Work Session Meeting March 24, 2025

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, March 24, 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, Americas Job Center of 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. READ CLOSED MEETING STATEMENT 3.1 The Las Cruces City Council met in closed session and only discussed those limited items as stated in the posted notice:

1. To discuss the purchase, acquisition or disposal of real property rights regarding 302 South Main Street, Las Cruces, New Mexico, which is closed pursuant to NMSA 1978, Section 10-15-1(H)(8).

2. To discuss pending or threatening litigation regarding the Estate of Presley Eze v. Officer Brad Lundsford, et al, Cause No. 2:23-cv-00976-GBW-KRS, which is closed pursuant to NMSA 1978, Section 10-15-1(H)(7).

4. AGENDA ITEM

4.1 FISCAL YEAR 2025-2026 BUDGET REVIEW. Jacqueline Rubalcava, Budget & Grant Administrator gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Bencomo asked on page ten I just had a question about, I assume this the first one with the Community of Hope homeless outreach teams they have, is there a reason for a zero estimated need for next year?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said this was just based off of not any new request that the departments have submitted but this was just strictly based off the amount of what they were funded for in FY25 and so the budget in 25 there was $75,000 set aside for homeless outreach. This isn’t saying in 26 that they don’t have a request for funding it is just from that funding that was in FY25 they are not expecting to carry over anything because they will fully spend it in 25.

Councilor Bencomo said I just wanted to make sure I understood that but then also take the moment to say that I think it is incredibly important that we continue to prioritize this program and ensure that there is and that it stays on the budget for future funding because it is an incredibly important program.

Councilor Mattiace said in reading page ten and then I think page nine, flip back to nine. Where is the amount that was allocated toward Police? I think I was just $1 million?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said there is the Real Time Crime Center, $1.1 million.

Councilor Mattiace asked this was FY25 budget?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said correct.

Councilor Mattiace asked if you go back to page ten and go back to page 9, am I adding that all $16 million was for housing? That came all from the Telshor Fund?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said if I remember correctly, it was closer to $19 million. I don’t have the exact numbers broken down, but we can get those.

Councilor Mattiace asked it’s okay, it’s just $14 million/$19 million in that category?

And then $1 million for public safety? The reason I bring this up is that I like to see the priority of public safety. I would really like push that for the next budget. That is all

I am going to say.

Mayor Enriquez said you mentioned the proposed GRT, and you mentioned also the

Telshor Fund. There is also proceeds, the cannabis proceeds funding is that being talked about? Do we know what kind of projected revenues that we are going to have there to be able to budget?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said yes, we do have that projected. I don’t have that off the top of my head, but we do have it budgeted in the budget, we just didn’t include all

revenue sources here. For the following Work Session, we can all funding sources for the revenue. At that point we will be further along with the process and have all revenues and then requests included.

Councilor Mattiace asked on April 14th we will have more of a say in the new budget, correct?

Jacqueline Rubalcava said yes, on April 14th we hope that we will have more information on there. We will have more of a breakdown of the requests that have already been submitted and anything that we have approval from the City Manager at that time. This was more just of a preliminary just to kind of explain what we are working through and how the process was laid out to get to this point.

Councilor Mattiace said I would like to share two items with the council now so that they can at least think about it before the 14th. Number one, I found out that five or six months ago and because of what happened Friday mainly with young people. The

Las Cruces Public Schools, and I mentioned it to Ms. Bencomo, the Las Cruces

Public Schools discontinued their therapy program. They actually had social workers and therapists in the school and for some reason they ran out of funds so I would like to see maybe application of our Telshor Funds to help the Las Cruces Public Schools bring that therapy program back to the high schools and then the second item I would like to is that there has been a lot of not mismanagement but I will call it surprise management like MMC, ambulance service, the leases. I would like to see us maybe here possibly a Compliance Officer. Someone that goes through all of the contracts and keeps us abreast of whether or not we are getting the reports when we are supposed to and then maybe we don’t have a closed meeting surprises so if I could just get that there for the rest of the council to possibly consider. 4.2 CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS PROGRAM FY26 REVIEW. Cynthia Alamillo, CIP Manager gave the overhead presentation. 4.3 AIRPORT MASTER PLAN. Andy Hume, Airport Director gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran said I know that commercial air service is a little bit, it is like the lead in this that everyone is wondering about. I noticed that the master plan sort of suggest that Dallas is already online and that Phoenix is coming soon and I know that those are things that we weren’t able to do. Can you give any sort of summary about what some of the most significant barriers are to meeting and again the master plan suggests that these already happened so I guess I would be curious to know what the shift in timeline is and what among the things are sort of the part of the CIP or other things that we have to consider in the budgeting process if that can make a difference in that timeline or not?

