up hurting us and
then in the middle of a pandemic is sort
of the perfect storm so i certainly do
hope that
um
the state keeps pushing for
and that certain folks keep pushing for
a cannabis bill for solar and wind
transitions for
um those kinds of industries um i hope
to see that happen at the next session
um i'm curious about
i so i had it in my notes to also
request from this council that we come
up with some collective asks for the
special session or sessions
um according to mr haran said there's a
possibility there's different
possibilities and tomorrow we'll know
more right or wednesday morning we'll
know more about what that will look like
but if there's going to be a special
session much like we the city council
and the city have for
um
regular
legislative sessions or we have a list
of priorities that we
advocate for during this capital outlay
or whatever that we do something similar
for a special session that we have a set
of collective aspects that we
um as a city would like to see move
forward like an anti-donation portion in
the event of an emergency whether it's a
pandemic or natural emergency and where
a city local municipality needs to act
swiftly to protect their own citizens um
i would love to see that but
additionally i think there's a couple
other things that we have been feeling
frustrated around and are tied
our hands tied with the pandemic like
for example
um relief on rent and even mortgage
um how does the state legislature move
towards um relief for both um
folks who are paying a mortgage or rent
and can no longer do so because loss of
wages are hours due to the corona virus
um
so if they're in the event of
in the event of a special session or
more than one
is that possible can we do that what
what would that process look like for us
to come up with that collective
collective asks um and mr that question
first for you mr horan or the staff
whoever can help me
answer that
i'll take a crack at it and then um
staff can correct me with if i if i
overstep or we can we'll work on it
together um mayor and councilor knight
and i do look forward to getting to meet
you in person unfortunately um this
would normally be the time and so i'm
glad to meet you this way as well but
but you make a very good point
which is
it would be it would be prudent for the
city and it would not be inappropriate
for the city council to come up with a
a slate of ideas that you'd like the
legislature to consider
during a special session um
we it would
it would be limited
in
depending on what the subject matter is
depending on what the special session is
going to be but is there going to be
budget issues um if you included general
language on how to protect local grt
revenues to provide
stimulus funding that local governments
can utilize to help their businesses and
there's ways that we could craft it
probably and would probably come in the
form of a resolution passed and enacted
by the council that we could share
with our legislators because
as the second largest city in the state
and also with the the cast of
legislators we have
we have the
we have the privilege of having a lot of
members that are in leadership that come
from the southern part of the state
and so um i think it it would be
appropriate it would it's a good idea
and that's something that we could work
on and and we could help craft a general
package of you may have some specific
ideas that you want but from my from my
perspective what sometimes is the best
is general direction from the council
things like
protect local gross receipts tax revenue
because as we talked about there's lots
of ways that we could have an issue that
could impact our revenue streams and if
we're too specific then we limit you
know we inadvertently tie our hands and
so i think if you came up with a slate
of you know five or six things that you
wanted to include and then we could
share it we share with the municipality
share with leadership in the governor's
office
um then
that would um i think that's a prudent
action to take
great thank you mr heron i i would
really like to see that happen mr mayor
or mr mice class i think that that would
be really important
moving forward and like i said well no
timeline for special sessions possibly
as soon as tomorrow
um given what the supreme court has to
say and then um you know give in
depending on what they have to say i
think the city will also have to
consider taking action on how we will
educate our voters around what this new
the primary will look like in june
um and and we will have to take again
depending on what they say we will have
to play a big role in in how we roll out
the primary and ensuring that both
people can participate but to
if whatever reason
there's a in-person election um
certainly hope not how we will protect
people
um
and then my other question is definitely
for staff i'm curious given what mr
horan said so in my private life i
um in my work i go to the legislative
session
similarly to lobby with a group of
people
um and so going as a counselor was
really different for me i'm not
gonna say if i liked it or not um but i
will say that given what you just said
with the
um the skate park the skater community
and how involved they were how crucial
they were
and getting the like getting some of
that funding for the very thing they
were advocating for that's how i
understand things to work when people
show up
and advocate for something um
legislators listen
and
so i'm curious about
um how more i i want the city to do
that more like how can we take directly
impacted folks
um on any given priority that the city
has to the state legislature to
um
to help us lobby on these things and not
just the counselors but taking people
who are directly impacted by whatever
issue we're talking about and taking
folks up there um with us is that
possible does the anti-donation fall in
here as well or not i i would really
love us to consider doing something like
that next session
david you wanted to answer that i was
going to jump in and say something but
go ahead oh go go ahead maybe i'll defer
to you and then i can add if there's
anything afterwards okay
so counselor
i mean the counselor bing cuomo so if
the city was to actually charter
something uh to take these residents
there uh it'd be really it would be
putting us in a huge liability
standpoint
um not only from
you know if they were to get injured or
anything of this nature
now for them to meet us there
or meet you there or you know it's
another story but for us for them to go
up in a whole caravan that's that's
really putting the city at risk and and
risk management would probably have a
heart attack if we were to try to do
that
that's all
that makes a lot of sense so maybe my
ask would be
and i certainly can do this as a
counselor right but
um to have more coordinated efforts with
people in our community to be able to go
up there as a as a joint las cruces
force
yeah absolutely i mean that's not a
problem in you know they're meeting you
there
but anytime the city gets behind
transporting
you know uh over there it really puts us
at a huge
huge risk
were you uh wanted to add anything
yes sir mayor if i could um i think both
of you were very uh on point with your
comments with respect to one uh the city
can't uh sponsor them up there however
you can advocate uh that they do go up
there the soccer community was also
another group that went up there on
their own that helped with that the
other thing that we can do depending on
the specific projects is we have city
staff up there as well and city staff
will advocate on behalf of the
constituents who have been asking for
items or they will advocate on behalf of
the infrastructure for their departments
that they might be asking for
legislative appropriations for
thank you
thank you thank you david yeah i'm
looking forward to next year as a
first-time
um counselor going up to the legislature
my first time is definitely overwhelming
i think i would i'm excited for it to be
um to
to feel like i have a different role
um you know more intentional meetings um
with with legislators perhaps um even
the governor's office uh versus the more
ceremonial things which um are great but
i'd rather show up as as a strong um
leader and advocate for for our city
next time so i'm looking forward to that
thank you mr mayor
uh councillor beta suvi did you have a
question or do you
forget to take the hannah
thank you uh some of my comments are
gonna echo uh what country ben cuomo um
has said uh i hope that next year that
we are i think we want to build up the
city's power and capacity as you said mr
haran we are the second largest
city here in new mexico but i don't
always think that's reflected quite as
well in santa fe and i want to make sure
that we as counselors are being very
strategic on how we present ourselves
and what we do while we're up there so
that we can add to that value of our
city um i myself was um did not feel as
useful as i usually am when i'm up in
santa fe
given the role that i'm in now and
just the
events that we attended um next year i
really would like to have um targeted
meetings
scheduled even before we get up there so
people know that we're coming
with
leadership um making sure
um that we are even working on the
interim um and finding out what those
messages from the governor might be if
any of our
um projects could be able to be tied in
to that
and then making sure to target out
those messages to to that leadership
um and
you know when it has blush christmas
days i
you know that we are really out there in
full attendance um
i very much appreciate
being able to go
um to santa fe and participate with our
local businesses um however
we weren't able to have quite the
meetings um that i thought are necessary
for us to use our power and capacity to
its full potential and i have a lot of
ideas that i hope that we can chat with
about later on how to work um in a more
strategic manner while us counselors are
up there
so
thank you counselor counselor sword
yes mr mayor uh what
counselor of eddie sube and counselor
ben como was talking about we've done
that similarly in the past and i agree
with them we need to get back to doing
that have our special day where we bring
lunch up to the legislature and we have
special meetings with legislators at
that time too
and also the meetings before the
legislation starts to invite uh for
breakfast or some kind of a an
arrangement to have them come where we
can talk to them as a group
i agree with that i think we should get
back doing that thank you mayor
i'm airport uh mayor pro tem and then
councillor flores
thank you mayor thank you mr moran good
to see you
um
i am used to seeing you in person so
this is a little different
um but i appreciate the work and the
advocacy um that you did while up there
um one of the things that you and i
spoke of was specific to the mental
health hospital
um and not getting
some of the traction
obviously that i felt we needed to
get
i'm especially concerned now given
that just um sort of the
the um
lasting effects that kova will have on
on mental illness and
people addre um
inability to address their mental health
um during this time and so
i'd like us to really be mindful and to
continue the conversations um about a
southern mental health facility
um and like to start now i think this is
probably going to be more dire now than
um
than it ever has been and so i'd really
like um to remind staff and you all and
as counselors and my colleagues um
in terms of how we strategically address
that as we move forward i don't know if
you have any questions at this point but
i do know that there are other
representatives and senators that are
very interested in the
in the southern part of the state and
working together to ensure that we get
this accomplished
thank you
yeah
thank you councillor flores
well i appreciated larry thank you
suggestions i'm sorry oh well
mayor pro tem do you do you mind if
let counselor photos go and then i'm
i'll probably say something and i'm
going to turn to larry to see what my
what
see how his thoughts
compare to what i'm thinking if you
don't mind if you don't mind please okay
thank you mr mayor and thank you uh
larry so much for all your work i
appreciate everything you've done
um i totally agree with everything uh
counselors uh of either stewie and
councillor bencomo stated
about our actual function when we go to
santa fe and i agree with
although i wasn't here
during the times that uh
we met with the legislature up north i
agree with what uh well it's true i
agree with what gil ford said council
about um having a different approach um
as the
legislature's in session
so
my my question to you mr haran is um
i um
i tried to
work on a rent control issue here for
the city of las vegas but um we don't
the state uh
[Music]
the constitution forbids that there is
no rent control there's only rent
control under very
specific uh
there's three sections to that statute
and
uh the last one is a there's an
exemption to that rent control or an
exception and um
and i'm not sure we qualify our our city
attorneys if we don't so
um all that being said since it's a
constitutional issue as is the
issue about um the anti-donation clause
um
would we need two resolutions from the
city
or excuse me
would it be possible to present that i
mean we do a resolution
i think everyone agreed to it
um
but i think the resolution would be a
little bit uh
not not it would be more um
would be
not as narrow as defining maybe two uh
constitutional statutes that need
changing such as the anti-donation
clause and the rent control
statute
but um
would we would it be possible to present
something like that uh to the
legislature during the joint session
excuse me the special session to get
that joint uh resolution or would they
be different resolutions and
when would we
go about uh pursuing um
pursuing those uh joint resolutions and
putting them
on the ballot
uh mayor and counselor so from the
perspective of the city you could do
if you have a resolution you could
either separate them into specific
resolutions for your rent control and
also for
um for anti-donation
um and it would really be up to you
whether you wanted to try and present it
during the special session or the 60-day
session
although what i will say special
sessions are
a unique animal
and depending on how they do it a lot of
what they're going to do they've kind of
agreed to
beforehand so if it's
we could we could explore the
possibility whether or not they would
want to consider
resolutions for constitutional changes
during a special session more likely the
legislature would would rather consider
those during the 60-day upcoming
legislative session just because
if they're going to want to have very
targeted issues to deal with in a
special session
they they would likely want to target um
you know economic stimulus
and and then also um the budget but if
it's part of a package i think what we
would want to try and have those
discussions beforehand with leadership
of the legislature and also the
administration to see if it's something
they would consider and if it is then we
could provide that support in the form
of resolutions from the city um to to
encourage them to consider those issues
thank you mr haran um
so it looks like we have to wait till 60
days but between now and then
um
we can even be you know much more i mean
we shouldn't wait until november or
december to be uh talking to our
legislators about the things that
touching
yeah
thank you very much mr haran
okay so let me uh and larry
jump in after i finish tell me what your
thoughts are
obviously with the drop in in
in
oil
and then of course with businesses all
around the state
it's going to be really tough
and in fact in our next presentation if
he hasn't already done it
i'm sure dave is going to have
some after we hear the proposed budget
but i think it's it's proven that we
look at three things one short term
and i hope it's short term
that
that we at least get on the drawing a a
million dollar reduction in our budget
just in the short term if we need to
two if this thing goes if the if this
cobit 19 goes on longer
probably look at a ten percent reduction
now we're talking seven or eight million
dollars in in revenues we're talking
about here or the third option is do we
use our old harmless grt that we set
aside for um
for the future if we needed it those are
the three options i look at and the
reason why i say this
is because
in my opinion
we're going to have to hold on to almost
any money
that um that we can that isn't essential
there was a time where a few year few
years back
when the state really didn't have any
money to give us and we got by fine
and it may have we may have to look at
it like that so that's why i asked mayor
ganda if we could hold off because
you know right now the state is going to
be scrambling they're going to be
looking for every little dollar they can
possibly get because they're going to be
in a world of hurt right now and and i
think we're going to be fine but if we
at least have these that place these
plans in place you just never know so
what i'm trying to say is if it turns
out that we're going to have to really
look for some some cuts those cuts could
also mean
projects that that we were going to look
at doing and we may want to hold off on
now granted we still got to move forward
with our geo bond because that's
different that's something that was
passed and we've got the money set aside
we can't touch that but some of the
other things um whether we move the uh
facility for our um
transportation facility do we hold off
on that for a little bit and certain
things that we were gonna have to come
up with some cash uh infusion do we hold
off
with some vehicle purchases
you know that we may want to just
hold off on but getting back to
counselor
ben como so for example in my opinion
you may or may not be aware of but this
this
cares act that was passed
any
any homeowner
including a a tenant the landlord who
has a house or mortgage that's uh backed
by freddie mac or fannie mae or fha
which represents about 70 percent
um or or the sba
can can get a a waiver to have those
loans those payments not due and put on
into the back of the loan
so i think if if if we're going to ask
the legislature anything is to say if if
that the landlord has to to
show the tenant that they don't have one
of these
type of loans seventy percent of them
they should and if they do then that's
where you get the
the maybe the rent um
not having to pay the rent because if
the tenant if the landlord doesn't have
a mortgage payment which is a huge
uh thing to do then it's a lot easier
for them not to have to pay the rent you
know or expect that from the tenant now
for those banks that don't that means
that they're done conventional
i think the legislature can look at
charging a a fee
to the borrower
kind of like unemployment insurance so
that if that this ever happens again
then there would be a fund that these
banks can use to much like the federal
government because the federal
government can
make money or print money uh then this
fund could be used to help these banks
that that uh could then
kind of take the few months off and and
help the
tenant as well so i think these are a
couple of items to maybe look at that
might be
that might work from a business
standpoint and also from a consumer
standpoint and a tenant standpoint
that's what that's what i wanted to
mention but getting back to the budget
so larry
i mean i know that
you know you you're talking to two new
counselors for the first time but um you
know
let's talk real candid here it's going
to be really difficult for the state
isn't it
uh mr mayor yes
in fy 22 it's going to be
we don't know the
we don't know the complete depth of the
problem but they're anticipating that
it's going to be a 1.5 billion to 2
billion dollar problem so with the 7 7.6
billion dollar budget
you know i'm i'm bad at math which i've
confessed to you before but that's
pretty easy math
you know that's a that's a huge hit it's
going to be really tough and what
happened last time
is they took money from everywhere i
i've never heard as many
different ways they could refer to cuts
they had cuts they had sandings they had
shavings they had skimmings
they had sweeps they did everything they
could and they took money from
everywhere they were taking it from the
schools
the school's reserve account
and they were even one time i in our
account which we basically told them you
know hands off
you know we're not a subdivision of the
state we're not a political subdivision
the county is and the schools are and to
the certain degree the universities are
but not the cities
and uh you know they left us alone but
yeah they were looking for every every
dollar they could possibly find so what
i'm trying to get at is we have to
get in the mindset that we may not get
anything
and and so these projects that that we
may have
um we gotta we that's why we want to
hear this next presentation on the
proposed budget but we need to be
prepared
on a short term if it's just a short
term and you know things get back to nor
semi back to normal that's a million
dollar hit at the very minimum because
almost 70 percent of our revenue come
from gross receipts tax from these
businesses that are out here that are
are not uh producing
you know i know that
some cities are really hardline on
businesses and you know i'm fortunate
that
we're fortunate that we're not quite to
that degree because not only do they
need to feed their their families you
know they're they're in the indirect way
