Work Session Meeting June 23, 2025

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, June 23, 2025 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

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

Councilor William Mattiace

ABSENT: Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, and Councilor Cassie McClure

1. JOBS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Sarah Raney, One Stop Coordinator for the Region Job Center New Mexico presented Jobs of the Week.

2. PETS OF THE WEEK 2.1 Carol Nielson, Digital Content Specialist for Animal Services Center of the Mesilla

Valley presented Pets of the Week.

3. AGENDA ITEM 3.1 A REVIEW OF THE STRATEGIES, GOALS, SETTINGS, AND

POPULATIONS RECOMMENDED BY THE OPIOID SETTLEMENT

ADVISORY COUNCIL IN ORDER TO DEVELOP ALLOWABLE

EXPENDITURE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR OPIOID SETTLEMENT FUNDS. Barbara Bencomo, Chief Administrative Officer gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Flores said I too was concerned to see that the Police Department and the

Fire Department to not see an active participation in schools, Councilor Graham and I serve on the community schools board and community to me I don’t know if you have a caveat or something, a prohibition or whatever to not work with the schools but I know that when my boys were in elementary school there was a program that the

Police Department put on but I can’t remember, it’s been like fifty years ago, I can’t

remember what it was called, but they would come home with things and then at dinner time they would talk about it or talk to their friends about it and it was about staying away from drugs and alcohol and it became something that the parents would talk about at the PTA meetings and all that. So, is there any way for this group to work with our community, especially our community schools, who really reach out to all corners of our county?

Barbara Bencomo said thank you for the input, and no, there is no prohibition on working with the schools on this sort of thing. One of the things that the advisory council took into consideration is whether there were other funding sources already funding some of those programs in different settings and that was I believe one of the considerations. The other one is, for example, in the community setting, the prevention programs could incorporate not just the students or the youth, children and the youth, but their families as well. So, they are just different settings that allow for different types of programing similarly in the child welfare setting, for example. There are a number of ways to address prevention programs, there’s nothing that stipulates that we cannot work with the schools and that’s why it’s an allowable setting and that’s why I included it as a recommendation.

Councilor Flores asked but how is it going to be implemented? Are you going to reach out to the community school system, or to the district office of LCPS?

Barbara Bencomo said once we get guidance on what direction to go in for the funding, yes, there is going to be a lot more work to undertake. I know that when I spoke with the chiefs, they had some ideas of some programs that they were aware of, I know the schools have as well, and so we would need to have some conversations about identifying programs and/or needs and I don’t know if the chiefs would like to jump in as well. It was part of our discussion on this specific topic.

Chief Jeremy Story said the program you are referring to with your sons was

D.A.R.E., the original D.A.R.E. program, and so several studies kind of invalidated it and then you saw it went away. So, we were very active with D.A.R.E., it’s hard to justify it when all the research is saying it doesn’t work. Now there’s several programs, including a new D.A.R.E. model that has evidence behind it and Operation Prevention from DEA, so we would like to look at or consider getting back into our schools with these newer models that have more evidence behind them to start youth prevention again. I think regardless of the funding source, whether it is through these funds or a different pot of money, starting with the community schools is a good place to start so we can do a pilot or a trial with those schools, but that is something we want to pursue regardless and find a way to make it happen.

Councilor Mattiace I was just going to add for Chief Story there is our lady Leticia

Sanchez and she is actually working with Las Cruces Public Schools, I believe there may be a couple of pilot programs on the new D.A.R.E. program and she wanted to expand that, so anything we can do to get ahold of Leticia and then maybe expand that it would be good for all the schools to have that new program.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I think I would like to remind us that we have no

authority over the schools and what they do with curriculum or not, but I do think it is important that we are in collaboration. In terms of the school, perhaps Barbara if you can put the squares, so there is obviously some zones that we are not covering I am curious if the group has discussed the ways in which the state allocation will be supplementing some of this, the state also has a significant settlement portion, will you share with us a little bit how they are going to be spending that?

Barbara Bencomo said we actually now have information, not only from the state, because they’ve been allocating funds for a couple of years now, but also the city of

Albuquerque and Bernalillo County just finished an almost two year process where they were evaluating what to spend the funds on and they allocated funds as well, so I do have information on both. With respect to the state, they’ve been allocating funds since 2023, and of course the state is going to receive a lot more than we will receive, the state is slated or expected to receive $391 million in that neighborhood, the state has set up two funds, the Opioid Settlement Restricted Funds where their receipts come in, and the Opioid Crisis Recovery Fund where they spend funds and they are only allocating or planning to allocate 5% of their receipts so they are effectively setting up a trust for this so they’ve already done that, and then the funds are expended through legislative appropriation so that’s how we’ve seen it in House Bill 2 for the last three years. Some of their allocations have been for medication assisted treatment, in fact both Albuquerque and the state are allocating the majority of their funds to the treatment realm. Then Albuquerque, very specifically, is allocating 60% for treatment, 40% for prevention and if you look at all the things that the state is doing, they’re not far off from that mark as well. The state is doing a lot of capacity building, even facilities, looking to bring in providers, they are trying to expand mental health services, looking at supportive housing, giving allocations for childcare for example, as part of supportive services in addition to some of the programing that we are talking about in terms of prevention program and that sort of thing. In Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, they are funding a prevention program through the school district there and it is called Crossroads Prevention Program. It is primarily a counseling program, so I don’t have all of the details about it, but I do know both

Albuquerque and Bernalillo County are funding that through their school district as part of their 40% allocation for prevention funds and then the rest as treatment options.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo asked just to be clear, the state, through their allocation has been funding prevention measures?

