Work Session Meeting November 12, 2024

MINUTES

Work Session

Tuesday, November 12, 2024 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

PRESENT: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor

Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace

ABSENT: Councilor Becky Corran and Mayor Eric Enriquez

1. READ CLOSED MEETING STATEMENT 1.1 The Las Cruces City Council met in closed session and only discussed those limited items as stated in the posted notice to conduct an Audit Exit Conference FY24 for City of Las Cruces, South Central Solid Waste Authority, Metro Narcotics, Mesilla Valley

Regional Dispatch Authority, and Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley, which is closed pursuant to NMSA, Section 12-6-5 to 12-6-14.

2. JOBS OF THE WEEK 2.1 None.

3. PETS OF THE WEEK 3.1 Carol Nielson, Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley presented Pets of the

Week.

4. AGENDA ITEM 4.1 STATE LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES. Barbara Bencomo, Chief Administrative Officer gave the overhead presentation.

Natalie Green, Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Administrator continued the overhead presentation.

Larry Horan, Lobbyist continued the overhead presentation.

Christine Rivera, City Clerk continued the overhead presentation.

Natalie Green continued the overhead presentation.

Larry Horan continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Flores said last year this tax on alcohol we visited with legislators, and I am still not clear on the difference. It seems like the one that Micaela Cadena is behind actually addresses lowing the price of liquor. That is what she said. Was that in the bill? You lower the price of liquor, the tax goes down, but I am not referring to the tax.

I just want to know whether that is how that bill was proposed?

Larry Horan said I am not sure of how it ended up last year but the one that she has proposed and presented on this year would be an increase from 2% to 3%. So, it would be a 1% increase, and it would be on per drink. So, if you went in and and bought an alcoholic beverage it would be on the actual sales, so it is like a sales tax.

Currently the alternative proposal is taxation at a wholesale level. Right now, they tax on volume at the wholesale level and the proposal with Representative Ferrary and

Senator Sedillo-Lopez would increase that and create a tiered structure. So, like craft brews and craft wineries and craft distilleries would pay a rate based on volume when they are selling but if you had Anheuser-Busch is a higher volume, they would pay a higher tax rate, so it is a three-tier structure. It also included an additional fee of $0.28 and I would need to confirm on the volume or if it was on per drink that they create a fee to pump into that fund. So that has several moving pieces, but it is a wholesale tax or a use tax versus sales tax.

Councilor Flores asked for the consumer?

Larry Horan said correct and one of the potential issues is if it is a use tax every time you have a point of sale that is the taxable incident that you have thousands of taxpayers. At a wholesale level there is many less wholesalers, a dozen, eighteen something like that so it is easier to track and collect at a wholesale level. That will be something that they have to decide what they want to do.

Councilor Flores asked I also have a question on the MRA and what Albuquerque wants to do, and they want to have an eminent domain on the district?

Larry Horan said that is correct. They want to have the authority to utilize eminent domain within the boundaries of the district.

Councilor Flores asked what is the justification or the rationale for that?

Larry Horan said I will speculate. I can’t tell you with certainty, but they did have a proposal for a property tax on vacant commercial buildings in downtown Albuquerque that didn’t pass. So, an educated guess would be that if you had property owners that you are not able to get to comply on certain things that would give them the authority to utilize eminent domain if necessary. I am not sure that is their reasoning, but it seems to make sense based on the ordinance they proposed.

Councilor Flores said I have a question on the anti-donation and the septic tanks.

Septic systems is the word that was on the monitor here, what exactly does that mean and how would it be implemented?

Larry Horan said the actual implementation the way at least in context we have it or proposing it is that you give broad authority at the state level saying local governments can create a program to fund utilities to private property owners.

Essentially based on what you almost would see in a Local Economic Development

Act. That would give you the city council the authority to create the criteria of the actual program. You could have criteria for who it is available for, funding sources, if it is an application process, a grading process, it would allow you to have that authority to create the program that fits best in the needs of the community.

Councilor Flores asked that doesn’t include the hookup, correct?

Larry Horan said it would. It would be on private property so that is the difference, that is the change. You could use public dollars on private property if we are successful at passing the bill. Constitutionally you can do that now you just don’t have the enabling legislation to say go ahead and do it.

Councilor Flores asked what enabling legislation would you need? The legislation would just reiterate the law or whatever the state has approved?

Larry Horan said the way the Constitutional Amendment reads, it says you can utilize public funding for essential household services if the legislature passes enabling legislation so that is the next step. That is why we have to pass the bill.

Councilor Flores asked how feasible is that going I be? I think a lot of people will argue that it falls under the purview of anti-donation clause but have advocated against that rational because it is a health and safety issue and all citizens, everyone, septic tanks are going to deteriorate, and it is overwhelmingly expensive to remove the septic tank. To only have the septic tank removed and then the resident has to, or the owner of the structure then has to pay for the hookup. What about the lines that go up along the property lines? Would all of that be included?

Larry Horan said yes if we are able to pass the enabling legislation because this creates a new exemption to the anti-donation clause. It is bad luck to say anything less than difficult to pass at the legislature but the septic system problem here is an example that we used in testimony when they were advocating for the constitutional amendments so I don’t think they will be surprised to hear about the problem and as of now we have not heard of any opposition to the concept of us allowing for utilities to

be an exemption to the anti-donation clause.

Councilor Flores asked how is the money going to be distributed or dispersed among all of the municipalities in the state of New Mexico? I imagine a lot of cities still rely on septic tanks. So, is there going to be a huge allocation, like millions upon millions of dollars, is there an allocation clause in that?

Larry Horan said no, this bill wouldn’t have any funding attached to it but what it would do is allow local governments to utilize whatever type of funding, whether it is grants, whether it is federal money where there is local general fund and also in concept we are allowing to bond against it, so if you have an ability to bond and wanted to create a fund so that every potential. We are trying to make it as flexible as we can so that way you have enough flexibility to obtain funding it.

