Work Session Meeting February 23, 2026

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, February 23, 2026 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

PRESENT: City Councilor Johana Bencomo, City Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, City

Councilor Cassie McClure, City Councilor William Mattiace, City Councilor John Munoz, and

City Councilor Michael Harris

ABSENT:

1. AGENDA ITEM 1.1 LAS CRUCES PUBLIC SCHOOLS COMMUNITY SCHOOLS PARTNERSHIP

REPORT. Carol Brey, Quality of Life Director introduced the topic.

Johnny Rivera, Community Schools Manager gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure asked how do you work with our Parks and Rec Department for some of the out of school time?

Johnny Rivera said one of those ways is really a direct relationship with them. One of my neighbors used to work for Park and Rec and I would just go knock on his door and say hey, listen can we do this partnership with you all? We have this afterschool program idea, can we do this? And it was just as simple as that. It is just calling someone directly and I am not familiar with staffing right now, but our coordinators do that. Our Community School coordinators do that direct contact with people throughout city government, and they reach out to the Parks and Rec Department, explain what we would like to see and try to make it happen.

Councilor McClure asked I am just curious if we can support them with more funding?

I know what our budget looks like but that 4% might be something that we can talk about in the future but I am also thinking about the swim program we had that we asked for support at the legislature that didn’t actually come through but if it is something that we can kind of merge together and give kids an opportunity to learn

how to swim and give that support, also financially I think that would be a great collaboration especially with our great pool.

Councilor Mattiace said I think it is so vitally important because of the emphasis we need to give our youth programs and this is excellent and again thank you Carol and the Library for the partnership and the other partnerships. I am trying to look at the next two years that I sit on this city council is the impact. In other words, when you spend a million dollars how many people are you reaching? Or you spend $150,000?

You are reaching thousands of children and sometimes we spend $20/$30 million and maybe it only impacts 50 or 60 people and that makes for a very tight budget.

Whereas when you spend on the library or you spend on youth programs, you spend it on public safety, you spend it on roads, you are reaching thousands of people. You are making their lives better in a large volume and so I really support anything that we can take from our budget and give to this program. I really support it wholeheartedly and thanks for your effort both of you and thanks for the presentation.

Councilor Harris said I am excited to be on the advisory board and to learn more and to help out going forward in the future. There are two community schools in the

District 3, and they are great resources for the people who live there. I like that Lynn started it, kicked it all off. Something that stood out to me in one of our previous conversations when I was getting introduced was that the interaction with the students and getting their thoughts on specifically safety around their school and what struck me about that conversation was they seem to have different thoughts than all of the rest of us might have expressed in the past and so that is very interesting and I look forward to that kind of engagement at that level. Another thing that I wanted to mention, when we were in Santa Fe we were talking about afterschool programs, community schools, the whole general idea and something that one of the legislators brought up is that we need to have activities. Actually, specifically not activities, facilities that are open to kids to just be there. So we talk a lot about having afterschool programs and arts and crafts activities and sports and things for them to do but what this conversation was about is we need to also recognize that some kids just need a place to go and exist and maybe they are scrolling on their phone or whatever and sitting in the corner and not talking to somebody but they are there and its helpful and if they want to engage later they can engage. So, I just want to make sure that when we are discussing activities and I think I was talking about this in the board meeting too with some people afterwards and I think they are on it. You know just be open to not everything has to be an activity. You don’t have to gather data from a survey from every kid right at the offset. Otherwise, I absolutely am in support,

I think this is a great program. I think it is really thinking outside the box on how we do community engagement. Back in the past the schoolhouse was like one of the centers of community and I like that we are bringing that back.

Councilor Bencomo said on the absenteeism chart you showed us, I thought that was really powerful information. I am curious if you all have further data on that? Honestly,

I am just really curious about what are the kinds of things leading to absenteeism if you have those sort of in categories recorded?

Johnny Rivera said one of the projects that we have done and I think it is important to

point out with community schools that is inherent to only community schools is the ability to connect with students on a more intimate level and a more grounded level.

