City Council Meeting August 18, 2025

MINUTES

City Council

Monday, August 18, 2025 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

PRESENT: Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, Councilor William Mattiace, Councilor

Becki Graham, Councilor Johana Bencomo, and Councilor Becky Corran

ABSENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores

1. OPENING CEREMONIES 1.1 PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE - MAYOR ENRIQUEZ. 1.2 PRESENTATION OF CERTIFICATES OF

APPRECIATION/PROCLAMATIONS - MAYOR ENRIQUEZ. Mayor Enriquez presented a Certificate of Excellence to the NM/TX Majors Baseball

Team. 1.3 JOBS OF THE WEEK. Sarah Raney, Americas Job Centers of New Mexico presented Jobs of the Week. 1.4 PETS OF THE WEEK. Carol Nielson, Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley presented Pets of the

Week.

2. CONFLICT OF INTEREST INQUIRY BY MAYOR AS REQUIRED BY LCMC

SECTION 2-27 (E)(2) 2.1 None.

3. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION 3.1 Jose Gallegos, Member of the Public said I am the newly hired Executive Director for the South Central Solid Waste Authority. Thank you for taking this opportunity to

introduce myself. I am a graduate of NMSU with engineering degrees and master’s in environmental engineering and a bachelor’s in industrial. I have worked for the federal government for the last 30 years in different capacities including with the Airforce,

Corps of Engineers, and the Army as an Environmental Engineer. I started as an

Interim doing haz waste management, solid waste management, recycling programs and then eventually was given the job as Environmental Division Chief for White

Sands Missile Range and then eventually eight more years as Public Works Director at White Sands. In the last years I have actually worked for the Department of

Agriculture and emergency response capacity as an Environmental Engineer in response to foreign animal diseases. I really am happy about getting the opportunity. I took the early out so to speak in the federal government given the current circumstances and I am so happy that I got an opportunity to serve at the national level with the federal government and given this opportunity to serve at the local level with our city and county. A little bit about the South Central, 180 employees that do a lot of good work out there. They are the experts. If anybody has ever noticed a day when their trash is not picked up, it is one of those very important services that the minute it is not there we notice and I try to instill a sense of pride in what these people do for us from every capacity, a facet of our operations from the laborers all the way to the heavy equipment operators to engineers. It is very important that we provide a very sustainable service to the organization. I believe I have the background to provide that. I did know the previous Director. We worked together for some 15 years, and we saw eye to eye on a lot of different things, but I aldo realize that it is my ship to steer and with the assistance of my subject matter experts I hope to do a great job for our community and for the organization.

Lynn Moorer, Member of the Public said the Utility Director asserts that New Mexico

Environment Department and EPA are aware of how Las Cruces Utilities is inspecting its lines to comply with the Lead and Copper Rule. That is a curious justification for a technique that clearly does not comply with EPA guidance. New Mexico Environment

Department has no role in enforcing the rule because the state does not have primacy. EPA is the sole agency with enforcement authority. It is troubling that the

Director doesn’t understand this distinction. Even if EPA is aware of the city’s deficient technique it doesn’t mean agency approves of it. EPA may be working on an enforcement action against the city. The Director should explain how the city’s technique of just looking at the meter box and identifying lead lining inside the pipe.

How does it identify a lead segment farther up the line? How does it deal with a setter’s meter? Where is the evidence for each property that this technique results in an accurate conclusion that EPA requires? An EPA document dated October 2024, says water systems must use a validation process to ensure the service line inventory is accurate. You and city staff were provided this document so that everyone has been informed about this federal requirement for accuracy. Despite this requirement

Las Cruces Utilities provides false assertions in its inventory. Handout 1 sets out facts regarding the city’s practice of falsely characterizing pipes as non-lead based on installation dates after the 1986 lead ban when their installation date is prior to it.

These properties constitute 28% of 81 properties sampled. This means the city falsely characterized more than a quarter of the properties sampled as non-lead based on the instillation date after the 1986 lead ban. Review of the installation date column plainly shows that each is prior to 1986, it is not a closed question. Top city staff should be able to see this obvious fact and stop providing cover for the Director’s

continued provision of false information to the public. Review of the record date column shows that most of these 23 properties were posted with this false information for 8 months on the city’s inventory. Then in mid-June all installation dates were disappeared. This removes any basis, without basis there is no credibility. Here is the thing, being able to tell whether a date is before or after 1986 is pretty simple. If Las

Cruces Utilities can’t get it right 28% of the time, we cannot ever trust them when they say pipe is lead based on installation after the lead ban. The Director asserted at the last meeting we believed we are meeting all requirements. Seriously? I doubt that anyone at EPA agrees that providing false information in the inventory complies with the rule that the Director and city staff have been repeatedly informed about this and other federal requirements that the city is violating yet continues to fail to comply makes each a knowing violation in which can lead to more severe penalties. You all should know that as of this weekend Las Cruces Utilities has disappeared the entire online inventory without explanation. Another colossal violation of EPA requirements.

Liz Rodriguez Johnson, Member of the Public said I am going to outline another problem evident in Las Cruces Utilities’ compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule.

This one pertains to its classification of pipes using as a basis, “water sampling only with no records”. Handout A list 32 properties found so far for which the inventory uses that basis. Without records nothing can be proven so none of these classifications can be proven to be accurate. Water sampling only with no records is plainly not an evidenced based technique like EPA requires. Plus, without records how do you even know that sampling occurred, without records it didn’t happen. The

Las Cruces Utilities office has had problematic inventory records disappeared which allows them to try to argue that none of the problems occurred, when in fact we have hard copies of the dissppeared records. Ninety percent of the water sampling only with no records properties have not been verified using an evaluation using another method. For the three properties that indicate a non-lead status verified by visual inspection at the meter pit the technique that the city uses is so flawed that it does not actually verify anything. Moreover, for more than half of the properties the reported water sampling yielded a classification of unknown. So, water sampling can lead to either a non-lead or an unknown classification and that just doesn’t make sense. This water sampling only with no records is neither reliable nor proven evidence-based technique like EPA requires. A variation of this flawed basis is the second problem evident in Las Cruces Utilities inventory. The examples of this are so numerous that a list of these addresses were not compiled for you at this time. In the second case the city classifies properties all across the city as non-lead based on field inspection only with no records. Like water sampling only with no records, field inspection only with no records is not an evidence-based technique that can be proven to be accurate.

Therefore it doesn’t comply with EPA requirements. Again without records, one cannot be certain that an inspection actually occurred or of what the reported inspection consisted of. A use of visual inspection at the meter pit does not actually verify anything because the technique is so inadequate. Why is the city choosing to use two such utterly inappropriate grounds for classifying pipes? Classifications that are critical to protecting public health, especially that of the vulnerable and relatively powerless citizens of Las Cruces.

Eddie Thomas, Member of the Public said I want to talk to you about what I have termed the culture of crime in Las Cruces. In certain circles parents in Las Cruces

raise their children to hate police and resist arrest. They join gangs and either end up getting arrested or getting killed. If we love our children, we would interdict and steer them from this bad road. If they survive, they end up as adults with juvenile records, then find it difficult getting a job or getting into a trade school or college. Their working lives are limited thus making a life of crime an attractive and easy choice. Selling drugs or transporting illegal immigrants doesn’t take any talent or skill. It may even become a necessity in order to survive in the gang life. Even if you do get a job you will be closely watched and expect to fired on the spot at the first sign of trouble.

