Work Session Meeting April 28, 2025

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, April 28, 2025 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

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

Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William

Mattiace

ABSENT:

1. JOBS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Sarah Raney, America’s Job Center New Mexico presented Jobs of the Week.

2. PETS OF THE WEEK 2.1 Carol Nielson, Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley presented Pets of the

Week.

3. AGENDA ITEM 3.1 FISCAL YEAR 2025-2026 BUDGET REVIEW & PUBLIC HEARING. Jacqueline Rubalcava, Budget and Grant Administrator gave the overhead presentation.

Mercedes Tomayko, Management Analyst I continued the overhead presentation.

Jacqueline Rubalcava continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Flores said so, on page 25, there is a homeless outreach allocation and what exactly, for what purpose is that allocated? I mean it isn’t handed out to the homeless, is it?

Natalie Green, Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Administrator said our homeless outreach program staffs two teams of two employees that do street outreach to people experiencing homelessness in our community so when we get calls out for our neighbors who are in different parts of the city, we get a call someone is living in this area, please send outreach. Our outreach team goes out there, engages with those individuals, makes sure they have updated case notes, they’ve done their housing intakes, and they work with them to bring them closer to the

Mesilla Valley Community of Hope campuses to receive services and hopefully transition into Camp Hope or housing programs to address their unhoused status.

Councilor Flores asked so is it the personnel at Community of Hope that does the actual outreach?

Natalie Green said that’s correct, we contract out with the Mesilla Valley Community of Hope, they hire the teams, so there’s two teams of two employees each, so four employees total and they manage that program on behalf of the city.

Councilor Flores said that’s great, you know I think it would be a good, it’s not about the budget, but to be informed about that, because I know that all of us on the City

Council are very much concerned with the unhoused and it would you know get some stats on that. So, the allocation made for the Rio Grande painting of $52,000, is that coming out of the TIDD? And then, do you really think it’s going to, what’s going to be painted, one wall? I mean seriously, painting is an art and that theater is probably going to require some gold paint to restore it.

Chris Faivre, Director of Community Development said so there was money already budgeted to do some painting work interior and exterior for RGT. This is extra money to make sure that they have enough to do all of that. It’s just touching up the paint on the inside of the building.

Councilor Flores said on page 20, the allocation of money for our different departments, are these new automobiles slated to replace or to add the existing amount of cars?

Mercedes Tomayko said these are replacements, the only vehicle that will be new and added to the fleet is for the Animal Control Officer for that new position.

Everything else is a replacement to the fleet.

Councilor Flores asked oh ok, so there is going to be an additional vehicle for the

Animal Control personnel?

Mercedes Tomayko said correct, so one added Animal Control Officer vehicle all the other 16 vehicles are replacement vehicles.

Councilor Flores asked on page 23 you have gap funding, and what is that? You prefaced it by saying it was gap funding, what exactly is gap funding? I mean, for example, we have homeless outreach for $75,000 carry over $0, where’s the gap or what is it?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said when we put gap funding, we refer to funding needed to complete the project, so those $2 million has been set aside to meet all of the construction needs for Fire Station 9.

Councilor Flores asked on page 8, there’s reference to longevity, so what exactly does that mean?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said so HR does a calculation based off of the different positions, and so for any represented bargain contracts, any employees who qualify for longevity, that has been incorporated into the budget and that is a calculation completed through the salary and benefit projections that HR provides and then we incorporate those into the budget.

Councilor Flores said ok, so it is a projection.

Jacqueline Rubalcava said yes.

Councilor Flores asked and then on page 11, there is a balance on the general fund and what does that cover?

Jacqueline Rubalcava asked is it on slide 6? The unreserved balance?

Councilor Flores said well, you can explain that also.

Jacqueline Rubalcava said so for the general fund summary, this is a breakdown of the years, so the beginning balance is what we have here, for the FY26 Proposed, we have a beginning balance of approximately $76.5 million. That includes any projections or carryovers that we are bringing in from the prior fiscal year and then we subtract out or add in the expenditures and transfers which gives us an ending balance and then because the general fund is required to have a 2/12 reserve, then we take out the 2/12 reserve which in this case for FY26 is approximately $28.9 million to give us an unreserved balance of $5.7 million. So, this just shows us the trajectory of the year and this is the information that is budgeted. So, this isn’t based off of actuals, it is just based off of budgeted information at the beginning of the year, for the proposed.

Councilor Flores said and these numbers can change.

Jacqueline Rubalcava said yes, so we normally at this time we are relying strongly on projections so that’s the departments are projecting how much they are going to spend at the end of the fiscal year. During FY26, audit will be completed for FY25, once the audit numbers are out, we come to council and update any beginning balances to reflect actuals. At that time, then we’ll update the beginning balances to reflect what was actually spent and so there that will be updated throughout the year and that’s where we see that difference between the 2025 adopted and the 2026 revised.

Councilor Flores asked ok and when will that be presented to council?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said so for FY26, approximately around February.

Councilor Flores asked of next year?

Councilor Flores said page 17, Fire Department allocation for LIGHT, the LIGHT project. Where are we?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said no worries, it’s right here on 18.

Councilor Flores asked I was just wondering if, I know Fire overtime licensed master social workers so that $38,922, is that going to be enough to add for the overtime?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said that is the estimated-

Councilor Flores asked because how many LMSWs do we have?

Fire Chief Michael Daniels said we currently have three social workers; part of this overtime plan is to increase their availability. Currently they are exempt so we’re reclassifying them as part of this to a non-exempt status so that they can be used for backfill to keep the LIGHT team in service more often versus hiring new FTEs when one is out or on leave this allows us to bring them in off duty so we can keep the

LIGHT team in service more days out of the year.