One of the research items that we did with Lynn Middle School was we asked a group of students why they are not coming to school, why they are coming to school and what resources they would need to stay at school. So, the reason they were not coming to school, was violence. The reason they were not coming to school was separation within the household, death in families, either to violence or to Covid at the time of the pandemic but also the need for mental health resources to support them.

And so when we talked about why they were coming to school they were talking about positive relationships at the campus, they have a teacher that they are just really close to or friends, a strong social circle on the campus that they feel supported on their campus and then also they felt safe on the campus. This was their one space that Councilor Harris touched on. This was a space, one space that they could come to and not have to worry about anything other than just being at school. I wanted ask about other resources to help support them. We talked about all of the resources that we provide as a Community School and so we realized maybe we should educate them more about the resources and this might help out with our chronic absenteeism rate, but this is something that translates with all of our campuses across our community schools at least.

Councilor Bencomo asked when you say violence, it was violence at home not violence at school?

Johnny Rivera said one of them is gun violence. Gun violence in the community. We had a student that was in ISS and I had went and poked my head in there and talked to him and why he was in ISS and found out that really the root cause wasn’t that he was just acting out to act out. He had lost a cousin due to gun violence in the community, and he didn’t know how to manage his emotions for that instance and ended up acting out in way that ended up in ISS. So, we connected him with other resources to make sure he feels supported on the campus. Obviously we have other instances near the campus that have taken place since then like Young Park and connecting with those students in group session and just giving them that time and space to connect with them and to let them know that we want to hear what your thoughts are and all they have said to us really was we just want to know what is going on and that was it and for me that is where we should start. Just giving them a platform to talk and where they can be treated like people and they are and we treat them as people but I think community schools is that function where we can make those changes and have those conversations with students.

Councilor Bencomo said literally my second question was going to be about gun violence education and I am curious if community schools would be such a perfect place to engage in that kind of work. I know the newly revamped DARE program is out there. I am curious about what kind gun violence or violence diversion education is happening at community schools or if you would be open to those kinds of partnerships in the future?

Johnny Rivera said absolutely we would be open to it. I think community schools as I mentioned earlier is a democratic platform. In our traditional schools we have student

government and when you think about a high school and how many members are involved you might have 50 members in a student council, student government, that is not representative of 5% of the student population and when we talk about community schools we pull out more students to different committees and we have a stronger engagement with their students and give them a platform so that they can truly talk about what they feel comfortable talking about and something as delicate as gun violence. I think it is very important to have that strong relationship and bond with our students before we can tackle something that heavy.

Councilor Bencomo said I think it is really important given the alarming trends that we have been seeing in the last year certainly. Again, I think it is so important and I am really glad that we have this partnership with you all and I think community schools are really vital to our community and the success of our kids.

Councilor Munoz said there is about 1,335 students in the Cultural Enrichment

Program. There is roughly 24,000, maybe 25,000 students district wide I would say and you may or may not have the answer now, but I would love to hear what initiatives or what ideas you have to expand that. How can we work together between the City of Las Cruces and our public school system to increase our net for student services with the afterschool programs?

Johnny Rivera said afterschool programing has been also in the climate of volatility when it comes to grant funding and so with our partnership with NMSU there has been a year-to-year basis for the last couple of years as to what our funding is going to look like. I do think that we need to find sustainable ways to fund these programs because for example at one of our campuses we have 33 programs and if we lost our funding and we lost all of those 33 programs and we can do the math of 33 times approximately 26 students, there is also to students that even how don’t have anywhere to go and they also don’t have the programs they designed in and so we lose that ownership and buy in from our students and giving them that space that they deserve. As far as expanding on a district level, that is a question for Dr. Wendy

Miller-Tomlinson who I would be glad to sit down and talk with but I do think that the conversations begin at our Committee Schools Partnership Board meetings and it is great to have the council members that we have here and I know the Mayor is going to be joining us to have those discussions and that is where it begins.