Barbara Bencomo said treatment and prevention, correct. So that’s their area of focus and it aligns with the strategies that we’ve set, but for our community we may do it in different settings than what the state is doing it.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I think we want to make magic with this money and I think we will, I think the folks in our community will, I also just want us to have a balance in terms of there are families being torn apart because of the opioid crisis right now, people are dying right now and I think it’s a very fine balance between treatment now and prevention. Obviously, I’m a social worker, I want to go upstream, and I think we just have to have a very good, clear analysis of what the state is doing

and how they’re spending down this money as well so that we’re not necessarily replicating effort, not making the money go as far as it needs to. On the settings and populations, most of them are pretty specific, I’m curious can any of you talk more about the community setting? I think that feels a little bit more nebulous, the other ones feel very specific I’m curious Barbara what the community conversation how that went.

Barbara Bencomo said what you see with the three bullets of populations under that community setting, the second two as I mentioned, those are your vulnerable populations. So, the focus is on older people, children and youth for sure and then of course we want to look at people who are justice involved. We want to talk about transitions, we don’t want people to fall through the cracks, and we want to make sure that we are improving that continuum of care so we can address underlying causes for folks who might already be in the justice system, so with all of these I will say, there’s a lot of allowable strategies, there’s a lot of allowable settings. We don’t have unlimited funds, so we are trying to focus our efforts where they will be most impactful in this first round of spending, which I mentioned we are thinking about this two-year cycle. That’s not to say that we’re not going to come back and maybe pivot to a different setting or population, it depends on what is the data showing us once we get this out there, what is the community experiencing, what are our first responders telling us, what are our school professionals telling us? So, we want to be able to respond to that and I think that was some of the input that you gave us previously about wanting to make sure that we had a source of funds as we progress through the years, to address this crisis as it unfolds and perhaps takes a different shape. So, I will say that the focus of the discussion on the strategies, goals, settings and populations is looking at the priorities now. Not to say that there aren’t other important things, $10 million sounds like a lot, we’ve only received $3.6 million, it’s not that much, we don’t necessarily want to recommend putting a little bit of money on a lot of different things that might not have the impact that we’d like to see for our community.

So that’s a very general answer, but I’ll tell you that’s a guiding principle in order to make these hard recommendations for what to prioritize.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said no, I really agree with that guiding principle. I don’t necessarily have any guidance in terms of the strategies, the goals, settings and populations. I think where I want to sort of give some thoughts is this next step for the funding cycle and how the advisory committee sets up that process for distribution, implementation, evaluation and making sure that this continues to be a guiding principle around I don’t know if you’ll set some sort of rubric or whatever that does give weight to those kind of programs that will make the most impact right now. I’m ready for that conversation and I hope it comes soon, I think the community, I’ve had treatment and providers reach out and say hey is this available yet? And so, I think our community knows about it, I think they are ready about it, I think we’re going to see some really exciting kinds of proposals, and I’m ready for that conversation and I do hope that it comes soon, early August.

Barbara Bencomo said yes, and I just want to say to clarify and you’ll see on this timeline that we’ve got activities, dates, those who will be involved in doing the work we’re going to shift a little bit from we’ve relied on certainly our advisory council to a large extent to sift through all this information, make the recommendations, our

elected officials to provide guidance, now there are going to be a lot of staff involvement for us to come back to you with the specific break down of activities, funding as I said some of the funding might be internal allocations, some of it might be

RFP’s. I know that the city and the county would like to coordinate as much as possible on any RFP’s that we have so that we could coordinate, for example, preproposal conferences between the city and the county because we will get some of the same questions from the community members perhaps, about some of the

RFP’s that will be going out there and so we really want them to make this as cohesive as possible so we can minimize any confusion in the community about how the providers can respond to these RFP’s so there will be a lot of staff work and you’ll see that in developing some of the evaluation frameworks and then the determination for the allocation of funds, and again that’s going to come back to you for approval once we have a proposal that has the specificity that you’re looking for, but that logically tracks from the recommended strategies, goals, settings and populations that we’ve laid out that we would like to address.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said and you might not have an answer to this question, but it is something that I will most likely be following up with at the next work session around this around who you think who would make up the committee for selecting proposals ultimately whether that’s staff, county, city staff and if the advisory council will continue to be part of the selection process.

Barbara Bencomo said yeah we do have the advisory council, certainly being involved in the ongoing monitoring and evaluation determination about whether we’re getting the desired outcomes etcetera but there are a lot of administrative functions that we would like to handle at the staff-level just to make sure we are following our P code, following the state procurement code, etcetera. And we certainly have members of the advisory council who are representing certain factions but they might be aligned with service providers who would want to bid on some of these things so we have to be very careful to make sure that we maintain the integrity of the process in what we’ll propose to be for evaluators.

Councilor Flores asked is there a need to work closely with the state or will our local county, city people here be working closely with the state and what exactly were in terms of making sure that the dollars we do have are stretched and they’re effective?

So it’s a question of not having overlapping, like everybody jumping in and everybody’s focusing on one thing and everything else is falling by the wayside and the reason I’m concerned about the state, with all due respect to the work of most of our Senators and our representatives the money for like a lawsuit, the big

Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit the money still hasn’t been implemented for the children and that lawsuit is as old as you know, well not as old as I am, but definitely it’s sitting there. I’m just concerned that the state isn’t going to move on it. I know that you will and the city will, because you’re on that committee, I know that you keep people on their toes Barbara and I appreciate that, the way you really follow through and I appreciate that and so is there going to be any oversight in terms of the state coming through?

