Special City Council Meeting Meeting January 13, 2025

MINUTES

Special City Council Meeting

Monday, January 13, 2025 @ 9:00 AM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

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

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

Enriquez

ABSENT:

1. CALL TO ORDER AND PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

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

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

3. RESOLUTION(S) FOR DISCUSSION 3.1 RESOLUTION NO. 25-081: A RESOLUTION FOR THE DISCUSSION AND

DECISION AS TO WHETHER TO LIMIT THE SELECTION FOR THE

POSITION OF CITY MANAGER TO INTERNAL CANDIDATES ONLY. Brad Douglas, City Attorney gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure said at that time I had no discussions about whether or not this was going to be an internal or external search. The reason I heard about it was a press release and I had the same questions afterwards. I asked Mayor, I said hey how do we do this? I said hey, why are we going internal versus external because ultimately I think external might have been a good idea. I think our candidates internally could have been strong enough to compete even if we just put a job search on our website not on a nationwide search costing us money. I emailed the attorney at the time, Linda Samples and I said, hey who makes this decision? City Council does. I also heard reports on the different news outlets that there was consensus, and I am not sure where they got that from.

Councilor Mattiace asked I have a question before I make my deliberation if you could answer it? Have we followed the same process in the past? Internal or external?

Brad Douglas said I don’t know. Honestly, I have only been at the city for one hiring process for the position of City Manager. I did reach out to Human Resources to inquire as to what that process might be if any and maybe I am saying too much, but I think that is the point of this meeting. It has come to my attention that there is no policy simply with regard to the hiring of the City Manager. So that might be something that you and your colleagues might want to pursue as you know the City

Manager is this governing body’s one and only employee. I do tend to think the deference should generally be given with regard to how you all want to select that person and I think that is the general thought around the state but I think the most important thing that occurs in the future is to have any discussion regarding that position should it become vacant again in an open meeting consistent with the AG’s opinion.

Councilor Mattiace said with that my statement of course is that I have only attended two closed meetings. I am not a fan of closed meetings. I did not attend the 18th but I did attend the March 20th, so I was not a part. I just wanted to go on the record. I was not part of any consensus whether of internal of external or particular person for City

Manager.

Councilor Graham said at that time, a great way to start the phrase, I will probably repeat for each of the discussions. The legal team that we had at that time which is not the legal team that we have now, so Brad, I know you are flying a little blind here. I was never under the impression that the legal advice regarding OMA, closed session, open session was in any way misguided. We had continuous conversations, and I just wanted to state that if the impression that I as a council member was not in communication with staff or legal that was not the case. In regard to my thoughts on internal versus external at that time and I think the slide spoke to it well there are pros and cons to each of those situations. I felt strong about internal because of the depth of candidates that we had here in the city. I felt that we had what seemed like a great problem which was multiple qualified candidates right here in the culture of the city who had extensive experience with everything that had been going on and it was a very tumultuous time for the city as well. Thinking back on that time it was a very rough time in the city and the stability and consistency of having people who were on board with that and again the cost savings and time commitment of going through a national search. That was why I felt good about staying internal.

Councilor Corran said similarly at that time I think I was coming to this in the context of understanding a long history of various approaches to how people were hired and even though I wasn’t on council at the time I witnessed the city go through a number of processes that were failed, that resulted in candidates who were pretty destructive to the city. So, all of those things were in my mind. As a city councilor I think part of my job is to and I continue to think that as a part of my job is to encourage the city to give avenues for advancement for folks inside the city and I think that context is part of the internal versus external search and that was definitely part of my constant conversations with City Manager Pili who had been involved in several searches prior to this so I consider that part of my conversations with him about building a bench and so in that context that was not related to this specific decision but part of my conversations along the way for about a year we had known that City Manager Pili

may be seeking other opportunities in different places so that conversation had been happening and I did go into the meeting with all of that knowledge and the expectation of relying on staff in particular our city attorney to sort of guide us how this should go and their presence honestly at these meetings helped me feel like okay, and it followed a process that I believe mirrors many processes that I have seen happen in terms of the functional components of it. People applying, reviewing, etcetera but to go back to the idea of internal versus external as a question I have managed many people, I have been part of many, many executive searches and less executive searches in my career and I have come to see little value often in an organization that isn’t in crisis or needing to go in a completely different direction of searches that bring in folks from the outside. I don’t want to suggest that I am a protectionist but I have seen a number of external searches go horribly awry, more than five I would say of people who were expected to be leaders and didn’t come through after an external search and I think those hopes or disappointments also considered into my decision in understanding where we were and what we were deciding on in this context. I think that is the main question that is being asked and that admittedly it is all because of historical trauma, worries about the stability of the city and my experiences in those contexts so I brought all of that to this conversation and that is where I landed in this discussion.