Councilor Graham said just a quick question. I think we will probably invite our friends up from the Animal Welfare Trust Bill. I believe you said HB 191?

Stacy Sutton Kerby, Member of the Public said I am with Animal Protection Voters, it is House Bill 191.

Councilor Graham said I just grabbed the draft from the session earlier this year. Are you looking at pretty similar language, kind of just reintroducing?

Stacy Sutton Kerby said very similar language although there has been some discussion around which would be the agency or board or commission that would disperse the grant money. In the draft from last session, it was Department of Finance but going forward we are looking at some possible other entities. That is with input from the author as well as legislative council on what would make the most sense for in dispersing grant money.

Councilor Graham said anyone interested in this I would definitely recommend looking over this. Extra funding for shelters is good enough but this actually has really broad reach into empowering, mitigating threats to public safety, reports of animal cruelty so it goes far beyond what even I would just think of as a typical shelter support.

Stacy Sutton Kerby said I would agree with your reading of the last draft from 2024 that the intent of the legislation is meant to build out capacity not only by doing things such as making money available for construction projects, renovations, purchasing equipment, but also empowering the shelters and nonprofit partners that they work with in their communities to do things like, animal wellness, vaccination clinics, chipping, education, the kinds of things that help keep pets, excuse me companion animals in their homes and keep them from coming into the shelter in the first place as well as possibly providing funding for training for animal services and animal control officers.

Councilor McClure asked was it about $30 million that our overall request are?

Barbara Bencomo said we have 11 projects, $27 million potentially although as I

mentioned, some of them still being developed.

Councilor McClure asked typically do we expect a third to come through? Is that what we hope for?

Barbara Bencomo said I mentioned that the last two years we received about the same amount just under $12 million. The ask between those two years vary widely though so we came in at that same dollar amount but with very different total asks. I couldn’t really speak to a trend.

Larry Horan said it really depends. One of the things it depends on is whether or not we get any of the statewide funding by the Governor’s request. I am not going to remember the year but Governor Martinez had year of the water and we got a lot that year because we had lot of projects that fit that and part of that artsy science of it is trying to predict what that priority is going to be from both the legislators and the

Governor to try and tap into all that available funding so that is why what we are really trying to come up with a project is to try and hit the trends in legislators of what they like, what the Governor is indicating which can also change in the middle of a session what the Governor wants to fund so we try and hit those highlights so that is really hard to say.

Councilor McClure asked I was also curious too, how do you make this strategy because for one hand the septic thing would have requested is $1.6, with things being more expensive why aren’t our asks more for some of these things?

Larry Horan said the dollar amounts that the legislators have to fund even if their available funding is higher the request go up proportionally. Typically, last year if they have a senator write off of $4 million, they are going to get $100 million in requests, maybe $50 million and so as a house member. So even if their number goes up everybody’s ask goes up. Even though the dollar amounts go up it is really difficult to move the needle much for them. Everyone is competing for the same dollars.

Barbara Bencomo said last year we did an analysis of all of our own legislators’ expenditures or allocations of capital outlay and Larry is absolutely right when you look at the districts that they are serving. They are looking at a wide geographical area and many different kinds of needs in the districts so yes, we are competing with many other communities and local governments, and I definitely saw especially from the last session just because we didn’t ask for more money doesn’t mean we are necessarily getting it because of that distribution of assets or requests from the other communities as well.

Councilor McClure said I was going to ask if that is a sort of strategy thing to say. We are going to be doing much more regional say with the library mobile we are going to hit a lot more people that might be something that they would look to more kindly?

Barbara Bencomo said absolutely, that is some of the feedback we received directly from the legislators. They are looking for regional projects to support as you know they have been very supportive of our Community of Hope. We looked at some of our

own asks for example with the library that I mentioned that is a regional resource for our community. Some of the police response vehicle request also serves the larger region. What we heard from the legislators i`s yes, they want to fund things in their districts but they want also things that have a regional impact. So that certainly was part of the consideration for developing the proposed priorities that we brought forward today.

Councilor McClure asked can we double dip? So, if you have the Governor will support something and gives funding can GRO money say support that in the same way to? Could then the legislator then work together with cross, put that together, I guess?

Barbara Bencomo said yes, we could potentially as you said double dip. For example, last year for our Amador Crossing Project we got funds from both the Governor and for the legislators for that. The GRO money is a little bit different in that typically what we are talking about is capital outlay, so we are looking at larger capital projects. The

GRO funds can fund now especially studies or smaller equipment. It may not be capital can be complementary and one thing that we are considering and for example

Larry recommended we add to the GRO list for example the police drone program that is complementary to the capital outlay that we are requesting for the Real Time

Crime Center which includes drone pods on facilities in order to make that program work better. So yes, we do try to look for some complementary programs along with the capital outlay requests.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said one quick thing around the active transportation plan.

Are you able to get us some of the projects that have been funded with those allocations from the past? I think it makes us better advocates when we go up there to talk about this is the impact you have had already, and this is what can continue to happen. I am unfamiliar with those projects.

Barbara Bencomo said that is such a great request and question because that is something that we have been working towards and some of the feedback that we got from the legislators this year is that they would like to have an annual report and so what we are working towards is a December report so that we can look at the funds that were previously received and get some more detail about how those funds were used and what the community impact was for that funding and that way you all will be able to have that as well to speak to that when you advocate for especially ongoing projects.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I think there was just two projects. I didn’t write the other one but one of them for sure is the Real Time Crime Center which you had the only funding source left to cover would have been about $800,000 and I am wondering why we just don’t include that in the ask especially since the Governor has made public safety a priority.