Barbara Bencomo said you know the state is allocating funds through a number of

their departments, we know what they are allocating it for generally. For example, they are allocating medication assisted treatment in prisons so that’s the setting that they are looking at, they are allocating mental health for infants, for example, initiatives, some facilities for a children’s psychiatric hospital in Albuquerque, hepatitis community health outcomes program, so we know the programs that they are going through a number of different entities. I actually would love to have someone at the state that I could speak to that would be the Opioid Settlement Czar or I don’t know what to get that understanding of what their plans are so that we don’t duplicate efforts, we are to the best of our ability reviewing all the information that we have so that we can leverage our funds and not duplicate efforts. I think we can do that again by understanding what the state is allocating. I would love to have a point person there, we don’t right now, we did go up and testify at the health and human services legislative committee last November about the collaborative efforts going on around the state, the Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, the Las Cruces, Dona Ana County, the seven counties collaborative, as well so the state could know what we’re doing and where we and we anticipate that we will be going back to talk about our efforts, and I know that, we will all be interested to hear in whatever way, shape or form we can get the information on what the state is doing because that will always play a part in how we make our determinations about funding but again I’m going to go back to what we did at the very beginning of this effort is that community needs assessment we did says what is needed in our community that’s what we need to focus on. Sometimes if we say oh, the state is funding medication assisted treatment it may be in a different setting, it may be in a different way, and we may just need more of it. It’s not to say they’re going to take care of all of it either so it’s certainly something that on an ongoing basis we’re going to have to evaluate and continue to partner as much as we can and that’s why I’m grateful that one of our advisor councilmembers is from the department of health so we have connections, numerous connections and we use all the connections that we can in order to get the information that we need in order to do the best work for our community.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said you mentioned Barbara as an example potential for an internal perhaps use of the funds for Narcan for Police and Fire. You don’t have to have this information today, but I’d be grateful if you could get us information for both

Fire and Police on what that looks like right now, what does acquiring Narcan for public safety in the city look like right now in terms of budget and how long that lasts.

Barbara Bencomo said absolutely we’ve already had those discussions, and I know

Chief Daniels has provided me some information as well but we will make sure we understand what that landscape looks like as well, we know that at the federal level some of the funds that were previously allocated for Narcan may not be coming as well, so that’s another set of information that we need to stay on top of that might cause us to pivot and where we are focusing funds as well, so yes, that is definitely already in the works to get that information.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said but internally, for sure that would be great for council to understand that current context.

Shara Thorpe, Dona Ana County HHS said I just wanted to let everybody know as far

as what the county’s doing with the schools, HHS, our department, has been in Las

Cruces Public Schools for the last 20 years and we continue to meet with Las Cruces

Public Schools for evidence based programing, so we do have several programs already in the schools and I just wanted to speak about our workshop we talked about not including these school based because we didn’t want to duplicate any efforts that were currently happening or going to be happening, but I wanted to just mention that even though we excluded it for initial recommendations, it does not mean that we would not include it in another phase, it’s just for our initial recommendations we did not include the schools just due to those other programs that we had in the schools. I just wanted to speak to that and let you know that HHS is in the schools and there is some evidence-based programing happening there already. So, thank you very much.

Trent Scribner, Member of the Public said I want to thank everyone for coming out today, I’ve lived in Las Cruces my whole life, I always say, I work in healthcare right now, more importantly I’ve had family and friends, a lot of family and friends who’ve been, you know, addicted to drugs opioids and what not, what have you, so this conversation means a lot. Working in healthcare our priorities are good here, it seems like we want to cast a wide net with screening, with universal screening for everybody, which is good, the important thing with universal screening in the healthcare setting which usually you’ll meet these people in the emergency department is making sure that we had follow up available for them so follow up with counseling and I think this is a really good opportunity to kinda get all of the disparate non-profits and city organizations together so we know what resources are accessible to people the hospital maintains a list of what resources we refer people to but having something kind of more central to refer them would be very helpful. I think that education, prevention education in the schools is very good. I wasn’t a fan of the old D.A.R.E. model, cause everyone that I know who won the contest did drugs later on. But Chief

Story was right, the new D.A.R.E. model I think they call it Keeping It Real, or something is backed by the evidence, which is good because we have the numbers to back that up and I know a lot of people who, if they had had these programs, and more importantly had the follow up again with counseling and with city services and state services because really it’s an issue of poverty and you want to coordinate you know uplifting them from, if you want them to stop doing drugs you’ve got to feed them first. I just wanted to express my support for everything that we are doing here and I’m excited to see the implementation of it cause I’m impatient, thank you.

Tanika Gonzales, Member of the Public said I’m a Board Certified Psychiatric Mental

Health Nurse and I’m an alternate on this team, but I’ve been working in mental health and working with people with Opioid Use Disorder for over 15 years. Great vast lived experience as well. And so, I just wanted to share with you all that one of the things that has been a firm point of discussion amongst the Opiate Council is where are those funds coming from? So, with transitions in CARA and transitions in CYFD, we’re really trying to look at where the gaps are and where we can fit in and not duplicate those services and also be mindful of workforce shortages, right? Where we can make the biggest impacts and I think a lot of us are having really great discussions with people in other communities that recently had a really remarkable discussion with the deputy chief from Tucson they are doing a two hour post Narcan follow-ups so I think that things are written broadly enough that we’ll have some opportunity to be really innovative and also be really mindful about monitoring and reporting back. I

think that the proof is in the pudding, and that’s kind of I think a lot of us where we are focused and the term community is used broadly, I think it is used broadly intentionally, and also when we talk about schools it is that SEL model, everybody loves D.A.R.E., not so much science to support D.A.R.E., however, lifelong healthy changes associated with social, emotional learning, evidence based social, emotional learning, doesn’t just impact substance abuse disorder, it impacts outcomes for risk youth behavior, for long-term health choices, so those are all things that impact our community that can broadly be used when we are working together with our community schools and community providers.