helping the cities as well
now granted and thank goodness for this
those that are purchasing online there
is a portion of taxes
uh that is due
and i hope it's i hope larry can you
give us a report on that have we seen
how that's been working out and what
percent um i mean
does that make us kind of whole because
i i notice uh you know just last last
night i bought a shade on on online and
uh
um a replacement shade and you know
paper our
gross receipts tax but of course it
wasn't quite the same amount
so
made me think okay it's only like five
five point something percent
is that just going to the state which is
about what it sounds like they get and
the city's not getting anything or are
they how are they splitting that up
uh mayor so right now it is just going
to the state because what they did last
session in the 60 day was they enacted
legislation to collect
and make those payments to local
governments but they pushed out the
payment to local governments for two
years to implement a system to figure
out how to collect it so instead of
giving you the actual tax receipts what
they did is they set aside a pot of
money and they're giving a
portion to every city based on
population so we're not going to start
seeing
um actual collection from internet sales
for another just over a year
okay good well
that's amazing that they they can they
don't know how to how to distribute it
but they know how to collect it
so uh counselor flores did you have
another question
or would you forget to put your hand
down okay yes i did i'm sorry
you forgot to okay yeah sorry sorry
that's okay
well i didn't mean to be the bearer of
bad news but you know i'm
gail and i have been in this before and
maybe uh counselor uh mayor pro tem got
that to a certain degree but it it's
gonna be tough and it's good this is
probably gonna be tougher than it was
before
so
you know we need to
you're gonna see some you're going to
see a lot of municipalities and maybe
even counties laying off workers
you know and so i don't think we're
going to be there
but um
it's going to we need to we need to look
at it like okay can we get by with with
this vehicle for another year probably
now
exception our our emergency personnel
uh police and fire we need to take care
of that so if those vehicles roll we
need to change them now because those
guys
go fast and they need safe vehicles but
other than that if uh
if um
you know
community development or inspection oh
and that's another thing
i think if we have if we have positions
that
help increase our grt like uh electrical
inspectors well i think we need to do
that because
we have a
backlog of of those and the more more we
get those things going the more revenues
that are generated so you know we just
need to look at this very pragmatically
okay well i guess that's it larry um
you're not going to stick around for our
budget i guess uh thank you mary well if
you need me to but i just if you don't
mind i'll just close on just a couple of
things that i wanted to make sure i've
touched on
um and mayor pro tem i apologize i
should have brought up the mental health
facility because i had some extensive
conversations during the session on a
way to proceed
with the mental health facility
unfortunately i think what we'll need to
do is
is put it off somewhat but
but the discussion was
and legislators were interested as with
the as was the administration
and if the city hosting a a meeting at
some point if we can ever meet in person
again
to have a meeting with our legislators
and the administration
probably department of health and
department of human services to discuss
how do we proceed with mental health
providing um increasing mental health
services in the southern part of the
state and las cruces in particular so
that's something i received a lot of
interest in and it's something that we
would um that we would probably like to
host at city hall
and work on as you know as things get as
things get more normal
and and um
the discussion on how are we how do we
become more effective or continue to be
more effective in santa fe um part of
the other thing that i had a lot of
discussion with legislators with is how
do we further improve our process for
not just our capital
resolution and capital priorities to
coordinate with legislators but also
policy priorities and so what we'll i'll
work with the city manager's offices
things again it would have been
something we would have talked about
today if it wasn't this time
is what are we going to do starting soon
for discussions internally and then also
with legislators on not just capital uh
priorities but also
legislative priorities coming into the
60 day and into the special session so
we'll keep working on that because we've
done the the things the the lunches and
the breakfasts and we've gone through
cycles and different councils want to do
it more than others but i'm happy to
work with the city manager's office and
the council to figure out how do you
want to become more active because it's
something the more active we are the
better off we're going to be in in santa
fe so i'm happy to help with that thank
you thanks terry i think mayor pro tem
gandhi had a couple questions ask you
and i wanted to leave you with a closing
thought after she finishes please
thank you mary uh mayor um thank you
larry for for um for that um
i very much appreciate a mayor
forecasting um for with us or for us um
i appreciate the the three plans but
like with anything mental health is a
basic need and we can't put that off if
you think things are bad now and they're
they're going to continue to get worse
for our law enforcement who's at the
front lines dealing with this every
single day
and so i don't think we
have we're at liberty to forget or put
it off i'm going to keep pushing this
because i believe it's going to continue
to be a huge issue especially now and we
will have a new normal and
i don't know what that's going to look
like
but i don't think we have um luxury of
putting this off given what's going on
people still need to get their basic
needs met in some way and access to
mental health
um is one of those and we still again
have not
um
um recuperated from
you know our our behavioral health
shake-up and so with that said um i i'm
going to continue to push
larry mayer and my colleagues about
making sure that people have access
to this because this is only going to
get worse and talk to any one of our law
enforcement officers or any one of our
newer counselors who have went on right
along with um our police officers
they're dealing with mental health in
one form or another every single day
and so um i don't if they're not
equipped to do that that's not their
level of expertise um and we need to be
ready for them and i'd rather
be a visionary around around that
so thank you well yeah mayor tim don't
get me wrong i mean we'll be more than
happy to continue to support it but we
may have to
yeah if we can get the money from them
great but i'm just saying it's going to
be it's going to be difficult but if we
can come up with some different
alternatives it might be uh it might be
able to work hey that'd be fantastic
because i agree with what you're saying
but
i just know that the state is going to
be looking for
you know because you're talking to
you know 40 million dollars operation
building it and running it so
larry one last thing i just want to let
you know that about every two weeks the
mayors have a conference call from all
over the state and
i'll just tell you this much it was
floated more than one time about um
returning the
and this is i'm just telling i'm just
the messenger here returning i i didn't
say anything but returning the uh tax on
food and medicine because if you if that
was because those like i said those
cities there there's a lot of them that
are going to really be hurting
extremely bad so i just want to point
that out to you just to give you an
example to our new council members if
that was to come back that would
probably mean seven or eight million
dollars a year to the city of las cruces
maybe even more but just thought i'd
throw that out there but anyways i just
want to leave you with that larry
so you're not shocked that that's that
might come up
uh thank you mayor and that that has
been a policy
um and the municipal league has adopted
that policy and pushed it
um about reimposing it again with a new
norm who knows what the
what the political will will be because
depending what happens to the state
budget it could have an impact up until
now it has been a non-starter
particularly in the house of
representatives but with a time like
this um
who knows what will happen and who knows
what they would consider and just the
last thing i would leave you with is
what i would suggest and we touched on
it a little bit earlier but any federal
or straight grants or capital projects
we've received funding for we should
proceed with
um
encumbering and spending those as
quickly as possible for two reasons one
it helps keep your economy going but
also then it protects us from those
future sweep backs because mayor and
councillor sorg and i think to extend
council goddard we've already been
through it and we've seen the shaking of
the couch and the cushion and getting
the money out of the cushions and so we
need to spend as quickly as we can sure
okay well thanks larry thanks for that
uh
summary
appreciate and update
okay so the next item is going to be the
fiscal year
2020-2021 proposed budget and miss
leanne damouche will be discussing
good afternoon mayor and counselors
thank you so much for
being with us today i hope everybody had
a
very windy easter like we did at our
house but it was very enjoyable
um i'm going to load up our presentation
i'm going to try to share my screen and
i
we have actually um three people that
are going to be presenting david maestas
our interim city manager will start out
first and then
um dr polias will come in with looking
at the economy
and then we will dive right into the
budget numbers
so let me share my screen
i've never
done this so bear with me can everybody
see it
yes
yeah great okay so i'm gonna turn it
over to
david thank you leanne i appreciate that
good afternoon mayor and council david
maestas interim city manager
uh it is my pleasure and honor to be
able to present to you the city's fy
2021 budget
as you all are aware it is a budget
process that really goes on throughout
the year we get input from our
constituents and through council
either through city council meetings or
work sessions as the year goes on we
also get requests through
inter contact with our constituents and
with that we start formalizing and
getting together those items that we
know need to be part of our budget as we
go through different fiscal years we
also start to get into our authorization
a little bit more heavily and a little
bit more detail starting in november
when we start meeting with counselors to
get their perspective for the upcoming
year and then from that we get with
departments so that we can make sure
that there's alignment with the not only
council strategic business plan but also
their strategic business plans as well
we can formulate our proposal which
becomes what you see before you today
and that we bring forward typically
around this time so we can get approval
for it and to the
state before the end of our fiscal year
deadlines come to place
the budget that you see before you uh is
and you can go to the next slide for me
and please
the budget you see before you is
actually a very conservative approach
uh any of you who have been through a
budget cycle with miss leandy moosh
and those new counselors who have worked
with her for a little bit know that
although we're dealing with hundreds and
of millions of dollars she is still a
very much a penny pincher
so which is good for the city uh because
it makes sure that we're looking at the
best most innovative and effective and
efficient ways to provide the services
that that we want to that are best for
our constituents and for our customers
the budget that is before you does not
include
modifications as the mayor pointed out
and larry did
for the current public health emergency
that we're going through uh we did that
for a few reasons
first we wanted to bring forward to you
uh the budget that would have been able
to end in june of this year with our
current status without the public health
emergency so to get an idea of how well
the budget was functioning
the other reasons uh for not having it
included right now is because as larry
pointed out and even with the state
in their process we don't know for sure
how long the duration is going to be for
the stay at home or how long this event
may last so we're not quite certain on
the final outcome
although we do have uh pretty good
projections and assumptions at this
point dr payatis and miss nandy moosh
have been working closely with state
officials and have been working on
projections so that we at least have an
idea and the reason we wanted to have an
idea as the mayor pointed out we do know
that at some point we are definitely
going to have to adjust for this event
and we want to be able to have
recommendations to come forward to city
council with which we do have at this
time as mayor pointed out for short term
that was one of the first things we
wanted to look into and then when we
learn more about the duration of the
event then we can start looking into
intermediate and long-term solutions
you will notice uh through your packet
that the budget itself also does not
have any increases in our
taxes the grt or any of the property tax
rates to be able to make us at a point
where our revenues are more so than our
expenditure so that is a very good sign
obviously with the budget
the other thing that's part of the
budget is consideration for councils
priorities and the strategic business
plans for the departments as i pointed
out and as we go through the
presentations uh you'll see those as i
outlined some of the items as leanne
outsigns outline some of the items and
then mr david sedillo will have a
presentation for you on the cip kept
improvement program following this one
and he will also outline some of those
initiatives
next slide please liam
what i'd like to do with the next few
slides is highlight some of those
initiatives on just a general level
again as we go further into the
presentations uh for the budget and the
in the capital improvement program
you'll get more detail on these items
and then obviously after those
presentations any questions that you
have we have staff from the department
specifically because they are the
technical experts and they can help with
any questions that you have for those
items
the first strategic themes here you see
are part of the city council strategic
plan
one of the items states that the city
council will work with the community to
explore
discover and discern policy directions
for key areas such as utilities public
safety transportation and the capital
improvement program so you'll see
several items in there that fit along
that criteria
one of the ones is a police evidence
building so that that can help them
in their processes and their
efficiencies with the investigations
that they go on throughout the year next
item is rehab to our wastewater
treatment plan there have been previous
projects to help with upgrades in that
area and we want to continue to assure
that not only are we efficiently
treating our waste but also being ready
for expansion as may be necessary
third one there the madrid avenue
extension is a new roadway installation
from the intersection of anita
and martha to travis to take the place
of the existing two-lane milled road
this would be a complete streets
initiative road that would have bike
lanes as well as sidewalks and street
lighting with it
next two items are for the buffer
program for our refuse and recycling
receptacles
as well as for our generators and hvc
type systems these buffers would help
enclose each of those
structures uh so that we have one a
safety aspect to them as well as an
aesthetic uh change with each of those
uh installations
last one there is lighting upgrades to
city council chambers to help us assist
with our energy efficiency and better
lighting for our meetings in the
chambers
next one leanne
for the economic and community
development
this again is part of the city council
strategic plans
uh to improve relationships between
businesses the business community and
the city in particular you'll see that
first one there we want to be able to
improve the development for the west
mesa industrial park area as well as the
las cruces airport area
that definitely will help us with
grt and revenues in the area if we can
work on those items
working on establishing a purchasing
power agreement
many of you recall and know that the
city as as one of their resolutions has
approved that we will be 100 renewable
energy in 2050
and therefore we want to continue to
make sure that these types of projects
are moving forward
economic development is working on
relaunching their website and improving
on that website for the business
community
this again helps with the relationship
between businesses
and the city
we have definitely had quite a bit of
lessons learned through this public
health emergency there has been
quite a bit of activity between our
economic development in obtaining
information
sharing information and collaborating
with the business community with all of
the different care packages that are
coming through and stimulus bills coming
through the federal government and
through the state so this has been a
good uh
practice for them to help improve that
website in the future
and then partnership with our community
development financial institution again
so that we can help and assist with
our small businesses throughout the
community and that they are in a better
position to be able to work on accessing
a capital for their small businesses
next slide
for the community involvement and
follow-up another strategic initiative
for council was the engagement within
our community at large one of the things
that we want to improve on for
efficiencies and expand would be the 311
program in our community
that has proved to be very popular it's
quite active but we want to make sure
that we have
targets towards our constituents and our
community so that we know that we are
meeting the best services that they are
requesting out there we want to work on
closed captioning for the city council
meetings along with increased spanish
translation throughout all of the press
releases and publications that we have
so we have better interaction with all
of our customers and constituents who
are getting information from the city of
las cruces and that would also include
improvements to our video streaming uh
via youtube
and then lastly in that item for
education
continuing with and improving our
neighborhood academy that one is a very
popular program we have several people
wanting to be a part of it and when they
go through it uh really enjoy this the
program itself
so we want to continue to have that in
place but also whatever improvements and
efficiencies we can work on there and
then lastly uh continue our
collaborations with the las cruces
public schools and in particular the
community school initiatives
next slide then
so in summary uh some of the key points
you'll see in the budget is our focus on
ensuring that we are delivering the
correct services to our customers making
sure that we are efficiently and
effectively providing
programs services and capital
improvement items that meet or improve
their experiences
we want to continue to implement cost
containment strategies especially now in
light of our current situation but just
in general we're always working on that
i'll defer back again to leanne and her
push to make sure that we are
correctly accounting for all of our
pennies and they are being used wisely
we want to make sure that we're
maintaining our city infrastructure
again i'll refer back to our current
situation that really make sure that we
want to
keep our current infrastructure in as
best shape as possible we may not be
having the funding available to have new
infrastructure put in place so we want
to make sure that we maintain it to the
best that we can and then lastly we are
always looking to advance council
strategic visions
and with that i will turn it over to dr
payatis and he will give you an
oversight of the city's economic
performance as well as
what's being forecasted as we move
forward thank you for your time
thank you david
good afternoon mr mayor good afternoon
city council can you hear me well
yes
yes this tucker
excellent well thank you very much for
for having me and having this
opportunity to describe some of the
things that we've been experiencing
um the first slide that i prepared for
you basically shows the
tendencies that we've had throughout the
years at least in the last decade uh the
blue lines or the blue bars as you can
see are associated to the number of
people that are employed and the
line that is kind of downward sloping
towards 2019 that represents the
unemployment rate so the thing that i
wanted to show you from this slide is
that obviously we have been improving
substantially since our last recession
that we had that we experienced actually
back in 2010 so
the number of people that are that have
responded to the employee has continued
to increase
at least up until 2019 and the
unemployment rate had decreased
substantially out to the lowest point
that it had had in a decade in 2018.