Barbara Bencomo said what we brought forward for you today is definitely in development. We want to provide an idea of the scope of the project, the dollars and we can certainly make adjustments going forward and certainly with your guidance.

What we really want to do today is really just find out, are we on the right track with the kinds of projects that we are proposing for capital outlay because what we need to do is now turn it around into a resolution for you all to consider at your December 2nd meeting. We will use that resolution so that we can then provide the state with their portal with our list of projects and the capital outlay request. So, we can absolutely make adjustments to those requests, and this go round as we have been developing these numbers for you it is sort of coming to light for us as well where we have big gaps, where we have small gaps and we can certainly make adjustments to that requested amount.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said since 2018 with this current administration, Las Cruces has not fared well when it comes to the Governor’s portal. What suggestions do you have that we can break through with some of these request?

Larry Horan said it is what we are doing and is why we are successful last year. If I remembers right, we got money for a Real Time Crime Center and Amador Crossing from the Governor. So, we figured out what the priority was going to be, and we have projects ready for that. Not only when we do that, we have good advocacy from

Mayor, council, and staff for those projects during the sessions. We hit all three of the high points. The trick is hitting the right projects for the right priorities. Like streetlights and lighting is on here because during the Public Safety Summit the Governor talked about lighting and community. Real Time Crime Center is back. You see water back because that is what we are trying to do and coming up meeting with the Governor’s staff a couple of sessions ago meeting with the Governor it all makes a difference and the advocacy has been much more active the last several years. With council and staff it has been very good and I just think that is why we have been successful. So, I think that is what we need to keep hitting on and when you all came to Santa Fe the messaging was very good and the meetings were very good and so I think that is what we need to continue.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said thank you Larry, I appreciate that affirmation and you are right that we are on the right track and just so that I am clear on the IPRA updates, I know that historically it has been really difficult to advocate for IPRA because it almost automatically feels like what are you trying to hide, though what you presented today Christine was really reasonable in terms of the heaviness that IPRA has. Larry you had mentioned that this is an initiative being undertaken by other city clerks, Municipal League and you even said the Press Corp?

Larry Horan said Municipal League has met with both the New Mexico Foundation for

Open Government and the New Mexico Press Association. To answer your question, the difference and I had a good discussion with AJ Forte who is the Executive Director of the Municipal League. What they are trying to do is find common with the Open

Government Advocates. Meaning IPRA being available for the public looking for the press in their view of what the intent of IPRA was, not necessarily the monetization or commercialization of information and so by finding common ground with them they are much more likely to reach a compromise because that is usually where it becomes difficult is Foundation for Open Government in particular are very zealous

protectors of open records and so finding common ground versus being an adversarial to them would be helpful.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said lastly, I wanted to say big kudos to the anti-donation legislation. I was wondering how that was going work if we were going up there with a

Las Cruces specific piece of legislation and how strange that would be but this sort of broader legislation to allow other local government, I think is important. If there is anything I can do in reaching out to other colleagues and other city councils, please let me know and that way we can advocate together. I think that would be really important. Also thank you Natalie for the housing priorities and the initiatives that you mentioned and codifying some of those pieces is going to be really important and I look forward to hearing from you again soon Larry on more of the specific pieces of legislation that are more making their way through.

Councilor Flores asked there is the rainy-day fund, the general fund, how much money is in there?

Larry Horan said the general fund budget last year was somewhere between $10.6 and $11.1 but that was for outgoing expenses. What the legislature has done that there is several now permanent funds, early childhood education fund, the rainy day which I forget the proper name passed by reference of Larry Larrañaga that trippers once oil prices reach a certain level, has over $3 billion in it. There is different funds now because what they have done to protect those revenues we have gotten in the last couple of years is they have created a lot of pockets like that so they are putting money away for future down turns. There is not just one rainy day fund there is a lot.

Councilor Flores asked are any of those funds being invested somewhere where we could see it grow and we could have it dispersed to our rainy-day people here in the state of New Mexico?

Larry Horan said they are all invested in one form or another, so they are generating revenue. For instance, the severance tax permanent fund where capital outlay would come from if they didn’t have cash. Every year we have capital outlay, it’s based upon the return of that permanent fund and issuing on bonds as it relates to it so that is typically the structure the legislature creates. It is invested and then they will utilize some of the growth in the revenue from those funds. So, the Animal Protection Fund if it starts at $30 million the idea being the $30 million corpus grows and the available funding in the out years becomes more for that dedicated purpose of the fund.

Councilor Flores asked is there any analysis of what prospectively these funds could earn given all the ups and downs and all that sort of stuff on the market?

Larry Horan said there is and that is provided by the Legislative Finance Committee. I don’t know right off the top of my head by committee but their staff would do the analysis on the budget and they also have a consensus budget group which is made up of the legislative Finance Committee Taxation and Revenue Department and

Department of Finance Administration and so they all collaborate also on not just budget projections and then they have knowledge of what the funds are doing in the

projections for those funds.

Councilor Flores asked in your estimation and if you don’t want to answer don’t but it just seems like there is billions of dollars and those billions of dollars must be generating more billions so why and with all due respect to the senator that said we don’t want to pierce that in any way draw the money out but it would be interesting to see what all the asks are of the legislature from the different municipalities and entities here in New Mexico to see how much money would have to be disbursed to meet those asks and those needs more than asks. We are not asking for a multi- million-dollar movie theater or something like that. Has anyone ever done something like that? A good mathematician or someone who really knows the market?