Barbara Bencomo said I apologize, I just wanted to follow up with some recent news. I want to clarify that the settlements that we are talking about right now in terms of the $10 million we are expecting to receive do not include the Purdue Pharma settlement that was just announced last week. That’s over $7 billion that will be distributed to local governments and medical providers and individuals and so that is separately in the works, my understanding is, and Brad you can correct me if I’m wrong, that we’re going to be working with the state attorneys general, to opt in to these settlements. I believe we’re going to have until the end of September to make that decision and then the bankruptcy judge is expecting to approve a plan in the November timeframe if enough parties sign on by that time and so hopefully in the Fall, we will have more information about an additional funding stream that’s resulting from the Purdue

Pharma settlement. I just wanted to clarify that.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo asked do you know if that has the same timeline? 10 years?

Barbara Bencomo said it’s over 15 years is what I’m hearing, so it will be extended as well. 3.2 PUBLIC INPUT NEEDED: METROPOLITAN REDEVELOPMENT AREA

PLAN OVERVIEW FOR EL PASEO AND S. SOLANO. Blairre Flores, Economic Development Coordinator introduced the topic.

Dani Wilson, Sites Southwest gave the overhead presentation.

Allie Caskey, Community Planner with Sites Southwest continued the overhead presentation.

Dani Wilson continued the overhead presentation.

Elizabeth Teeters, Director of Economic Development continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Graham said before I forget, great document. I really appreciated the document design and just great presentation. I recognize that these are not all questions that may be able to be answered today, and just kind of bookmark them for future discussions. In no particular order, I noticed a couple of points, largely around the South Solano corridor where the reports specifically mentioned that there were some zoning impediments to doing the most effective redevelopment, specifically for

those areas, will Realize help with that? And in a larger context, is Realize poised to empower the MRA writ large, and if not, what are some potential amendments?

Dani Wilson said yeah, that’s a great point and I should say we stared updating points of the plan after Realize Las Cruces was approved I will say I think we need to go back with a fine tooth comb and still double check on that because the new zoning code does make that process easier for that property owners along South Solano. I think the more accurate description at this point would be that sometimes still with redevelopment there’s steps for the permitting process and certain assessments that need to happen along the way that don’t discriminate between a large redevelopment project and a small redevelopment project and sometimes that can be an additional time and financial burden on developers, particularly if they’re small business owners in the South Solano area. So, I think rather than, that’s a really important shift to make that it’s not zoning per se, it’s more that redevelopment permitting process that might, there might be ways that we can streamline that for these business owners and property owners along South Solano, but the plan should reflect that so we’ll make sure to take a look at that text.

Councilor Graham said second, I know in both the report and the presentation you talked about specific public policy recommendations that would help move this along.

For instance, I noticed the allusion to a vacant property ordinance which I believe one of my colleagues is going to dig into a little deeper, but beyond that, what are we thinking?

Dani Wilson said no, the vacant property ordinance is a good one to bring up because that again is low hanging fruit that other communities have used as a pretty effective tool where we want to be careful to balance both the carrot and the stick approach that we’re using, that one’s a little bit more of a stick and in order to balance that we want to make sure we’re also providing the support and resources we need and so thinking about how we might have some funding mechanisms that the city can use to help incentivize that rather than penalizing I think property owners who have those vacant properties so we do want to use both here. I think also just thinking more broadly about policies that the city can consider to support some of the recommendations of the plan. Allie mentioned this when she talked about some of the public safety pieces there are policies that we don’t traditionally think of as tied to redevelopment but when we think more broadly about the character and impact that this area has when we look at our social services and public services that we’re providing when we look at the policies that we have in place around safe and complete streets. These are all things that can be revisited, I know that the city has a safe streets ordinance, but it might be revisited and updated to better reflect the reality of what’s on the ground, what developers can do and the degree that the city can hold those developers accountable for creating the conditions for safe movement through the space so those are kind of two areas that I think the city could consider in terms of policy updates and ordinance updates off the bat.

Elizabeth Teeters said sorry, real fast, the only thing I would add to what Dani was saying is taking a look at our infill policy, we haven’t updated it in a while so looking at that cause that’s going to impact almost all of our MRAs so looking at that and seeing

what could be updated, like Dani was saying, that can better help these vacant buildings or bringing buildings up to code how we can fill in the infill that would another policy I would consider looking at.

Councilor Graham said and then kind of a little more philosophical question, I guess, there’s a lot of really compelling information here, about neighborhood identity community building and as I’m reading through recognizing that one of the things that makes this MRA unique is the per capita percentage of renters. Huge compared to

Dona Ana County as another and recognizing renters are as great neighbors as homeowners. I was a renter for, now that I’ve lived here forever, I think I’ve finally out stripped my homeowner versus renter timeline, but there are challenges to affecting these kinds of changes and you are necessarily going to have a rotating cast of neighborhood members so how do we as the city, as the one who’s always going to be there, help too? And I think you’ve already started to mention some of these things, neighborhood clean ups, block parties, but specifically how do we leverage this in a renter heavy area?