the just for some clarification as to
the current year current calendar year
the payroll employment continued to
expand at least in the months of january
and february of this year in las cruces
metropolitan statistical area in 2018
just the same thing that i repeated we
had the lowest unemployment rate we had
had in almost a decade and up until the
last performance uh sorry the last
presentation that i did for you i i
indicated if you recall properly from
that presentation that the median
listing home for prices have been
increasing for at least 24 months so
this is just to provide a context of
where we were coming from um
can you move to the next slide uh liam
please
if you recall properly from our last
meeting that we had the last work
session that we did the last bullet
point that i had described on that one
was what happens with kobet 19 and
depending on how it goes well it seems
that
the awards that
made it happen correct but what what has
happened or what we can see right now is
that at least from what we can gather
from the data well not the data from the
meeting that the fed the federal open
markets committee had on march 15 and
this minutes were released on april 8th
among the discussions that they were
having in the fed they were indicating
that we are already in a recession
now the fed indicates two possible
scenarios as to how we get out of this
the first scenario is of course that
economic activity rebounds in the second
half of 2020 that is starting from july
onward in other words that we start
having a recovery uh from july onward as
as more of the restrictions and more of
the people start going out and it's safe
to go out again the second scenario that
they uh also interact with is a slow
recovery that makes it materialize all
the way until 2021
so what are some of the main challenges
so when leanne brought this question
leanna the budget office and
administration brought this question to
me the the the biggest challenge that
that we have as you know we have a good
model that traces the grt
collections from the city but the
problem is that there's absolutely no
data available for our estimates right
now
the events that are occurring are so
recent that we do not have um
appropriate data that could help us see
what the tendency and what the real
effects are the second thing and it's
probably one of the most important
things that we have one of the most
important data points that we must get
is there's no possible date for the
resolution there's no date in which we
can say this is the day in which the the
travel restrictions or the the visiting
restrictions um will be lifted and even
if it did uh what will be the strategy
for lifting those restrictions that may
have an economic a different economic
impact depending on how it goes whether
they're going to be staged or whether
they're going to be lifted all at once
we don't know that so that's the biggest
chunk of information that we do not
possess
and the third one is that this crisis
has been so
specific so strange because it has
impacted all sectors of the economy in a
very short period of time
so
the difference that it had in the
previous recession as you probably
recall las cruces got into the recession
later if there was a lag period from
there was the collapse in the financial
system
it got uh the collapse of the financial
system happened in 2008 and the biggest
hit on an unemployment rate was in 2010.
in this case
the industries have been hit at the same
time in a very short time frame
very short timeframe i remember the the
ordinance the public health ordinance
from the mexico department of health
that happened in march
19. banning
restaurants and banning large gatherings
and things of that nature for so we're
actually less than in a month and it has
substantially affected us so
these three challenges pose very
different challenges to economists the
first one is that the data has there's
no data available for estimates
basically puts a constraint in an
econometric model which is what we use
to collect and calculate uh so
to calculate our grt projections so
since i do not have data for what are
the estimates that's that's the first
one the second method that i analyzed in
order to have this
these estimates was an input output
model that based on the third bullet
point you see right there uh
since it affects most industries at the
same time in a very short period of time
it would probably overstate the the
effects so at this point in some of my
of my my technical support for for
calculating these estimates is is
constraint so what i have to do is that
as many economists are doing right now
you have to rely on a model that you
think is safe which is exactly what we
did and then you must rely on
assumptions about the local economy uh
lian can you move to the next slide
please
um this is
this is the scenario that we're
presenting um from what we are thinking
it will occur i know this is a very busy
slide but bear with me for just a second
the panel on your left shows you the
graph and in the graph you have multiple
things but the bars are grt collections
that we've had for that specific uh
distribution month in other words that
means that the economic activity
has happened three months ago
the orange line represents the grt
forecast that the budget office and
economic development department have
worked together to create this has been
a very good model as you can probably
see it has been able to track fairly
well the the
the
grt collections that we've had in the
city
and then we have the instance of um
covet 19.
and based on the estimates that we had
in essence what we did is that we went
sector by sector industry by industry
with the information we were able to
collect from calling different
industries
from looking at what their tendencies
were from engaging in multiple webinars
from discussing with other economists
including economists at the state
legislature
we were able to see and actually this is
a very similar approach they're all
using we are all providing educated
guesses of what each individual industry
is happening each individual industry is
experiencing
from that we applied the decrease to
the benchmark model that we have created
from the econometric analysis the
results that that yield at least for the
end of fiscal year 20 is that the
distribution month of may which would
represent the collection sorry the
business month of march uh we're
probably gonna experience a nine percent
decrease in jrt collections now what
happens for the distribution months of
uh june july and august which would be
the
business months of april
may and june end of our fiscal year and
at least in in in the business time
we're probably experiencing or we're
calculating
uh an estimated decrease of about 19
every month
so
this this of course i did and i think
that the mayor was fairly fairly um
was was scared in discussing this this
represents a a big decrease
um and some of the things now after
finishing right there with with the
graph and the left going through the
graph and in the right we can see that
most non-essential industries are
expected to decrease and and we're
experiencing that ourselves as a
government entity where the essential
workers are probably working
they have to go to to
their places whereas most of us are
working from home the industries that
we're expecting to be hit the hardest
are of course bars restaurants hotels
and small businesses essential
industries that are expected to increase
are probably going to be well an example
is health care and social assistance and
right there you have the two
descriptions that we did the first
receipts are expected to fall for march
2020 which is that's the business month
which would be reflected in our in our
collections for the month of may and
then gross receipts are expected to fall
on average 19 for the remaining of
fiscal year
uh 20. now one thing that i do want to
point out and that probably goes back to
the first line that i showed you is that
there is if you see right there in in
that graph that you have on your left
right now
the blue bars are exceeding the
forecasts at least in the month
distributions since november december
january february in a little bit of
march so that a little bit of march
represents january business month
um but for that i'll i'll let um city
manager and i'll let um miss liam de
mois continue with the presentation
thank you very much
thank you dr palliatis
so thank you mayor council this is
leanne james i'm going to
jump into the budget as our interim city
manager david maestas
explained to you this was pre-coveted
this is our budget cover for fiscal year
21. um i'd like to give a nice shout out
to carla
walton with the communications
engagement
program that helped us put this together
i'd also like to just briefly introduce
my staff
they're very
very important in this process meeting
with the departments that they're
responsible for and that's matt signs my
senior analyst
veronica mcgregor
william blanchard and shirelle de la
cruz who are my budget analysts
so our theme for this year
is painting a brighter future for las
cruces
and
overall our budget
for citywide budget this is what this
slide is representing
as you know we do
fund accounting so each of these
represent the different funds
but overall our city budget is about one
an increase of about 1.7 percent
as you can see there is a slight
increase in expenditures for the general
fund
um some departments actually went up and
some went down as you may be aware this
is our second year for performance-based
budgeting
and what were i think what we're
starting to see from the departments
when we went through the process with
them for budgeting we had three specific
trainings with them trying to get them
to you know identify
what their programs were and what their
strategic results were and to budget
towards those strategic reports
uh through their
strategic targets i should say
and just helping them develop those
budgets while you know making sure that
they're more efficient and effective
i want to let you know that when we
started this project of
process of performance-based budgeting
we reached out to several
cities that had gone through the same
process that we had
and they actually told us that after
certain years three five and seven
you're you're going to start seeing that
actually your budget overall is going to
start going down which really sort of
amazed me
but they said that when the department
start looking at their strategic results
and what their goals and their targets
were they actually become more efficient
and more effective and so the resources
that they use
become more efficient and effective and
they notice that their budgets are going
down and i think we we're going to start
seeing that as well
as you can see
our general fund is just a slight
increase of 400 000
the other operating funds um that is
actually the other general funds i'm
going to put s on this this is like our
hold harmless the airport these are
still and i and doing our fund
accounting these are still the funds
that start with 100 but we took just the
general fund out of that equation um the
reason you see a really big um decrease
in this is because one of the funds that
we have which is our engineering fund um
it's one zero zero five if you'll notice
there's no expenditures in there so what
we're trying to do is we're trying to
there there's certain funds that we're
trying to in the process get rid of that
we don't feel that there is a need for
these funds anymore so we've actually
put these expenditures into other areas
um maybe some of them went into other
some of the departments some of them
might have gone into special revenue and
things like that
um as far as the special revenue you do
see an increase in the special revenue
um
of course in these funds and i
i know that you've seen our recap we
have hundreds of funds so to go through
every single fund is a little bit
impossible um
however the special revenue funds are
tied to they can be tied to
a statute or they can be tied to a
resolution or to an ordinance and so
they have specific things that they can
uh are items that they can spend it on
well the reason that you see an increase
in our special revenue is because um one
of the funds that's in there is our
operating
grants
fund 2100 and as you know we've been we
bring on
probably about an average every month to
council at least four or five maybe
11 grants to you so our operating grants
has
really expanded and has caused some of
this increase as well
there's also an increase in expenditures
for street maintenance
which is public works is expanding on
the upkeep and the taking care of our
streets
as far as the debt service just
it went down just slightly
we had a couple of uh debts that have
were paid off in fiscal year 20 this
fiscal year they'll be paid off they
were for some uh fire equipment that we
had that has been um we have debt taken
debt on about six seven years ago and so
we're no longer paying for that for that
debt and that's why it decreased just
slightly
um in our capital project funds which uh
later on when we do the cip david
sedillo will getting we'll get more into
what these capital projects fund of
course
where there's an increase in our
community investment projects um
not in each fund there's probably
multiple projects but like i said public
works can get more into what
they're
going to be presenting for the capital
projects this year
our enterprise funds um
went down just a little bit
these actually these enterprise funds
make up from
utilities as an enterprise fund uh
transit is in there as well and also the
rio grande theater um
transit um you know of course gets a
grant every year and the city matches
that grant
um it went down a little bit because uh
sometimes the grant can cover all of the
grant and the match can cover all of
transits
expenditures for a year and for this
particular year we have not added
additional funding for the beyond
because his grant and his match has been
able to handle that
however i think ms bassford told you on
friday that the transit will be getting
about 6 million dollars
and we'll be bringing that budget
adjustment to you when that grant comes
in
as far as internal services internal
services has to do with those um like
fleet services that um have
um that you know
that work on uh for other departments so
like for fleet for instance they work on
their vehicles from other departments
also in the internal services is things
like workers comp the health fund this
is where we pay our insurance um you
know the claims for
our the staff
medical we also
pay for their uh prescriptions out of
this we have a company that we've hired
a consultant that helps us with this um
and we pay for all of those out of the
health fund and we also have an internal
services our liability fund as well
as for the trust and the agency funds
these are
we get donations um
from
organizations that we use uh just the
other day i think we took a budget
adjustment uh to buy i think it was
library books for the library for
children's children's books
we are we are also the fiscal agent to
several agencies uh these are like
mervda metro the animal service center
in south central solid waste
all of their budgets are in there i will
tell you that
most of these agencies have a board and
their budget has to be approved by their
board
and we send those resolutions into dfa
and we monitor their budget throughout
the year
uh just to give you an overview um this
is the same information but just you
know showing where the bulk of our
expenditures are for our main city as
you can see the enterprise funds is 29
that's the bulk of it then general fund
following and then capital funds is 22
um and then you can see internal
services agencies special revenue and
debt funds are between five and seven
percent
um
jumping into our general fund which is
the fund that is used for pretty much
almost all of the departments of course
except for utilities and for transit
we did set some budget development
guidelines from the city manager's
office
we did put in a 2.5
increase into the budget this was done
through uh hr through human resource
we did put in if we have a negotiated
union contracts we made sure that
we met all of those contracts and what
is needed for those contracts
we also made
it's not listed on here but just to let
you know
everything that was needed for the
increase in pera was also put into the
salary and benefit projections as well
we did set aside an open salary savings
we've been doing this with the budget
since 2019
uh this year we set the open salary
savings at 5 million
and then overall for the operating we
pretty much told the departments to
please review your budgets
to try to meet your strategic results
and like i said earlier with this
performance-based budgeting
you're going to see
that a lot of the departments fluctuated
some went down and some went up
okay jumping in for uh into the general
fund as you can see um in our the budget
that we're in right now currently our
fiscal year 20.