Councilor Flores asked and my question is really based on my humble opinion that you probably need more FTEs than the LMSWs.

Chief Daniels said so based on the current down time it doesn’t appear that we would need them unless we want more LIGHT teams in service, but to maintain the current single LIGHT team in service, we believe we can accomplish a decent amount of coverage, we’ll get quite a bit more coverage by being able to utilize off-duty and bringing them in.

Councilor Flores said it would be great if we could have a presentation on that, I don’t want to overstep City Manager or Mayor, but I think it would be great if we could have, because I know that our former Mayor Pro Tem, Kasandra Gandara, worked really hard on this and I remember just being, watching and listening, so I’m just following up on all of that.

Councilor Corran said I’m going from page 50, I think, is approximately where a lot of this stuff is. I really appreciate having the document, this is really skinny though, so

I’m looking forward to the giant thick one that I collect in my office and actually read.

Thank you for the concise version for today, I had a couple of quick questions and

follow ups. I really appreciate you all including staff wage increases I think 5%, I just feel like we’re behind, everyone is behind because of the rate of inflation and I really appreciate and always want to advocate for us making an investment and paying our folks the best ways we possibly can always all staff throughout the institution and I think we have the best employees I really appreciate that initiative which is more than the state gave recognizing a lot of state employees are at 3 or 4% so that’s outstripping them and I again am proud that we are a great employer and I want us to keep that up. So, I wanted to express my gratitude for that the inclusion of 5% increase, which again I don’t think is enough given the inflationary rates, but I also understand that we are also in a really difficult budgetary moment with a lot of ambiguity in the future. So, I think our humans are the best thing that we have, so I appreciate us and our investment in that. The other part that I wanted to really point out, I think the neighborhood traffic calming program, we had a very brief conversation about this last week, $140,000 I feel like this, there are probably three things that I’ve mentioned that my residents are really worried about it and I recently got the summary from the Neighborhood Watches which reiterates this idea that one of the big things that folks really want is for traffic to be slowed down on their streets and I know that this is a representation towards what we asked for, but it doesn’t come close to what we really need to do to invest in neighborhood traffic calming, so I actually would love to have a specific work session related to neighborhood traffic calming sometime and what kind of things we might need to fund in the future if we really want to invest in this. This isn’t really a question it is more of a comment as you are ever accustomed to from us. But I just want to say this investment I appreciate it as a gesture toward this, but that’s like 1/20th of a traffic circle and my neighborhoods want like 15 new traffic circles last month, except for the ones that hate traffic circles, so thank you for that. The last thing that I wanted to go to was on slide 25, this is another thing that folks in my area and across the city have really said they appreciate is Mano y Mano,

I think that this had a higher budget allocation in the past and one of the things folks reported is this service that we offer is really powerful and I think they’re visible in my neighborhood, so I’ve heard from residents that Mano y Mano is making an impact.

I’m just curious why the reduction because I don’t get the sense that there is less of a need, and I think that they are really delivering on what they need to be, so I think that is one of the places that I was curious what’s going on there.

Jacqueline Rubalcava said the $676,000 for Mano y Mano is based off of the amended service agreement, so the service agreement was for $676,000, so that is what is being budgeted here, there is a carryover from that amount last year I think it was $903,000 that was budgeted, including vehicles, so those vehicles have been ordered and there is also a carryover of that amount.

Councilor Corran said I just don’t want that service to be reduced, that’s one of the things that I’m really hoping we can maintain, so whatever that looks like.

Natalie Green said I will add that while the service agreement for $676,000 that’s what we subcontracted Mano y Mano, the city still has expenses that we have to provide as part of our contract that are not in that number so it is underfunded, the City is required to provide all the supplies, all the vehicles and the long term maintenance. In addition, one of our vehicles is, it died, so and the other one has 600,000 miles and so part of that funding was the replacement of the Mano y Mano vehicle, so we are

hoping to see that restored to what was requested and budgeted. So, last year council raised that to the 814 and added that additional truck so if it stays at the 676, we will be reducing our level of service to parks in particular because it is the van that is impacted.

Councilor Corran said I would like to see us maintain the level of service that we have for Mano y Mano because it is something that my residents I know really speak very highly of, it’s a visible impact in their communities for what they are experiencing.

Traffic calming is the second thing that I just really want us to think about ways that we can invest and have forward that conversation and so I appreciate seeing both of those things in here, as well as many other things that we’ve talked about, but those are two things that I continue to hear from my residents so thank you again for the work on this. I know that you all really faced the daunting task this year of doing it a little bit differently and I really appreciate the way that all of the departments have put in to think about this in a different way and really look constructively at the ways we make an impact in our community, so thank you again for your presentation and listening to my comments, not questions.

Jacqueline Rubalcava said and I just want to add that the neighborhood traffic calming program, the amount budgeted is for a pilot program.

Councilor McClure said I had a question for page 18, the Public Health Coordinator that came up during our presentations and I’m just curious on the thought processes of having it grant funded, especially with grants around the country as they are and sort of just the idea that that’s kind of unstable. Where’s the priority of that and in terms of finding that grant for it.

Jacqueline Rubalcava said so there is already a grant that has been identified and is in the process of being applied for, and so with that grant, a portion of that will go to fund the Public Health Coordinator.

Councilor McClure asked do we know when that might come through? Is there kind of a tentative award date if we did get it?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said not at this time I don’t believe I don’t have the answer here, we can look into that.