Larry Horan said what has happened in the past few sessions especially since we have had this excess revenue, the Municipal League in particular has been working on those types of efforts and also the administration so roads. They have been funding a lot of road projects that have been unfunded in the past. A couple of years ago we did airports. They are looking at water systems and water projects for local governments this year. What is that need and is there a mechanism for using some of those funds to fund those. So to your overall question about the billions that are stocked away, what is still in the mind of some legislators although there aren’t as many left to remember it but as recently as 2016 the state budget, they had a .5% reserve and we had to cut Medicaid K-12 education they kept funding to local governments so even though we are a little high spot here and even as recently as

2020 after Covid the price of oil went to -$50 a barrel and so we see these giant swings so they are reluctant to spend cash and that is why they have created a lot of these funds for the future so that way if we have another down turn they can fund basic state government and continue to fund in some of these capital priorities to spending the cash and then not being able to fund the essential functions that they see in state government. There has been since 2009 there has been three gigantic swings like that we have endured. So, there is a little bit of budget shortfall PTSD amongst legislators.

Clint Thacker, Executive Director Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley said I just want to say that we are in favor of the Animal Welfare Trust Fund. Letter of recommendation or support was sent to them with our letterhead, and I just ask that the city do the same.

Lorenzo Alba, said I just want to remind you know that you set precedence last year when by showing up over there, so I hope that we see all of you over there again because it made a big impact in our community on how many millions of dollars that we were able to bring in. If you don’t show up and you don’t allow staff to show up nothing happens, but you all were there. You all showed up at the Governor’s, you showed up at the meetings. I saw a lot of you in the Round House and that made a huge impact on our community. I think that is how it should have been for a long time.

But I think if all of you guys are there allowing the administration to do their thing, they are pretty good at what they do but also the department heads make a huge impact in actually getting the facts to the legislators and really making an impact on showing them exactly what we are doing with the funding and how we are spending it. I intend

to be there a lot. Hopefully I will run into you guys, and we will be able to do this work together but let’s do it. Let’s go get the money. This community deserves it. What we are trying to do at the Community of Hope is huge. It is a lot bigger than all of us. It is not easy for everybody to understand what we are trying to accomplish there. Just come and visit. Come and spend some time with us. Remember that it is not just the unhoused that we are serving there. We are serving low-income families there at

Casa de Peregrinos. That is our largest demographic and what we are doing now in that building should be evidence that we are actually doing good things with the money, 20% growth year over year on what we are doing. That is showing that we can do something special with that money. If you all want to tag team a legislator let me know. I am really good at advocacy and God has given me that gift.

Steven Jones, Member of the Public said I would like to thank the council for entertaining funding for the library and library services. I believe that libraries bring communities together. It is long overdue that we address the library and library services. The bridge gaps between our differing communities and bring a critical resource to every person in Las Cruces. 4.2 ANIMAL CARE AND CONTROL ORDINANCE. Brad Douglas, City Attorney gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran said I think we are against capacity in a number of spaces, and I think we have to build in those things to address those capacity related issues. That is spay and neuter capacity, we have like three or four tools that we can use that we are using in varying degrees of ability that I think we need to put more effort into and that is partly why I think that delayed enforcement is important. Educational period that we could allow us to perhaps expand that capacity in a number of ways more meaningfully. To me I really want to know that we are on the ASCMV Board, we know that most animals that go to the ASCMV, which the city funds come from animal control right? That capacity there is strained. There are too many animals going in which is fundamentally the issue, right? That is why we don’t want any more animals to be born. That is why mandatory spay and neuter is a question of our budget I would argue because right now we are subsidizing spay and neuter on the back end of animals going into ASCMV, so where are we paying for this? I do want to not create a situation that leads to higher rates of impoundment to the Animal Services Center and taking animals away from people that would otherwise care for their animals and that is why even the tethering conversation is a really tough one because animals getting lose out of people’s yards is a huge problem and those folks aren’t necessarily bad pet owners, patently I don’t think and so for me I am really glad we are having this conversation and I think we can keep having this conversation but for me those are the things that I see as measures and I want us to protect against that is punishing low income pet owners who can’t afford this or it’s an eight week at best $300 venture to get one animal in the market spayed or neutered properly. That is a capacity issue, right? It is incumbent for us to address if we are going to compel people to do that and then also making sure that we are not creating a situation where we are increasing the population going to the ASCMV inadvertently because we have written something into our ordinances that leads to animals being removed from homes that would otherwise be able to care for them. For me those are the two big things that I think are achievable in this conversation and I think just having this conversation and even

saying we value spay and neutering and I would argue microchipping should be a very similar thing. We should be micro chipping just the same. Only about 15% of the animals they pick up have microchips, so we don’t even know who they belong to to get them to spay and neuter. I guess for me having this conversation now thinking about updating our ordinance and the conversations of the educational period and us making a concerted effort to fund spay and neuter in the various ways that we can try to, for me those are the things that I am concerned about. I feel like this draft does a really good job of addressing some of those things, so I just want to speak to my desire for this to be about building capacity and not creating capacity issues in the community and/or at our shelter. So those are the two values that I hope we can really make sure come through in this conversation and I feel that you all have done a really good job of trying to get to that space. I am curious to hear more and what other folks are saying and what folks are thinking but I really appreciate you all working on this.

Councilor Flores said I am happy to see that there is a balance here. I have been active with the animals, this committee, well was for about seven years and we did the whole thing about how many members should be there and Becki Graham stepped up and that was wonderful. I know that the community who is in support these are all animal lovers, and we spent a lot of time reviewing the statutes or the requirements and you know we spent a lot of time talking about what constitutes a bird, a chicken, and horses, all that sort of stuff but we are focusing now on pets. Is that correct? Or is it going to be a total revamp?

Brad Douglas said what I think that this proposed draft does is it is a comprehensive overhaul. Which does not mean that all of our existing code is going away. I don’t necessarily want that, but I do think that the majority of the provisions would apply to companion animals, but it is not solely for companion animals.

Councilor Flores asked is this going to be a revision within the statutes we have now?

Brad Douglas said yes.