Councilor Flores said I was on the city council when we hired Ifo Pili and so was my colleague Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo and we did a national search during Covid, and it was extensive. It was horrible in many ways because we really couldn’t see that person and I say horrible because these national searches and I don’t know who the city hired to find these were utterly unqualified to be City Manager. When I started, we had City Manager Stuart Ed who proved to be for lack of a better word, I don’t want to slander anybody but it’s true, he just didn’t measure up, so we fired him and then his

Assistant City Manager was even worse. This is my eighth year on city council. I am an attorney, licensed in California and we went through a lot of turbulence with Stuart

Ed and his Assistant City Manager who took the helm and I read the AG’s report, and

I still don’t understand what we did wrong, and I am sorry I was out of town.

Fortunately, I did read the AG, and I did not have the opportunity to speak with our

Attorney Brad Douglas to see where we erred. I did not ask why we were having a closed session on this. I just didn’t ask because we knew who the candidates were, I don’t know how they were selected. I don’t know that part, but I will tell you this part, every person who interviewed was overly qualified for the position and it was probably the most difficult decision that I made because all of our candidates were, remain a stellar people. It was a relief for me after going through that national search of over

200 or 300 candidates that some of them were just pitiful. One guy out of California said that he decided to retire in Las Cruces from City Manager in wherever he was in

Southern California and that he and his wife were looking at brochures and that Las

Cruces seemed like a nice place so that is why he applied to be our City Manager.

That is one of the examples of how horrible, how difficult it was. When we came upon

Ifo Pili it was like what, is he for real? And yes, he was for real and then he hired the

Assistant City Managers and he hit a home run and grand slam of the hiring of Ifo Pili.

I don’t understand how we came to that closed session. I was not a party to that decision, and I do know that our legal team and our Human Resources people are top notch, and I say this because I have been around the block. I am a child of the sixties, and I think it was our generation, my generation, my age group that really started to

question a lot of things and so I have been that way and being an attorney necessarily

I am that inquisitive and all that sort of stuff. I saw it as a relief. I felt the relief to know that our candidates, the worst part was making a decision because all of our candidates were top notch, top notch and it was difficult to say that this one, knock that one out, totally unqualified. I just want to let you know that it may have looked like we conspired somehow as city councilors, and I don’t want to in any way avoid the responsibility that we have. On the other hand for this to appear to be something that was, I read the AG’s report and I have not had time to call to find out exactly how we violated the Open Meetings Act and our City Clerk is very good about making announcements about, giving notice about these things and I think that whoever felt that it was inappropriate to hold this meeting should have raised it before it was held and to then further pursue the questions that were addressed by the AG. I just want to say that it is terrible what we are going through and all I have to say is that I personally, I can’t speak for my colleagues because I am very careful about socializing with my colleagues, once in a blue moon something comes up and we happen to be at the same place and I make it a point not to even stand next to one of my colleagues outside of city council, outside of meetings. I am honestly appalled that the AG had to intervene on something like this and I just want to express my gratitude to our City Clerk and to our City Attorney, our personnel department, but I don’t know who made the decision. I really don’t know, and I had no concern whatsoever to even question it and it was a relief to know that the people that we work with, that I worked with for 7/8 years now had applied because they were so qualified and believe me after going through that search over several years ago it was horrible. I just want to express this openly, to everybody, the press, Justin Garcia does an excellent job of reporting everything, calls it as it is. For those of you who are attending the meeting this morning who care about local government and who are indeed we are in this together. So, I want to thank our City Attorney, our City Clerk, Christine Rivera and

Brad Douglas and I hope to correct this in manner that is not too disruptive. I think that even though I had nothing to do with the decision that we would have in house candidates or how that was made and going through Stuart Ed and his Assistant City

Manager who was whatever and then going through the search and going through all of that, that was so disruptive. It was so disruptive we couldn’t do our work. I just want to emphasize that I can’t speak for my colleagues, but I can speak for myself that I didn’t feel that it was a conspiracy. In my experience it was not a rolling quorum or anything like that. Anyway, I am sorry we are going through this and totally in my humble opinion unnecessary and I want to thank again City Clerk, Christine Rivera and our Attorney Brad Douglas and everyone else who has been working on the resolution of this issue.