Councilor McClure said I’d be curious to see whether or not we can actually, maybe even just a part-time position, before it actually the grant does come through to see whether or not we do that.

Natalie Green said we did receive notice from the governor’s office that has been awarded, it’s $350,000 the bulk of that will be for staff and it is a two-year grant, and we’re just finalizing that scope of work, and we will bring it into the budget.

Councilor McClure said awesome, thank you. I also wanted to second the idea of having a traffic calming work session, I think that would be valuable. I also get a lot of those and yeah Mano y Mano is also a super valuable program that I would like to see

and make sure that we sustain that level of service as well.

Councilor Bencomo asked this is our last hearing, right before our official vote?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said yes, that’s correct.

Councilor Bencomo said I’m just going to go kind of down the list on page numbers and since you are here, this is perfect. I’ll start here, this isn’t really a question, I honestly just wanted to say that this is my fifth budget cycle, and it has felt the most different in a good way. I will say that I feel like you having the highlights here, the council priorities and then the little ones next to some of those requests. You know

I’ve said this before, I feel like in the past, it just has felt like a little auto pilot, the budget cycle and this time it felt really regenerative and you know most of us come very well prepared to budget sessions because we’ve been in the community we’ve been talking to people and we know exactly what we are going to be asking for and ensuring that that gets uplifted and funded so I just wanted to appreciate that first and foremost. A question on number 19, you have the storefront repair initiative carryover,

I’m sort of just very curious around the process here, right, like I knew at the end of last year we were nervous regarding ARPA dollars, are these additional allocations we’ve been given to this store front program? Or are these still ARPA dollars that have been sort of secured and not going to get pulled back?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said this is that continuation of the ARPA funding, so this carryover amount is from ARPA.

Councilor Bencomo asked ok but is it safe? No one is trying to claw these back?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said we have not heard that anything will be clawed back from

ARPA.

Councilor Bencomo said it’s a good program, so I’m glad it is still going. Page 20, on vehicles I apologize, I don’t remember if last year when we initially sort of allocated for park rangers if we also allocated for vehicles. Did we do that last year is that already in the budget?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said I’d have to look into that, I feel like they have been, but I’m not sure of the amount of vehicles.

Chief Jeremy Story said yes, we have all three of those vehicles sitting at the police department right now waiting for the rangers to fill them.

Councilor Bencomo said oh great! Ok, thank you. I could not remember, so thanks for that! And then honestly, I had a similar question as Councilor Corran around page 25,

Mano y Mano. I think probably every single one of us up here makes requests to

Natalie to send the Mano y Mano program if not on a weekly basis, on a pretty regular basis. I think that those vehicles take a significant beating, like they are doing very hard work I think that they are doing very important work. Not only is it the vans, you know I’ve heard that there’s a van that’s been totally broken, they are literally using

one on loan, I think they have equipment that needs to be used, right like the little pick up things, vests, bags, all of this kind of equipment. Community of Hope covers the insurance for the vans not even the entirety of Mano y Mano isn’t even being fully funded by the city, I think Community of Hope puts in additional funds as well, insurance for the vans, the food for the employees gets provided by El Caldito and

Casa De Peregrinos, of course they have to maintain wages, like the rest of the city and so I also want to make sure that we are funding programs that work, like these programs in our community work because we not only I see them out there all of the time, but I hear back from community members how grateful they are that something like this exists and so I would really hate for us to roll back something that exists, given something that works, given the conversation we continue to have around our unhoused neighbors. So, I did just want to give that last plug because I also want to make sure we provide them the funding they need to continue doing the level of service they have been so far.

Councilor Mattiace asked my question is if you go to page 22, and then you see these initiatives, the question is really for the City Manager, all of this is from the Telshor

Fund, correct? Page 22, 23, 24, and of course that’s not a recurring fund. I mean we have another $14 million we could take out of it, and we might last through 27, 28, and maybe 29, but all these great initiatives, how are they going to be funded in say, fiscal year 2029, Mr. Ikani?

Ikani Taumoepeau, City Manager asked you are asking for a project that has not been identified?

Councilor Mattiace asked in other words, well, I assume you’re going to continue these initiatives, correct? Mano y Mano, I mean it’s a great program, but right now it is being funded by the Telshor Fund.

Ikani Taumoepeau said great question, Mano y Mano is approved by this budget that you see in front of you, is approved by you as Council, as you know. To answer your

2029 hypothetical-

Councilor Mattiace said I know it’s hypothetical, it’s just that once that money is used, it’s gone, right? But you want these programs and these great initiatives, all of them, to continue. I mean not just for two years, three years, you want them perpetual, correct?

Ikani Taumoepeau said yes, what I’ll share with you to answer your question at its simplest form, is Telshor Fund, once it is used, the funds are reduced, we receive interest on these funds currently right now, so if we do nothing with them, we continue to receive revenues based on this interest, but Natalie can answer some of the questions as well.

Natalie Green said this year the State of New Mexico put out some significant resources, both for affordable housing and for our homeless encampment response, so our goal is to utilize those fundings and reimburse the Telshor Funds for much of these projects. In terms of the affordable housing projects, those are onetime projects,

and they are loans, so all the revenue will come back to the city of course that is over a 20-year period, but our intent is to make the Telshor Fund whole for any of the funds that it has allocated to us for loans. In terms of the gap funding for Amador Crossing, again we’ve been very successful at acquiring, I haven’t announced it yet, I was going to do it in my next presentation, but we just got another $2 million to help recoup some of the expenses that the city’s paying. So, our goal is to fund these programs with other revenues as much as possible. So, we’ll be working on that over the next year.