Councilor Flores asked can you go back to page 7? In paragraph 2 or the second bullet point, it is recommended that the requirement have delayed enforcement i.e 12-

18 months or any other time period as deemed appropriate by council. This is kind of ambiguous to me because is the 12-18 months from the time an owner gets a dog or is it 12-18 months in terms of the age of the pet? I will tell you why because my son’s roommate had a Shiba Inu and my son kept telling me that he kept telling his roommate to get her spayed and he said no she is too young. She is only a few months old well low and behold, my son’s dog Dexter made love to her, and they produced one baby, and I have that baby now. But the point though is that she was only six months old and that is the part that I find, have delayed enforcement. I don’t know how we can supervise this. This language here is not part of the new provisions of the statute?

Brad Douglas said no councilor, but it can be. If it is ambiguous that is my fault. What

I meant to say here was that if the city of Las Cruces, meaning you all, eventually adopt a mandatory spay and neuter policy that no enforcement of that mandatory

spay and neuter ordinance be enforced for a time period as identified by you all and I would recommend in the interim what that time period is if it were to pass that LCPD and Animal Control engage in community outreach and education. Councilor just to clarify a little proposed in this draft, like I said it is a draft it is not set in stone for good reason, and I am going off of my memory, but I believe the recommended age for a feline, a cat is five months or more which I believe comports with most national standards and recommendations. For smaller breeds of K9 I believe that it is four or possibly five months or older and then for larger breeds of dogs so it is not to stunt growth I believe that it would be nine months or older is the current recommendation.

Councilor Mattiace asked we can get to passing this pretty quickly, correct? If we are pleased with the overdraft or overhaul and then you want 12 months or 18 months where the departments will educate and get the word out about the new law, correct?

Brad Douglas said that is what I would recommend. Whenever there is a legislative change, it can have wide reaching affect like this, not always but usually I prefer a phased in approach or delayed implementation so that we can do our due diligence and educate the members of our community with regard to what our new responsibilities might be.

Councilor Mattiace asked with this planned education who will be in charge of that, and do you have any idea of the planning and how it will be implemented with veterinarian’s city wide, social media and pet owners? Is there a plan already enforced that is going to be immediately used as we approve this?

Brad Douglas said with regards to who would engage in education and outreach I think that probably most appropriately LCPD and Animal Control are subject matter experts, are boots on the ground. The people that it would affect the most, I would be happy to volunteer my services to help in any way that I can but as far as an educational campaign I think it would be most appropriately up to Animal Control and/or PD.

Councilor Mattiace asked do we have any idea, any words on the plan?

Joy Wiitala, Police Lieutenant said yes, I would agree with Brad here that we have conceptualized the whole process however nothing has been sort of written in stone, so to speak. I think first and foremost we want to see if the ordinance is actually passed to come up with a final draft and then take our next steps from there but this is why we are highly suggesting that we do have educational processes similar to any other ordinances that have changed within the city we need to get the education out to the people whether that be through social media but a lot of the time it can even be through projects on foot. In other words, going into the neighborhoods and addressing the neighborhoods we see could potentially be possibly more of a concern regarding this area that maybe they don’t have spayed and neutered animals and making sure that we are educating individuals when it will be implemented and when it will take place.

Councilor Mattiace said I like that idea and that is working with the neighborhood

associations would be ideal. My first month on the job I had to go after a pack of dogs that had been roaming and killing cats over there on Good Shepherd and Union Drive.

It was five or six dogs, and it took a couple like four or five weeks to address that and so I think that is very important that we work in the neighborhoods because that is where I get most of my calls from. We have one neighbor his dog has been loose now thirteen times. I think the overhaul for this ordinance and getting it passed is very important to the residence. Thank you all. I want to thank you, our Legal Department,

Animal Control and Police Department for getting this on the books as quick as possible.

Lt. Joy Wiitala said along those lines we could potentially use more of our strategized policing model looking at our statistics as far as where those stray animals like you mentioned are coming from.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I personally think that I can get behind most of this. I have pretty serious concerns about mandatory spay/neuter policies, and I will tell you why. One of the biggest things is I think we can do that kind of programing without mandatory spay/neuter. We can do the educational programing that we are talking about without using the criminal justice system to try to get to our goal. The other thing I will say is that in all my research consistently I find animal advocacy organizations speaking out against mandatory policy. The ASPCA, against mandatory policy. The Best Friends, against it. The National Animal Interest Alliance, against it.

The No Kill Movement, against it. The American Veterinary Medical Association, against it. The data consistently shows that mandatory policies do not work and in fact have disproportionate impacts on poor people. So I feel like a little bit of déjà vu Brad that I am sitting here in front of you again saying this policy has an unintended intended consequence on disproportionately poor folks and we can think about more creative solutions than just going through Municipal Court and then just giving poor folks another ticket and before we and hopefully in the future get rid of the $100 failure to appear warrant that is just a debtors court. These kinds of policies have not shown the evidence to say that they are actually reducing the number of animals on the street. These kinds of mandatory policies are not getting us to where we want to. So, let’s look at things that are. Otherwise, I think I can get behind most of this and I will look more into the tether piece but honestly I struggle with that. That is how I got my dog, my little baby Santo was tethered for a very long time in this man’s home and that is how he came to the shelter before we adopted him so again I feel like I can get behind the majority of this proposal but I will not be able to support a mandatory spay/neuter and I just need to say that right now because I think it will have perhaps an opposite impact and I think that we can even with the tether piece or the loose piece and I am throwing a curve ball here a little bit the source of income discrimination ordinance we passed last year or a couple of years ago codes and housing approached that policy with landlords in a very educational manner and not a punitive manner because we know that is actually most effective in getting people to comply with new policies is through education and not punitive measures so I will stand strongly by that and hope that we can come to a positive and civil meeting agreement place on this because that is just not something that I can support at this moment but everything else I think I am able to.