Dani Wilson said I think that one of the best ways to engage both renters and homeowners is to first shift the perspective because I think there is often this bias against renters, that they aren’t perhaps as worthy of some of the investments that we are thinking about and the programs we’re thinking about because they aren’t going to be there long term, but especially in this area considering the proximity to NMSU you often have that large renting student population in addition to folks at other stages of life and they are just as I think impacted by some of these things. It’s less of looking at renters as a liability and more of looking at them as where can we find the opportunity here to create long term connection to create that sense of purpose and stewardship, especially among younger populations like students and I think the first lesson that we took away and what we’ve taken away from the planning processes is by meeting them where they are and so by getting out into the community whether that is through organized community events or in some of these spaces where they might come for services, whether that’s the Library, the Boys and Girls Club, the Senior Center, whatever the city can do to meet those residents where they are and show them how they have a place within the community, whether that’s by taking on a volunteer role, or being involved in something that’s happening in the future in these areas in the park, wherever it might be happening, I think that establishing that sense of you all have a place and a purpose here where you rent or whether you own your home is step one. And then beyond that, the idea is that eventually we are creating the opportunities to begin to shift those who want to move from renting to home ownership to do so. By creating those mixed use missing middle infill housing opportunities maybe we can create the conditions where some of those renters will move into being homeowners in the future and staying in the neighborhood.

Councilor Graham said a perfect transition for my final kind of more of a comment, but

I’d love to hear your thoughts on it regardless. I think clearly an area isn’t designated as an MRA if it is doing great in all aspects, you know these are areas that need some reinvestment, some love, some attention, but I think I just caution all of us on the dais, in the community, I think we can fall into a narrative of oh, this is a problem area, this is a scary area, and I think that reframing the conversation just like you said, not as a liability, but as an opportunity I think that that is so important and I think a lot of times

you know I’ve gotten some pushback as I’ve been really advocating for the MRA throughout my time as a city councilor, people will say well you’re just not being realistic, you’re just trying to brush the problems aside without recognizing the reality but if we continue to characterize these areas as blight or problems then nothing will change. So much of what you’re talking about is momentum and how relatively speaking, how easy one small catalytic spot, Boys and Girls Club moving in, one small change in the stream can make such a big difference, so I hope that we will find great words to say about our El Paseo/South Solano MRA.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I do want to start with what I love because I loved a lot.

I just couldn’t be prouder that we are finally here so I’m very excited. I think one of the things that I loved the most was the catalytic project of El Paseo transformation plus the opportunity site, I forgot what you called it, but it’s the Paseos Verdes and family resource hub?

Dani Wilson said family services district is what we called it, yeah.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I loved it! No, I really loved that, and I think that I love it because I think you captured the investments that we’re already making, like the commitment that we’re already making to this part of the corridor with Paseos Verdes and our housing team with our great partnerships, resources in the community like

FYI and Boys and Girls Club and so many other things. And so I just wanted to lift up that I really loved that synergy, if you will, so I’m really excited about all of it, I think I am also, thank you for mentioning Realize I think one of the pieces that I felt exciting while reading this is I guess I do hope that you sort of go through Realize also and pick out the pieces but one of the greatest things that I think people didn’t see or didn’t want to see in Realize is how much of a focus it had on flexibility in the MRAs and I see staff back there shaking their head because it was so intentional because we have such a focus on these corridors and so I think if your team does go back through it before you come back for adoption you’ll see a lot of alignment again because that was so intentional. So, I’m very excited about that. I was also really happy to see that you had a chapter if you will on vacant properties. This is something I’ve been talking about quite a bit and you talked about being 90 vacant parcels plus 30 unoccupied buildings in the entire of the MRA you know that’s huge and I’m sure I just think that there is such we must address this like we have to address this folks and I think like

Albuquerque have sort of started paving away on how we do some of that with the balance of what you said the balance of the stick and the carrot it’s certainly not punitive and working with good actors people who desire to do something with the property versus folks who abandoned their responsibility. I think that’s an uncomfortable conversation, but one that we need to have and so I really appreciated your focus on that and it I one of the policy priorities that I will continue to have is adopting some sort of ordinance on addressing vacant properties and unoccupied properties. One of the other pieces of policy recommendations that a constituent brought to my attention, thank you Don, was around the CPACE program which I actually connected with staff this morning and they said they’re coming to present in

July, so lots of alignment there. But just to put it on you all’s radar, CPACE is

Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy which is an alternative source of financing for improvements to commercial properties. It covers the direct and indirect cost related to reducing energy or water consumption, generating renewable energy

and building resiliency. Eligible properties include any privately owned commercial, agriculture, industrial, multifamily property with five or more dwelling units and that includes non-profit organizations. The state adopted this as a policy, but counties and municipalities have to opt in and so Albuquerque’s done it, Santa Fe has done it, and so I’m hoping that that’s what the July work session will be on the recommendation that we opt in to this program that I think can be one of those incentives for our non- profit partners but also commercial folks who are already doing a lot in this area. I also wanted to lift up the impact fee reduction and demolition site fund that I thought was really important and would love for us to continue having those conversations about what it would look like here. On public safety, can you help me understand what were some of the core concerns that people had? Was it like property crime, was it yeah, so folks who are unhoused, folks who are struggling with addiction, what was the core of those concerns?