Councilor Bencomo said I’d like to sort of tackle a little bit of that question as well, I think that the longer and the more intentional we are about investing in long term solutions, like housing, the more we invest in housing people who are currently experiencing homelessness, and the more we invest in building our housing stock though things like Realize and those kinds of long term solutions the less there will be a need for things like Mano y Mano. So, ultimately the goal is while Mano y Mano is incredible, and I want to see it fully funded, the goal is for us to not need it eventually and I’m not saying 2029 is that timeline, but the more we invest in the long term solutions, the less we will need for the shorter-term solutions that are currently working right now.

Councilor Mattiace said I guess had we done this 15, 20 years ago, and had good investments, and good revenue, we would probably never needed the Telshor Fund.

So, it’s a good project and a good way to go.

Mayor Enriquez said just getting back to the page 20 with the vehicles. Just want to make sure on the staffing, we’ve got one new codes officer come in and one new animal control officer, I think you said there’s one vehicle for animal control, are we going to make sure that we get the vehicle for the new code officer as well?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said so yes, the animal control officer is the one budgeted, and

I’m going to defer to Police on that question.

Chief Story said there is not a vehicle that’s dedicated for it, but we have some other solutions. We’re working with Fire to repurpose a vehicle that was potentially going to be sent to auction, and we have a couple other backup plans, so I think we have it covered. It’s actually a decent vehicle for the codes officer.

Mayor Enriquez said just want to make sure that if you get a new position, that we get all the resources that they need to be able to fulfil their duties. One of the other things that’s been brought to my attention is, I think it would be page 22, I think it would fall under maybe the CM office for public services if not under the Telshor Fund, maybe

Quality of Life maybe there is another funding source for the Las Cruces Public

Schools has reached out for some of their case managers or social workers that they have after school programs that only fulfills two days out of the week and they’re requesting $150,000 that would do five days out of the week and I think that’s a great intervention program a great public service health wise for our community that if we could partner up and help out Las Cruces Public Schools with their social workers and making sure that for the youth in our community we’re giving them five days out of the

week instead of just two. I guess I’ll look to the City Manager to see where exactly that would fall under the budget but that is a request also, working with our community schools and the public schools. And the other one I know I agreed to with traffic calming those are always concerns that come out from the residents but the other thing is training and safety and I know I’m just springing this on now, because I just saw it last week, there is a company here in town Mansco Company that is doing a school instruction for heavy equipment operators and they had some simulators there that they can do up to 36 vehicles included there are police units, fire apparatus, heavy equipment that our public works and street use all the time, there are simulators that cost about $70,000 and I’m just throwing it out there because I promised Lucio I would, and say that it would be great for training, for testing, preventing accidents and just helping our staff to get better trained in traffic, so that’s another item that I present and throw out there.

Councilor Mattiace said I’d just like to support you on your request for the social workers of Las Cruces Public Schools.

Linda St. Clair, Member of the Public said I am the President of Friends of Thomas

Branigan Memorial Library. I wanted to start just by thanking you for the support you’ve already shown for the design process for the renovation that I’m sure that was helpful for us when we went to the State Legislature and were able to get some funding from them and we will continue harassing them for more capital campaigns, but you have in this budget a Librarian II Collection Development position and I do want to encourage you. That is an incredibly important position for the library. Our

Library staff is so incredible, they wear so many hats and do so many things outside of their regular responsibilities because we don’t have someone in that position and haven’t in quite some time as I understand it. So, I just would like to encourage you to support that Library Collection position. Operation of the library is so vital to so many people, the friends actually have more friends here in the audience, but they are out running the book sale that we have going on right now to try to bring in some more money to help with some of the other operating expenses that come up that they don’t have the money for in the budget the staff does such a great job of putting on. I want to thank you for your support in the past and encourage you to keep supporting the library.

Nicole Martinez, Member of the Public said I also wanted to express my gratitude for including Community of Hope in the budget and supporting some of our programs. I know that our homeless outreach program, the Mano y Mano program, certainly coveted programs in several other communities. I think it is a very strong partnership that we have with the City of Las Cruces and shows that we care about our unhoused neighbors. I’m also really grateful to see that it’s been budgeted to have onsite maintenance for Community of Hope. Not sure if you know how it works right now, but currently if Jardin’s toilet breaks the work order comes to me, I send it to the city.

Casa de Peregrinos lights goes out, it comes to me, goes to the city and then sometimes I don’t know if things are getting updated on what might be happening, so this really will streamline and really prevent a lot of the things I think that we see happen at Community of Hope, so I’m really excited to have that there. It will save the city some money in the future and while I’m here, I just wanted to comment on a couple of other programs that our city funded. They are not necessarily in this budget.

One of them is the GRD Funding that we’ve gotten from Legislature and that’s to help people with one time assistance, people that are exiting homelessness, and transitioning into their own apartments, might be security deposits, but a lot of the funding that has been used has been to prevent homelessness, so I know sometimes it gets lost that we are doing a lot of those things too, so we have a lot of different types of housing programs but we are really flexible and we think that housing is the way to go with that so people that I know that there was a woman that had come about information of her losing her housing had come forward those are the types of people that we are helping constantly. Since July we have served 163 clients with that funding, so prevented at least 103 of those people from becoming homeless by assisting with that funding, 19 was security deposits several with Utilities and quite a few that were utilizing it as first month’s rent, we also have been operating ARPA funding, Landlord Risk Mitigation Program that can also be used, would have worked for that same woman as well and we have worked with 33 unique landlords in the City of Las Cruces with the landlord mitigation, it’s for damages but it’s also for recruiting landlords, it’s also for helping bring units into compliance with inspections so they are safe when we are moving people into those units, and then we also have other funding sources that come from the state that will assist people with homeless prevention funding with more than just one month of rent, so more ongoing assistance for people who might be facing eviction. So, just wanted to let you know that those are things that the city has also been supporting I don’t think that landlord risk made it into this particular budget, but it remains a really useful program keeping people in their own home or quickly moving them to another unit, so they don’t join the ranks of our unhoused population. So, again just wanted to say thank you so much.