Second, chances rarely come to those with a criminal record. Nothing is going to reduce our crime statistics until parents in Las Cruces stop supplying gangs with fresh recruits. If we can’t get our legislature to pass meaningful laws to curve crime, then we the people and more specifically the parents have to get involved. Something has to break the circle of criminality that is self-perpetuating. We have to give our kids alternatives to gang life such as sports, boys clubs, music, church activities, or extracurricular activities that aren’t illegal, watch who their friends are, who are they hanging out with, academics or gangbangers? You might have to get real angry and insistent but it is something that they might thank you for when they get their degree from college or trade school. Imagine your heart bursting with pride when you see your kid walking off stage with a diploma in his hand. Now imagine that same kid behind bars wearing orange overalls with the letters DOC on the back. It is up to us as parents. We are all influenced by the company we keep. If you love your kid watch the company he keeps. The police are not the problem as some would have you think.

You want to do something about crime in Las Cruces? Raise your kids to respect the law. There seems to be an anti-police sentiment here in Las Cruces. As societies go that is counter intuitive. You need law and order to keep the peace and thrive as a city. Commerce dries up when there is no law and order, need proof? Just look at the boarded-up business as around town. There is a perfect example just across the street from here. It used to be a tire shop. Now it is a boarded-up building that probably provides a hiding place for mischief makers and homeless. Do you as Mayor and City Council want to save Las Cruces from the death spiral it is currently in? Then advocate for laws that deter crime so that we don’t have gang wars in our parks and police officers murdered by deranged violent career criminals.

Lonnie Montgomery, Member of the Public said I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I am here bringing greetings from the riffraff to the oligarchy . The oligarchy pushed through housing with the help of the zoning and we tried to get a bunch of people to vote so that we could get it on the ballot so that people could vote on it, but it would not of mattered if we had 45,000/44,989 it would not have been approved. But it went on and I congratulate you. With the zoning, they have done a lot of good things like when they were having Sonoma there, there were about five of us there. It was me and my son and his wife and there were two people and those two were on crutches and this one lady said I don’t want this built out there because it is going to take away my view of the beautiful Organ Mountains but they said it didn’t matter so to me that just didn’t work and then when we had a church that was going to have a dispensary built next to it, that is two feet away from the church property. Zoning called the attorney there and said is this illegal and she said yes, it is, and they said oh well that is okay we will pass it and they passed it and the thing came in there anyway and it’s gone now. That just goes to show me that the zoning thing doesn’t give a tinker’s dam on what is going on. We need to come together here, and Pastor Dennis preached

about two months ago that Jesus loves everyone. I bring a message to you today, Mr.

Mayor, Council, I love you and I will continue to love you and I shall continue praying for you daily and I will continue from there on but as we all both all sons of God and everything being an older sibling I wanted to give you a little warning. Please do what you speak to the public. That could lead to traducement. If you go on traducing like that sooner or later, you are going to end up in court and this is just the warning.

Lucas Herndon, Member of the Public said I am a resident of District 2. In particular last city council meeting after I spoke there was a sentiment expressed that certain people don’t want to hear certain ideas presented at city council and that expression of my free speech is something that I thought was held dear in this country and as I have been looking around and noticing sort of the way things are going it feels like lots of things that I was taught what this country stands for don’t appear to be agreed upon by everybody in this country at this point in time. It is my opinion that as a community we have a moral obligation to do what we can to help each other and as we pull our resources through things like taxes and build budgets for this city to spend in things that can help our community, two weeks ago you did a good thing by passing a $640,000ish, an ordinance that would allow you to accept that kind of money for a

CEED grant that would help low-income people make their homes more energy efficient thus saving them money, thus making them more able to contribute to our collective society. Meanwhile the Las Cruces Police posted some very giddy photos of their new BearCat, which is made by a company called Lenco. These vehicles cost anywhere between $200,000 and $450,000 depending on which model you get. I don’t know what model LCPD just procured but that is a lot of money that could go towards directly helping people in our community based on the amount we just passed for this CEED grant so when I expressed my opinions about the police and how we provide them with far too many resources comparatively to what we provide our actual citizens I don’t feel like my opinions are any less valid than anybody else’s.

We are here to debate those in this public forum. Finally I will say that in the national front as we have seen this expression of restricting speech in the name of public safety or something of that effect and I would remind all of those paying attention that one of our dear calls to action at the founding of this country is give me liberty or give me death and I stand by that.

Jim Hoerst, Member of the Public said I may owe some of you an apology. I thought you had some power in the state and apparently, I am incorrect. This city council has no handle on our government as far as the state. I guess power goes down not up.

There is a serious issue though. Voting by mail increases voter turnout. Presumably votes with higher turnout are more in tuned with democracy. The more people that vote the more the voting reflects the people’s will. The people’s will is supposed to prevail in a democracy. Voting by mail allows more people to vote more times. Not in an illegal way but they will show up every election if you let them vote by mail. There is a mechanism in the state, the state allows permanent vote by mail. You are supposed to be able to sign up for it online, but it is only open for a few months before the elections. We are less than 100 days away from the next election. The state portal for signing up to vote by mail on a permanent basis online does not function. It is not open. Apparently, somebody thinks that nobody is going to do that this far before the election but if you are hoping to have a campaign to increase voting by mail now is the time to print literature, to train volunteers, to start signing up people to vote by

mail. That can’t be done while the portal is closed. So, I don’t know what influence you have with who, I am just begging you to find it, use it, and make voting more accessible by demanding that the Secretary of State open the portal now. Not six weeks before the election or whenever the hell they were planning to do it but now so that we can build campaigns around it.

Tim Jenkins, Member of the Public said I have been a plumber here in Las Cruces for over 20 years now and personally service about 90% of restaurants, hotels/motels, hospitals, etcetera and it is absolutely heartbreaking to see the demise of this city and it seems to have especially gotten worse and worse in the last five years. You used to be able to go to a restaurant and sit down for a bite to eat and when you needed or wanted to go to the restroom to wash your hands before eating but now almost every single restaurant in this town has to have their restrooms under lock and key because of the destruction to their property from the unhoused or mentally ill or the unstable.

There is a field engineer visiting me last week from back east and we were grabbing a bite to eat before heading to Holloman Air Force Base for a job and he had to wait ten minutes to use the restroom until a manager was available to unlock the restroom for him. He was absolutely shocked and says to me what the F is going on in Las Cruces that all the bathrooms have to be locked and I was so ashamed and embarrassed that this is the city that I call home and I wish I could invite people here and be proud of my city but the sad reality is that I am not proud of this city and it is embarrassing to invite people here with the state of this city and I can guarantee you that I don’t have all the right answers and don’t know all the steps to take to change this around but what I do know is that we can spend $20 million building houses and economic development and not a single thing will ever change until we start to deal with the actual root of the problem. So, I demand that we as a whole start actively working together to address the crime and the mental illness in our very own city. We have multiple times asked for Work Sessions and collaboration to help with these exact issues in every way we can but instead we get called names and get vilified for our efforts.

Belinda Roberson, Member of the Public said I have a problem that my husband have the custody of my daughter and I claim the custody of my daughter with emergency because the police officer was effected because my daughter was driving alone with no driver’s license, with no permit, with no age, with no coincidence in the city of Las

Cruces and it is child endangerment. In the light of drivers around the city of Las

Cruces are in danger and she just turned 15 years old, she had a collision and crashed the car with the police officer from the Las Cruces Police Department. I already put the motion that I want emergency, but I want my daughter to claim the rights of the biological mother of my daughter but the judge he doesn’t give me my daughter, and I don’t have felonies or criminal history. This is why I came here to you so you can investigate or help me to recover my daughter. I give you a copy of the statement that I present in the Third Judicial District in the city of Las Cruces, New

Mexico. The Case is D-307-dm-2021-00100, and I claim the rights of the biological mother of McKenzie Roberson, and Cameron Roberson and she was born on

December 14, 2009 and Cameron was born on January 20, 2011. I accuse my husband Ken Roberson for negligence because he left harm to the kid, he left keys to the kids.