Andy Hume said the two items that are the biggest barriers, one is a terminal that will be able to support the TSA requirements. Particularly for the larger aircraft to get to

DFW. Our current provider does not fly or is not going to be able to fly to DFW. The second is having an MRG, a minimum revenue guarantee. In order to get the service started a provider needs to know that they are going to be able to meet their

expenses and so having a minimum revenue guarantee provided to them until they get their numbers up, their load factors up to the point where they’re meeting their expenses, they’re making money is the second requirement. I would say that those are the two biggest requirements. Our current runway is long enough to support regional jets so that is really not an issue and we have the instrument landing capabilities for those types of planes so that is not really an issue but it’s the terminal and the MRG that are really the two main issues.

Councilor Corran said I wonder in particular the terminal which I assume that one of the capital improvements that maybe we just saw, I am not sure. I think there was about $6 million being projected so I am curious as to what that looks like. If it is our existing one or you have to raise things? What would those changes be?

Andy Hume said one of the design ideas that we have is taking our existing hangar, the city owns a hangar. We could take that existing hangar, build an addition on to it, we have a space next to it that we could build an addition and basically retrofit that hanger and the addition to provide we would call it a transitional terminal until we can build a new facility that would cost a lot more and it would be more of a long term solution but we could do that in that $6 million range. That is really where that cost estimate came from but it would be retrofitting an existing building that we have.

Councilor Corran said I just wanted to understand the context if that was an ask and if it was coming through in this and if we understood the implications of it or not and I think it is important for the conversation.

Councilor Graham asked what is the tipping point of when we would need to upgrade our firefighting facilities, capacity, equipment?

Andy Hume said it would be going to this type of service that we were just talking about. Right now, we have what is called an index A service and for the type of aircraft that we have, the eight-seater aircraft that level of service is appropriate. If we go to the regional jets that we were just talking about we would need to upgrade to index B, which does require an increase in our service, an increase in our equipment and it also would probably require an increase in probably a need in additional personnel.

Councilor Mattiace asked on the increased equipment for regional aircraft what is the control tower situation? Do you have a full-fledged control tower that would be needed?

Andy Hume said at this point in time a control tower is not needed. Typically, control towers are needed once you get to a certain number of aircraft operations. If you have regular aircraft operations that exceed 100,000 per yearhat is when you start needing a control tower. Right now, we are in the 35,000 to 40,000 per year range so we are not anywhere close to that number of operations per year yet. We certainly monitor that year after year, but we are certainly not at the point of needing a control tower at this point.

Councilor Mattiace asked in ten years what type of increase to get to 30,000, where were we ten years ago?

Andy Hume said I would have to go back and look at the numbers. I don’t have that off the top of my head.

Councilor Corran said I want you to know this is absolutely not about you and your leadership or anything but what I am about to say but for me I wasn’t here when the initial sort of parameters for what the future of air traffic will be in Las Cruces and I understand that there are a lot of folks who are really anxious to see air passenger go to Phoenix and Dallas but I have to acknowledge that for my own perspective a really big investment in the airport for passenger air service doesn’t really necessarily reflects what I think some of our values are or our biggest most pressing needs so I just want to say that in this context. I don’t know what is in the capital plan and again I want you to know it is not I have any doubt that you have the ability to make things happen, I know that you do. I just sort of want to beg a question of what kinds of investments should we make and what populations is this serving and what is the ultimate impact we want to make with money and for me this conversation I don’t know if I would necessarily and I know we did this a little bit in our CIP Retreat and it did make me reflect on what my values are and what my understanding of what our values are and I don’t know that passenger air service to Dallas and Phoenix are things that I would choose to prioritize in a capital improvements process and so I just want to say that to be transparent in this conversation because it is pretty ambitious and it does have some implications I think for budget and what we understand and so

I just sort of want to own that in this conversation.