Dani Wilson said yeah, so a lot of it came up as property crimes, especially for business owners, you know, their employees not feeling safe, you know, closing up the business and going into the parking lot on their own at night. Having first of all the infrastructure to feel safer there, then also having a good connection with LCPD so if something happens, they know they have that quick response, that they can reach out to there, I think also what we heard too from residents was just the differentiation between what services needed at a given time, so whether it is mental health services for somebody who is in crisis versus somebody who’s actively trying to break into their property or damage it somehow. So, wanting to have a little bit more clarity on what to do as a property owner, as a resident, when you see that kind of a situation, and then

I think from residents just across the board there’s this sense of we want to be able to more fully utilize our public spaces, but we don’t feel safe/comfortable there so that is where we got into some of our recommendations around lighting and shading and just creating that space where people can feel like they can be out and about and not have to worry about their safety.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I do, I think one of the pieces that I was sort of thinking about as you’re presenting on that is that I want to make sure that we are holding this fine balance between safety, not only meaning more police presence. Like safety has a lot more definitions and I think we on the city council and the city have, one we want to acknowledge that people’s fears are very valid, those concerns are incredibly valid and real, and I also want us to address them in a way that makes the most sense in terms of what is actually going on. Right? Yeah, sure like property crime, I think the

Real Time Crime Center will absolutely help address some of that. I think if its issues around unhoused, issues around folks experiencing addiction, and are on El

Paseo/South Solano, like how can we also put in this plan more weight on the kinds of things that will help address those specific issues outside of just policing? I think to me that feels really important and necessary, and it ensures that we’re actually working. We’re not burdening police department number one with things that they are not necessarily trained to do, but number two, pulling our partners like FYI, like

Community of Hope, like other folks who are already doing a lot of the outreach work and our housing department, ultimately if one of the biggest issues is homelessness, we are going to meet that need when we build more housing. So, I just want to lift up that piece around public safety as having a wider scope on that. I was also thinking about the heat map index on El Paseo and how that’s a form of violence, right? Like

people experiencing disproportionate amounts of heat whether it’s their homes or walking, not feeling safe crossing the street, not having bus shelters, those are also things that to me hit at public and community safety that I wanted to make sure I lifted up. And so I don’t know Elizabeth what the safety improvement program will look like, but I want to just make sure that we are sort of creating that program with some of those principles in mind as well. Oh, and then my only other recommendation would be that the MRA committee that is created, we do include someone from the NAT team on there, the Neighborhood Action Team or the Nuisance Abatement Team given the hopefully the priority that we have when addressing vacant and unoccupied properties. I’m just so invested in this and I think our entire council is, and the whole city and making redevelopment and revitalization such a priority. I’m excited for July and I’m excited to send off whatever the state needs for us to start collecting that data.

Councilor Mattiace said I truly appreciate the research that you’ve done, and I’ve only been on city council for about 13 months, and I’ve watched El Paseo and Solano deteriorate over the last 12 years, with your experience and professionalism how does a city prevent, I mean you brought up the public safety issues, which is very important, you brought up private partnerships again, which is important, and there’s very wealthy private enterprises like the gas and oil company that could help us with investments and you brought up other items like neighborhood associations and strengthening them. How do you prevent, what would be the best opportunity for the city to work on that we don’t see another El Paseo, we don’t see another Solano?

What all do we need to be doing, not only on the public safety issues, because if you don’t have a safe city, you have a problem. Could you indicate what other things we could be doing so we don’t have a Telshor or another area going into blight, into unsafe feelings?

Dani Wilson said yeah, I have some ideas and then I may also hand it over to staff if there’s some ideas as well. I do think that, so it is good to recognize the context in which we’re presenting this plan, this is one tool that the city can use that offers flexibility for infusing resources and funding in an area that is already demonstrated that kind of deterioration that you’re talking about. And when we think about how that came to be over many decades, and how that might happen in another area, I think that there’s a lot of influences at play and some of that the city has control over and some of that the city does not. I think a large part of it is just recognizing when it comes to development decisions, developers are going to go where they have the potential for the greatest profit and the fewest barriers and so in the case of city cores, especially historic city cores, there’s often constraints there you know because of the way the road network was laid out, because of the way the parcels are, that make it a little bit harder to develop in an already built out area versus going to say the fringes of a community or to the county and so that’s one reason why you sort of see a shift often in the spreading out of our cities is because it is just easier to develop on the fringes, it’s cheaper and you have to go through less hoops. That’s why also in the

MRA plan we do talk about how to reduce those barriers, cities well on its way with the new zoning code, but as we mentioned there are some things in terms of permitting processes, in terms of looking at the infill development ordinance that the city could do to further reduce those barriers so that we are making it easier for that development to happen and to continue to expand in areas where it might be a little

bit more physically constrained. So, I think that’s one thing the city can do, it’s not just in the MRA area, any part of the city that is older, any part of the city that has some of those additional constraints, that’s step one. I think also too, it’s just there’s a lot of forces that are a little bit beyond the city’s control when we look at just overall patterns of growth and development policies that have happened at the state and federal level that just make it easier for people to just hop on highways and drive into the city rather than making their home there and building it up. So, some of that is just out of the hands of the city, I would say, has come from decades of city planning that doesn’t necessarily incentivize regrowing and redeveloping in our cores. I guess that’s kind of a bigger answer that doesn’t give you a ton of tools to work with, but maybe one starting point with reducing those barriers.