Tim Jenkins, Member of the Public said a question, I don’t now how many times in the last year I’ve actually called on Mano y Mano, and they have done excellent work but I remember prior to Covid that we had a program with the inmates picking up trash which I know the governor shut down during Covid, but would that maybe be an option of something we could maybe implement or bring back to help cut costs? Just an idea. Just thought I’d bring it up. 3.2 CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS PROGRAM FY26 REVIEW AND PUBLIC

HEARING. Cynthia Alamillo, CIP Manager gave the overhead presentation. 3.3 CITY OF LAS CRUCES PARKS AND RECREATION IMPACT FEE STUDY Katherine Harrison-Rogers, Parks Plan & Construction Administrator gave the overhead presentation.

Julie Herlands, Vice President with Tischler Bise continued the overhead presentation.

Katherine Harrison-Rogers continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran said thank you for orienting us on this. This is something that from my perspective is we’ve been considering as a city for a really long time. It’s really overdue, like I think we’ve been neglecting our duties to address park impact fees for a long time and I think we now kind of have the experience of having to catch up

which is not a great situation to be in. But I was hoping that you could bring up, so you had the CIAC recommendations but the one prior to that is the or on this it’s just one page up. I guess for me the most important variables that I think about and again, I think that my district probably has the fastest growth of anyone, so these impact fees will be paid primarily by people moving into District 5 and that’s part of what I consider in this, but I also see that lots of parks are actually exist in our district and people are always calling me to ask that the city come out to maintain their tiny one acre neighborhood park and so all of those variables for me really make me think, sorry it’s like maybe one more up? This one I think, I just wanted to say, for me I think this is I think we should include neighborhood parks although I understand that the variable

Realize is somewhat complicating of that. So for me, in part because of that very reason, that many people in my district benefit from neighborhood parks but I don’t know how that will be moving forward in terms of development and reimbursement and all of those things so I sort of defer on that, but I know that all of these get passed on to residents, that is how buying a home goes and one of the biggest things that people always say is don’t put up barriers to housing and what I very much appreciate about this model is that it takes into account entry level housing for people who have small families versus sort of middle of the road and thinks about housing units, how many people there are, using the services based on that. I would like to say that I support the way that this is approached in terms of square footage making it parallel to the public safety impact fees and I also want to really encourage us in my district, I think in the last year, housing prices have increased enormously, and people continue to buy houses, so I say this homes stay on the market for three days, four days, five days, they cost probably 35% more than when I moved into the district at least or perhaps up to 50% more than when I moved into my district so I just want to put the caveat in here that while housing prices this is a factor in housing prices, they are going to go up I anticipate whether we do a lot of things or not. This isn’t one of the biggest variables driving housing prices from my observations and experience in the district. So, I would also urge us to do the maximum allowable fee per unit because folks are enjoying these services, they’re expecting a level of service from us, we owe it to people to give them green space in the outside and I would similarly argue that this accounts for steep impacts on the housing sort of supply by changing to a residential square foot model instead of something else and so that accounts for that.

So, I just want to say thank you for presenting this, of those options that we’re given, I don’t remember if this is actually the one, I think I’m thinking of the one with neighborhood parks. Oh yeah, that one’s really a lot. I am here for this, this is the one that I would say I am in for, the maximum allowable for each, in part because thinking about what benefits folks’ experience. It’s disproportional from this, and also I think for a while people were paying like $3,000 to be members of a golf club in my district, I say that for context like, that’s one golf course and again I’m not saying that that isn’t a legitimate expense, it’s great, but this is all of the facilities that the city provides and so many neighborhood parks this is what I would ask for moving forward, but I realize

I’m a singular sort of voice in that conversation, but I have been watching this issue since I got on council and I’m really happy to have the opportunity and I urge us to do it as soon as we possibly can so that we can start addressing the revenue shortage and building more new park facilities too.

Councilor Bencomo said like Councilor Corran said we’ve been talking about this for a really long time and I remember early days of the Ifo Pili administration I spoke to him

often about honestly the need for us to improve our parks impact fees system as a whole. I think we have incredible staff that has gotten us to this point, not only with this conversation, but with the improvements with Realize that of course while that’s still sort of out there, I am very confident that we will have Realize as city wide policy, so, I just really do want to personally thank all of you for this work, this is tremendously exciting. I don’t think I would take this job there’s way too many numbers for me, but I do love this conversation as a whole. Just for because there are so many numbers, and because so many of us have different filter than that I just wanted to say a couple things to summarize so that I make sure I understand and to make sure the public understands, not that you all aren’t number’s people, but I imagine there’s a lot of non-numbers people. Ok, early on you spoke about the cost per person and all of that and you said that if we stay on track, if we change nothing, that the need for our park system would be around $37 million, am I interpreting that correctly?

Julie Herlands said yes, and no. More yes than no, let me go to with neighborhood parks.

Councilor Bencomo asked can you go back to if you do nothing today?