Councilor Flores said after hearing Mayor Pro Tem about the downside of mandatory

spay and neuter I am not sure I am behind it however has there been any effort to form a 501c(3) to fund the spaying and neutering of animals?

Brad Douglas said I can’t speak to that right now with regard to a 501c(3) formed by advocates. As I stated earlier Councilor Corran was instrumental in getting the $80,000 appropriation for SNAP recipients and that should be to fund either free or reduced cost spay and neuter. I think that is a great thing. It is a great move forward but of course the funding need is probably excess of that is what I wanted to say.

Councilor Flores said unless there is a fund that is going to pay for that spaying and the neutering it is going to be hard and on a lot of people.

Kathe Stark, Member of the Public said I am with Animal Advocates for Change. I wanted to address the points that you raised with the national organizations. If you dig into those studies and what they are saying and what we have been saying all along is that you need to remove the barriers for those low-income people which is number one, phase it in, number two, there has to be some funding and there is $80,000 and we thank you for that. We have a very generous community. We have some rescues here that we will tell you will put up six dogs on Next Door and say we need $75 a piece for spay/neuter and within 24 to 48 hours they have got it. So, the whole goal of the phase in period is to number one, build that capacity and we have presented some ideas in the past of how we can do that. Number two, look at the funding. Look at the vacant position at the ASCMV. The other thing that you need to understand is state law and our current ordinance state that when you reclaim an animal from the

ASCMV you get it spay/neutered or you get a voucher, and have it done, or you get an intact permit. So, there is really nothing different there. We have talked with animal control. The intent is not to go into the community and say that dog looks like it is intact, you have got to have it spayed and neutered or here is a citation. It is to connect those people to the resources programs that we are trying to build to eliminate the provisions which the national organizations have said yes if you don’t do this it’s a barrier and it penalizes people that should not be penalized. We have tried to build that into the whole thing.

Geri Wheelis, Member of the Public said I am with Animal Advocates for Change. I think if you read the studies closely that Mayor Pro Tem cited, you will notice again it was not that mandatory spay/neuter does not work, it does not work if it is not funded.

If you expect low-income people to pay for it themselves, it is not going to work. The city has to back these programs with funding and that was what the bottom line of the study stated too, but mandatory spay/neuter does lower intake at shelters. It does obviously lower population controls. There are many, many benefits to it with spay and neuter and I think if you thoroughly read the studies, and we can also provide you with other ones and the proposed ordinance you all will come to that conclusion.

Stuart David, Member of the Public said I have been here about six months. I worked on similar ordinances when I lived in rural North Carolina and a little quick note on tethering is when I did a deep dive in some research there on anti-tethering laws, I really expected to see that they were from California or Massachusetts or from really liberal areas. If you take a look, it was the opposite. They were mostly from the rural

deep south, and they were almost always in response to somebody either getting maimed or killed by a chained dog. It’s really a public health issue to because those dogs that are chained are so anti-social, kids get in the yard they get mauled and then they pass a law, so I just wanted to bring that up. But I what I really want to talk about was spay/neuter. Again, we passed similar ordinances in rural North Carolina,

Buncombe and later in Asheville and mandatory is a scary word. I know it is and we saw that when we saw that word to but first place this isn’t mandatory because A, you can get an intact animal permit and B, nobody is going door too door. It is only if there is a problem with the animal, and C, you can have a letter from a veterinarian to. So don’t let mandatory scare you and also the people who came up here and the people who traveled down here from Santa Fe you all seem to nod and support this $30 million for sheltering for animal welfare and I hope you do I think that is a great deal but I would also like to point out that in the end we really want less sheltering. That is what we want is less money for sheltering and if we get behind spay and neuter that is going to be our outcome.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I just want to clear up perhaps some miscommunication. I do believe in spay/neutering. I am not saying that I don’t believe in spay/neuter programs.

Jim Wilcox, Member of the Public said let me tell you a story about Tony. Tony loves to run around at the park and he likes to run up and scare children and engage in casual sex and he is running around and because Tony is a six-year-old dog, and he is part Setter part Lab and so he has been doing this for a number of years and now

Tony has about six little puppies that he has fathered. He is not paying any puppy support and there are out there just running around and now since it is has been so long some of those puppies have grown up and they are doing the same thing. There is now 22 decedents of Tony and Tony gets out. His owners they try, they block, you can see the bricks they put up and he still figures out a way to get out. So, when you take care of the problem at this stage you remove the problem for the future and one of the things that is that is important to understand to understand is how many chances do, we give somebody to take care of the problem before we say we have given you enough chances. If two times is not enough, maybe it is three times or X number of times in a certain period of time, but something needs to be done. Our hands should not be held tied because there is some potential problems. When you are passing legislation don’t make it so hard that it is so restrictive that you don’t do anything because an adage is that it is better to do something then to plan many things that you never do.

Clint Thacker, Executive Director of ASCMV said for the mandatory spay and neuter we are, ASCMV is in favor of the ordinance however we are very concerned about the compliance of this ordinance or ordinance change. How are people going to be compliance when we ourselves ASCMV when we are back logged for surgeries ourselves. We have a veterinary shortage nationally. It is not regional. It is national issue. We cannot fill this veterinary position that we have. So, my worry is that of compliance. The next one that I am worried about is something that was said earlier about enforcement will be upon impound. That means the animals at the ASCMV we have no jurisdiction to enforce any ordinance. We are not an enforcing agency. So that will have to fall back on Animal Control some way or another to be clear on that. I

don’t want anything extra for our staff to have to do for that part. There is also an issue with community cats that are in this ordinance where it still has a river, a river ordinance that says a feral or community cat cannot be released within a half mile of the river and that is an issue for us. It takes a lot of resources to relocate a cat. It is not taking it to another place and just releasing it. It is a resource burden, experience or an issue that is very difficult to complete. Again, we are in favor, but we are worried about the who, what, when, why, and how basically.