George Pearson, Member of the Public I’m vice president of Velo Cruces said good afternoon, the plan lays out six plan goals so I’m just going to touch on each of those in my comments about this. First is economic revitalization and housing, it’s not just housing costs, but transportation costs that effects cost of living, for example, the cost of owning a car is about ten thousand dollars a year, if you can remove a car, and replace it with a bicycle or other modes of transportation active transportation modes, and I think there needs to be more emphasis on the other active transportation modes maybe laid out at the goals in the beginning including bicycles and transit. The MRA area is easily three miles across, which is a very easy access by bicycle and improved transit would be wonderful, imagine having 15-minute headways where you have bus access that is very easy. Infrastructure improvement is the next one, improved bicycle facilities need more consideration, identifying protected bike lane between the University and downtown is something that we really need to look at. On public safety and health, safe, secure bike parking is something that we need to look into, this will result in more bicycling trips, and that will result in health benefits that are enjoyed by people that use active transportation. A longer life span is identified as a benefit of more active transportation. On the social equity side, roughly a third of residents do not have a driver’s license for whatever reason, either they’re too young to drive, too old to drive, or other things have happened, so they have to rely on somebody else for transportation, so better active transportation solutions helps with social equity. Environmental sustainability well that’s active transportation is just the obvious answer to that. And on the historic preservation, I think something that was talked about in the body but not really in the goals, is fostering neighborhood identities and so I want to say, it is a great document all in all and I especially liked the way it is broken up into the smaller areas that identifying what can be done there, so thank you for allowing me to speak.

Ashley Echavarria, Member of the Public said I’m the CEO for the Boys and Girls

Club in Las Cruces I was equally excited to see that little area renamed as the Family

Services District, it’s exciting. I think it’s an exciting step in the direction that we’re headed. We’re really excited to be moving to the area and to be, quite frankly, I think a little bit further along in the process than most the entire MRA of course we’re still working on getting things funded. We’re really hopeful that we’ll be able to break ground this year that’s truly the goal. I just wanted to come in I was watching online and I thought I just want to come in and let you guys know that we appreciate the partnership with the city and we’re so open to any other ways that we can partner together to make sure that we’re getting this redevelopment done as quickly as

possible and in a way that benefits the entire community, I think about the public’s safety concern and I hear a lot of that, oh my goodness you are moving the Boys and

Girls Club to that area? But I like to look at it on the positive side, I see us as being kind of the headliner if you will to going in there yeah and so you know I want to say

Chief Story if there’s any possibility, I was thinking about community policing, we’re building the facility in such a way so we will have extra office space, what if we had a police officer office out of the Boys and Girls Club from time to time there’s presence in the area but you know any other way we can collaborate, we’ve designed the building in such a way that the gymnasium is accessible from the back end so if we can partner with Parks and Recor for the league sports or anything else that’s really what we want to be, we want to be a place that is community minded and as you know, the longer the buildings sit empty, the more concern we have so you know the more support that we can get from the city, we’d be grateful for just to get this project going as soon as people start seeing activity out there, hopefully some of the issues stop. We have had squatters in the building, we’ve had a fire in the building we’ve had quite a few things going on there and we just want to get the project going until we’re at a certain dollar amount, so I wanted to say thank you guys for what you all have done for us so far, we’re definitely looking forward to working together in the future and anything we can do to move the MRA plan along, we’re here, you’re behind us, I think most of you know this has been my goal for the last 12 years, so we’re really hopeful we can make this happen soon.

Trent Scribner, Member of the Public said the MRA is a big area. I know it seems maybe like a small area because it’s a small town, but it’s huge and it’s kind of different needs and different stuff going on in each part. Along El Paseo there, so when I talk, I’m mostly talking about the Foster/Montana area because that’s where my family stays, I spent a couple of years living there, I’ve lived everywhere, I’m a renter. I think that we have really good priorities in the area, lighting is a concern, public safety is a serious concern, stuff like lighting, again evidence backed especially around Foster going towards the business complex like Crunch, Albertsons, and all that because it’s a place that people walk along, I used to run like from my place over there to the Crunch and running there I always felt good because I was all hyped up, but on the way back, I was weak and it’s dark and I’m like aah man they’re going to get me and a street light would have helped out a little bit. Vacant lots too, that’s again evidence backed. In fact they did a study in Flint, Michigan they started taking vacant lots and putting like greenery on them, just making them look pretty, pretty much, I’m not all about broken windows theory, but making these vacant lots look pretty and kind of involving the people at every step of the way it reduced violent crime in the area by about 40% that was a 2018 study in Flint, Michigan and so it is effective and it’s cheap. It’s cheap, effective and humane, which is what we want. I was curious and

I’d kinda like to know the percentage of responses back we got was from the survey that you guys sent out to the community. Regardless I think it’s representative of what people want over there from what I’ve heard from them. What else, I was really happy that you worked with the schools that you worked with Las Cruces, because those kids are like it’s the only place you see people walking because from Las Cruces High they go and they hang out along El Paseo and they are keeping it alive down there,

God Bless ‘em. Yeah, cleaning up the vacant lots is good, holding these people accountable for the untended properties. I think that we’ve relied a lot on private investment to bring life into communities and you can’t rely on private investment

really. The 2008 recession hit hard in that area because private investors were like oh you guys are broke, let’s get out of here, 2020 Covid hit hard in that area because when things are hard, private investment goes and so if you want resilient communities focus on public investment is a principal that I would have moving forward and I think that you guys are embodying that very well. I wrote down a bunch of stuff, otherwise I’m real happy about the Boys and Girls Club, I was down there at the graffiti event that they did and that was beautiful a lot of people from the community showed up like real people who don’t usually go out like the teenagers and stuff who think that stuff is lame, and so I think that we’re doing really good things down there, turn the Payless into something cool, don’t turn it into a Real Estate office, thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said I do want to point out it isn’t just Las Cruces High

School, it is also Las Montanas High School which I really love.