Mayor Enriquez said that is kind of the question I have. Moving forward what kind of investment are we really looking at with this master plan looking at the future? What kind of investment funding money are we looking over what time frame?

Andy Hume said up to this point I am going to answer this in two ways. The first is that the numbers here that I have on this slide reflect capital and other grants. So, this includes the Rural Air Service Enhancement Grant under the state grant. Of course, the FAA grants. So here these are all funds that are coming from sources outside of the city and the $1 million are the matches that the city has come up with. Now this is since 2018. The other sources of funding are the operational funds, personnel and operations and so I don’t have the numbers off the top of my head year over year and

I can work with finance to get those but those are the funds above the revenue that the airport generates from leases and other fees that the city provides to operate the airport. Again, I don’t have those numbers with me but I can get those from Finance.

So, there really is two, one is these numbers here which really reflect capital and other grants and then there is the personnel/operating.

Mayor Enriquez asked my question is really moving forward what is it going to cost?

Andy Hume said I would refer to the CIP. If we want to move ahead with runway extension projects. Runway and extension projects are going to run into the tens of millions of dollars but again, we would seek grants for those. We would work with the

state legislature for funding on those. The new runway down in Santa Teresa I believe cost $40 million but the state legislature provided most if not all of the money for that project. We are going to be replacing our automated weather system and our rotating beacon. I believe it is in the neighborhood of $650,000. The FAA is providing 90% funding for that and then the city only has to provide 5% of the match for that. So again, those funding sources are out there through the FAA and through the state legislature. The city generally has to come up with 5%/10% for matches and I work with Planning and Implementation to make sure that those items are prioritized in the city’s CIP.

Councilor Mattiace said I think that was a good mention. Maybe Chris could help us to on the economic development cooperation. In Santa Teresa on the $40 million investment, being there eight and half years at the Border Authority I watched the

Santa Teresa Airport grow and they had the same vision you had. They brought a lot of jobs like Dell Computers, a lot of the aircraft land there that go to Dell Computers and they employ close to ten thousand people. So, there is a lot of employment that comes from building an airport and linking it with an industrial park. I think that is a great vision and if 5% is only our investment I think that is a very inexpensive for the numbers that you will get back. Maybe Chris could add to the economic development component of the Industrial Park with an airport. We have a lot of experience with that.

Elizabeth Teeters, Economic Development Director said I think when it comes to the

Industrial Park, Andy and I have the same scope that we need infrastructure and that is in his plan as well as mine but we are working on the collaboration with the airport so we have been focusing on the south side of the Industrial Park. So south of I-10 but we are now starting to work on replating the north side and what that is going to be a collaboration with the airport to figure out what kind of businesses we can attract that need airport access or could potentially get it in the future. So that is the next phase that we are entering into with the Industrial Park.

Councilor Flores said Councilor Mattiace’s questions and comments are helpful in so far as letting the council members and city know that it is a potential gold mine, and you have brought it up to standard. I have seen you go through all the hoops and sit down, walk, run, don’t run, and bringing the airport up to be at least an intrastate and your work with the federal government and getting funds for the airport. The airport has come a long way because of you, and I see it as an economic development issue because it opens up the industrial innovative area there and we can bring in a lot of businesses there. I want to thank you for not only getting these end results but all of the battles you have had to fight, and I know that Senator Soules has been very supportive of our efforts, and I want to thank him to. I think that you have had a lot of success with the funds from the state legislature. Not just the legislature but I don’t know if there is an Economic Development Department or tourist department or something but I want to thank you because yes we need a lot of money in other areas without a doubt but this is a gold mine and this is something that we should prioritize and support you, I certainly support you to continue with you quest. You have been very successful. I see some members of the advisory committee here. I just want to thank you Andy for all your work, I know what you have been through, and the airport has a different feel to it and I think that we will probably, hopefully be operating

intrastate and then connecting us to thuser world. I personally have to drive to El Paso

Airport several times a year and every time I drive there, I think golly I should be driving to our airport in Las Cruces connecting me to where I want to go and I think that is going to come sooner than later and again, thank you Andy, thank you.

5. ADJOURNMENT 5.1 Councilor Yvonne Flores moved, seconded by Councilor Johana Bencomo, to adjourn at 2:12 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Yvonne Flores

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