our expenditures from the original
budget that you adopted
back in may of last year
our expenditures were 95.3 million
this year we are asking for 95.6 million
which is only a point three percent
increase
uh this gives you an um outline of the
fiscal year 20 original that was adopted
like i said back in may of last year our
21 that we are proposing and then what
the change is
um
as far as a revenue like francisco had
just mentioned while ago we do have an
econometric model that we work with him
on um
we feel very uh confident about this
model when we did these projections uh
for fiscal year 29 our projections
versus actuals were only off by about
250 000
um when we told that to the state
economists uh she sort of laughed
laughed and wished that they were as
close as we are with their econometric
model so we feel very confident about
that model um our expenditures these are
all from you know from the city
management and also from all of the
departments again that was 95.64
million that we're asking for and then
our transfers are in and out
they went up
most of the transfers
went up because um
we are
last year we put a lot of the transfers
into the hold harmless grt
this year we moved some of them back to
the general fund and like i mentioned
earlier
and we're going to be going over a list
of the transfers in a few minutes as
well but we also increased some of the
transfers as well i think animal service
center is asking for an increase
um we increase the budget for the
vehicle acquisition fund
we increase for the liability claims and
also for the medical health for staff as
well
uh you can see that we have an a nice
ending balance we are meeting our
required 212s as you know the state only
requires us to uh to meet 1 12 however
we adopted a resolution
that requires us to do an additional 112
and then our unreserved balance is about
4.64 million
um this gives you an idea of where our
revenues are um
our prediction is
102.6 million as francisco showed you
earlier from the graph
our grt has been coming in extremely
strong um it's it's surpassing our
predictions which is um as david has
told you um i'm not
i'm maybe a penny pincher but i am very
frugal
i like to be a little bit conservative
and not be you know my predictions to be
too high
however i i really believe that the
reason that we are
seeing this increase in francisco and i
sort of watch the grt as it comes in
we've seen an increase in the retail and
we've been seeing an increase in
construction and those are two very
strong industries that are that are
bringing in
our gross receipt stacks um our property
taxes this is actually straight from the
property tax levy that we receive from
the state uh they're predicting about
12.8
million
excise and other taxes includes like
franchise fees uh we do receive
um
taxes from like uh gasoline license
plates uh and cigarettes um other
revenue these are our fees and charges
as you know we have fees and charges for
parts iraq for permitting for
community development
when you get stopped by a police officer
and you get a ticket
when you pay for that ticket it goes
into the other revenue as well
then earlier you heard larry talk about
the internet sales tax for fiscal year
as you remember we're on a lag so you
have business activity month and then
you have your distribution month
the business act
we only re we will only receive for
fiscal year 20
10 months of internet sales tax
distribution because they are lagging it
you know of course for two months for
fiscal year 21 we will receive uh 12
full months of internet sales tax which
is just a little bit over a million
dollars and that makes up our 102
million dollars for revenue
as far as our expenditures what we did
we we lumped it into
service categories for you instead of
going through every single department as
you can see for emergency services they
are the largest portion of our
percentage-wise of our
expenditures
um
49.7 percent 50 percent of our
expenditures out of the general fund
go to emergency store services uh 39
then goes to community services this is
community development economic
development parks are at public works
quality of life and then our
administrative services which is 16.6
and that those are all the internal
services uh the cmo's office finance uh
hr
and um um i t
and then of course we have an open
position savings of 5 million
as far as our expenditures this is where
our money is going to as you can see
like in most businesses the largest cost
is employee cost
our employee cost is 67 percent
um supplies and services 15 transfers of
debt is 3
and then transfer to other fund is um
is 14
so um for this budget uh the departments
did request for new positions
this is a list of all of the new
positions i'm not going to go through
every single one
there's two slides of this i think total
there's about 21
positions that are requested
some of these i'll just talk briefly
just about a few
community development is requesting
three new positions these are all for
the one-stop shop that they have
um
the um however these positions are
contingent upon funding uh we will be
bringing to the finance select committee
um which i think will be at the end of
april uh we will be bringing a uh phase
two of the community development rates
for permitting
and we will be um giving the the new
rates that we came up for the community
development partner department and
hopefully if the selection committee and
the members that are uh counselors and
mayor that are on the selection
committee agree to this and we will
bring this forward as a resolution uh to
adopt new rates for them
for finance the customer service rep i
should say maybe this is a cashier this
is for the person that will be out at
the east mesa
utility where they collect um i think
they're collecting
um
the utility payments out there and also
signing people up for utilities
this is a for a person for out of that
location
moving forward public works um quality
of life um as you can see they've asked
for some food service workers um these
positions are
contingent upon grant funding
we recently brought to council the new
mexico aaa grant and these positions are
in
in that grant so if we are awarded this
grant these positions are contingent
upon that funding
and of course the transit supervisor is
fta funds from
from the fta grant for transit
this is the next couple of slides are
all of the transfers
when we when we mean by transfers is
that we take money out of the general
fund and we put it into another fund
every year we support airport operations
we transfer funds out of the general
fund into the airport
this year for the vehicle acquisition we
typically try to put money in there for
vehicle acquisition for about
one and a half million every year
last year i think we only supported the
vehicle acquisition fund with a million
dollars
we were not able to cover a lot of
vehicles for some of the other
departments we always try to cover as
many vehicles as we possibly can for
police
um the rest of the as you can see the
funds start with the three all funds to
start with the three are debt so we are
transferring funds out of the um general
fund into debt and so that's what the
next one's all the way from 2015 grt all
the way through the hud section
which is the um the loan for the
monas
we also are doing a transfer to the
solid waste landfill closure for a half
a million um we support the rio grande
theater theater as well every year and
then of course the transit operations
which is their match
for their transit grant
fleet services um we
hopefully as you know fleet is in the
process of putting in a new software
it's called fleet wave
right now we are doing a tr we are
giving a transfer to fleet services out
of general fund for those vehicles that
are are tied to general fund um
utilities transit still has to um do
direct chargebacks to fleet for their
services
however once fleet wave is up and
running we will be taking fleet back to
being what we call a chargeback and
charging each of the departments
we made a transfer for workers comp
compensation uh for liability claims we
do um
for amervda we give merveda um i think
the agreement is
53.47 and we pay 53 for murder
metro narcotics uh that is with the
sheriff's department we supply i think
it's six officers they supply six and
then we each contribute the county
contributes 325 000 as well and then of
course the animal service center this is
an equal match from the county as well
and i will say
going back um that
murda metro anne um i'm not quite sure
about the animal service center um their
boards are in the process of meeting and
will be um
accepting or adopting a resolution for
their
budgets um every year um i when i
started this i tried to highlight a
couple of other
funds um i always highlight the hold
harmless replacement
this is our 3 8
that we receive
we are it's going to be accommodating it
has very little expenditures in it this
year um it is accommodating about 8.3
million of transfers and i'll be going
through those transfers in a few minutes
a few minutes uh the majority of those
transfers
are for debt
the public safety impact fees this year
i decided to cover them for the last
couple of years the public safety impact
fees has been covering the debt
for the east mesa safety complex however
we are anticipating that there will not
be enough coverage in fiscal year 21
so we we will be taking a um
a transfer out of the general fund to
cover the rest of the debt coverage for
the east mesa safety complex
the
vehicle acquisition fund
of course this is used to purchase
replacement vehicles um i put the page
number if you wanted to look at um
page 61 is where we have our vaf
uh we're requesting as you can see
several vehicles 19 for police typically
police tries to
we try to accommodate them with 18 v
replacement vehicles every year
this year i boosted it up to 19 because
they did have a couple of wrecks and
some of these wrecks were not at the
fault of the officer
and so we need to replace those once we
receive
insurance payments on those vehicles but
they need to be on the vaf so that way
we can actually replace that vehicle
um
moving on these are the transfers that
are coming out of the hold harmless
every year just like we support
the um airport we also support
facilities maintenance
we do
we do receive a bill every an invoice
every month i should say sorry
for uh prisoners
uh from the county
and then the rest of these starting with
uh 2017 ssgrt as you can see the fund
number starts with the three
26 all the way down to 3294
these are all transfers for debt
and
continuing as you can see
[Music]
two more debt for flood and for fire
equipment and then a transfer another
additional transfer to the liability
claim for a half a million
uh this year i wanted to just briefly go
over the if we would have been in front
of you um you know all the department
directors they are online so if you have
specific questions uh they can answer
those questions as well
but this year i wanted to go through the
department
budgets just briefly
the when we talk about their proposed
budget some of them will probably look
huge and the reason for that is because
when we did go to performance-based
budgeting we're looking at all
of their budgets so this includes think
of this the city-wide budget which is
the four-point i mean the 417 million
this is that budget so for the proposed
budget like for the city manager's
office which does include fleet services
that's why there's such a large budget
for the city manager's office
one of the things that we are proposing
this year is to move
on the sustainability program from um
this was city uh city managers directed
to move the sustainability program for
economic development to the city
manager's office um they felt that this
was a really good move for
sustainability
mostly because you know they
they are responding to
um you know each of the departments you
know they work real closely like with
utilities and public works um and so
um and to the community as well so we
felt that for this particular department
to grow
that moving it from ed to the cmo's
office might be a very um and
a good response to that program and help
us
yes
which c which city manager uh does this
is this uh david's
well david is the interim city manager
currently this budget was put together
with um when
mr studer was the interim city manager
oh
okay thank you they're just wondering
okay sorry
um
they are
one new position media intern and of
course we are requesting funding for a
performance management software
uh for community development i talked
earlier about the positions that they
were requesting
of course those positions are contingent
upon funding
and again with economic development just
taking the sustainability program to the
cmo
finance is requesting um two positions
and like i talked about one of them uh
is a cashier and customer service rep
i'm not quite sure that i told you that
though that uh utilities would actually
be paying for that position
through their administrative fees and
then finance is also asking for
additional a small additional amount of
money to have
a small business outreach program for
the community
the fire department their proposed
budget um they are requesting no academy
budget for fiscal year 21.
uh the hr department asks for one um an
hr specialist and then it asks for
budget
to for phone replacement it amazes me i
didn't even realize that we've actually
been in the city hall now for 10 years
and so it's time to start replacing some
of the equipment that we have in here
they put funding in for um
a phone replacement and also for a
network security penetration test
as for legal they requested two new
positions internal auditor and a
part-time office
assistant
um of course the mayor council your
proposed budget is a 2.8
million
uh munich court there were no changes at
all for parks and recreation
they requested five new positions a
caseworker a youth program specialist
they actually asked for three of those
and for their after school program and a
part maintenance worker
the police department
they propose their budget and it does
include a 20 person academy
for public works
they requested new positions
they also requested funding for computer
upgrade for the alarm system for murda
and for
additional funding for to conduct roof
inspections
quality of life they're actually
proposing a re-org
for
their department
and i'm trying to
they're actually wanting to
change some of their
none of their lines of business but they
are looking
to change some of their programs which
i think we pretty much approve those
they want to move their art program and
make it a public art program under the
director's office and then also under
the library museum line of business they
want to add a new program for
collections a collections program
they did ask for
twenty thousand dollars for public art
and a hundred and twenty 000 for a
senior community needs assessment which
is something i think one of the
counselors had been asking for
um for utilities um their board just
recently approved their budget last week
um they did ask for an increase for
equipment which is a tapping machine and
um a trenchless equipment as well
um delilah walsh has some really cool
videos maybe some someday soon she can
share that maybe she shared those with
the board as well for the uh both of
these two pieces of equipment
and for that i'll turn the um everything
over to david cedillo to go over the cip
thank you leanne
good afternoon mayor and council i will
bring up the cip presentation here
shortly
for everyone to
to see
as i do that
is that coming up
if yes
f5
okay
maybe i didn't make myself clear you're
not in a full view of their presentation
if you hit the f5
button on your
keyboard
it should go
david thank you counselor for good
hit the button i don't know what's
happening with the oh with the screen
there's times it doesn't work i guess
what about control 5 will that help
is the presentation up
yeah that's fine we can we can just
slide the we can just use the slides
david you know it's not a full screen
but it's
how's that
same
okay
we'll go ahead and move on uh as
mayor council knows the
capital improvements program is part of
the city charter in article 5 5.05
and it is being
it is part of the budget process to
propose
a five-year calendar improvements
program
this is required by the department of
finance and administration
in advance of any legislative sessions
that helps us obtain any grants and debt
funding it is also tied to our peak
performance
as an organization
uh just a quick overview this is a
six-year
program uh the sixth year comprises of
the funded capital projects within the
current fiscal year that's been proposed
for fy 2021
and the remaining five are part of the
infrastructure capital improvements
and those are non-funded projects in the
outer years of fy 22 through 26.
as maestas had mentioned uh and leanne
touched base on it as well too in their
presentation this is a cyclical event
meetings do kick off in october as they
go through we meet with departments we
meet with
city managers office and city council as
we go through to identify
the projects for the cip
once those are collected again one of
the things that that we have changed is
meeting as a cip committee for ranking
that involves departments from
throughout the organization
once that is complete we actually get
that
created and send it through
for review
and is submitted as part of the budget
that's where we're at
yes sir the slides are not advancing
are you seeing slide four
what put your put your uh cursor over
four and and hit enter and see if it
moves it
yeah we aren't seeing slide four at all
uh david i'd recommend um just stopping
your screen share and then starting it
again
thanks adrian
did that
is everyone able to see the screen now
we can see it you want to try your f5 or
at least or control 5 one of the two
okay how about if you how about if you
put your cursor on
on the screen on the
slide four and then hit enter or click
it on slide four and see if it moves
it david cedillo i think you have to
um start the slideshow before you share
the screen for it to work
let me try that
unshare start the slideshow and then
reshare
yeah that's exactly what i was going to
try to help you do
you know you want to ask him if he he's
here
i don't want to bug him when he was
talking
i can
is anything showing up here
same as before
dave
just
just your very first screen
david this is david myers can you do me
a favor can you unshare your screen i'm
going to try calling it up from here and
then uh if you are in the building a net
will go down there and help you
sounds good and yes i'm currently here
david since i see yours did you want to
go ahead and and move over to slide four
yes if that works for you i can do that
let me know when i'm on slide four
not there
okay how's that
yes it's there
okay
thank you david uh mayor council
apologies for the technical difficulties
but uh we'll we'll proceed
from where i left off
uh
as you know this process
is a cycle currently right now
we did we didn't see slide two or three
maybe had to go back one or two
sure thing counselor
there we go uh slide two we'll go ahead
and
backtrack backtrack
the cip
is part of the city charter as i noted
before article 5 in
section 5.05
and
as stated the capital improvements
program is a five-year proposed part of
the budget that will need to be
submitted
this is required by the department of
finance and administration in advance of
the legislative sessions which helps us
obtain grant and debt funding it is also
tied to our peak performance as an
organization
next please david
is it showing
it it's showing online
it's not showing on mine
okay i'm on slide three right now
we're not we're on two yet
tell him to stop sharing his instruction
david can you try stop sharing yours and
we'll try mine again
yes i sure can
let's just
foreign
so
david this is land
why don't you let me try since i got
mine and they're both in the same folder
and i'll see if i can i'll i'll see if i
can share it on mine okay
sounds great thank you leanne
did that work
yes ma'am thank you very much leanne
okay so you want me to get to slide
three or four are you gonna start over
looks like you did it
yes we will go directly to slide three
okay one second
i can bring up a powerpoint but i can't
unmute myself
thank you leanne
so now that everybody can see the
presentation again my apologies for for
not being able to to bring that up
the cip is a six year program that runs
from fy 21 through fy26
the funded capital projects which is the
proposed current fiscal year of fy 21
and then the other five are the
infrastructure capital improvement plan
from fiscal years 20 through 22 through
26 again these are non-funded projects
in outer years
next please leanne
to not reiterate the the process again
this is just an overview of what our
process is at this point right now we
are at the april where we
show the proposed cip along with the
budget this will be coming back to city