Julie Herlands said so you are exactly right, I apologize, this is $37 million dollars, you are exactly right, of growth related needs based on the projections that we have that are from multiple sources, trends, we look back, we look forward, other external projections sources that we would look at put given a projection over ten years of about 14,000 and change of people at that level of service, yes, there’s $37 million worth of growth related needs of which the majority of that is in the park improvements so I was mistaken in the indoor aquatic because what we show here is just that, the growth related share in this chart, so the $2.6 million.

Councilor Bencomo said so then my second question to this is I want to talk about the equity in the park system, and so even earlier in one of your slides earlier you had them neighborhood parks, all of them listed, I would have loved if you added a column on which district they were in because I think it would a shown the serious inequity that we have in the City of Las Cruces in terms of the person and the park and who has access to neighborhood parks and who doesn’t because of frankly in my opinion the years of disinvestment in the park system through the park impact fee system and all of that. I think maybe perhaps for the next for our voting session I would love to see something like that because I think from someone like, I’m in District 4, and from someone like me, where there is very little growth happening, there is some growth, but very little growth, and the growth that has happened like I always point to Legends

West neighborhood, I don’t know if you know or not, but this growing sort of neighborhood had this tiny little pocket park and they said yeah, we will build some trails and it’s just not adequate for that neighborhood. And so when I think about this conversation I always think about Legends West and that neighborhood as a whole and District 4 as a whole and 3 and 1 just deserved better in terms of neighborhood parks. That’s how I’m sort of approaching this, I’m also wondering if you have like national best practices for this like dollar per person should be the land cost per person. Do you have that top of your head and I’m curious sort of how that matters in

this conversation?

Julie Herlands said we’ve lots of discussions both here and elsewhere, my firm does work nationally due to impact fees, we’ve done one thousand impact fees. I don’t know what our number is these days, but cross the country, 40 years, I’ve been there for half of that time, speaking of numbers, so we are really hesitant to talk about comparisons in comparable communities because every community’s level of service is different, everyone has a different range of things and types of parks, types of service, types of facilities that they provide underneath the umbrella of Parks and Rec.

So, we are very hesitant to do that we do. We have had questions and we can follow up on some of what we’ve learned sort of regionally and in the state, but it is kind of a real checker board in terms of who does impact fees, who doesn’t, what other sources of funding there are, so we work in Colorado, Arizona. Colorado there’s kind of this history and a tradition of dedicated taxes to purchase open space, so they take their open space piece out and kind of do that separately, really a checker board of who does what and when and where and the history. Florida’s very different than Arizona, than Colorado, California is its own thing, New Mexico is kind of a mix of all of those things, there’s really not a kind of a standard and so we’re long way to say hesitant to provide the specifics in terms of dollars. We can say what other folks have done regionally and kind of within the state.

Councilor Bencomo said no I really respect that, thank you. One of the things that I appreciate most about this study is that you have, it is like deeply localized. It is all local data, all local numbers, so I think that that’s actually really credible. I think some of the sort of tension that exists around the last number, the 2600, is that it is a little bit of an arbitrary number and I want to move away from that completely and what you have done here is said oh I have receipts. We got to this number through a very specific localized formula so I really respect that, thank you.

I think just generally I would like to say about some of this and what I’m already expecting will be the push back around will this make home prices increase? And I do want to note that in 2013 the last time there was an increase, which was a very long time ago and if anything I’ve learned from Utilities is we should not rate shock people, right? Rate shock is bad, we should try to avoid putting this huge increase on people and so instead you do this more gradual smaller increases in order to upkeep and maintain your entire system and deliver good service, I feel like that’s a good perspective for this as well and in 2013, honestly the narrative was the same, if you raise A you are going to make it impossible for someone to buy a home. I would argue that right now first time home buyers, it’s already impossible for them to buy a home, and it’s not because of park impact fees. It’s because of stagnant wages, it’s because of student loan debt, it’s because of medical debt, it’s because of a lot of other things that have nothing to do with park impact fees and yet here we are, trying to figure out how to provide the best service to our community. Parks, I deeply believe are as vital as a utility and so I’m very happy that we are having this conversation. For me I think that what I would like to see us move forward with is the I think it is page 16 the piece without neighborhood parks, given the piece that exists in Realize, I think if we sort of said you have to dedicate certain parkland and there will not be reimbursements any more and you have to pay an additional fee I fear that that would get us in legal trouble potentially, so given the stuff surrounding Realize right now though, in my

mind if Realize is the new zoning code, I think for me this, I would like to move forward with this and the residential by square foot. The only caveat, maybe asterisk, that I would put here is that one of the biggest motivators behind Realize, one of the biggest motivators of the city as a whole, is to increase our housing stock. We have a serious housing crisis for not just affordable units, but fair market rent units, the missing middle type of units, we are in a housing crisis and we are trying to do many things in order to incentivize what that looks like. And again we can’t predict the future, right, so I don’t know if this number on the 1300 or less would yield us what we desire to see and especially in the infill and I don’t know so I guess we move forward with something like this I’d like us to sort of in a year just in conversations with staff, like in the year we revisit and say did this yield us the kind of housing, the multifamily housing we were hoping to especially in the infill and if it didn’t, perhaps it is time to revisit the cost for 1300 or less, specifically the less, would actually look like. Do you think so that we wouldn’t have to do an arbitrary number at that point is there a way that you and your firm and staff can come up with a number to help us address a situation like that?