Axel Hale, Member of the Public said I would like to say that I agree with Councilor

Graham about us framing this as an opportunity area rather than a problem area. I think we have such a rich culture stemming from the downtown market area and the

Mesquite Historic District not too far, and I think expanding then to El Paseo is very possible and I think we are starting to see it with local businesses like Deputy Dawgz moving in there, that being the only el cometa we have in town over there off El Paseo to see that culture grow into something similar to what we see downtown where you regularly have people gathering, where you have people gathering in the Historic

District near Clyde Park, I think there’s a lot of possibility there and I really do like what they’re doing with it with public investment and bringing in those services that are so heavily needed in that area. I’ve also lived in Las Cruces my whole life, I used to shop at that Payless, so I would like to see that turned into something meaningful. I think the vacant properties, focusing on that, I’m also on board with that because by reducing those, and bringing in things there whether it’s public sustainability, agriculture stuff, more focus on those programs I think having more there, creating that presence where it feels less empty and vacant will help bring that new sense of life into this area of the town. I used to work on El Paseo, I worked at that Arby’s for a number of months so I know how it gets down there, and what Mr. Scribner was saying about the students from Las Cruces High School, they very much are keeping it alive of course Las Montanas worked with a local film not too long ago and seeing what they’re creating over there is also very meaningful. So, to see all of this incorporated into something the entire public can come together in meaningful ways to address is very promising and those public safety concerns as you were saying the heat mapping is so important over there because you don’t have any of that shade right now. There is, don’t quote me, but there is one bus stop on El Paseo and I feel like it’s very much viewed as a travel through area than a stop in area. Ok I’m going from this part of town to University, so to turn that area into something more meaningful where the public can commune is something that is super important.

Don Kurtz, Member of the Public said I live on Missouri and Las Cruces, and first I want to congratulate the consultants on this plan, I think it is really good and the input that came from stakeholders and the council and staff was good too and I feel like you were very flexible and trying to incorporate those things, anyway I think that it’s a great plan. I’d like to just make a couple comments on sections of it, it seems like I’ve

always been especially interested in the El Paseo corridor, it seems like we’re kind of putting together the holy trinity of a successful area there where you have the housing which brings commercial activity to support the housing which in turn attracts more housing and holding it all together in my view is the transit which we have an opportunity there I think to piggyback on the value of that corridor just to connect

University and that whole work student area with downtown and that whole work area.

One thing on housing that I think I want to follow up on comments by Councilor

Graham and the young man earlier, I think we want to be careful not to unconsciously or consciously designate this as a low-income area because the opportunities for housing along there are tremendous, for student housing, for senior housing, for young professional housing and the major employment centers there are right along that corridor, Las Cruces Public Schools, the High School, the University and the other end Electronic Caregivers and so I think the opportunity there for housing is much larger than, but I’ve got to say at the same time that the whole idea of the

Paseos Verdes and the family services district is great so we are talking mixed income housing of all kinds. Secondly, on the transit this is something that’s come up repeatedly over the years when we think about transit I’d like us to have Roadrunner be thinking about this from the very beginning, direct service from the University,

Convention Center area to Downtown and back and frequent enough that people can count on it to get to work, to go to class, and you don’t to go directly on this, have to loop way out to the east or way out to the west which is kind of what we have to do now. So that kind of short line service every 15 or 20 minutes for students it’s great, for coming to the entertainment districts downtown I think we could get DWI funds to help support that kind of transit. And finally, I appreciate you saying I think we all know this is a heavy lift but hey, you know what? You guys have done it before. When I think about what Downtown was a dozen years ago, and what it is now, that was the city initiative that was bold and broad, and you went after it. I hope you’ll do it here and I think it can be done, so I appreciate it, I really congratulate all of you on your work.

Allison Wallace, Member of the Public said I’m a resident of district 4 and I work in the

MRA area at one of the faith communities, I won’t say which because I’m not supposed to officially represent, but I do actually see two gentlemen from our community in this photo here, which is nice. Something that we have faced on South

Solano and just off of the corner of South Solano and Missouri, or I guess it’s the

Boutz side, but we did face some of that property crime that was mentioned when the public safety discussion was taking place as we have several times seen hateful vandalism to our church, people have come and spray painted some very awful very racist things on the walls and it’s become a concern I really understand the public safety concern in this area, especially because it’s become a concern among many members of our community and something that I’ve always found to be maybe lacking a little bit, community spaces that are more accessible during the summer, I know we can come and gather everybody from wherever, have a birthday party in a park, but when it’s like I’m pretty sure the last two weeks solid every single day it’s been over

100, it’s really hard to go spend time at a park with your family so that is when we are looking into revitalizing our city and beautifying our city I think that is something that really does need to be taken into consideration that we do live in a ridiculously hot area of the country and I’m glad to see that the city is putting a lot of work in to beautify our city and to improve conditions here with initiatives like this and Realize

we see a lot of great opportunity and I just wanted to make sure that the council is always keeping the ridiculous heat that I know it’s impossible to ignore in mind when looking at these projects.

4. ADJOURNMENT 4.1 Councilor Yvonne Flores moved, seconded by Councilor Becki Graham, to adjourned 3:29 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Yvonne Flores

SECONDER: Councilor Becki Graham

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

Graham, and Councilor William Mattiace

Mayor

City Clerk