council in may for approval once it is
approved it is submitted to
the state or the legislative funding up
opportunities
and then it goes to the legislative
session the following year
next please
so what i want to do is go over some of
the major changes that we incorporated
into
fy21 cip process and how we came to the
final product
so
again this is
in collaboration with all the
departments that had feedback
uh throughout the year and throughout
the process so some of those new input
requirements that we show uh go ahead
leanne is the new workbooks that that we
came up through as part of that feedback
from from staff and from those
departments uh that was consolidated
to have one working book that includes
both capital and maintenance for all
their projects as we go through
the other improvement that we did
next one man
is our
prioritization of our matrix like the
workbooks we also combine those are
consolidated those to have one matrix
include both capital and maintenance
projects to give weight to all different
projects for from all the departments
and
also we
streamlined the
forms which
allowed staff to do a drop down or
refillable form which increased their
efficiencies in providing that through
us as
as a department and keeper of the cip to
move forward
next slide
as you may have seen before here's our
combined priority matrix it does take
different aspects and gives those
projects essentially what it is is a
weighted value based on the chart and
how these projects align
with both councils and department
strategic plans along with other
items that we take into account from
that we'll get a matrix score
next one
which will put them in a range of low
medium or high
with those denominations there 0 to 25
26 to 50 and 51 to 75
next slide
so one of the things that we also
changed or we improved as part of the
cip
was recognizing that we do have annual
projects
every single year now those actually
receive consistent funding with little
or no fluctuation
but
we're never really ever
shown on the cip so for consistency we
are now adding those to the cip
some of those examples that we show
uh for instance in public works
next slide
leanne please
for instance in public works we have
annual projects with our neighborhood
calming
program traffic calming program and also
our weed control and maintenance
uh an example of the utility projects
that are are annual and ongoing
are the gas solid waste waste water and
water building improvements
next please
another thing that we're wanting to
highlight for for council and the public
to see
are the notations that we've made for
those upcoming legislative
appropriations as larry had mentioned in
his presentation earlier we did receive
those
fundings or basically those
appropriations for for several in
different projects
those were actually listed on the cip
and i'll show you how those
get placed on the cip and what the
difference is
and here's a list of those projects that
were approved through the latest
legislative appropriations the amador
hotel aquatic
services center
solar panels
arts and cultural district improvements
all the way through municipal services
center transit
project
munson
center renovations
next slide please
uh and is there's a continuation of
those projects that were approved you
will see projects from community of hope
uh ranging from various things the new
skate park that was called for
through the trails projects and
wastewater
septic system
improvements from grants so what i'd
like to do now is show you where you're
going to see those changes in the cip
next please
here's a snippet of the cip itself
and as you see there are two notations
in the fourth project down and the last
project down at the bottom
you will see a notation that says 2020
legislative appropriations
now although the state has agreed to
fund those the city does not have that
money in hand now
so what you'll notice is that the
funding is out in fy
that is to show that the money has been
appropriated but has not made its way to
the city and in its in its coffers to
use
once that does happen
those fundings under uh
an adjustment will go to council to move
those from an unfunded year of 2022 into
the funded
f white 2021
next please
our bond cycling will work just the same
as our legislative
so here are a list of those
bond cycle projects that we will be
moving forward with
as you recall at the last council
meeting there were the streets and flood
bond cycles that were approved here
coming forth will be the facilities but
here is a small list of the projects on
that list
again
to identify those projects on the cip
next please
one more leanne
you will see that those bond cycle
projects are being identified just as
those in the legislative if you look
down
on the screen third project from the
bottom
you will notice that the east mesa roads
and drainage has two
of those items because we are receiving
funding from those two
which is a 2020 bond cycle and a 2020
legislative appropriation
again just as with the legislative those
will move back into the funded column
once they are approved and received
next one
one of the other things that we wanted
to
identify and show
for consistency purposes was combining
basically uh
some of the projects that we've had
throughout
public works they they've all been here
but we wanted to highlight
is the actual departments that have a
great involvement with those projects
so typically those projects historically
were listed under public works
we are moving those out
to the departments to show
the involvement that they have
based on those projects so some of these
movements that that you will see
are with economic development quality
quality of life and fire and police
now
i do note uh there with fire and police
you'll see on the next slide
coming up that's another change that we
did
we wanted to
show a little bit more
of
consistency with our public safety
infrastructure
and
police and fire agreed to come as one
under the cip to show that
because a lot of the other reporting
that we have
deals back to public safety this is a
good way to tie it back to
the
cip
to show that this does include both fire
and police instead of having two
separate items on on the cip
next please
that you can see as an example here
within a page of the cip
that goes through all the different
portions
of it and it does show both fire and
police there
next please
here you will see what the final product
look up like this is the first page
uh it does show the rankings of those
projects those are again just the
projects that were ranked within
public works as you go out throughout
the document you will see the others
that were listed but
another change we have made is we're
placing appendices in the cip which will
extract this information and you'll see
here on on the next slide
here what you have are only
the newly funded projects and this is
this will be an appendix a of the
document as you can see it shows
those projects that were newly funded
for fy 21 or proposed to be
based on availability of budget as we
went through those portions of the
committee to rank the projects
the other
improvement that that we've enhanced on
on the cip and in the next appendices
appendix b
will be a total
for all the project types and all the
departments that are listed there so
it's a quick reference a quick guide uh
instead of having to go back into
the weeds and getting a lot of detail
this is a quick reference to get updated
on where we're at with those fundings as
we move forward
next please
now what i'll do is i'll go over those
newly funded projects proposed for fy21
again this was done by a committee
of department directors throughout the
city and it did identify as we went
through and ranked them it put them in
order as the committee agreed
and if there weren't funding available
for it they were replaced by something
else so what we'll do is we'll go over
those nine
and then uh we'll go ahead and i'll uh
stand for any questions you may have
so as part of our first ranked project
that you've probably seen in the other
slides before
is going to be the
police department evidence building
if you recall from the matrix this did
get a score of 52 which ranked high
you did notice that there is the scope
of work and the details but this is a
project that pd
needs
uh immensely because right now they're
they're storing their evidence in
something that needs to be updated uh
and kept in proper condition as they
move through
using that evidence
on trial or for whatever purposes they
may need which again will keep the
integrity of of that evidence
the second project that you will see
ranked is going to be the
waste of water treatment plan
rehabilitation
that one there did receive a score of
56. again i want to point out that by
committee and available funding uh you
may see that some scores are higher than
the others but as a committee we came
together and said this is these are some
of the things that are more important to
departments and the overall citizens of
of las cruces
for our third project or our third
ranked project will be the madrid avenue
extension that one did receive a score
of 47
and it is to construct
as david maestas had mentioned prior to
a full reconstruction going from the end
of martha and anita to travis which will
provide a lot of things but more
importantly be able to give it a
complete street
look
as part of our rcip
our next project as we move along it
will be midway avenue this one did
receive a score of 45 and as you can see
midway is is currently a dirt road
with hardly any infrastructure so what
we're doing is improving that to make
sure that we can have that connectivity
in a full street
design as we go through to improve these
areas
next one please
here's another
project with the solar ridge it did
receive a score of 52
and this primarily will be used to
upgrade the water lines and pavement on
solar ridge between mars and
and sun ridge
these uh have been identified as
infrastructure that will need to be
replaced
next
here we have the mesquite tornado
drainage improvements as most council
can recall this was brought up as part
of the
bond cycle last week for
for the flood
bond cycle it did receive that score of
40. and again this is to analyze and
mitigate those flooding
issues that we have within the
neighborhood
these
this project was also mentioned prior to
i believe david maestas at the onset
when he was talking about the cip
this is the refuse and recycling buffer
program again this is to enclose those
areas and provide both that safety and
aesthetics that we're looking for in
particular this is actually going to put
us into compliance with section
38-61 of the municipal code as amended
next please
next please leanne
back just one more
again this one was also mentioned
earlier
this is for those safety and
aesthetics looks as we go through to in
enclose these areas for our generators
at different sites throughout the city
especially our older facilities
and lastly what we have
is the
next one please thank you leanne
is the lighting upgrades to the city
council chambers
there again the improvements to chambers
will help with those broadcasting and
streaming portions of council as as we
go through
as
comcast switches over to a high
definition here in the near future
that'll help us
have that ability to show and basically
correct some of that distortion that
that
currently happens through
those and with that
we'll go ahead and take any questions
again mayor council my apologies for
the
problems we had technically with with
the presentation but we'll go ahead and
stand for questions now
thanks david
wow no questions okay entertain a motion
to adjourn
council bencomo
mr mayor i have a question where's me
nope beat you
no i got council been como and abate to
stevie
and there
there you go everyone
thank you
counselor bingo go ahead
thanks mr mayor
um and thanks to
our three
presenters um very much for all that
information
um honestly i mostly have questions just
so that i can better understand the
process as a new counselor
um i know that the you know this whole
process is is much longer than justice
meaning and so
um
[Music]
much like the
um legislative priorities i'm looking
forward to being involved in this
process for next uh much differently for
next year um
as i was reading the budget book
yesterday i just have a couple questions
that i hope liam you can answer for me
um but one of my
um i don't know if we're allowed to make
requests but i'm gonna make one
um i i think that there's a strong need
for a full-time translator slash
interpreter at the city
um for all departments not just pio but
any communication that needs to go out
to
las cruces
perhaps under the pio office but i do
think that
a translator would be a good
um
addition to
the team at the city
um
[Music]
given the
grim
presentation we just had prior to this
are we considering moving forward with
the vehicle replacements um
particularly um for police department um
you know understanding that
uh public safety is a priority and
um
you know 19 vehicles are also a lot of
vehicles so
um is that is that a conversation being
had with both utilities and
the police department
since they were the ones with the
largest number of vehicle
you know counselor just uh and i'll let
the staff jump in but keep in mind this
was the pre-covet 19 so there's a lot in
there that that may not be able to it
all depends on how and how we're doing
as far as our
our grt is coming in so
i think a lot of it can be
you know
you know going back with a
with uh another
review to see
if it's really really necessary and if
there's some that could be put off
because i i'm just telling you that the
budget we're gonna have to start looking
for cuts
and um
and so you know obviously if those of
those 19 vehicles if if five are really
need needing to be replaced and maybe
those will just be the ones and then the
ninth the remaining 14 gets put off to
the side i don't know we'll have to
have probably david is probably going to
have staff re evaluate everything and
and come back
with some suggestions to us i'm just
guessing
may if i if i could jump in i can add to
that
as you mentioned in your discussion with
larry haran earlier about different
ideas and different recommendations for
cuts the first place that we looked at
was with the current list of vacancies
that we have we've already put a process
in place
i won't call it a policy yet because we
didn't approve it as part of the same
manager policy but it is a a directive
from the city manager right now and what
we are doing is for any vacancy that
comes through
departments ask for it to be filled it
will go through a committee approach and
that committee will review whether it's
something that is critical to
the organization to have put in place
mayor you gave examples such as if it's
an electrician in community development
well then yes that one will probably end
up going through because we need to make
sure that we're getting those permits
completed but if it's another area where
we have pulled back operations based on
the public health emergency and our
limited services in that area then we
will hold off on that hiring so
immediately we'll start to see some of
the savings that we can offset this
public health emergency for and then as
we move forward further and we start to
find out how much longer this is going
to last and what the projections look
like our next level would be to do the
same thing with the vehicle acquisition
fund as a request for purchase comes in
it will be reviewed if it is a critical
emergency service item well then it may
have to go through but if it's one that
we can hold off on with the existing
vehicles we have in place then we will
hold off on that
i hope that helps answer your question
counselor ben coleman
yes absolutely thank you
um
and then can leanne can you help me
understand the
under
city page 63 i think is where i saw
under council there's a capital expense
line what is that
yes
i was pulling i was uh getting to page
63.
so
you're looking under council you're
looking under the cmo's office
yes
right okay so when we lose capital this
is not capital
that is um
like the cip this is capital that's over
uh like a thousand dollars so you may go
out and need to buy a computer and this
computer let's say it cost twelve
hundred thousand twelve hundred dollars
so that's a major equipment major
equipment is considered capital
so they're they're requesting uh capital
of
uh well for 21 they're not proposing
any capital under community relations or
fiscal
um
actually i don't think anybody's
requesting any capital for next fiscal
year out of the cmos office but that's
what that capital is
it's for anything that's over a thousand
dollars that lasts longer than a year
but it's not on the cip
does that answer your questions council
yes absolutely and then um
liam you said that from the increase
from last year was point zero three
percent right
from uh for the general fund
yes
yes point three percent yes point three
percent okay right it's about four
hundred thousand dollars and by the way
counselor that does include all the new
positions that were in the um
uh that we i showed you in the slide
presentation so i think there's 17 new
positions that are are being asked
out of the general fund
okay
great that's it for now i just had a
couple clarifying questions i i want to
i really want to thank leanne because
she met with councillor beta stevie and
i um to discuss this whole process and
and she's brilliant and i think we're
really lucky to have her
thank you so much counselor
okay thank you counselor next is uh
counselor beta stewie
thank you
and thank you all the presenters uh it's
a lot of information it's very detailed
and um leanne thank you as well for
meeting with sherp and komo and i before
this to make sure that we had the time
to
ask a lot of those detailed questions as
well
um i did
have a question and it might be
um for
chief gallagher
and it is about fleet uh one of the uh
in the cars uh one of the issues that i
saw when i was doing my ride-alongs was
that they did have quite a number of
those older vehicles uh some of which uh
they said had over a hundred thousand
miles on them and some that were being
used that were just
that shouldn't be on the road i said the
story before but there was a vehicle
that would stop on right turns
and the officer would have to restart
the car and so that is definitely a huge
public safety need um so i'm wondering
if they've done anything with those
vehicles if they have a catalog of
how many vehicles they have on hand and
then what those mileages are and
then how many are in that
you know severe service category um that
would also i think help um
figuring out
what types of needs um they have that
are those dire uh situations so i don't
know if chief has
um
any sort of
my counselor's chief galaga can you hear
me
yes sir
so yes we are we have a very good handle
on our fleet even more so recently
because we hired someone just to
kind of be our liaison with the city's
fleet office and he is a new position we
created uh by combining another position
so we didn't add 12 positions we kind of
cut down on one position elsewhere and
we created this position so he's putting
together he has a very
good listing and a good feel for the
number of vehicles in our fleet how old
they are
how many miles they have on them i can
tell you when i first got here one of
the things i noticed was
um
city of las cruces needs to do a better
job like most cities do with planning
the replacement of police vehicles
because there's been some years like i
found out
in a row where there was no police
vehicles replaced and so that puts you
then in a hole and you're behind now
you're constantly trying to catch up and
that's the position the city now finds
itself in we've been working with leanne
on that there was some
discussions about maybe some creative
financing to do a really big purchase
one time to put us back on the on the
right track um of course current events
are going to have an impact on that i
can tell you just from my my days as
chief in santa fe um
we had a plan a vehicle replacement plan
we would go to city council with it they
weren't crazy about it but every year
we spent 1.3 million dollars a year to
replace police vehicles it was kind of a
sunk cost but we would go to them with
um here's the vehicle here's the picture
of it here's the mileage here's the
expected life um here's how old it is
something has to be done eventually you
know i think i've told you in private
some of our vehicles are older than some
of our offices so that's obviously a
problem when it comes to public safety
not many of them i say that just as an
exaggeration
we also have bought
years ago a particular type of vehicle
i'm not going to
smurge a company in public but that
vehicle many police departments have
moved away from because of having a lot
of problems it's really not suited to be
a police vehicle
we're cycling those out as well and
sticking with the current purchase of
ford interceptors so yeah we we are