Carol Brey said what I would like to add from the City’s perspective is that I attend all the partnership board meetings and so do several of my staff. We have at any monthly meeting we have one or two people from the museums and from the library outreach teams. Currently our museums are doing programs in the schools already. I believe it is second grade right now that they are working with. They have a curriculum they have developed for second graders. Our libraries come to many of the community school outreach events that they will have and we are looking at ways internally across our department that we can do more to provide afterschool programing and certainly we will consult with Johnny and with his team about how we can do that in a way that would be useful to the community and to the schools as well.

Mayor Enriquez said I look forward to serving on the board and being a part of you

know throughout the United States there is different charters and different ways of doing things. There is some areas where the schools are under the city, and the mayor, and the council and there are others that are run by the state as we are. A lot of times we feel that there is nothing we can do about it because it is not under our purview, but the truth of the matter is working together, being a community so it is fitting that their community schools so that we can work together as a community and take care of our community. This is great, it is a great step forward and we need to get

NMSU involved as well as you said building that relationship for our community is what is going to make it succeed.

1.2 AMADOR HOTEL UPDATE AND AMADOR HOTEL FOUNDATION

REPORT. Carol Brey, Quality of Life Director gave the overhead presentation.

Garland Courts, Deputy Director Quality of Life continued the overhead presentation.

Carol Brey continued the overhead presentation.

Heather Pollard, President of Amador Foundation continued the overhead presentation.

Heather Pollard continued the presentation.

Councilor Bencomo asked do you have the numbers of the total amount for public funds that have been invested to date?

Carol Brey said we have spent approximately $7 million I believe at this time. The phase we are getting into now, finishing up Phase II is another $3 million and then we have $4.8 million for Phase III and then I believe Phase IV is going to be another $3 million. So, it will be about $21 million, not quite $17 million. That number fluctuates because of course it is a very old building as we get in there, we sometimes find that we need more than we thought we neededfor certain aspects. I know that we have discussed this quite a bit with Public Works and Sreedevi Mohanraj is here and I don’t know if she wants to add anything to that but that is where we are right now. So far, we have spent a little over $7 million and then we are adding the $3 million we already have. Most of that did come from TIDD funding to do the remainder of Phase II, that puts us about 10 and we this additional $4.8 so that is almost $15 plus $3 for the remainder of what would be Phase IV. So that is about $18 million.

Councilor Bencomo asked current for the phases you have planned out, how much currently do you have secured?

Carol Brey said we have enough that should get us through most of Phase III and enough to open the facility to the public at this point and that would be basically be $14.8 million that we will have spent that we once we spend that money and we will

really just be looking for the remaining funding for the second floor interior and that is all we lack and we can open the facility. A lot of what is needed on the second floor, I believe it is going to be a lot of dry wall and paint. I think they are doing some of the structural work as part of Phase II.

Councilor Bencomo said $4.8 million from a grant, which congratulations, that is excellent. The other $3 million is additional TIDD money.

Carol Brey said it is mostly TIDD money. There was some additional legislative funding we got from this but that has been spent.

Councilor Bencomo asked have you all come up with a plan or an approximate proposal for operational funding and what that will be per year?

Carol Brey said we are working on that now, given that we have got three years given before we will be able to open. We have a little time but we will want to have it ready by obviously fiscal year 2028 so that we are ready to roll that into our budget proposal but what we are doing right now, Garland and I are talking about who form the museums could service a liaison into this project beyond us because we are not always as available as when they might need someone and then we also with our museum team and all across the department you know once we are operational we are very skilled at holding events and holding programs and conducting tours and knowing as he mentioned how to create a museum exhibit space. So, we are going to be able to rely a lot on the team we have within the Quality of Life Department. We only envision a staff of, I would say of three to four people, most likely.