Jim Wilcox, Member of the Public said we have a position posted for the Active

Transportation Coordinator. Good job on that and I am a member of the Association of Bicycle and Pedestrian Planners, and I posted that on their site and I put in a really good word for the City of Las Cruces and how great it is to work with the council and the other people who are employed here. As far as that position I recommend that you include a non-voting community member and that person should be not me. It could be somebody in our community that is involved in bicycle and pedestrian transportation, and it would offer insights and credibility, and I recommend the head of the board chair of VeloCruces which is Donald Wilson. He is a native of the city, and he has a background in administration, and he is familiar with EEO. That would be somebody I recommend that you put on your committee they don’t have to be a voting member. Secondly, I am also happy to say that we have a weed ordinance that has been tendered, and I would just like to just indulge you a little bit because I won’t be here when the discussion happens, I am going to be out of the area. So it is really great because I talked to Officer Roach, he did a great job in looking at his direct reports who are out in the field and asked them what they thought and that is a really good sign of a manager to do that and it lists eight weeds and when you list those weeds and if it should be passed, when you list those weeds put a link to the picture so that people would know and I would also recommend you show also pictures of the things that we want to see. The native plants that people could plant because that is like the carrot also and you can also educate people at the Farmers Market, and I recommend that you talk to the Native Plant Society of which I am a member also.

They have insight into the details about this as far as which plants you should have, be encouraging people to plant in our area. And they will get the word out also, help get the word out about the weeds that we don’t want to see. So, it is going to take a little bit of education process, get a table down at the Farmers Market. You can have the weeds out there and have them identify which ones are good and which ones aren’t. That would be kind of fun and then finally just a little hint about something or a suggestion. The current grass height is recommended around four inches. I think it is a little short. I was out there cutting my grass the other day and I was like I got my ruler out there you know so I recommend something around six inches. Well, they say we don’t want the vermin to hide under the grass. Well, there is already bushes and stuff that cover huge areas of yards that go right down to the ground so I think six inches you would still be able to see those vermin running around your front yard.

Doris Buchmann, Member of the Public said I am a resident of 422 East May Avenue.

I want to speak about all the action that is happening in our street and many people know drug dealing, there is a lot of stuff, the sites are used as dump sites, fires, and all of that. My question is very simple. Why is it so difficult to get a camera on the corner where the main action on the side of the daycare in San Pedro would be put.

We once had it there and the activity went down, and I was told by the police it is not up to them to decide where those cameras are. The argument is often that the camera is against the privacy policies and all of that and if you were to go out and ask the people in our streets, I am pretty sure that 99% would be for the camera because of the impact all of that has in our street. There are certain times when certain cars in the night are driving down and the activity is very high, people are coming from everywhere and they are throwing stuff in that black truck and it has a side car that is always accompanying this truck and then they leave again and everybody in the street knows that these are cartel people and I don’t know, I am not a professional I

am just living right there and it is very hard to live there and every night to listen to how bad it gets and I just wanted to throw in the question about the police camera.

These are the ones that they have on the Walmart properties you know?

4. READ CLOSED MEETING STATEMENT 4.1 READ AUGUST 18, 2025 CLOSED MEETING STATEMENT INTO THE

RECORD. The Las Cruces City Council met in closed session and only discussed those limited items as stated in the posted notice:

1. To discuss the Opioid Litigation update regarding Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy and Sackler Settlement(s), which is closed pursuant to NMSA 1978, Section

10-15-1H(7).

2. To discuss pending litigation regarding the Malissa Lea Ronquillo, Personal

Representative of the Wrongful Death Estate of Connie Polanco v. City of Las

Cruces, ET,AL., Cause No. D-307-cv-2025-630, which is closed pursuant to

NMSA 1978, Section 10-15-1H(7).

3. To discuss pending litigation regarding Brandon Barron, Yolanda Mireles,

Manuel Salcedo Contreras, and Lorenzo Mireles, as next friend of D.B., a minor v. City of Las Cruces, et al., Cause No. D-307-cv-2025-2217. Which is closed pursuant to NMSA 1978, Section 10-115-1H(7).

4. To discuss pending litigation regarding Paulette Eze and Pamela Eze

Sylvestre, as Personal Representatives of the Estate of Presley Eze v. City of

Las Cruces, et al., Cause No. D-307-cv-2023-699 (consolidated with D-307-cv-

2023-1137), which is closed pursuant to NMSA 1978, Section 10-15-1H(7).

5. ACCEPTANCE OF AGENDA Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by Councilor Johana Bencomo, to accept the agenda as presented.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Becky Corran

SECONDER: Councilor Johana Bencomo

AYES: Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, Councilor William Mattiace,

Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Johana Bencomo, and Councilor Becky

Corran

6. CITY COUNCIL MINUTES 6.1 WORK SESSION OF JULY 28, 2025.

7. RESOLUTION(S) AND/OR ORDINANCE(S) FOR CONSENT AGENDA 7.1 RESOLUTION NO. 26-023: A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY OF

LAS CRUCES (CITY) TO ACCEPT VARIOUS BUDGET ADJUSTMENTS

FOR VARIOUS CITY DEPARTMENTS THROUGH AN AMENDMENT TO

THE CITY’S ADOPTED FISCAL YEAR (FY) 2025-26 BUDGET. 7.2 RESOLUTION NO. 26-024: A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE LAS

CRUCES FIRE DEPARTMENT TO DONATE 44 SELF-DONATED

CONTAINED BREATHING APPARATUSES FOR USE BY THE MESILLA

FIRE DEPARTMENT AND MOUNTAINAIR FIRE AND RESCUE

DEPARTMENT.

8. RESOLUTION(S) AND/OR ORDINANCE(S) FOR DISCUSSION 8.1 RESOLUTION NO. 26-025: A RESOLUTION ADOPTING A TWO-YEAR

FUNDING STRATEGY FOR USE OF THE OPIOID SETTLEMENT FUNDS TO

ADDRESS THE HARMS OF THE OPIOID CRISIS. Barbara Bencomo, Chief Administrative Officer gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran said I know that there is a lot of money going to prevention and I just want to make sure that we don’t do DARE of the 80’s anymore. I know everyone has agreed upon this but I just want to once again put it out there that this is oriented towards evidence based contemporary methods in our approach to prevention because I know that was a big misstep of prior public health initiative, so I just want to again reiterate. I trust that what the folks who are administering this are thinking about that in that context of evidence but specifically to the question of what the process is I was wondering what the role of the committee is and how it relates to the RFP? I do see that there is a lot of contracted work. I would like for the Opioid Settlement

Advisory Committee that is full of professionals who do this work to be engaged in the future but I also don’t want them to be excluded from RFPs so I think that and I don’t know how that will work and I think that’s not something for us to micro manage and I don’t think from here but I just sort of want to speak to I hope that the process is really transparent which it sounds that there is a really strong plan to have that process be transparent but also to engage the folks who know the most about this to help support the process and so I just want to speak to appreciating that transparency and also just getting clarity on what the role of the council will be specifically in those things versus the RFPs and I know the city has very high standards by which we issue money. I am confident that we will go through those types of processes but I am hoping you can talk a little bit more about that?

Barbara Bencomo said with respect to the prevention efforts and concerns about the kinds of programming that we are talking about, I know that we are talking about a revised program called Keeping It Real, this is the one that the Police Department would like to launch as an option for the public schools. There is currently a pilot program going on right now with two schools in LCPS but the Police Department would like to train officers to be able to teach that curriculum which I understand is evidence based, again as an option in the public schools and I know that Lt. Wiitala helped to draft the proposal for what this will look like over the next two years and I know she will be happy to speak to that if you want more detail on that. Regarding your second question on the Opioid Settlement Advisory Council and their role. We absolutely want to make sure that we both engage them for their expertise but also allow them to have the opportunity to make proposals with whatever organizations that they might be working with. With respect to the RFP and the grant, that would be very administrative focused in terms of how we develop those requirements and get them out there. We are anticipating that on the Evaluation Committee, which would be from both the city and the county, that we could have one external subject matter

expert and obviously somebody not connected with anyone making proposals. We do also anticipate that the members of the advisory council are going to be very heavily involved as we develop the reporting structure for the expenditures, the evaluation of efficacy of expenditures, ensuring that the outcomes are those that we intended. They certainly have a very strong role in that part of the process on an ongoing basis as well.