Stacy Sutton Kirby, Member of the Public said I am with the Animal Protection Voters.

First of all, I want to say that the national organizations do take a different perspective than state level organizations and local governments and city council members and that is because at the national level they are not operating shelters and operating animal control. I would agree with the folks that have stepped up to the mic of taking the balanced approach of A, having a grace period in educational window phasing in an ordinance as well as providing resources to people so that they can come into compliance is what I have seen in my experience as an advocate that is where you get the best results. The point is not to give people tickets to make it unaffordable for someone to have a companion animal and certainly not to cause a situation where an animal would be relinquished to a shelter because a person could not come into compliance. So, the communities where we have seen it work the best are where folks come together. It sounds like there is already $80,000 in SNAP, a Spay/Neuter

Action Program, and planning out that timeline with those resources and getting that educational campaign out there. That is where we have seen it work the best.

Cheryl Hain, Member of the Public said I am the Direcort of Animal Spaces Rescue here in town. I just want to say that the lack of this is causing such a pressure on those of us who spend our lives trying to help these animals. We are not paid, it is our money. We have probably four rescues who have worked together on getting dogs to

T or C to Dr. Allared who is a wonderful vet by the way to get spayed and neutered.

We have done between the four of us I know we have done well over 500 a year.

Your spay and neuter program here in town has done 1,000 and the last year that they have reported so we are equally working on that to the best of our ability. My experience has not been that people don’t want to spay and neuter their pet. My experience has been that they can’t afford it, so I understand that but when given an option that is affordable in doable and they can have help with it, we get very little push back. I have had maybe three people, we had one that let us spay all its females but didn’t want its males spayed. That I think was a cultural thing on his side but in general we have talked. We have done several hoarding cases with the County

Animal Control where we have gone in and we fix them, we chipped them, we have gotten them their shots, we have taken the puppies and got them out of state. My rescue, one of our big initiatives is to get most of these animals out of here completely. I go all the way to Delaware and Connecticut, and Wyoming. I have been all over the place because they don’t have puppies there because they have spay and neuter. I don’t like the word mandatory because it is not 100%.

Diane Starbuck, Member of the Public said I am with Animal Advocates for Change. I would like to address Clint Thacker’s concerned about there not being enough veterinarians here or that he feels that the whole thing is going to be put on the animal shelter. That is not true. We have spoke to six local vets who are willing to do

weekend clinics here. There is a MASH organization willing to come down to Las

Cruces and do 200 animals a weekend and there has been interest within the state of other vets coming down to Las Cruces to help us out also. So, I think this could all be worked out. The resources are here. If you look for them the resources are here and its logistic and financial, but I feel those issues could be worked out.

Sarah Smith, Member of the Public said I support spay and neuter as well, but I as well am concerned about the word mandatory and criminalization around this particular issue. If enforcement is only happening through animal control, I think you are going to have a very low number of people who are jumping up to say I want to go get my pet spayed or neutered. If you use education, if people knew how many animals were dying in the shelter regularly, I think that would help people understand the problem better and if there was a way for you to do free spay/neuter or even offer an incentive, I don’t know if you could do $50 off of your utility bill, you would have people lining up to say we want to get our animal spay and neutered instead of trying to use the force of law and going through this other path which really to me doesn’t seem like you are going to get many people who are wanting to do that if you are just trying to rely on animal control. I am hoping that maybe you guys can look at those other approaches. I have some serious concerns over using criminalization, petty misdemeanors, potential for fines, potential for jail time along with this. I don’t think this quite makes sense in the context of this. I am hoping that you can find something that is a little bit more nuanced than going that direction.

Brenda Browning, Member of the Public said my first time at a council meeting and my first time speaking in public in this town. I have another point that I would like everyone to consider. We are talking about tethering. Consider a senior alone in a house, she has her favorite pet, she is not rich enough to own the house, it’s a landlord’s house. She doesn’t have a fence. The dog needs to go outside, needs to go potty, may or may not be able to use a potty pad and trust me they don’t like it. The obvious simple solution is a small tether near the back door. She can clip it on, she doesn’t have to take that step down into the yard that may be a risk to her health and safety. She can tether her dog, allow it out for fifteen/twenty minutes and bring it back in. If you mandate no tethering, she will have to give up her dog. She has to live alone. I want you to consider it.

Brad Douglas said with regard for the tethering the way that the proposal is written now would allow for very limited tethering. Tethering wouldn’t be eliminated altogether

I believe under the proposed language tethering would be allowed for up to an hour a day.

Mary Rodriguez, Member of the Public said I want to talk about both the tethering issue and the spay/neuter mandatory word. First on the tethering, I had a deaf dog and I am a huge animal advocate, I have been my whole life and I had this deaf dog and I lived in a rural community where there were no fences and so when l let him out

I put him on a trolly and unfortunately he would run to the end of it and he messed up his neck and I have always felt horrible about that because it is my fault that he did that. That is my lesson on tethering. As far as the spay/neuter goes you probably all heard I did come from a city in California where mandatory spay/neuter has been in

effect since the 90’s and what that looks like after a long period of time and nobody thinks about people who don’t spay/neuter as criminals ever, that is just not what we do. When something is considered the right thing to do, they just do it. It’s like when you put a new stop sign in people aren’t just going to run it. They are just going to eventually do it. The education piece is totally relevant. I just feel like I need to say that it works. We watched the shelters go from like the shelter has 400 dogs and the county has the same amount of people, and their full shelter is like 40 dogs because they aren’t having puppies and kittens left and right and there aren’t stray animals running around. I had notes on Next Door on all the ridiculous things I see there because there are just too many animals in this community.