aware of it um we appreciate you you
bringing it up you and councillor
vancomo um the officers
definitely
would like to have
the implementation of that vehicle
replacement program if and when it's
possible because um just comparing the
fleet here with the one i had when i was
in santa fe
at least half of the fleet here would
not be eligible to be on patrol in santa
fe because of the standards we had so
you know
current uh
current situation aside i'm sure we
would have been working forward to that
what's going to happen now we don't know
we're frankly in a position where some
of the vehicles the crown victorias are
still being on the road basically
because fleet guys are so good
at like creating frankenstein monsters
they take a transmission from one and
an engine from another and you create a
whole new car
that's not gonna last forever
thank you chief i appreciate that
um
my next question that i have is um just
asking a little bit more about the the
cost savings that you had on personnel
um i'm trying to find the budget but it
had about a five million dollar
savings for that um
i don't know if leon you can explain
that a little bit more to me and
a mayor councillor uh stevie this is
land
so about three years ago
um
the city management decided that we
would put in open savings
into the budget we started that the very
first year was about 4.5 million and we
had um oh so these are so when we talk
about open savings what we're talking
about is you know through the years we
have people that may decide to retire or
they find a job somewhere else or they
move
um these positions may be um
not filled for several months let's say
so that is considered open savings it's
like vacancy savings and so throughout
the year
we keep tabs on what the savings is by
the the how many positions are vacant at
that time
we're not saying that you can't fill
these positions i want to put that out
there we're just closely monitoring what
that savings is
and so for that first year uh we had a
we had they we wanted a 4.5 million open
savings and we met we met that and
actually our open savings was about 5.4
million
so i felt that 5 million for this year
was quite reasonable
especially unfortunately with what we're
going through right now we do monitor
that on a
by payroll every payroll we go and
monitor that um so that way if it
doesn't look like we're gonna meet it we
start you know talking to city
management about you know what is it
that we need to do because we need to
meet that i will also tell you
throughout the years i've only this is
only my third year of being in the
budget office um
so i'm telling you that management is um
you know that the departments are going
to spend about 95 million dollars um i
will tell you that we never really meet
that number um every year we probably if
we spend maybe about 85 or 88 or close
to 90 million a year um then you know i
i feel really good about that but you
know
we we put our expenditures out there in
a rather large so that way we have a
larger spending power
but sometimes you know projects don't
get done as fast as we want and
and things like that that happen but i
feel um
you know i i feel that with this open
salary savings it just sort of lowers
those expenditures and makes us like
true to our numbers
hopefully that helps helps you
we can't
i can't hear you
um
a little bit of follow-up for that i
don't think probably doesn't count with
the current
um situation going on because we do have
some decreased services
later on um has there been any studies
um or looking about
um
if we are saving by not filling those
positions but kind of they've crossed
the service if we're decreased on any
service because we are not
um having those positions filled um has
there
been any sort of look at that
uh mayor councillor stevie this is land
michigan
not that i'm aware of with the city i
know there's probably some research out
there that we can go and uh retrieve
that from uh what i can do is maybe work
with our hr director joe richards to
maybe start looking at that i know it's
one of one of the things that's on our
to-do list
but uh but yeah it is something that we
have discussed into and to talk about
but i think that's something that might
be in the realm of the hr department i
don't know if joe's
is online
you might want to chime in on that
i don't see her
leanne
yes
yes this is joe richards hr director
yes and with this event we are
actually looking at a review of
physicians and
we'll be determining whether or not
there will be an impact with the budget
um for future resources i i think that
we can move uh in that direction as well
thank you
um i do
i i'm all for saving um japan i just
want to make sure that we're not
sacrificing um our quality service um by
doing so um and you know there are a few
departments not with any fault of their
own that haven't been able to fill
positions just
man but we know that our service um is
sacrificed because of that and so i
think that the balance has to be but i
think it's something that we should look
at in the future given the current
situations of course um there are going
to be issues that we have to look at but
just something for the future
okay thank you councillor
councillor flores and then mayor pro tem
uh thank you mr mayor and first of all
can you all see this
there it is
so i want to thank um
carlo walton for that beautiful
work of art
and looks like it would make a beautiful
mural somewhere in the city
the um
the uh city art board is probably you
know cringing right now because their
definition of public art is quite
different
perhaps it's a mural
it is a mural isn't it a library
oh it's at the library
oh okay i hadn't seen it i'm sorry but
anyway i think it's beautiful that it
was put in our budget
so anyway thank you carla anyway but um
so as far as um
as far as
the q i have a question for my questions
are for leanne
or anybody who knows um
so
there was i think somewhere around
i don't know what page it was on but
um you indicated that quality of life
wanted to change some of their programs
and that they wanted to reorganize um do
you know exactly
what that reorganization would be
mayor city council this is lynn
gallagher the director for quality of
life i can um address that question
so during the strategic
business planning for
uh for for the city of las cruces for
the quality of life department
there were a number of different
strategies identified and public art was
one of the areas that the city
really wanted to focus on
for
the current strategic business plan
public art is located within the museum
system
and so one of the changes that we
have set forward is to move
the public art program into the
director's office
so that we can
best address those issues directly at
the director's level
the uh the next is to just align the
museum
system accordingly based on that that
particular move and then the next thing
that we
did as part of our strategic business
planning
overview as we've been doing this now
for a year
is we we've realized that
um
we we realized
that we that what we did is
um we did not have an also in the museum
system a collections department
identified
while the city of las cruces has a very
robust
art
collection in its museum system process
we did not
adequately identify that so that we
could a
fund it through the budget process
and ensure that we had
sufficient strategic planning to
uh to meet those goals
as the city identified
so when you're talking
so um thank you ms gallagher so um
the art collection you're talking about
are you talking about uh uh cataloging
that or what exactly
does that all mean
a mere city council yes so part of it
will include catalonia cataloging it we
did receive a grant the loose grant we
did receive that a while ago that has
started that process
but along with that we've realized that
we receive a lot of requests online for
information regarding our collections
and we also have
a very very large collection in the city
that is not being held
per
museum standards that we are adequately
storing you're just not storing it to
medium standards and so by breaking it
out and creating its own strategic
performance measures
and
adequately aligning it with our
performance-based budgeting we will be
in a better place to report that to the
city leadership
and then to be able to improve in those
areas
in alignment with
approved museum practices
so miss uh gallagher
in terms of um
bringing the art collection up
to the uh
care the standard of care by museums
that would require probably maybe
restoration and a lot of cleaning you
know the cleaning that's done with a
little q-tip so that would probably
require more personnel so is that
included in that um
proposed contemplated change
mayor and city council this first step
is important to just identify what
performance measures and what work is
required for the current collection and
then for
other collections as they get added as
you know there was a work session
several work sessions to add different
types of collections
um to this and before we can adequately
say that we can accept
more
collections into the museum system we
have to be able to have a strategic
performance uh objectives
to identify that and then
in the in
we will look at
what staffing that we need in order to
make that
a better process
okay so all of this right now is still
are just
the initial steps that are being taken
to conserve some of that collection
which is i think
neither here nor i mean it's not really
stored in one place and some people
can't even identify
exactly where it might be is that part
of the process that you're going to
be facing
mayor city council the the objective is
to make sure that we that we focus on
each piece in the collection
and its unique attributes
what is needed to maintain it in museum
quality standards and then to set
forward a process by which we would
bring to city leadership
the mechanisms the costs the staffing
that would help improve that for the
city
my question ms gallagher thank you but
my question was directed more at
identifying identifying the location
of
this
collection is it located in one place or
is it here and there and everywhere
mayor city council sorry
councillor flores the museum
collection
there are pieces that are in the in each
of the museums that we have there are
also a number of pieces that are stored
in a location that is
um not
adequate for storing such rare and and
parts of our history
but they are in
one or a few places
okay yet to be identified perhaps
that's correct
thank you thank you very much ms
gallander and my next question is for
leanne
leanne um
when i was reading through this
beautifully prepared
budget packet that we received
i read through the
introduction
the beautiful introduction thank you mr
master
um
[Music]
and
i came across
the um
the section on
enterprises me
and
excuse me
so i came across um
the um
okay there you go
and that's at page nine and the
enterprise funds are funds that are
provided uh that that provide goods and
services to the public for a fee that
attempt so
attempt and i circled that and
highlighted that
um make the entity self-supporting this
one includes funds for utilities
rio grande theater and transit
so i know that um
the mayor has uh and dr garcia has made
it clear
um that the enterprise the utilities
enterprise fund
is a um
actually
it raises its own revenue
it's a well it's an enterprise
so i comparing that to what the rio
grande theater is
my question is how is the rio grande
el rio grande
theater
different than the utilities
enterprise and
at page
um
what in the first in the first part of
the corner of that
um
that page
just opposite the pie there
um
if there's a
there's a sentence there the
third full sentence
that states transfers to other funds are
used to support
airport operations rio grande theater
mervda metro narcotics and animal
service and
fleet services so
if if the rio grande theater is a
an enterprise well first of all how is
it different
than the utilities enterprise
and if it's an enterprise isn't it
self-sufficient and actually generates
its own type of budget or you know
funds and
and why would funds be being paid or
excuse me transferred
to that enterprise so i'm just curious
about that
so mayor councillor flores um excellent
question
excellent actually during the budget
process
one of the
um
adrian's been getting after me for not
starting my video
so one of the things that we talked
about was
in depth was the rio grande theater
because it is being supplemented by
the general fund
i think what happened was uh of course
this was before i came into the budget
office
the rio grande theater had been set up
as an enterprise with the intention
that they would be you know people would
come and pay for tickets uh they would
have concessions uh sales and that all
of it would the rio grande theater would
become self-sufficient so they put it
into the five you know for fun
accounting they put it into the fives
which is an enterprise fund however we
are noticing over the last couple of
years that it is
not self-sufficient just like utilities
is
and that we are in the process of moving
the rio grande theater uh into the
general fund
uh that has been um
well we're i say we're in the process
we're in the development process and the
discussion process of this
um
and so and um the other uh when i say
that they attempt to be i also am not
talking about transit as well uh transit
has also been when it was established
was put into the enterprise fund as well
however the the you know a third or half
of the transit funds comes from a grant
and the city matches
uh that grant so there's also been other
discussion about
what fun um
possibly the transit needs to be in as
well and i think this is a discussion
where we need to bring management to the
table but we also need to bring finance
to the table as well to discuss that so
you are absolutely correct great fine it
but it is in the process and we are
talking about it right now
okay
thank you thank you so much leon i
really appreciate that explanation i
just you know just because it didn't die
well it does now it so how how long do
you think that you have to talk to who
uh mr maestas or the management
insofar as getting all of this uh
back in line
yes counselor mayor flores um i think
it's a discussion that we need to set up
hopefully maybe it's something that we
might try to um you know discuss before
we bring
the actual
resolution which is on maybe
i want to say may the 18th however if
not we would be bringing that to council
as a separate resolution i'm sure um
you know i'm not quite sure how
long the rio grande theater has been in
the enterprise funds
but however there's been quite a bit of
discussion about moving them into the
general fund so you that was a great
fine on you yes ma'am
thank you very much diana i appreciate
the explanation thank you
okay mayor
gandara councillor vasquez
and then councillor sword
thank you mayor thank you leanne um
and david
um at both david um for the presentation
i know and all the directors i know
there was a lot of
work put into this
and
i'm echoing some of the
comments
abeta suvi
um has
has posed
in that um i i think um the cost savings
are are great to have and we get that a
lot
quick we get quite a bit through our
vacancies and so
my question is around how many vacancies
do we have that those are all for me
really important um
as part of this
process um because i have often kind of
heard
that
they're they're that
that um
well you it depends on who you talk to
right
that we have vacancies
you know for cost savings
but meanwhile and no fault of of the
department
that there are some departments that
that are struggling because because of
those vacancies and so i've often
wondered
um and and i'm happy to see that hr is
getting an hr specialist
um because i i i get the feeling that
um some of the
the issues or maybe the difficulty in
hiring is there's a bottleneck that
occurs around um hr
and so i i i want to make sure that um
that we have enough people
um to process
all of the
of the
the requests
for workers and background checks and
those kinds of things so that we can
ensure that you know
things are timely
um you know i i often have said i've
come from state government and and much
of our
of of that work happens in santa fe and
so it's
i think we're incredibly
um blessed and ungrateful to have our hr
here
and so i often think um things should
happen very rapidly
um and so
i i i would like to see um
you know how many vacancies do we have
where are they at
um
would be for me and important
um
and
then um my other is
um
on community development i've had
several conversations with our director
um
as mr nichols
um
making sure that our meal gracias room
and and that we have enough inspectors
um so i noticed that there is not only
an associate associate engineer but a
combo inspector what is that
good afternoon mayor and uh councillor
andrea this is larry
nichols of community development
um what we're attempting to achieve
there
is uh we find that we have
our inspectors have certain
specifications and certifications that
are
authorized by the
industry division in santa fe
uh they may be a residential inspector
and so they go and when we get a request
for an inspection
they will go and inspect the framing or
the foundation
but they're not certified to inspect the
electrical or the plumbing or or the
mechanical
and so the effort there would be able to
get
an inspector who had multiple or a
combination of certifications
that with one visit they could cover
uh multiple inspections we would be more
efficient with that
and it would also help uh
service our customers to a greater
degree
great so
very interesting
and the number
the number of um
times that we we've met
um there have been a a um a waiting list
if you will um in terms of um the the
number of inspections and then the issue
of
um
what we pay our inspectors
um
versus the public sector
and so i
i
did make the connection in terms of
would these inspectors be
paid
um
accordingly to
to be able to recruit and retain them
um and secondly
i've i i think we spoke of increasing
salaries of your other inspectors to
make sure that we keep them so that we
can
um ensure that we're doing timely
inspections is that something that has
been figured out in
any increase that you might see in
community development
yes sir mayor and counselor protein
gondora
we have uh achieved that um
what we what we found when we were short
an electrical inspector that caused
quite a bit of a backlog for us and
created a lot of
calls to counselors and to the mayor
about addressing that
we had gone through uh 14 candidates for
an electrical inspector and we would get
down to getting them qualified and
achieve the process for hiring
uh and we get to the negotiation for the
salary
and we would find that they would say
well i can make much more than that in
the private sector right now and so i'll
be uh i'll be passing your offer thank
you very much
the recruitment again
uh we were able to overcome that
and we were able to uh have them uh
recognize the benefits as well as a
salary
that was helpful and we did hire
an electrical inspector about two months
ago
but in doing so and achieving the uh the
salary that would
uh be uh available for him to come to
work
it did create an equity issue with a
couple of our other inspectors
sure
we were able to have movement there that
brought everyone into a uh
equitable position and uh
and we have a full staff of inspectors
now
but as everyone knows
the last two years and in particular
even this year
even with the kobet
uh condition pandemic
the construction activity is still in a
growth posture
that would be the reason for asking for
that
inspector the combination inspector
uh we are current with all of our
inspections now
i'm pleased to tell you that we have
addressed the backlog that we had
and we're we're current on permit
applications fan reviews inspections
and and as well as
the uh enforcement issues
okay
that's great now did i see mr nichols
that this is contingent upon
possibly raising the
impact fee
mayor pro tem
uh that is correct
when we mentioned that we needed to fill
these positions and to
bring them into their ability to do that
it was mentioned to us well
you need to
find a way to increase the fees i have
been wanting to increase fees from the
time i came here because they had not
been addressed for over 17 years
and that was putting us quite a bit
behind
uh on being able to uh
help help meet the expense of that
so we increased the re the residential
fees last year
and then we went to work this year with
the budget department with uh
with lee to help us with that and that
for commercial fees
and the trade fees the trade fees being
mechanical electrical plumbing
and those fees uh we have that proposal
that we'll be bringing to the council
for
uh review and adoption
with that it will give us the means of
addressing
the uh
the staffing
conditions
okay thank you mr nichols thank you
um my next question is for parks and rec
i noticed the caseworker
um i i was i wasn't sure what