Councilor Corran asked so the evaluation work that is included in this will be contracted out or that will be? Jamie is shaking her head, I was just curious what the role was. I wouldn’t want us to be like, oh we have a process, and we enlisted all of the experts to help us develop this and then none of these experts can actually participate in the work because I think there are a lot of good folks contributing who work with different agencies.

Councilor Bencomo said I am still unclear about the joint part of this effort. So, if someone wants to submit an RFP for the funds, is there going to be two different RFP processes, just one? Is there actually two pots of money and not really one?

Barbara Bencomo said we do have our own funds that have come to us at the city and we have them set aside. The county has received their own pot of funds as well so we do anticipate that we will have two coordinated processes. The county will probably do an RFP process. As the city we will probably do a grant process similar to what we did for other funds like our ARPA community funds for example. We certainly have not had a joint effort of this kind before, so we are sort of working our way through that and what it looks like. One of the important steps to that though is the coordination of our grants team and the city’s procurement team in which we have already had some initial meetings on how this could be structured. Also, the joint preproposal conference so that we get the same message out to the community because I very much anticipate that we will get some of those same questions. It is very possible that both the city and county will want to fund some of the same activities. So, we definitely don’t want it to be an onerous process, burdensome for the community providers so I anticipate as we get proposals and jointly evaluate them between the city and the county that there might be some future consideration of pooling funds in certain ways that we don’t have multiple ways that have multiple contracts for the same services but then again that is sort of yet to be determined as we receive proposals and in that coordinated effort to determine how we are going to spend those funds. So, I can’t answer exactly right now but I can tell you that there are a lot of effort to make this a coordinated effort so that we don’t have too many administrative cost associated with these funds going out to the community and certainly that we don’t duplicate services unless we intend to. You know really beef up programming in a certain area.

Councilor Bencomo asked since last Work Session I am curious about exploring and again I don’t know given anti-donation, I don’t know even if this money is tied to that or not actually now that I think about it, it is not, right? I am curious about exploring opportunities of a Naloxone Community Center. Instead of having local organizations who are often utilizers Naloxone have to go through a grant writing process, an RFP process, and just using funds for first responders. Can we explore that? Can we

explore some sort of community driven Naloxone Center? An easier route for harm reductions than some kind of other kind of programming that other service providers may have. Naloxone feels very low level.

Jamie Michaels, County Health and Human Services Department asked are you talking about purchasing Naloxone and giving it out to organizations so that they can either use it or distribute it to people they serve?

Councilor Bencomo said yes.

Jamie Michaels said we are already doing that with both state and county funding, and we will continue to do that with the Opioid Settlement Funds, it is in the proposal for County Commission to approve that if we continue to get state funding, we will continue to do that. So right now, that is what is happening. We purchase large amounts twice a year and give them out to organizations and ask them to distribute them on our behalf so it is not an anti-donation, and I know that there is funding that

Barbara put in the proposal for you all. It would go to first responders and law enforcement and sometimes first responders and law enforcement distribute out to the public so we are talking about how to synergize those purchases so we get the biggest bang for the buck if there is efficiencies in buying bulk but we will and you are right that is one of the easiest and most effective things to do is get Naloxone out.

Councilor Bencomo said that is really great to hear. Thank you for educating me on that and for the public and I think Barbara and for Chief as much as I think that we can do that for the city, right like the first responders be the distributors of that for organizations that often use Naloxone. I think that is much faster harm reduction then having to go through a bureaucratic grant process to apply for Naloxone.

Barbara Bencomo said I didn’t mean to leave out Chief Daniels and Chief Story, but they actually proposed the funds that are in your resolution today for Naloxone. I didn’t know if they wanted to speak to that distribution or purchasing or programing at all, but I wanted to give you that opportunity.

Councilor Bencomo said I had similar concerns about the 175 set aside for the substance use prevention programming in schools. I have similar reservations about

DARE curriculum. I am sorry and I think even when I think about the name of it think I would tell my 17-year-old and she would just cringe at me, Keeping It Real, really? Is this money able to explore other programing? Also, I think another tension I am having is that we are telling the schools what kind of curriculum to adopt and I know it’s an option but are we able to provide a menu of options that they think works to the population?

Barbara Bencomo said with respect to the funding, so in the resolution we have allocated the funds for the purpose of substance use prevention programing to be administered by Las Cruces Police Department and I expect Lt. Wiitala and others will join in to say what will formulate their thought process as to where to go with that with respect to the public schools I think that we have been very careful to say that this would be an option for them. They have a lot of different options at the schools for the

different levels, elementary, middle school, and high school for different prevention programming which is great but they certainly have schools where there are gaps or maybe that particular school would want a particular type of programming and that is why we want to make sure that we can bring that forward as an option but I will let Lt.

Wiitala add to that.

Lt. Joy Wiitala, Police Department said yes full transparency, what we are looking at right now is the Keeping it Real curriculum and I can understand that a 17-year-old would find that very cringey. With that curriculum it is more so focused on the elementary schools which when we are taking a look at our community in particular tends to be when we are thinking prevention kid-wise where we want to address a lot of the concerns that we have seen in the last couple of years. Again, full transparency, yes it is prior DARE programming, changed new curriculum and evidence based. With that said you are exactly right. Would it be beneficial for every school? Potentially not but this is where it is going to be working in collaboration with those schools to say, hey this is an option that you have, it is available to you if you feel that it would be best served within your school and those students it is available.

However, there are going to be some schools that are like no we would like to go with a different program. Again, DARE of the old days was a lot of scare tactic for lack of a better word is what I would say. This curriculum is entirely changed, it’s entirely different. It is no longer that scare tactic. It is more in teaching kids’ choices and responsibility and how to make healthy choices and so getting away from the say no to drugs emphasis and really again looking at teaching kids critical thinking abilities.

Again, the way that is was structured in the past we would not be doing it that way. It could be an option of like this teacher feels like it would be beneficial to this class, great. In the past it would be like no, we are hitting the whole school and this is what we are doing. No, we realize that each classroom has different dynamics so it really would be working with the actual individual schools to say what is it that you need.

With that this curriculum also comes with an evaluation piece and so it would be taking a look at what the students are learning, having the officers evaluated by the teachers that are overseeing that and again seeing what is working if it is or if it is not.

Councilor Bencomo asked the instructors are officers?

Lt. Joy Wiitala said the way that we are looking at it right now is that we would have the instructors as officers however they can also be firefighters. They can be retired officers. The way that we currently want to structure it is that we understand that most officers have their other responsibilities, but this would be an additional sign-on but with that said there would be an assessment process. So, in other words I am not just going to say like you want to come do this, let’s do this. What we would want to do is we want to come up with an assessment process to actually see who is qualified, after that they would have to receive the training. It is an intensive training where it ends up being two weeks. You can’t teach an officer to be necessarily a teacher in two weeks, however you can teach them the basis of the curriculum, and I would like to think through the assessment process you are going to have the officers who are invested in working with their community and with the teachers to see a difference.

Councilor Mattiace asked if you could bring up page 9? On the child welfare, can you

explain more on the children and youth involved with the justice or care system, maybe more of an explanation and detail on that?

Jamie Michaels said this is kind of a general terminology for children who may be in the juvenile justice system or in the child protective services system. So, any child that is system involved in either of those two areas we would look at how to develop services for that child or that child and their family.