Councilor Bencomo said I have to be very honest. I hope that the remaining funds for the remaining the phases that are not secured yet, that I hope they do come from grants. I feel like given the state of the budget and given the state of the infrastructure emergency that we currently have in the city with fire houses, Municipal Court and those kind of things that we should definitely be focusing our investments on some of those emergencies and you know I think at this point that we are nearing about $15 million of public dollars and I am not saying that it is not important, I am just saying that I really hope that the foundation and all of the folks are prepared to go and try to find those kinds of more grants in order to support this project and in order to supplement the investment that the city has already made. That is just at least my perspective and where I’m coming from given what I hope we are funding in the future and how we are I hope addressing the infrastructure emergency we currently have in the city.

Councilor Harris said I also echo some of the budget concern. I think that it is a great and important project. I am new and all of this happened way before my time, so I appreciate that. I look forward to going and seeing the building. I drive past it every day and I see the progress and it looks exciting and I am excited for what it can become and be this anchor to downtown. So, to that end I was wondering what does this look like as like an everyday integration to the space? I saw the courtyard and it looks like there is cool plans there. I am struggling a little bit to visualize it in my head of how it dovetails with the Visit building and the Amador Live but is this envisioned to

be open every day so that people can go? Will there be a little café or something to draw people in that is not necessarily event based? Can you speak a little bit about hat plan, I know it is not for another four years?

Carol Brey said some of that I can respond to but some of that we don’t have the plan for yet. We don’t have a plan for a café per se. There is a plan for a catering kitchen.

The plan is yes, hold events there but you know we also have talked a lot, and I believe the Amador Hotel Foundation is in agreement with us about basically making sure we have the museum space, that we have space that explains how important this space is to Las Cruces. That we can bring the many students that tour our museums now, bring them there and help them understand one of the earliest important historic spaces in our city that still exists, right? And what Las Cruces was like. We have talked about having Moonlight at the Amador like we have Moonlight at the Museum so that we can have adult events there. We talked about also recreating when the days apparently and I have heard Irene Oliver Lewis talk about this, our local semi-retired actress perhaps talk about as a child remembering and going and being in that parlor in there and there was singing and dancing and performances going on and with the talent we have locally here we could recreate that sort as a parlor space which I think is very exciting for our community. So, you know there is a lot of possibilities and in fact that Kells & Craig plan does outline some of that. We don’t think we will need to focus as much on the event space aspect of it, but it would be available for rental for events as well.

Councilor Harris said that is great, I like that we are looking to kind of bring more mass and density of museums and I like the thinking that you can make a whole day out of your field trip by taking kids there and then working on your way down Main

Street. Looking forward to getting it finished and getting some events.

Senator Carrie Hamblen, Member of the Public said I wanted to give a little background on the $4.8 million grant that was received. The Department of Finance and Administration has five new people on staff now that their sole job is to find these pockets of money that are going to projects like this and so I do want to give credit to my assistant, my District Legislative Aide, Andre Gonzales, who is instrumental with really working with the Amador Foundation and the DFA to try and find that money and I recognize Councilor Bencomo’s concern and Councilor Harris’s concerns about where are we putting this money and understand the challenges that you have as a city government so I wanted to just make sure and commit to you that Andre will continue to do it to help find those pockets of money to help do this because I recognize that there are other things really need to take priority when we talk about public safety but I also feel like this is the last cog in downtown especially since you all were successful in that eye sore of a building getting leveled that when we look at downtown and really the vibrancy that we are able to have a downtown, I feel like this is the last piece of that and so that is why I feel that it is something that is really important and so Andre will continue to work with the foundation to try and find those monies and try and do that so that you can put your budget money to where it really is needed. So, I do appreciate you all considering that and thank you very much for all the hard work from city staff and from the Amador Foundation for really trying to get this gem up. I do strongly encourage you to go and see it, just the history there. My brother’s mother-in-law stayed there in the 50s when they were coming down to start

their life while her husband was working at White Sands and so they had fond memories of that hotel of people who are still in our community who have very fond memories. I appreciate all your efforts and thank you all for your support on this.