credentials you were looking for what
kind of
of
of um person that that might look like
um i'm not i didn't i don't see
um
the director for parks and rec sonia
so i i want it
and maybe leanne or somebody
do you know about that
mayor protem can i interrupt for a
second it looks like david donahan and
joe richards wanted to speak real quick
on maybe perhaps some of your questions
david
um mr mayor councillor gander i was
going to go back to your other question
that mr nichols answered it wasn't the
impact fees you would use the word
impact fees it's the actual building and
construction fees
um
and miss delgado was is unavailable this
afternoon um on the parks question
um i don't we do have current uh case
managers within um the city organization
both for senior programs and for
i believe parks and rec
ms richards may have an answer to those
specifics but if not we we will get you
an answer to the entire council on those
credentials david joe did you have
something you wanted to add
yes sir mr mayor counselors with respect
to uh the number of vacancies i can tell
you right now we are recruiting for 107
positions
those are
active uh recruitments
there may be some other vacancies that
have yet to be um posted
but that's where we are right now and i
can certainly get you more specifics
with regard to where those are and
the individual positions
i don't have specific information on uh
the case management position at this
time
thanks joe
that and one more i'm sorry mayor putin
david
maestas yes sir thank you mayor i
appreciate that uh premier pro tem i
wanted to just clarify on larry's
description of having been able to hire
the electrical engineer
with respect to the salaries itself
when we do have questions from people on
salary and they do ask for more
we're looking at it from two aspects one
we're trying to make sure that they
understand typically from the private
side you can always make more money than
what you can on an hourly rate in the
city but the city also has a benefit
package to add to that and sometimes
people don't understand that they're
only looking at their take-home pay so
we try to equate the benefit package
with their entire question so that they
realize uh they are actually putting
money away for their retirement while
they're they're working and there is a
significant benefit to that the other
thing that we do if we do find out that
there is a discrepancy our human
resources staff does do a market
analysis
and they do a comparison with similar
jobs both private and uh public and
within that category they'll take a look
at the comparison again for what the
private uh take-home rate is as opposed
to the public and then they analyze the
benefits along with that as well and i
think that helped out quite a bit more
in larry's uh case and community
development they were able to impart
upon the people that were applying for
the jobs that you do have more than just
your hourly salary that you can take
home with you
i hope that helps explain that how he
worked through that with his electrical
inspectors thank you no i i understand
that and as an administrator i
understand that that does occur but
sometimes that hasn't in the past and
those current conversations that i've
had with mr nichols that didn't help
you're losing people left and right to
the private sector
and so um you know um mayor and i have
sat with mr nichols to have specific
discussions on specific issues
um with a business person
and that has truly been an issue and so
over the past month and a half i've
heard from
the home builders association and others
how behind
we are how we don't pay
um similarly obviously to the private
sector but getting close to that and
offering
you know a nice benefit package would be
helpful i understand all of that i just
think i just want us to really um and i
know that you are
looking at um creative ways that we can
continue to recruit and retain our
people especially around that
given
that
most of our grt comes from construction
um they i appreciate it i you know my
questions are around the case manager i
realize we do have case managers um
in the
city of las cruces specifically in
senior services i wasn't sure
um what kind of credentialing they were
looking at
um
at public at on parks and rec
but i also think it's important if i
remember correctly their strategic plan
and ensuring that you know high-risk
kids are getting the necessary um
programming and services and those kinds
of things and i wasn't sure if there was
an infrastructure in place at parks and
rec to be able to be able to do that and
and i was a bit worried about the
supervision that is necessary for a case
manager if you will especially when
you're looking working with um high-risk
kids
um
okay
i'm moving right along let's see i have
a lot of on page 80 um
we talked about the project
identification and prioritization
process
um and
i i know that there was a panel of
individuals that get to look at which
major capital expenditures are going to
um
going to be sort of
a priority and there's a
process and i just wanted to
remind me again about who sits on that
panel and how are those decisions um
being made i know you have sort of a
criteria of of sorts and
i just just remind me again about what
that looks like specifically
mayor mayor pro tem david maestas
well the panel members are made up of
department directors as well as their
key staff who work on their capital
improvement projects in their areas
and what we do in those meetings is we
take all of the projects that have been
prioritized previously that's that
matrix prioritization
where you see you get the numbers for
those type of projects
and from there that group will help
determine from a city standpoint looking
at city strategic plans and department
strategic business plans uh which
priority projects they think rate the
highest to lowest from a city standpoint
rather than just from a department of
view
thank you
okay
thank you david i appreciate that um
i wanted to talk a little bit about the
first one the evidence building
um
and
at one time when i first start um was
elected
i
i don't know
i don't remember um
that that it was an evidence building
per se but i knew that we were
looking at
the issue of the rape kits that hadn't
been processed
um and um a lot of uh like a lab if you
will i guess is what i i think if i
remember correctly we were looking at um
a lab now is this what this is a part of
or it's just solely to um
um
to um house evidence over time till you
can get
it to a certain location i guess i'm i'm
not clear this is chief gallagher uh
mayor pro tem um
it's for all evidence and not just
evidence it's also for um found property
that comes into our possession the
current um building that we're in that
i'm in right now was built 30 some odd
years ago for a much smaller population
so our evidence room was built for that
population as well
uh we've outgrown it so this is
basically needed to increase the
capacity of what we can store
to
basically allow us to have successful
criminal prosecutions and to
hold on to property until people come
and return it or eventually we can
dispose of it if we're given permission
by the courts we really are bursting at
the seams
okay now um chief
is this in in conjunction with um
the
[Music]
the specific lab that i thought at one
point
um um people at lgbt of course it was
before your time
but um i thought that there was a huge
need for that and it had been sort of
batted around we've had some robust
conversations about that
yes there was my understanding uh and
there still is a need because the
primary lab is in santa fe we do have a
lab here that does mostly analysis of
narcotic evidence
um the problem is
somewhat similar to the crisis and
defense crisis center crisis trio
we could build it the state would build
it but the department of public safety
who operates that lab has maintained
that
you're not going to get the
people been asked to put my video on
you're not going to get the people to
staff it here unfortunately kind of
similar to the conversation you just had
the department of public safety trains a
lot of people to be um to work in the
labs and be
technicians in the labs and they move on
to arizona and colorado and texas when
they do that so that conversation has
kind of ended until we can figure out a
way to
appropriately staff the lab not just to
build it
[Music]
i i do know because i've had several
colleagues or former colleagues of mine
since retired
um work in the lab here locally and i
think what was happening is just there
wasn't any political will they they
would freeze the positions when people
retire they didn't rehire you know hire
people into those positions and slowly
it it became um um
almost a vacant building i'm not sure
what it's like currently but i i
i'd love to resurrect those
conversations as we begin to talk about
this evidence building
um it would just make sense in my mind
but again i'm not a law enforcement
officer so
it would help to have it heavily on you
that's for sure as far as cutting down
on need to transport and go up to santa
fe every week that would help
right now
[Music]
we'd be willing to have a conversation
and maybe get the legislators to agree
um we first have to address the problem
of where we're going to put the stuff we
keep bringing in every day right right
okay all right thank you chief
um let me
i think that's it mayor i i appreciate
everybody um i would agree with
counselor bencomo around the translator
full-time translator i think that would
be um
and
i've talked about that for several years
it's something i'm happy to see that we
are moving into updating our chamber so
that we have
a more you know robust sort of live
streaming and the ability for people to
really um
be able to participate in our in our
meetings remotely um and and and i think
that's a great it would be a great
benefit to
our community um for us to
for us to really to really do that
okay thank you guys
uh let's see we have council vasquez and
councillor then
to speak again
down the road or did you just forget to
put your hand down no no i do want to
say something oh okay and then david did
you have something you wanted to add yes
mayor sorry to jump in at this point i
didn't get a chance uh when councillor
ben como brought it up but to answer for
concert ben come on mayor pro tem gandra
we are looking into and had some
discussions on
working on a translator service right
now we were looking at doing that
through contract uh we were hire a
company to help us out so we could
determine what the actual need would be
if we find out that the need is enough
to support a full-time staff then yes we
could be coming back to council later on
with a position for a full-time uh staff
person in the city of las cruces but for
now we want to start off uh if council
is amenable to that under contract and
we would have somebody that's available
to translate with any of the releases or
any of our
meetings that we have available they
would help us instantly and then once we
determined that we do need somebody full
time then we would come back with that
proposal
thank you
mr mayor
counselor
i just quickly want to address that uh
translator interpreter issue
um and i'm glad the city is looking into
it i agree completely
but a translator
is totally different than an interpreter
so an interpreter is a spoken word
translator is a written word and
the twin shall never meet an
interpreter especially a simultaneous
interpreter
the brain is just made up quite
differently than someone who looks at
the written word so i just want to since
mr mike has mentioned that they're
looking at some service to do either i
don't know he said translating
um i just want you all to keep that in
mind because translators can't do the
work of an interpreter and vice versa
thank you okay thank you counselor
i disagree i know people that can do
both
very very well
if you're going to have a translator or
an interpreter for a city council for
city council staff
um
no it doesn't work you for example in
court we'd have a spanish interpreter
one got fired during the o.j simpson
trial
because
the woman interpreted rancho
in the context that it was used by the
spanish speaker
she was talking about someone's home
and based on that judge ito uh fired her
immediately and and i know that
city council meetings are very
very specific as to the words that are
being used and with all due respect uh
councilor bencomo there is a big
difference and people have to be
certified so i can i can interpret and i
can translate but um but people have to
be certified in both so that's all i
think thank you okay councillor vasquez
and then counselor sword and then
councillor flores council vasquez thank
you mayor um
[Music]
yeah thank you to my colleagues for
asking a lot of great questions um had
some similar questions to counselors
mayor pro tem gandera
in particular concerns regarding the
the inspection process um
listening to people talk about minor
fixes that need to be made to get
their commercial inspections approved
that often get delayed by a month or two
months or two months because the minor
changes that they have to make
can't be accommodated for a return
inspection for for up to a month or two
and
uh significantly impacts small business
people's ability to uh to open you know
within a timeline that actually lets
them recoup their investment or their
loans and so that's really important you
know i think
there are some really hard to fill
positions in the city that i think i
would really support us being
competitive with the private market in
especially when it comes to
those positions being critical to
getting a return on investment
in this case uh grt which is the most
important one of the most important
returns that we can get and so
um
you know i think we have to adjust to
that i think we have to be reactive to
that um i've heard since i've gotten
here
two and a half years ago that the
process has not gotten better
that uh inspections are still delayed
that folks are still waiting much too
long um
mr bustos from our
uh economic development office i think
tries his best to
try to work with local business owners
and try to help
uh folks walk through this process but
that's not enough the fundamental
problem is that from what i understand
we don't have enough inspectors uh to to
be able to timely get to people who need
uh to get certified so that's really
important um i would i would definitely
support us being as competitive with the
private market in those in those
particular positions they're they're so
important
um and similarly for any other positions
that we're having trouble filling but
are critical to the city
we shouldn't just go for you know how
low can we pay folks or how or what's
the market value uh because we're always
going to get outbid by the private by
the private sector
um so
that's just my my my opinion especially
on those either hard to fill positions
or those positions that often
uh
that that have a lot of turnover people
get courted to private industry
um
so a couple other things here on the
budget that i am glad to see
the madrid avenue extension i think is a
really important project that i'm happy
that we're doing
um i think both uh
my district and council gondar's
district are impacted by this but um
it's also part of the larger amdor
um um
the uh i'm sorry the apodaca blueprint
project right to have that connectivity
between bmore dam park in the future and
apolaka park you're going to need a
pedestrian walkway and apparently there
is none and so this sets up literally
the infrastructure for that connectivity
it allows us to leverage the capital
outlay funds for the vmware dam project
so that we actually have a
kind of a boundary or a buffer between
the future park that's going to go there
and so i'm glad we're talking about that
now in addition to also the safety
issues because
um
you know it's a it's a very narrow windy
street that often um
uh you know it's it's hard to see there
with no lighting and also it's very
narrow but it's very used um it's
heavily used by people uh to get across
town so glad to see that there um
parks and rec youth coordinators i think
i saw three at least three full-time
positions for that um won't ask any
questions uh related to that but i'm
glad that that's happening uh glad that
we're staffing up if i'm not sure if
we're feeling empty positions or we are
adding positions but
regardless
last year i think i pushed for
an increase in the parks and rec budget
specifically for after-school programs
and to serve
youth and it sounds like
with this 3d position we'll be able to
hopefully add programming and
accommodate those youth who need those
services so um so thanks i'm glad to see
that in there
closed captioning in spanish at city
council meetings is long overdue um you
know for a city with as many spanish
speakers as we have a bilingual state
um
the largest you know hispanic per capita
state in the country you know we we need
that we needed to have this a long time
ago if we really want to communicate and
serve our population in an efficient and
fair way so
um
fully supported this happening um i did
have just
two quick questions
one is around the lighting the the
lighting improvements for the council
i wonder i was wondering how much that
project is going to cost
and
just the justification for that again
good afternoon
mayor councillor vasquez uh
taking a look at that project in the cip
to get you value as i go through
i don't have that off the top of my head
if you'd like to wait i can get that for
you now or if you want go ahead and ask
the other question then we can go ahead
and and either email you that
information and all the council
okay
i see mr simon's just pop up there
so the project was slated for 40 000 for
to update the chamber lighting
okay okay thank you mr suns uh that you
know that doesn't sound uh like a very
high cost uh i guess in in terms of just
the intense
um capital projects that we have in
other places uh in our budget so that
sounds that sounds okay to me right i
think it's for what for the
in in terms of being able to better see
people through the
telecast
or something like that um i thought it
was a little superfluous to be honest
but um
but if it's if it's actually to
communicate better with the public then
i would support it um so
thank you for that uh and then the last
question i had was
actually around the peak budgeting or
the performance budgeting that we do now
uh when former city manager stuart e
came
to to his position and instituted the
peak performance program
i will add a very high cost to the city
um those consultants that we hired were
not cheap
and um
to be honest ever since mr eid left
i really haven't heard too much about
the whole peak performance initiative i
don't know
if it's fallen to the wayside i don't
know if it's been implemented according
to mr e's vision i don't know if
somebody else has picked up that ball or
if there's a hybrid of kind of what
we're doing with peak performance
um
in the future i would like to see like a
city council works session to get an
update on peak performance
um and where we want to go with peak
performance um but for now in terms of
the budgeting piece of this uh mr moosh
you mentioned the performance-based
budgeting being uh the model for how we
put this budget together which i think
is now
the second consecutive or the second
year that we've kind of budgeted
differently according to outcomes
um so mr moosh could you just remind me
of kind of the difference of how we're
budgeting now does it still reflect the
peak performance model
and
you know how it's working for you
mayor councillor vasquez great question
it is um for budget and also for our
performance manager uh amber vaughn and
if barbara de leon wants to chime in on
this after uh possibly i speak as well i
will tell you it has never gone away or
has never been lost as far as in
budgeting
like i mentioned earlier we actually had
several
budget trainings with the departments
we see in budget that it is a benefit
we we greatly do we are starting to see
that um you know of course it's like
some department said you know how you
see the commercial about the little red
button on somebody's desk you know if we
could hit it back then we would have you
know
but uh we did reach out to other cities
to say you know hey what's some pros
some cons what do we need to look for
you know and um they you know they they
told us don't expect miracles overnight
which we haven't but i i have to tell
you that we are they're getting it and
there's some departments
that uh actually while ago i have to
commend her you heard um our quality of
life director lynn gallagher she is
constantly always talking about her
strategic plan and how it's integrated
within her department and it's just uh
we love working with them because
they've you know they're just driving
with the strategic plan
and constantly upgrading it and making
sure that they're meeting their targets
and their goals and i think counselor
vasquez in the long run
it's we're going to see a lot of