Councilor Mattiace asked parent involvement with this program with the children?

Jamie Michaels said if they are in the care system there is probably some reason why they are in the home with their parents so we would work with CYFD and other early childhood providers in the community to provide the type of services that they need in the home or that the family needs knowing that the root cause of a lot of this is substance use for the parents.

Juan Garcia, Member of the Public said Leticia, myself, and a few others and we met with a couple of the council on the advocating for this Keeping it Real and I want to say thank you and I hope you support it. I think it is a good effort, particularly with a high juvenile crime in Las Cruces and this is what prompted us to get started on this.

So again, I hope you support it, and I hope you vote for it.

Leticia Sanchez Freeman, Member of the Public said I have been working with Juan and LCPS since probably October to try to get DARE into the public-school systems.

The National Guard is teaching it as Barbara mentioned. They are actually teaching it at Jornada Elementary and MacArthur Elementary. I just wanted to say thank you to

Barbara, thank you to Chief Story and Lt. Wiitala. Thank you so much for supporting this. I think it is a great effort. No, it is not the old DARE. It is a new program. It is called Keeping It Real. It is primarily structured for fifth graders, but Juan and I met with folks from Deming, they are teaching it in Deming, police officers from Silver City.

I am working with Sgt. Robles who works for Otero County, they are actually having their DARE conference this week in Ruidoso and I am planning to meet with

Representative Dow at 4:30 today because I am also hoping that we can get funds to actually put together a DOT which is a DARE Officer Training course here locally so instead of sending your police officers to Oklahoma or Missouri where they typically have the classes why not do one here? Because Sgt. Robles who is with Otero

County already has 3 officers that are certified to teach. The only thing they need to do now is do shadow training for a course somewhere and then they will be ready to teach it locally so if we could get funding for that I think it would be great.

Roberto Lozano, Member of the Public said I am the Chief of Educational Equity and

Support Programs. I first wanted to thank you for your support in the allocation of funding that hopefully will be approved. As mentioned by Barbara we do have SCL programming across our schools and in elementary, middle and high school so that will greatly help us in maintaining what we have and hopefully even getting better of what we offer to our schools. Regarding the Keeping It Real program, we have had several meetings with Mr. Garcia and Leticia and also members of the Police

Department around that. There are some promising statistics around the program.

However, how Barbara mentioned the stance that we are taking is that it will only be option. I don’t think we will ever get back to how we were back in the day how every fifth grader received it. We are working with the Up Coalition here in Las Cruces and they are helping us develop a menu of options per se and really looking at the needs of the school. So, I just wanted to emphasize those points and thank you again for the support and I look forward to the continued effort and collaboration.

Amy Himelright, Member of the Public said I am the Director of Academic Counseling and Behavioral Health for Las Cruces Public Schools and the only thing I would like to add is that we really have worked in positive partnership with our school resource officers we appreciate them tremendously while we do have programming in the schools, there are gaps and so it most certainly would be helpful to us to bring in

LCPD as a community partner to help us ensure that there is increase coverage of drug, alcohol, tobacco prevention at every grade level.

Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by Councilor Johana Bencomo, to

Approve Resolution No. 26-025

ABSENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores 8.2 RESOLUTION NO. 26-026: A RESOLUTION APPROVING A NUISANCE,

SUBSTANDARD DWELLING OR STRUCTURE IN NEED OF ABATEMENT

AT 414 EAST MAY AVENUE WITHIN THE CITY LIMITS OF LAS CRUCES,

NEW MEXICO, SO RUINED, DAMAGED, AND DILAPIDATED AS TO BE A

MENACE TO THE PUBLIC COMFORT, HEALTH, PEACE, OR SAFETY AND

THAT IS REQUIRED TO BE REMOVED. Chris Faivre, Community Development Director gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran said first I just want to say this stinks. This situation stinks, and also, we need to be doing things like this and also it’s a bad situation that we have to deal with. I don’t know how connected they are but I really hope that whatever happens with the contractor we are really clear about the safety of the existing structure and make sure that the primary thing that they are paying attention to. Other issues I understand, salvaging things, whatever might matter but I think making sure that we take care of the person whose existing structure is really critical but this also has me thinking, I looked through the documents where we were sending notices to someone who had passed away like many years before and the documents that exist and it just made me think that perhaps there is some way that we can find, it is the first week of school, I am going to digress a tiny bit. If we have students that are not showing up, seem to be struggling with something we do this like crazy early intervention where we have other people call them. We send them the things. We do a whole bunch of things to try to get, those students to come back to class and succeed in our classroom. That is part of our ethos at the community college. This story makes me feel like can we do something? I don’t know what it would look like but an early alert

system where we say this house, the person who owned this house died or the family cannot afford it. Like something that puts a flag in all of our system so that we are communicating clearly across the board and not waiting until the person has been gone for many years and it has been neglected, and people are lighting it on fire and it’s falling and the neighbor is complaining all the time. I think we could do better, I guess that is what I would ask and I wonder if there is some way that we can create a kind of property flag. We have nuisance abatement and that is, I am really looking forward to us addressing that but I think I feel like a little bit more upstream. Maybe there is some indicators that we could use to prevent this type of situation. I don’t know if you have any ideas? That is a very abstract idea. I just feels like this is an acute situation that should have been prevented at a myriad of places. I don’t know if this is incumbent on us to address this? It might not be but I would like us to if we can.

Chris Faivre said let me first start by saying I will be coming to a Work Session the end of September to sort of lay out a more aggressive approach to dealing with some properties so some of that will actually be demonstrating some of the things that we are doing but ultimately what it comes down to is my department working very closely with codes to identify those properties and potential ownership issues as soon as they come on our radar. So, what was are doing while codes is out there and they identify a property that potentially is vacant, early, early in the process we can try and identify the owner and ultimately prevent something like this from happening. This is a very unique situation in that it has been forty years and even when the owner passed away back then there was no legal decedent so we really would have never had a process to reach out to somebody else but again that is a very unique situation. In most cases we have been doing a lot of research on the properties that are on the NAT list on all different levels from the extreme cases all the way down to the ones at the bottom that we are trying prevent to get to that point and we are able to usually identify an owner through a variety of processes and so we are starting to document that process and we are having staff in Community Development work closer with codes. We do have some GIS resources that we are putting into this that we will be demoing in that

September meeting that we will kind of how we are flagging these properties and getting staff to be more aware of them early on so that we can ultimately prevent this from happening. There are several more properties that are out there just not in the

Historic District but around the city that are they are going to meet this same fate where there is no owner. We have done everything that we can to identify and ultimately, we are probably going to have to push forward with demo but once we get that process kind of back to baseline then we can sort of be more proactive as these properties do come up. That is the ultimate goal, and we can definitely discuss more of that at the September Work Session.

Councilor Mattiace asked I had some questions on abandoned buildings particularly from businesses, and is there anything when a business just vacates and leaves? It just gets really deteriorated. It just gets pretty bad, the property around it is not handled. Sometimes they leave signage that could be harmful that people could harm themselves on it. How does the ordinance cover some of these abandoned businesses, particularly El Paseo? I think of Church’s Chicken, that is kind of unsightly and then the theater. I think it is going to the Las Cruces Boys and Girls Club but is that like the graffiti capital of the world? I mean that has gotten pretty ugly. How do

you address that or control that?