Mayor Enriquez said thank you Senator Hamblen. We appreciate all of your efforts and your work in helping the foundation out. Also, I want to say that we all up here have that challenge, of where is the funding coming from and we are always looking at those things. This is something when you look at return on investment, we can also look at return on value. The value, the intangible part that it offers the city of Las

Cruces and the history that is so valuable to many of us here in Las Cruces and that is what it provides. So, Ms. Pollard, thank you for all your work, for continuing over 20 years to help this project and the Amador Hotel continue and to open up its doors again. 1.3 9TH SEMI-ANNUAL POLICE AUDIT REPORT PRESENTED BY THE OIR

GROUP. Viola Perea, City Auditor introduced the topic.

Teresa Magula, OIR Group gave the overhead presentation.

Stephen Connelly, OIR Group continued the overhead presentation.

Teresa Magula continued the overhead presentation.

Stephen Connolly continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Harris said I scanned through most of the report. It is very thorough, so I am going to dive much deeper into it and get to know things that happened before my time here. I would also like to thank the Police Department for cooperating so fully and for being at least compared to a lot of other departments that we all read about in the news. I think they are taking this stuff seriously and really trying to instigate some change. Obviously, there are improvements that can be made but I do appreciate the willingness to go along with this process. I have a few questions and comments. One,

I agree with your findings and recommendation that critical instant reviews should be completed for every single incident. I think that is not negotiable to me. In any other industry, in industrial safety and aviation, medical, every single incident gets reviewed and if we don’t have the resources to do it, we need make them. We need to get the resources and make them available. Every single one needs to be reviewed and reviewed quickly and in a way, obviously internally we are trying to make things better. Not necessarily place blame on any one person and then seek to discipline them. This is a big thing in industrial safety in particular and aviation is that. We are not trying to find the person who didn’t tighten the bolt, it is why did the system allow the bolt to not be tightened. I will also echo the thought that police officers are held to a high standard and they have to be. If I have a bad day at my job, that sucks, maybe

I get fired, maybe I piss somebody off, but I don’t carry a gun and interact with the public and so really, yes, held to a high standard, you have to be. Your bad day could be somebody’s last day. That is just the reality of things. So, I am curious with that in mind, so over the last nine years we have been implementing new policies and things,

have you seen changes in how the report in how these incidents not necessarily been addressed but like the types of incidents we have? So, nine years ago we had X number of incidents, and they had some severity through all of the things that have been recommending over the last nine years, have we been implementing these policies? Have they been resulting in real change? And I will let you speak to that and

I have a couple of follow-ups.

Teresa Magula said I wanted to just clarify on critical incidents, just a point of clarification that all incidents are reviewed. They do receive different groups within the department will review them and they ultimately all result in an internal investigation so an IA, Internal Affairs investigation. The nuance that we are suggesting, recommending is that it is this force review cadre which is a specialized unit conducting yet another layer of review. So just for clarification, all critical incidents are receiving at least some level of fairly rigorous review. As to your last question, I think that there are two sides of it. One is that we are looking at individual officer performance and conduct and the extent that we are tracking the names and the actual personalities that are coming across our desk, we are gratified to see that we are not seeing a lot of reoccurring offenders. There is not a lot of trends in terms of, boy we see this guy every quarter. So as far as remediation working on the individual level? I can’t say whether it is because of that process or that process that he or she shifted behavior but certainly it is implied and any training that was received. On a systemic level, the department for the most part agrees with our recommendations and where they go from there, we have seen changes in terms of process, the administrative process. I am spinning up reviews for this type of off duty conduct. We weren’t seeing that five years ago prior to Chief Story’s tenure and so we are seeing that the department is holding officers more frequently accountable through these internal mechanisms, then we have in the past.

Councilor Harris asked is there certain disciplinary actions that you have seen us take that are better than other departments do or worse than other departments do and do you provide specific guidance on in this instance we believe this behavior warranted a different kind of punishment? Specifically, I read a couple of individual reports from last year maybe and between them it kind of struck me as one of these is worse than the other but the one that was less worse in my mind like weren’t to the demotion. It was like this seemed disproportionate.