efficiencies and and now and the
effectiveness in this and i think
it's going to really reflect in our
budget so
you know we changed our chart of
accounts we went all the way
all the way into this peak performance
as far as performance-based budgeting
and i don't know if if maybe barbara or
david might want to chime in i see
barbara's hand up in david's as well but
for us for budget and for the
performance manager with amber vaughn
our our i would like to also say our
quarterly reports are geared totally
around our performance measures as well
so i want you to know it has never gone
away it really hasn't
and i'll pass it i'll pass the mic to
barbara or david
well there you go david or barbara go
ahead barbara i'll yield to you and then
if there's anything for me to add
afterwards i will go ahead and do that
absolutely thank you david and thank you
mayor and council i appreciate the
question it's always
important to understand when we spend so
much money to transform ourselves
how are we implementing that how are we
living that what are we putting into
practice as leanne said the budget is of
course a large
piece of that puzzle we have quarterly
reports with the city manager uh where
every department speaks to their results
their performance measures
um
one of the difficult we have also worked
on integration of our performance
management and peak performance with our
recently
approved comprehensive plan
and we are working towards how are we
going to report those results one of the
one of the weaknesses we've had over the
past year and a half or so has been that
the software we originally intended to
implement for peak reporting um turned
out to really not meet our expectations
and be what we were looking for both
with respect to our internal reporting
of measurement and what we could share
with the public
and so our staff and our performance
manager amber bond have been hard at
work to evaluate um tools so that we
could not only report on our peak
results but also utilize this
for budget reporting for comprehensive
plan reporting so that we could
integrate our plans and we're happy to
say we'll be bringing that forward to
you at this next council meeting on the
13th and we're really hoping that that
will make everything more apparent more
visible more transparent for the public
as far as these efforts go
thank you
thank you barbara
david do you have anything you want to
add
thank you mayor uh councilor vasquez
just to summarize because they both
leanne and barbara spoke very well to
that uh
the departments do take measures to
continue to gather their results and do
report on that in a minimum every
quarter uh some of them do it more often
per their department but as i mentioned
uh for that quarter that uh mr leon
mentioned as well we do get a report at
the city manager's office on their peak
performance measures as well thank you
thanks dave thank you
thank you david um i won't ask i don't
think i have any other questions at this
time but i do just want to thank uh
leanne and everybody all the department
chairs and and everybody who um helps
put together this budget i know it's a
really huge task especially identifying
the needs within the departments
and
working on a always a very fiscally
prudent budget i think makes us one of
the strongest
municipalities out there and so that's
uh you know large part due to to your
work leanne or mr moosh but um but also
to being able to uh you know wisely
spend the resources that we have to to
really make this city um
you know stand out but but also
keeping in mind that
you know we've we've got some we've got
some changes to make in the future if we
want to be better than we are now that
we want to step up our level of service
to our community obviously keeping
keeping people safe
but also all the investment that we're
adding into our parks and to our quality
of life programming um hopefully soon
into our housing uh investing in even
partnerships like mental health services
uh you know i keeping those things in
mind in the future in terms of you know
dialing up the notch a little bit on on
what we can do with this budget is an
important thing for me to to also see us
trending in that direction
um so thank you so much lillian thank
you mayor
thank you uh let's see we have
councillor sorg and then counselor
flores
thank you mr mayor
thank you all that have spoken already
and all good things that have been
talked about
um i just have a few comments not so
much any questions
um
i know it's one of the first slides that
was showing it talked about how
uh we're not going to have any increases
in taxes i got the impression that staff
was the one that decides whether or not
we increase in taxes
and it's my understanding according to
chartered city council
is the one that increases
taxes so but staff can ask us of course
if that's the case
um i never did understand why home
prices are part of an economic
um
report that shows some
good things um when home prices go up it
just makes it more costly for people to
buy homes and unless their income goes
up it doesn't really help does it
um
i noticed in a report that we may lose
about
500 million five million dollars in the
next few months
and uh
i was wanting to point out the fact that
according to what the presentation said
today we have approximately well i
should say over 17 million dollars
sitting in the bank in reserve
and should we be short uh 5 million or
up to 17 million i suggest we use that
money to keep the city going as is
um
cuts shouldn't uh
uh what worries me is about if you start
cutting the budget and cutting the
things that we do you're gonna you're
not gonna help stimulate the economy and
in this time we need our economy is
stimulated for sure
so um i i'm in favor of using our
reserves money to uh that's what they're
for they're they're there just for a
case like this
um
so that's something i wanted to point
out
um
i'm in the whole harmless gross of siege
tax it was mentioned uh
what some of the uses you're
transferring money out of there
i just wonder how much of that money is
going to go to economic development and
to
maintenance on our streets
um that was the original intent for that
gross receipts tax part of it part of it
not totally and so um i'm going to want
to know that and then finally
it's been talked about several times
today about our strategic plan
and i just want to remind everybody that
i think it's about time we have an
update on our strategic plan uh a short
rather brief or maybe not so brief
retreat on talking about that when i
don't know what be best time to do it uh
perhaps after a new city manager was
hired
and so forth and i'm just going to say
this
city staff um david maestas i i would
like to have a one-on-one or one-on-four
meeting about this budget because i
don't have the budget in front of me
right now and there was a lot of little
questions i wanted to ask about it so
that can be arranged
uh
later after today i would appreciate it
thank you so
much just a couple things counselor
story before i get to counselor
florida's
first off the 17 million talking about
about eight of that is is something
that's required that we have to have we
really can't be touching that if you
want to touch money in my opinion
it needs to hold it hold it now that's
reserved for a situation just like this
there's nothing that says we can't keep
the camera yeah it does we have a
temporary basis we have to let's have
legal let's have legal uh tell us that
if jennifer's there that's a requirement
gil uh counselor sword we have to keep
one minimum 112
we have been keeping two twelves
but if my my opinion would be we would
need if you want to take money
uh out as either
our gross our hold harmless gross
receipts tax
or dip into the telstra fund either one
but
um
anyways
again i don't i just wanted to say that
and one thing i forgot to mention uh
when councilor vazquez was there
you bring up some very good points but i
will have to say and i want to just say
this because
ever since larry came on board and then
of course later on uh mr bustos i
haven't gotten
oh i i did get one complaint and i think
all of you got the complaint from
our downtown partner there but other
than that i hadn't get any more
complaints
as far as the uh permitting process was
going but again counselor ross because i
just wanted to say that i forgot to
mention that but
anyways
jennifer did are you there did you want
to speak to the
whether or not we can deplete our entire
reserves or if the state
i don't know if you know that answer or
leanne but um or or is terry uh miss
gehart is she there
let's see if she's around here this is
jennifer
um no it's a statutory requirement we
cannot deplete our entire reserve
okay can you okay great
well i didn't think so but
i appreciate that uh councillor flores
thank you i just um yes thank you mr
mayor so i want to first of all um
say that i'm very unhappy to be part of
this city council where i think that
we've all
contributed a lot during this budget
session
and
or this work session
and
i'd like to thank
leanne um damouche and
dr bayatas who had to do a little bit of
back peddling i think because
the budget um the work session
um
on budget um
or the budget had been worked on before
the covid uh 19 really hit the ban
so um i i'm really
very happy to have them on our staff
and um i'd also like to thank um
i guess like well it looks like it was
well i'm just very happy that
sustainability is going to be on its own
within the city manager's office and um
and and i'm very happy with um
lynn gallagher's uh
wanting to
reorganize the um
the uh her department so
um and everybody mr cedillo's
presentation and
everyone who contributed to today's
session um you have my heartfelt uh
thank you
gratitude thank you mr mayor
mayor pro tem canada and looks like
councillor sorg wants to speak again or
jennifer did you
did you have anything more you want to
say or did you forget to put your hand
down
jennifer i didn't even realize i raised
my hand sorry
just as you said that's it yeah okay
thanks uh mayor protem and then
counselor sword
thank you mayor
um
i am
i appreciate counselor sorg's some
commentary about the reserves and
whatnot
um
i i think we have we should keep
obviously our 212th in there but
possibly look in the event that
something does
go completely awry which i think that's
sort of the feeling today that it it has
already
begun with this pandemic
but i i wanted to clarify mayor at least
you and i have sat into a couple of
conversations
meetings with larry nichols about our
permitting process with a few
um um
[Music]
businesses that had a tremendous amount
of issue with permitting
um and and so i it was around the
october a month
um and then i continued to have issues
um that i i brought up a few times so
i am
i don't want to
i don't want to belabor that issue but i
i i do feel like we have to just
continue to get better and better with
our process um i had a conversation with
the president of the home builders
association who was deeply concerned um
about the process and felt that it was
flawed
and needed some some rework and so i i
do want to in the spirit of just being
transparent want to
make sure that i that i say that um i do
agree with counselor um
um
vasquez and sorek about peak performance
i'd really like to see sooner rather
than later us looking at our strategic
plan and kind of getting an idea of
where we are at um it's unfortunate that
the
excuse me the the particular system that
was secured didn't
do
quite with what i think staff had
intended um
but this is something that
um not only
with you know having a computer system
um as a tool to assist but i i often
have felt like
we need to hire an evaluator to help
sort of
of um you know um each of the
departments
look at their
their performance measures
and and um
really
i mean they these are folks that are are
are
experts in that field and can really
help
sort of build on um evaluating each of
the objectives and determining where
they're at at any given time and so i
i'd really like to again um talk about
um this evaluator um position that i
that i think is is really important
lastly i wanna um
bring up um in in lieu of covet and
and moving into things uh most of our
meetings and such
i'm being remote i i felt it necessary
and i i looked through the budget and
saw a bit of an increase in capital
leanne you had explained the capital in
terms of new computer systems and maybe
programming and those kinds of things
but i just want to ensure that as a city
that each of our staff members are
have the tools that they need
um
be it computers um apps whatever
whatever they need to ensure that
they're doing their work
um or can do their work remotely and so
i i'd really again like to
emphasize how important i think our it
department is
especially now i've appreciated when
i've had to
get on zoom or any other things that not
only do we have adrian who's been um
great but i some of the i.t staff on on
standby helping us sort of move through
this but i i i
also know that
um from time to time
um you know
my computer hasn't worked my stamp you
know loan hasn't worked properly
and i i just want to make sure that we
are giving
as much
resources as we can to i.t because i
think this is going to be extremely
important moving forward
that's that's all my comments man
thank you mayor tim counselor sword
um yeah i've always wanted to uh just
have something i forgot to mention
sometimes i would like to have
uh
each department
show a difference from
the past year to the new year
in their budget and and tell us why it's
either going up or down
a lot of the other information is is
okay but it's it's
not what i was looking for year-to-year
depart by department changes
that's all
yeah that'd be interesting to see
uh kind of like a
a chart or a little bar graph
you know 2015 2016 2017
throughout the years i think that'd be
because liam did you have something and
then council vasquez
yes um mayor thank you counselor sword
that actually you um hit the hammer
right on the nail that was uh where we
were trying to go with this year but of
course with covid and doing everything
over the internet we were not quite sure
how it was going to be going in that
direction
but that is something that we have been
discussing and i agree with both you and
the mayor um that that we will plan on
doing that specifically for the future
and it might even be possible that we'll
try to get some of that data together uh
when we bring the resolution to you on
may the 18th
if that's
satisfactory
oh i love that thank you so much that's
perfect
okay we will we will start working on
that sir
great thank you councillor vasquez
thank you mayor um yeah just one one
last thing to leave off with um in
particular to the business inspections
um i do have you know two business
people who'd be happy to sit down and
talk about their experiences
uh just recently um one
one in my district one just outside of
my district
in fact they said please if there's
anything you can do
change the system and for one particular
business person and i won't name them
because i'm not sure that they they want
to be named but they did they did say
they'd be happy to come in for a meeting
they were delayed by uh opening for two
months because
inspectors couldn't come back quick
enough to check on things that had to be
corrected and so the projected revenue
that they would have had for two months
of being open
uh
made them get a supplemental loan
which then put their whole business
projection out of whack and so um for me
anyways i know those experiences are
real those conversations are real and
would just um you know in the future
maybe it's a good idea to bring those
folks in
for some of those one-on-one meetings
that way we can just you know work on
getting the system right whether it's
resources or process or whatever it
might be
um
you know i do continue to hear that so
uh maybe that's something for the future
that we could we could all set up
together thank you mayor yeah no
counselor i i hear you but like i said i
i said that i hadn't gotten the
complaints maybe you get the complaints
but i hadn't gotten the complaints
because i would get a lot of them and
they seem to have stopped well i'm more
than happy i'd in fact
i've made this uh challenge to others
who have had these problems uh for me to
sit down with them and i you know i i'll
keep an open mind
but invariably a few that have
made and i know you're you're protecting
or you're you know keeping it
confidential which is fine i have a
problem with that but i've there's been
some that come to city council meetings
and i've offered to sit with them and
they never follow through
so but getting back to the inspectors
and i think i think larry touched on it
and and and i see it all the time with
the new the younger millennials that you
know they don't a lot of times they
don't think about the retirement and
they look at the
the bottom line why you make 18 an hour
here or 20 here and the city's only
paying me 18. they don't realize that
that that that benefit of the retirement
and and uh health insurance and they
don't want health insurance you know
they'd rather have the money and and
this is the thing that's it's really
frustrating that las cruces i mean that
the school systems not just las cruces
but throughout the new the
state does not teach financial uh
uh information to our to our kids they
don't teach them anything about how to
how to save money how to spend it how to
budget it you know and it's kind of
frustrating uh you see that a lot you
know and and and that's that's something
there that you know i think if down the
road it would be nice
um
david you had something you want to say
yes man i do and thank you very much and
and thank you councillor vazquez for
bringing up the point about uh meeting
with somebody from the business
community that is one of the things that
staff is very much open to they do meet
with the home builders association on a
monthly basis it might be even more than
that but i'm definitely
sure that it's on a monthly basis at
least
one of the things that we have talked
about is actually looking into
having uh
[Music]
and talk about the entire process from
step a to step z so that there's a
better understanding uh for everybody
through all of those pieces and then if
there are areas of efficiency in there
on either side well then we can
definitely focus on those items and see
what can be done to make them better but
we're definitely open to meeting with
people from the development community
from the business community
thank you thank you thank you dave
and while i'm at it and when i would run
into her in the hall i don't see her
anymore and that's jamie rickman i know
you talked about the leadership program
for neighborhood leadership but she was
also thinking about doing one for
business
to allow uh those that interact with the
business uh side of the business
community
because in the past they've felt um that
they would fear retaliation but by
getting a chance to have a
an opportunity to work with
whether community development or or
utilities and such
it would really foster i think a good
relationship between the business
community and and the city and would
help
have those connections and put the names
to the faces and have access to them as
well
thank you mayor
okay well
i think all the questions have been
asked and um we appreciate the
presentation to the budget i know it's a
big budget and uh
leanne and your team and terry and your
teammate and david and your team
everybody you guys did a fantastic job
as usual and um
look forward to
some other things i'm sure that's going
to be coming down the
down the way so if that's it then i'll
entertain a motion to adjourn
move too jen
exactly okay emotion made by counselor
sore second by counselor vasquez that we
adjourn all those in favor signify by
saying aye
all right all right
all right it's 5 26
um and then i'm going to stay on i think
christine is and
jennifer and david i've got the agenda
setting meeting
so um
we'll see you all probably this friday
9 30.
that one should be a short meeting i
think
my
gender okay mayor i'm ready when you are
oh you are okay so this is the agenda
meeting for the april 20th 2020 city
council meeting number one non-consent
one non-conference two non-consent two
non-consent three non-consent
any non-consent or non-consent
or non-consent five non-consent
five non-consent six consensus
six consent seven consent
seven consent eight non-consent
eight non-consent nine non-consent
nine non-complaints
and concern
ten consent eleven non-consent
eleven non-consent twelve consent
twelve consent
thirteen
mayor twelve needs to be non-constrained
uh like her license
you know i saw that it's only as a
public hearing yeah
i wondered about that
uh 13 consent
13 concern
mayor and christine i don't know how
we're going to handle a public hearing
so we probably need to talk about that
it's a good idea
required tomorrow okay sounds good
okay
everyone
thank you bye
thank you mayor have a good evening