Chris Faivre said that is again something we can discuss more in depth in September but to your point the council has adopted the International Property Maintenance

Code that does set standards for what buildings need to be when they are vacant and what level they need to be maintained at. Again, that is going to be more cooperation between Community Development and Codes to identify those early on and work with those owners to address that before it becomes an issue or it has become an issue to make them bring that property up to code. So that is something that we are working on now. It hasn’t it been a real point of emphasis historically so we are trying to remedy a lot of those situations and kind of get everybody up to speed and then ultimately there are some other alternatives to sort of move forward and deal with vacant properties and buildings sort of in the long term and we can discuss other options that are available but again it really just gets back to working with the resources we have now and enforcing the code that is already been adopted and so we are using staff on the building official and some of our staff there and go out and identify some of these. Meet with the owners, let them know what the expectation is. I actually just spoke with the owner of sort of an abandoned commercial property on

Friday and let them know that we are trying to move this forward and the comment was made that we have been sitting vacant for years and I was like yea I know that is our bad but now we are trying to fix that and move that forward and deal with those issues. We are trying to be a little bit more aggressive in our approach to identify them earlier on than letting them get to this point.

Councilor McClure said I just want to add that as I have been going to the Historic

Preservation Committee meetings I am really actually optimistic about it given that there is a watch list, a new chair, that we have a new Historic Preservation Specialist and I think everyone is really engaged. A lot of the push back we got was why didn’t we take care of this 5/10 years ago so at this point this is the time to start. None of us were here, some of us were here 10/15 years ago but a lot of times the best place to start as yesterday, but second best is now. I am just really optimistic. I just put it on my agenda to come on Wednesday again and to meet the new 3 preservation committee members and I just think that we now are kind of having a new focus for this.

Councilor Bencomo asked I totally agree. It kind of seems that we keep having this conversation about why didn’t they do something about this 15/20 years ago and for the folks who have sort of gotten used to well it has just always been abandoned and empty, why now? It is because I don’t know but you have a council that is paying very close attention now, I guess and we want to do something about it. Obviously, this particular property had to go through a historic preservation process? That is not going to happen every time obviously but I am curious from the moment of condemnation in September of last year to now what is it that takes this long to get to where we are given the deterioration of the property and I say this because I can think of at least three properties in District 4 that look very similar to this one?

Chris Faivre said I think there was a couple of things specific to this property that made it take a little bit longer, but I will admit it probably should have taken this long.

The first one was we were trying to identify potential owners because there was the thought that maybe there was a potential buyer so we thought if we could find somebody who was a legitimate heir and connect them with somebody that wanted to buy it, we were trying to give that process a little bit long and we worked with Brad and his staff to try to identify that but ultimately there just wasn’t any options on that path. The second reason is because it is located within the Historic District it requires a structural report in order to do the demo so we had to bring on a structural engineer to go in and do the analysis and provide us a report that basically says that this property needs to be demoed, further complicating the issue was the fact that it was attached by a party wall to another property so we were having to make sure that whatever we were looking at was going to take her property into consideration because what we kept hearing was you are not protecting a historic property, you are trying to demo it and to some extent yes, that is an argument but now we are trying to preserve the other historic property next door so we wanted to make sure we are doing everything we could to get all the information we needed specifically about the wall and we have the building official out there and fire and codes and everybody was out there up on the roof of the other property looking to make sure that we knew what the conditions were before we moved forward so it did take a little bit longer. Other properties that are not located within the Historic District won’t take the same amount of time but hopefully you know the plan is to move a lot quicker on these where we identify them. We try to find an owner and if we have to go in and abate the situation and then lien the property and then move forward with other remedies, we are doing that in a more timely manner.

Doris Buchmann, Member of the Public said 422 East May, thank you for the opportunity again. I am so thankful for what he did and Mr. Milo and the years that I went through and the last four years, especially the last three years when I tell people about this they are in absolutely unbelief. They want me to move away and all these kind of things. Waking up to fire a few feet away from where you are sleeping, getting knocked out from the Fire Department out of the house. Standing in the smoke of melting bathtub in plastic covering the whole air. As I said, the distress through the night because the people are still, just a few days ago they moved in again in this property, 414 with a mattress. I am just saying. In the meantime, it is used as a dump site. The whole people that do not have trash bins, they are bringing their trash now to this property and it is just rising to the top of the building. There is so many years of living in this stress that I am super, super thankful that it looks like it is not the only thing that is going to change, the whole neighbors, everyone is giving up. The police are coming but it is the same on the next day, and the next day and the next day and the next day it is the same no matter how much you call and this man here actually made the difference.

Belinda Robertson, Member of the Public said I want to ask a question. How much is the cost to remove the property?

Chris Faivre said we are soliciting bids right now and quite frankly we have bids that came in anywhere from low $30’s to over $100,000 so we are trying to sort through.

Obviously, we have a limited budget for the NAT program so that is what we are looking for right now but we haven’t settled on a particular contractor yet.

Belinda Robertson asked how many properties in this condition are close to this property?

Chris Faivre said specifically close to this property I don’t have an exact amount but there are numerous properties I would say within the Historic District alone. I ran a report the other day I would say there is about 20 properties in various levels on the

NAT list within the Historic District.

Belinda Roberson asked the properties have an owner? Or no owner? You mentioned there are about 20 properties next to this property but this property don’t have an owner, the other properties have an owner or abandoned like this one?

Mayor Enriquez said there are some that have owners. This is one of those rare situations where there is no legal owner but the majority of them do, it just take litigation, legal action to determine where they are at and who is the rightful owner.

Looking forward to the Work Session. You can address some of those issues. I think that is already mapped out to where they are at and share that information. You know

I do agree and I am glad council is looking at this because you know the procedure/process has been hot and cold throughout the years but this is an opportunity to really get some policy and some incentives for some funding for this program so that we can start really cleaning up Las Cruces and making it a better community and safer community.

Approve Resolution No. 26-026.

ABSENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores 8.3 RESOLUTION NO. 26-027: A RESOLUTION APPROVING A

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AGREEMENT FOR PHASE THREE (3) OF THE

DOWNTOWN MASTER PLAN WITH PLACEMAKERS, LLC IN AN AMOUNT

NOT TO EXCEED $199,875 INCLUDING APPLICABLE TAXES FOR A

PERIOD OF ONE (1) YEAR, SUBJECT TO APPROVED BUDGET

APPROPRIATIONS (PROCUREMENT NO. 24-25-070). Greg Gonzales, Buyer gave the overhead presentation. Councilor Johana Bencomo moved, seconded by Councilor Becky Corran, to

Approve Resolution No. 26-027.

MOVER: Councilor Johana Bencomo

SECONDER: Councilor Becky Corran

ABSENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores 8.4 RESOLUTION NO. 26-028: A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING AN EXISTING

CONTRACT PURCHASE AGREEMENT WITH ADVANCED NETWORK

MANAGEMENT, INC., OF ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, IN AN AMOUNT

NOT TO EXCEED $250,000 ANNUALLY, PLUS GROSS RECEIPTS TAX,

FOR THE CISCO SMARTNET TELEPHONE SYSTEM, UTILIZING NEW

MEXICO STATE PURCHASING DIVISION STATEWIDE PRICE

AGREEMENT NO.20-00000-21-000010AB, FOR A TERM THROUGH

NOVEMBER 17, 2025, SUBJECT TO APPROVED BUDGET

APPROPRIATIONS (PROCUREMENT NO. 25-26-017). Alysha Zamora Morales, Buyer I gave the overhead presentation. Councilor Becki Graham moved, seconded by Councilor Becky Corran, to

Approve Resolution No. 26-028.

MOVER: Councilor Becki Graham

ABSENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores 8.5 RESOLUTION NO. 26-029: A RESOLUTION TO AWARD CONTRACTS FOR

SECURITY GUARD SERVICES TO SECURITY CONCEPTS, INC. AND

TRANSCENDING TACTICAL, LLC, BOTH OF LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO,

IN A COMBINED AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $3,000,000 ANNUALLY,

PLUS GROSS RECEIPTS TAX FOR A PERIOD OF FIVE (5) YEARS,

SUBJECT TO APPROVED BUDGET APPROPRIATIONS (PROCUREMENT

NO. 24-25-069). Donny Prosise, Purchasing Supervisor gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Becki Graham moved, seconded by Councilor Becky Corran, to

Approve Resolution No. 26-029.