Stephen Connolly said I will say a couple of things. One is, it is absolutely something that we look at. If there are sustained allegations, we are certainly curious to know what the department’s response is and does it seem commensurate with the severity of the allegations. We keep our description of it in terms of public reporting in a pretty high level as opposed to getting in the weeds. We will occasionally talk to the department and have the same reaction you do. Not necessarily why this seemed worse than this and why did this get a different lesser punishment but in an individual case we might say we would have expected the consequence for this to be more significant and then just have that conversation. The other piece of it is that there are some different variables that can account besides the specific policy violation. Are you a repeat offender? Are you a supervisor who should have known better? Or a brand- new officer? And I think the biggest key to your point about actually fixing or correcting as opposed to just giving somebody two days off and teaching him a lesson. I think

the idea that the department has really leaned into is really almost every case that is sustained and some that aren’t even sustained. The department is going to follow up and outside of the disciplinary process address the underlying behavior performance issue and really try to give the officer the tools to make sure it doesn’t happen again, so I think there is an evolution in that respect.

Councilor Harris said there were incidents where you found where supervisor should have been paying attention to this because the leadership really does come from the top and flow down. I was reading the report and there was a note that the zip code sample was kind of iffy and the main reason was most of the reports originated from

Internal Affairs which was in zip code 88001, shockingly. Do you have any recommendations on different ways that we could geographically map these things by patrol routes, or council districts, or other statistics that we might be interested in?

Teresa Magula said one of the things that we tried to do more recently is look at the underlying police reports so not rely on the memo that says, the complainant is the

Police Department in 88001. So we look at who was involved, where was it happening and we are using that zip code more regularly and what I think we need to do is go back over the course of five years and put that data instead and so certainly we will be able to have a little more mapping in the future. We will go back and do that work.

Councilor Harris said that would be appreciated. The zip codes in particular in Cruces are weird and mixed to say the least. I don’t know if we would have better geographic descriptors, that is a question to further go on but I think that is it.

Councilor Corran said you mentioned in two separate reports and I noticed these when they were coming through earlier that the use of generative AI to write reports is maybe leading to some problematic things and/or at least not allowing for a clear narration of what people experienced in that that might be problematic of understanding the implications of whatever happens. I am wondering if you can talk a little bit about what you are seeing what other departments do in this context and/or if

LCPD has come up in about the last year since we started using this new technology and I understand report writing is terrible but I also don’t want us to miss things or have things be glazed over by AI because it is rosy or whatever the situation is. It seems like it might have been the case in some of those things.

Teresa Magula said we are at the cusp of something new like every morning, so this is a work in progress. I think for agencies nationwide and certainly there is that balance because report writing takes an extraordinary amount of time and officers are often tied to that desk writing a report versus being in the field. Supervisor, same thing, tied to the desk, reviewing, checking that report and so I think this is one of those pandora box that we opened and officers have access to it and if we were to take it away they would probably not be very happy to go back to the type of report writing they were doing. I think the important part is to have really strict guardrails and very close review and so we are really leaning or departments are really leaning on supervisors to be doing thorough reviews of those reports. Does this make sense? Is it something that is comprehensive and so on. Axon, which is the main vendor of this report writing software although there are various, but Axon is the one most frequently

used. It is packaged in with the body worn camera contract typically. And they have a lot of safeguards in place in order to kind of test the officer and the supervisor to make sure that they have reviewed the report. They will put in things that are completely wild and out of left field to kind of make sure that those are reviewed. They have been developing safeguards over the course of the year as new things come up they are putting up something to help remediate it but certainly it is something that we have to keep looking at and I think this is just the new world that we live in, not just for law enforcement but all around. So, we will keep looking at it.

Councilor Corran said this is one of those situations where I don’t trust the people who made the problem to fix the problem so I feel a little to be a little proactive in thinking about this because I don’t want to, I am not proposing that we get rid of it even though

I tell my students, you get dumber when you use it. I understand the context that it is in and the value that it has. I just don’t want it to be something that interferes with your work, with our understanding of accountability and can actually help make things better for the force so thank you and I look forward to hearing any other interesting updates that might come around related to that.