Julie Herlands said on that sort of threshold there is some flexibility in those ranges sure and this was to be consistent with the public safety fee this is exactly in line with the public safety fee I’m thinking there would be some level of consistency or that would provide a level of consistency and certainty from the development side so you are sort of fitting in the same buckets as you are getting your building permit and turned on the other side of the table but that can be an area that we from our side, can look at a little bit closer the potential issue there is the low end of the household size. And you can go lower than one considering some vacancy so this is a persons per housing unit, so at any given time there’s going to be some vacancy there where you can be lower than one, but it still needs to be reasonable, and it needs to mathematically make sense.

Councilor Bencomo said right there’s no half a person per unit.

Julie Herlands said right, so it’s sort of yes and no question you can certainly drill down and look a little bit deeper at the data to see how much, if you can go smaller than that 1300 would be our floor. But again, there is some flexibility there you can change the middle parts too in terms of scaling it in terms of different buckets. So, we’ve worked in communities a fee schedule with ten categories or you can have a range there, so there’s some flexibility there.

Councilor Bencomo said and I just want to say for now I’m very comfortable moving forward with this particular scale and again in a year, once Realize is in place and all of that pieces are in place that we can look and actually say what is happening, is it working is it not working and then sort of address it that way. At this point I just feel like we are so far behind as a whole that I’m not willing to wait any longer and I think this is just vitally important and we need to improve our park system as a whole.

Councilor Corran said I just want to clarify one other point to this question for the first time I think this year we waived impact fees for affordable housing, and I just want to clarify that changes to this would not change our ability to do that within an ordinance,

right?

Katherine Harrison-Rogers said that’s correct, so section 13-131 is where those provisions related to waivers for affordable housing projects exist and historically you have sort of two options with that. Historically what we’ve done is you as council have identified a budget, given that to affordable housing, so that we can reimburse those fees as we have affordable housing projects come through, we had a really large housing project come through this year and the code actually allows for a full waiver, that’s built into the code as well. Just historically it hasn’t been done, but it was done the first time this year for Peachtree Apartments in the Metro Verde area and there was a full waiver of that for the affordable housing and it’s a fully affordable HUD identified project.

Councilor Bencomo said with a ton of amenities.

Katherine Harrison-Rogers said that’s correct, pickleball.

Councilor Graham said I also support the maximum allowable fee. Sticker shock is not fun, but it’s the inevitable consequence of not addressing these things in a timely fashion over years and years and I understand, I’m not dunking on previous councils.

I understand why it’s easier to just say ok, never mind we’re not going to change anything because you are being badgered, people are angry or threatened with not being reelected, which is not my problem, so I’m happy to both recognize and understand how we got here, but say it is time to move ahead. So, I just wanted to add on to that.

Councilor McClure said I think that it is time to kind of recognize what benefits, mental health wise, parks do for our city. Everyone enjoys the amenities in the ways that they can allow for themselves. So, I would also like to ask, I think that in our one-on-one meeting I suggested cutting a little bit into the 1300 or less, I like the idea that it might incentivize a different kind of housing as well, so I’ll add to that as also and yeah, the square footage is also the better portion of that.

Mayor Enriquez said what I would like to add is it is difficult to balance, it is something we are playing catch up, as you can see the dates of when we started with he impact fees and then when they were increased I don’t know if it was nine or eleven years but there was a big gap and we’ve seen that and we’ve seen that with our own parks, and our previous presentation on the budget we show where we put money from the

Telshor Fund into our legacy parks and I think that starts with us to set the standard and say these are the parks we want for our city and we’ve done that, so I think it is also up to the developers and the builders and everyone else to ante up and make the nice parks that we expect. We have to have that balance with building as well, if we do nothing, then we are just going to get further behind. I think we all agree with that, so to say with consistency I’m in favor of the square footage to be consistent with public safety but then also I’m looking at the page 16, is that the one without the neighborhood. Looking at that, we kind of have that happy medium because what we also have available is what we’ve already done with the Telshor Fund. Up next, we are already having another presentation with the GO bonds and that’s where we get

to that equity and that’s where we can look and say these are the park improvements we need in certain areas and the city continues to grow and develop and we don’t get further behind but at the same time, if we need to catch up, we have other options, we have the public safety critical infrastructure GRT coming up that will start in July.

Those will be some other opportunities that we can catch up with the things that have been neglected but we move forward, and everybody does their piece and we try to balance as best we can to have a bright, sustainable financial future and not always trying to catch up. So that would be my recommendation, the square footage, page 16 would be what I would be looking at. 3.4 GO BOND QUARTERLY UPDATE David Sedillo, Director of Public Works gave the overhead presentation.

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

Councilor Graham said the Three Sisters, so great to hear that we are already getting folks moving into Three Sisters, I know with Pedrena getting them leased out actually it was demand over supply that you were getting constant, how has leasing gone with

Three Sisters? Has there been a good response from the community?

Natalie Green said there are some few vacancies, so one of the things we are doing is the ribbon cutting will be open to the public, so we are hoping to right after the ribbon cutting, we’ll be able to fill the rest of the units.

Councilor Graham said oh, so it can also be a recruitment neighborhood building event. Fantastic!

Natalie Green said I will add that Peachtree we’re at probably once a week getting an inquiry to be added to the waitlist, so there have been some folks already anticipating those to be ready to go.

Councilor Graham said that’s amazing, and do you have a sense of how are people finding out about this? Is it word of mouth, is it city social media?

Natalie Green said it’s a little bit of all of it. Some of it is updates from this, they end up in social media or the newspaper, we get calls, in the case of Pedrena, sometimes it is district meetings or again people are just monitoring what’s happening at Council and they saw something in the paper and they’re calling us and a lot of times it is just inquires and calls. Someone is having a landlord/tenant issue, and they are looking for a new place to live and then we are able to provide a list of different subsidized properties across the city including the fliers that we get from the property manager and then of course, all the properties have very large signs so as people see construction move up, it does have typically contact information for either the developer or the property manager.