9. BOARD APPOINTMENTS 9.1 Councilor Corran is appointed to be an alternate to the South Central Regional District

Transit Board. 9.2 Councilor Corran appointed Rudy Jaime to the Senior Programs Advisory Board. 9.3

Councilor Flores appointed Marlene Ritts to the Senior Programs Advisory Board. 9.4 JAMES ASHBY Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by Councilor Becki Graham, to appoint James Ashby to the Veterans Advisory Board.

SECONDER: Councilor Becki Graham

ABSENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores 9.5 LUKE KEITH Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by Councilor Johana Bencomo, to appoint Luke Keith to the Veterans Advisory Board.

ABSENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores 9.6 DANIEL ASHBACH Councilor Becki Graham moved, seconded by Councilor Becky Corran, to reappoint Daniel Ashbach to the Veterans Advisory Board.

ABSENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores 9.7 SAM BOTHERN Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by Councilor Becki Graham, to reappoint Sam Bothern to the Veterans Advisory Board.

10. NOTICE OF PROPOSED ORDINANCE(S)

1) There will be no public discussion.

2) A Councilor may ask staff for clarification on the proposed ordinance(s). 10.1 COUNCIL BILL NO. 26-003; ORDINANCE NO. 3095: AN ORDINANCE

REPEALING AND REPLACING CHAPTER 18 - NUISANCES, SECTION 18-1

AND 18-2 OF THE LAS CRUCES MUNICIPAL CODE. Council agreed to bring it forward.

11. CITY COUNCIL MEMBER BOARD REPORTS AND COMMENT 11.1 COUNCILOR MCCLURE None. 11.2 COUNCILOR MATTIACE I just wanted to share with everyone that the El Paso Museum of History, they opened up a Women’s Veterans exhibit, and it was quite impressive in El Paso. I attended it and it was well attended. I remember when I started Honor Flight, we had a difficult challenge to make sure that women were getting recognized as much as men when we are recruiting people to see the World War II Memorial. Things have gone a long way, and a reminder today is that we have the number one baseball team, only because a girl is on the team so I think we all should remember that women play an important part in everything.

The second thing I would like to do is thank Chief Story, the citations happening in the traffic and reading those reports is amazing. It is not too comforting to know that the person that might slam into you in a red light may not have a license but again thank you for the work you are doing on those citations. Maybe you will slow down some people. Maybe you will get some people to register their cars and maybe a few people will stop when the light is red.

11.3 COUNCILOR GRAHAM I would like to start off by thanking Chief Story, also the entire department, for the truly incredible eye-opening Real to Reel Training event that you made possible for us.

Special thanks to Lt. McBride and Attorney Schranler who were our primary instructors that day but also to all of the officers that came and did some really disturbing and believable acting for us in the scenarios. I doubt I am the only one that had trouble sleeping that night and I am not kidding I felt jumpy for the rest of the evening but it was amazing to have just a small glimpse into what your day to day are like and I truly appreciate the effort that it took to coordinate that so many thanks to you and all who participated.

Also, great news from the Las Cruces Community Schools front. Sunrise Elementary is going to be our newest community school. I believe that makes 8 elementary and middle schools that are part of the Community Schools model and just a super brief overview of that. Community School is the idea that you make a school a hub not just for the kids who are attending there but for their families and for the surrounding community. So, it is a true partnership. I’m currently on the Community Schools Board so that is how I got plugged in to this great information. Go Sunrise Coyotes, welcome to the Community Schools partnership life and looking forward to getting out there and meeting everyone.

11.4 COUNCILOR CORRAN I echo the appreciation for Chief Story and Lt. McBride and the attorney who gave us all a bunch of acronyms that I won’t remember anymore. I really appreciate being invited to participate and having the opportunity to spend the morning with you all and all the work that went into making that a great experience I think for us and for the reporters and staff who were there and other folks.

The ASCMV has an official Executive Director position open so thank you for your work on that committee to get that happening. It is a national search, if you just google

ASCMV Executive Director you will see that they are recruiting across the country for the next leadership at the Animal Services Center. I hope that people will spread the word. Some folks in the community have mentioned that they have ideas for people so please do spread that to everyone that you know that might be appropriate and again the search firm that is working on it has searched for animal shelter leaders in municipal government before so they have a lot of experience in terms of attracting people and evaluating that and there will be an opportunity for community input to the candidates that are brought in. I think that is an ongoing and a positive step in the right direction.

I also wanted to welcome all of the new NMSU students, DACC students. Classes start on Wednesday so we will see you around campus and out there in Las Cruces.

Welcome to town if you are new or welcome to the classroom, get some new pens if you are just starting fresh this fall.

The last thing that I wanted to add is that we had a representative from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee here who alluded to the BPAC activities, but tomorrow night the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee will be inviting the community to be at the Dona Ana County Commission Chambers at 5 p.m. and it will be a work session related to in particular thinking about a very pedestrian oriented

Las Cruces and considering active transportation and all that we hope for in that sort of visioning session so I hope folks will consider going to the BPAC tomorrow night at

5 p.m. if that is something that you are particularly interested in. 11.5 COUNCILOR BENCOMO I want to start actually where Councilor Corran ended because I wanted to talk about something slightly similar regarding traffic calming. We did all receive a letter from Las

Esperanzas and the Alameda Depot Neighborhood Association regarding the work they had done to organize around the redesign of Amador/Lohman and sort of how dangerous it is and they even included some points in here about some pedestrians or accident fatalities or accidents and if you think this is important that we get an update on where that is. Yesterday I also received another email from a constituent who lives on Karen Avenue about speeding on that street and so I know I have talked about this before but given that we are headed into conversations about GRT and public safety and pedestrian safety, thinking about exactly the list of traffic calming requests that we have from all over the city. I know of at least four in District 4 but I am sure that my colleagues would have more and so I don’t know if we keep or if

Public Works keep track or codes or whoever keeps track of that list if not I certainly think we should certainly make one if not we can make one and if we do have one

someone could send it to me that would be great. While perhaps citations are up and that’s a good thing, it is clearly a problem across the city, specifically in residential neighborhoods. So, I do think that we need to keep that in the forefront in terms of traffic calming measures.

I also wanted to thank the Police Department, Chief Story, Lt. McBride for the invitation to participate in the Real to Reel Workshop. I am an external processor, so I processed out loud with Peter on his radio show the next morning and sent a very long email to Chief Story and Lt. McBride about a lot of the thoughts I think that they were hoping to certainly challenge us in many ways and I did I felt very challenged, and so I just wanted to say thank you for that and the opportunity to be in community with you all.

Because this amazing baseball team was here, thank you, Mayor I am so glad that they reached out or you invited them. I think it is always nice to start the meeting with something as joyful as that. I am proud of them but it got me thinking about several months ago a gentleman had come here to ask about Los Vaqueros and if we could explore the opportunity of bringing that back and I really wanted to follow up on that and I thought that was a really great idea that a constituent came forth and I would love whether Economic Development or whoever explored the possibility of bringing back that minor league team and I think that sounds like a lot of fun and obviously baseball is an important part of the culture of our community.

11.6 MAYOR ENRIQUEZ Thank you, Chief Story, for the training. It was good. It was challenging. I am going to reach out to that individual that came out and talked about a pro-baseball team in Las

Cruces and it was tried before. I don’t know what happened at that point but again gathering some information. I want to discuss with our Parks Director Steve, we have talked about the ball fields and the upgrades and things that would be needed for things like that so we want to make sure that if we are going to do something like that we need to be committed to sprucing up the ball fields not only for a pro team but for these 12 year olds. We will see, instead of being the traveling team we can be the host team and people can come in and spend money in Las Cruces and help our

GRT and help us as a community but I always look at as opportunities for kids that are kind of in the middle and don’t get an opportunity to travel and this way competition comes to them and they just get better and they will flourish and someday be on that pro-team from here in Las Cruces. That is the hope and vision for our future.