Councilor Mattiace said you represent quite a lot of cities in different police departments, you touched on a very important segment several times and that is making a police force better, that is training, equipment and tools. It was throughout your entire presentation. So, my question to you and recommendation maybe from you because you are experts, we are thinking of developing and building a new training center. Do you see the correlation? You work with police departments in other cities where they build a state-of-the-art modern training center that it is an improvement in the quality and of the recruiting of the policemen? It is a tough question for you to answer but I just wanted your opinion.

Stephen Connolly said I would say broadly speaking it absolutely makes a difference in so many ways. I think just in terms of morale it is very affirming and a source of enthusiasm for officers to have a place to go for training that is of a really high quality and I think that there are a lot of dividends that can arise from it as you noted and we appreciate that we are huge proponents of looking at these things holistically and you can unpack what happened on this specific day and did this person do this instead of that but you have to look at the broader context of how these people are being trained and how effective the training is and what tools are they being given and I think a robust training program is absolutely essential to an agency that is operating at the highest potential level and to your point more specifically, a quality training facility absolutely is a positive factor in that whole process.

Councilor Bencomo asked are we able to talk about the new contract and if we are I am curious about whether anything is changing in it that you can discuss now? When do we expect it to come to council?

Ikani Taumoepeau, City Manager said that is not on the agenda, unfortunately. So, we can’t talk about it.

Councilor Munoz asked when will this be available for public review or consumption or

will it be available?

Viola Perea said as soon as we finish today’s council meeting, I will have Christine post it on our transparency page.

Councilor Munoz said I would like to add a little more science or a little more math to the presentation. I haven’t read the contract so I am not sure if this is within scope or not but DC Urenda that is probably us as a police department and the city but I would just like some comparative data. Police has about 158,000 calls per year or so, give or take, so in Six Sigma we call this defects, or errors or anomalies. So, I would like to know how we did this year versus last year versus five years ago? How are we doing in comparison to cities our size? So, if that is within your scope and you can provide that I would love to see the progress and regress, if not we can do something internally to look at data like that.

Teresa Magula said I think one of the challenges in framing it that way although we absolutely can do that and we have looked over the past years as well to see relative to calls for service, what is the percentage of complaints? One of the things that is challenging about it is that as a system becomes more effective, we might see an increase and we have seen an increase in the number going up, right? So over time and in particular over the past two years we have seen an increase in internal investigations being launched. Why is that? Are officers actually engaged in more misconduct or is the department now taking the view that these issues need to be documented, formally investigated, formally addressed, right? So sometimes when we see those increases it is not necessarily indicative of something happening worse or going south or being more deficient but just a sign of a healthy system but we can certainly provide those figures.

Mayor Enriquez said anytime that you raise your right hand and you take an oath, you are held to a higher standard and anything that you say, how you behave and how you conduct yourself is always going to be scrutinized. So I thank Chief Story, the

Deputy Chiefs, the Police Department for being willing to cooperate and give in order to get better because as a law enforcement, as a code enforcer it is always hard to be audited and to embrace it really takes a lot of professionalism, maturity to say what is it that we are doing wrong? How can we do it better? And you still keep adding to it so that is good from external to the categories, to the cleared cases so that we can review everything and get better because that is what we want the best public safety we can get and the best department, the outcome can come out so again thank you for all that you do and we look forward to seeing how we can get better.

2. ADJOURNMENT 2.1 City Councilor John Munoz moved, seconded by City Councilor Michael Harris, to adjourn at 2:59 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: City Councilor John Munoz

SECONDER: City Councilor Michael Harris

AYES: City Councilor Johana Bencomo, City Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric

Enriquez, City Councilor Cassie McClure, City Councilor William Mattiace, City

Councilor John Munoz, and City Councilor Michael Harris

Mayor

City Clerk