Councilor Graham said I’m happy to see the La Llorona Park improvements getting put on there, that’s a place that I bicycle through several times a week especially the

Wayfinding, because I feel like I currently am the Wayfinding asset for the city because anyone who looks lost, I’m like, I know this trail system, let me help you out.

So, great to know that and that hopefully some storm water fixes because it can be a whole other pool facility over there sometimes so great to hear.

Councilor Corran said I was just curious, I don’t know if I remember, but could you talk about those two developments Skylark and I don’t know where those are or anything about them, could you just talk about them a little bit, Sierra Del Sol and Skylark? I don’t remember them, and they sound cool.

Natalie Green said Sierra Del Sol is a subdivision that is next to Sierra Middle School.

It is a piece of property that the City acquired in exchange for paving Bruins Lane and so as part of that, we put out an RFP and development agreement. Tierra Del Sol designed both subdivisions, but they’ve been holding out for funds to be able to build infrastructure and we anticipate those funds coming some time in the new fiscal year through some grant funding and my hope is to do that. And that’s Luis Street and

Spruce but the parking lot is there so it is behind the parking lot and then the other property, Skylark is off Skylark Drive and Central on the East Mesa. We had initially looked at that to be a subdivision and 2-acre park, and that was a directive from former Councilor Sorg when he wanted a 2-acre park on the East Mesa so we initially designed it for the park when the cost came back to be able to build the subdivision out was unfeasible with the park, so they redesigned it to make it all housing and there is a substantial waiting list for both of those projects, so there’s almost 200 people waiting for first time homeownership we do want to use a portion of the GO

Bonds to do first time homebuyers in Sierra Del Sol and Skylark and then the Arcadia which is in the Metro Verde PUD. So, a little bit of infill, a little bit of new.

Councilor Bencomo said last week when we met with Secretary of Workforce

Development, Sarita Nair, we talked to her about all of these projects and just how ready they are and the gaps in funding and really still advocating for that ten million dollars to come because we know that it will be used immediately, right, like it’s not money that’s going to be sitting around sort of waiting for something to happen. It can be used right now as you can see, obviously even like with Amador that we still have a little bit of a gap, but it is already going and Peachtree is moving fast and so just the huge thank you to Jan who was there and then just really hoping Natalie that you are keeping in connection with the Secretary and making sure that we do as much as we can to advocate, that’s a kind word, but really fight for these dollars to come to our community.

Natalie Green said I’m going to have a Tom Cruise moment of “show me the money”!

Councilor Bencomo said I love that actually, I’m going to join you in that. I think Las

Cruces is ready, and like I said, we’d use it immediately, so I’m just thank you for you know all of your staff being so prepared for that. And then David I just have one small question for you, on La Llorona park, I apologize if I forgot, you’ve probably talked about this in previous presentations, but the IBWC it said approval, that didn’t have a check mark yet, can you just talk to us about what that meant?

David Sedillo said so under the construction phase the lease approved by all parties.

That’s the update for this one here so, yes, the lease has been approved, it may have to be amended based on how we mitigate the storm water, that was part of the discussion.

Councilor Bencomo said got it thank you so much, I missed that.

David Sedillo said thank you for the recognition, however that was Parks who had the decision to move the funds over here, so just wanted to share that with you.

Mayor Enriquez said I did have one other question, the one on El Paseo, that’s a

Pedrena senior apartments, it’s not really with the housing, it’s a little bit more for

Steve, I just know throughout the community there’s a lot of talk about more pickleball courts and I know that there’s a Frenger Park there and there’s other parks. Is there any update, is that something that can be converted from tennis courts to pickleball courts or in other areas of town?

Steven Bingham, Director of Parks and Recreation said yes, we have looked into and talked with the community groups about using Frenger as a pickleball facility, the feedback was from the pickleball group is more that they would like to see a tournament site, a place that can grow out to 24 or 32 courts eventually. They feel like right now they’ve been getting by that was our discussions about three months ago.

East Mesa pickleball complex has been full previously usually maxed out at five courts out of the eight, and Apodaca had been down short one usually open, so we can go and convert Frenger to pickleball courts, and I do have a cost on doing that.

We’ve also looked at making it multiuse and making it so it can be a futsal/basketball and still add a couple of pickleball courts there, so we’ve been looking at each of those options.

Mayor Enriquez said I was more concerned with the residents that are living there now in that community. It’s just a walk right there to the park and to have some of those amenities I don’t know if through the developer Natalie have there been talks about having some recreation activities for their tenants as well. That’s what I was wondering if it could be done but you were saying you are looking at the costs and that was maybe something we could talk with the residents.

Natalie Green said I was hoping you could see it from here, but I don’t think that you can.

Mayor Enriquez said when you played the video that’s what caught my eye was the park, all that green space behind there.

Natalie Green said they did add a cross, they need to paint the crosswalk but they did add an ADA ramp with direct access to the apartment complex to correspond with the

Frenger and Gomez master plan and so my goal, not this year, next year, is to advocate for some grant funding for parks similar to how housing advocated for Valley

View Park so it’s on my list of wheeling and dealing to do to hopefully get them some grant funds to make some improvements to add additional connectivity with Pedrena.

4. ADJOURNMENT 4.1 Councilor Becki Graham moved, seconded by Councilor Johana Bencomo, to adjourn at 3:38 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Becki Graham

SECONDER: Councilor Johana Bencomo

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

Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie

McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace

Mayor

City Clerk