The New Mexico legislators are here in town. I was there earlier with the New Mexico

Water and Natural Resource Committee and on Wednesday the New Mexico Finance

Committee will be here. We will be welcoming all of our legislators to the city and sharing with them updates of what is going on in the city and some of the needs that we have.

12. CITY MANAGER REPORT

12.1 IKANI TAUMOEPEAU I would love to start off and ask our accounting team to please come down to the front. Exciting news that we announce typically at this time our Annual

Comprehensive Financial Report also known as ACFR for the fiscal year ended June

30, 2024, and qualifies for GFOA Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in financial reporting. We are currently undergoing our 2025 end of year, that is currently happening right now, and the Certificate of Achievement is the highest form of recognition and governmental accounting for financial reporting and its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by government and its management.

Josie Trevino, Comptroller said this award is not just about numbers and compliance.

It is about our people who pour their experience and their time into making sure our financial reporting is all transparent, accurate and worthy of public trust. The work often goes unseen but today we shine a light on it. To the entire team, thank you for your commitment to excellence. You set a standard that reflects the very best of public service and I am proud to celebrate this achievement with you, thank you.

Ikani Taumoepeau said moving forward, Communications, they continue to receive awards. NATOA which is known for the National Associations of Telecoms Officers and Advisors. This is a huge award to even be a finalist on this and so they have been named a finalist for 6 awards under this program. We also received one honorable mention. Finalists include videos for projects and programs in Utilities, Public Works,

Quality of Life, Economic Development, and Human Resources. So, we have staff currently there. That is why they are not here. So, our Technical Ops Manager, Adrian

Guzman and Media Production Specialist Nathaniel Bidding will be attending and is currently at the annual conference this week with the winners and will be formally announced later this week so we will keep you posted on that.

For VLC, Visit Las Cruces works to create strong relationships with travel and outdoor writers which has resulted in Las Cruces being nominated for the USA Today Best

Ten Cities to Visit for Fall. Also, the Mesilla Valley Corn Maze has been nominated for

Best Corn Maze and in Mesilla Dia De Los Muertos event has been nominated for one of the Best Fall Festivals. You can vote every day until September 8th. To vote go to tenbest.usatoday.com. As of Friday, Las Cruces was ranked 12th out of 20 so keep the votes coming.

I wanted to pivot a bit, so Carl Clark is our Assistant Director at joint Utilities, and I will have him come up and share a few updates on our lead and copper.

Carl Clark, Assistant Utilities Director said I am here to give you an update on the

Lead and Copper project that we have going on right now. Recently there was a letter written to the Environmental Protection Agency as to the legitimacy of the New

Mexico Environmental Department’s primacy over the lead and copper. Basically, a primacy really entails enforcement of the Lead and Copper Rule. The Environment

Department wrote back to the public and stated that they are correct. The New

Mexico Environment Division does not have primacy. Basically, they cannot enforce anything. However, the EPA went on to state that the New Mexico Environment

Division has oversight of the lead and copper in New Mexico as well as providing

technical support and guidance to public water systems which Las Cruces Utilities is the public water systems. So basically, what they are saying is that New Mexico

Environment Division really is to work with us and give us direction as to how it is supposed to go. They work directly with the EPA. So, this just leads us to other questions that have been stated that NMED doesn’t have primacy and that we should not be going to them, that is incorrect. So, I just want to make that statement.

Also, there was an opportunity to email the Environment Division, the New Mexico

Environment Division in regard to our new customer connection service lines. So we are supposed to be updating a new customers with the type of service line materials that they have and basically what we did was we took our form and we sent it over to

Environment Division and had them review it and we just got back information of what we did and what we have been doing is correct and so I just want to make that statement clear. We are notifying our customers as new customers as they come in, we let them know what the materials are. The way we see it and that is the process, and we also keep records of all of that, so we are complying with that aspect. It has been approved by the Environment Division and when I say the Environment Division

I mean New Mexico Environment Division.

Also, there was a statement about some disappearance of data over the weekend.

Number one we had some issues with Google and Edge in regard to the map and it wasn’t downloading appropriately. So that is correct but that has been taken care of as of Monday morning, today. In addition, we have changed the way we are providing the inventory data. It was very confusing in regard to the inventory data and the inventory criteria. We were updating it constantly so what we once printed has changed and that has created confusion with everybody and so we have stopped doing that now. We are required to update the map or the inventory information annually and that is what we are going to be doing, providing it annually because on this daily or weekly basis it just provides too much confusion for everybody. So, we are going to follow through with what the Environment Division says is okay and what the EPA says as written rule and we are going to update annually.

Basically inventory criteria is the description of the material, it could be lead, it could be unknown material, it could be plastic, it could be GRR which galvanized required replacement and so it is one of those items that we mark on the form and so that is the inventory criteria and that is what is causing confusion because we go out with staff and they check the boxes and they come back with the information and we update the maps and so it changed from yesterday. We are not hiding anything we are updating and that is the statement I want to make. We are stopping that. We are going to do it annually as required and move forward from this point on. We are still waiting for our funding to come free. We did receive a large amount of grant money that we will be moving with in order to do the full inventory. We will be hiring a consultant that is familiar with this process. They will be the lead on this, and we will be just as transparent as possible. The only thing we are guilty is of poor records in regard to the replacement of copper lines throughout the city. Unfortunately, that happened prior to me coming to Utilities. So, it has been a long time that these copper lines once out there and are now gone and unfortunately, we just didn’t have a very good method of managing the data set. That is where we have failed to do but we are going to be creating a new plan with this new consultant and that report will be

available to the public as well as the EPA for history. That is what I can guarantee on that. Once I get a hold of the money as usual, I move quickly with my projects. If you remember the ARPA funding, the $1.3 million I spent it in six months. So this will be just as fast. We are going to move through this quickly and we are going to get this accomplished and have a nice report in the end. Basically, I have a feeling that it is going to say that we were always in compliance. We don’t have a lead issue here in this city, we never have. I grew up here. I have been drinking the water for 57 years now. That is really what I have to report right now.

Ikani Taumoepeau said Quality of Life, Public Art Director Ceci Vasconcellos spoke about public art on KTSM Chanel 9 News, Mas Las Cruces. The program has been as seen several views on the YouTube Chanel so if you haven’t seen it go check it out.

Last but not least from the same department, our first GO Bond related public art project was installed at Fire Station 1, on Thursday morning on August 14th. It is titled

United in Service by Jason Butler. Jason says that he gave it that name because it not only describes the work of all firefighters, but it was also an honor for him to unite with them to make this piece of art. The firefighter who came out to the station to look at it loved it. Once we close out the contract, we will schedule a dedication unveiling ceremony.

For Parks and Recreation, Keep Las Cruces Beautiful will host a mid-week dumpster day on Wednesday August 20 from 2-6 p.m. to help residents dispose of the trash at three locations. East Mesa Rec Center, Frank O’Brien Papen Center and Young Park.

Additionally join us for our free family friendly movie in the park event on Friday,

August 23rd at Amador Live. The movie will be Disney’s Moana II which was released in late 2024. Don’t miss the next Music in the Park concert on Sunday, August 24 at

Young Park from 7-9 p.m. The night kicks off with Flat Blacks, a band known for the high energy classic rock performance that blends heavy riffs with melodies and hooks.

They will be followed by Schilling and Company who will bring their fun and entertaining style to the stage.

13. ADJOURNMENT 13.1 Councilor Becki Graham moved, seconded by Councilor Becky Corran, to adjourn at 3:32 p.m.

Mayor

City Clerk