Susan Richardson, Member of the Public said I am a really new to this cause and I just want to say this is my first council meeting, usually I am at county meetings because that is where I live is out in the county and all the work that has been put in by everyone on this subject is just phenomenal to me because for the longest time, I have been here since 1984 and for the longest time I look at the numbers that are coming out of the animal shelter even from August to September to October and they just keep growing and growing and growing and listening to people who work on this on a daily basis, okay there is not enough manpower, there is not enough resources, there is not enough money, there is not enough education so I really want you to support these efforts and these bills because we have got to start somewhere and yes we have state laws and we have this and we have that but I feel like now we are honing in and revising and updating them and making sure that there aren’t any loopholes but one thing I didn’t hear today was the fact that some of these cases that have been videotaped there is a big discrepancy when people are viewing them from what the rescuers see versus animal control sees. So in the future I would like for you to dove into the procedures for animal control, what constitutes animal abuse because there was an 18 month old dog, a year and a half and she looked like she was nine or ten and she had to wheeled out of the shelter in a wagon and she looked like she was ten years old and she was only 18 months.

April Nastazi, Member of the Public said I am with the K911 Academy. What nobody is bringing aware is that we have had 3 human deaths and an arm amputation in the last three years. Our dog bite numbers have increased in the last 200%. The Animal

Service Center is adopting out aggressive dogs knowing that they are known biters. I don’t believe they are educating them well enough. Our dogs now days are highly sensitive. You and I grew up when you could throw a pot lid on the ground and a dog goes hey, what is that? Now days you drop a pot lid and its oh my God, it almost ate me! Our dogs are highly sensitive and then our people kill themselves. How many people killed themselves during Covid? We have been fearmongered and who feels their energy? The dogs feel the people’s energy, they react. I specialize in aggressive behaviors. I specialize now in energy work to help not only the dog, but the person and it is education. I have so many people that come to me that they don’t know that those little behaviors that the dog is doing is a telltale sign that if they don’t stop and give the dog parameters it is going to get worse. I just wanted to let everybody know, I have not been here in two years. I did give them the Veterinarians Association, they do have a pamphlet, a thick book, they have had all the lawyers, and all the veterinarians teach communities how to lower dog bite numbers and I gave it to this council two years ago. One of the councilors I believe Gandara wanted to hear about

my program, and I do a free workshop once a month where I teach people how to interact with their aggressive dog and how to interact with that dog and other dogs and people. I am willing to teach, and I have been doing this for over eighteen years so I can help some way.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I think it is important that we are very clear about this kind of ordinance because I heard a couple of folks say it is not about ticketing, it’s not about making people criminals, however the section under penalty says, any person who violates a provision of this ordinance shall be deemed guilty of a crime thus giving someone a criminal record. So, I don’t want us to be naive about what this ordinance is and what these kinds of penalties can bring to someone when this is very much about disproportionately putting poor folks through the criminal justice system.

Councilor Graham said how I see this, this is my third year on council, and I feel like this is the issue that has simultaneously the most passion and the most inertia and I think that, and I am as guilty of this as anyone, it is such a cliché to where you sacrifice progress for perfect. No ordinances are perfect. No plans are perfect and at the end of the day it all comes down to people. One thing before I forget, Lt. Wiitala, one thing I would be interested to hear is exactly what Mayor Pro Tem was speaking to and that is your discretion in your role as a law enforcement officer. I understand the concern that you have is completely true and completely real and I do want to hear what discretion law enforcement officers would have should we pass this ordinance in terms of does it have to be automatically no that is it? It’s a fine, it’s jail, it is whatever. Should this ordinance pass we have 12 to 18 months for education. We have 12 to 18 months to get funding in order. We have 12 to 18 months to finally find an umbrella for all of you sitting in here today and all of the hundreds of other people who are not hear today but who have the passion and are probably not here today because they are out doing the work. I see this as an opportunity for the city to finally step up and create the space where we can all work together toward a common goal and it is just one of those things that I have just finally reached the point where we are not going to do anything unless we do something and that is kind of where I am right now.

Lt. Joy Wiitala said I agree with you. I do believe that inaction is not the way to go.

That we do need to take action on an ordinance. I think that we have heard an overwhelming concern today in reference to whether we classified spay and neuter as mandatory. I think that is what probably needs to be addressed the most. I think that with that what studies you go to you will discover it isn’t going to be an issue with an education component. There does obviously need to be the veterinary services within the area as well and so again my thought is that is not as simple as passing an ordinance. It also takes action on a larger scale to include potentially some budget funding with that again what are the next steps? Again, this is one of those things where we have proposed this ordinance, it is in draft status, obviously as in draft status it can change but like any other I think larger concern within our community it is going to take more than just the ordinance.

Councilor McClure said I just want to thank you guys very much for coming out and showing your support for this. I just want to say that over my time of almost a year that

it is has been people who have made change and to a large extent is us up here, but it is people who are working together that affect change and I just want to thank you guys for coming.

Councilor Flores said I want to thank all of you here. I hope we really do reach a resolution on this issue but most of all I just want to thank all of you for doing this for the community and for our animals that we love so much.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said thank you for mentioning that. We don’t have to agree on every single line in here for me to feel deeply grateful for the advocacy that you all do.

Brad Douglas said I feel that this was a helpful exercise. I understand all of the concerns that have been voiced on this dais today. We will continue working.

Progress is not always linear. We will keep working, thank you all for your time and attention. I would like to thank LCPD and Animal Control and our community advocates and community partners as well.

5. ADJOURNMENT 5.1 Councilor Yvonne Flores moved, seconded by Councilor Becki Graham, to adjourn at 3:46 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Yvonne Flores

SECONDER: Councilor Becki Graham

AYES: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki

Graham, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace

Mayor

City Clerk