Councilor Bencomo said thank you Brad, our City Attorney, our City Clerk, the

Department of Justice for their due diligence in getting us here today and thank you to my colleagues for engaging in thoughtful discussion today as we try to cure the issues presented. I was also not part of some consensus to arrive at this issue although I think as I reflect on the time period, I may have inadvertently been part of one when I gave a public interview to the Bulletin shortly after Ifo Pili had announced he would be leaving. I was asked by the Bulletin just how I felt about it. Obviously, it was heartbreaking to me as I was part of the team that hired him in 2020, and I was asked what happens now? I am pretty sure I said I think I said council has to come to a closed meeting to decide what we do and I know that because it is always been my

understanding that the Open Meetings Act has very specific exemptions for a governing body which include personnel matters, include current or pending litigation, and real estate matters. I don’t like closed meetings either, but I attend them because they are part of my job. They are the most difficult part of my job I would argue and so no I am also not a fan of them. That has always been my understanding and throughout the process in February/March and even April 1st our then City Attorney was present at every single meeting but at the time I think when I look back on it I think one of the biggest mistakes I made was arriving at my ultimate decision from a very emotional place. February and March were pretty tumultuous time in the city.

There was a lot of tragedy, a lot of heartbreak. Things happened around that time that ultimately changed my relationship to this job and Ifo Pili deciding to leave was one of those very heartbreaking pieces. I do want to correct a matter though, I don’t think Ifo was seeking opportunities. Ifo was being sought after by a lot of cities and when that started to happen, I started having a conversation with Mr. Pili about building a bench.

That was always one of his tasks when we hired him around. In 2020, we actually got a lot of push back for going external. For hiring an external City Manager and one of the tasks that we had given him was to build a bench and a bench he built. So when he notified us that he would be going back to Utah and I reverted back to 2020, when we last hired the City Manager and actually we did two external searches, two national searches because the first search did not yield the candidates we has hoped and it was honestly devastating and so we went out to a second search and the second search is how we landed on Ifo Pili. I will address some of things I remember from that search in items 3.2 and 3.3 as well because some things are just not necessarily clicking, and I feel like we are just picking and choosing here. However, at the time having a strong desire, me personally to stay internal, to hire internal because of the chaos that I felt like was happening at the time and the desire that I felt to have some sort of stability as I knew it was going to be a difficult year given tragedies that had happened. So that was my ultimate of how I arrived internally in my own self was hoping that this council would move forward in doing and we did, and

Councilor Flores was right getting to the ultimate decision was one of the most difficult decisions because our staff is incredibly talented and beyond competent and ready for the job. So, I think that covered item 3.1, thoroughly at least I hope I have and that is at least that is how I arrived at that decision for myself to remain internal.

Mayor Enriquez said what I recall at that time on March 18th and prior to getting to that point as the Mayor, as the Chair of city council meetings and closed session meetings I work with HR, I work with the Legal Department, and the City Clerk’s Office and the City Clerk usually comes to me to look for dates that we can find for closed session meetings when we have something that is coming up as Mayor Pro Tem said whether it is litigation, whether it is personnel, or whether it is real estate and we looked at the dates and to see what was a consensus to move forward with that. At this same time I can tell you that I was interested in internal candidates because I have been through this process before as Assistant City Manager, as a Fire Chief and dealing with interims and positions and the city becomes stagnant and there is no decisions made and it is hard to move forward and I know that an external process could have been lengthy but the key was to have a closed session meeting to get a decision and a consensus by council and on March 18th, we did that, asked in a closed session we wanted to go internal and then options to go external if we don’t fill a candidate and the consensus was at the time we would go internal. Then we had

the interviews, and we made our decision and the whole time legal was present, HR was present, throughout the process. That is what I recall at the time.

Lynn Moorer, Member of the Public said trying to redo in public the decisions made behind closed doors was an option by the AG however I think that a wiser choice is to start the process from the beginning. It makes a lot more sense and has much better opportunity for the public to be able to observe and be a part of that process in terms of understanding. You will hear quite a few questions placed to you this morning that you should be able to answer. I respectfully suggest that you all take note of each question then answer each during your discussion time. This will help dispel the impression that no genuine deliberation is likely to occur today. I appreciate that you all are providing what you consider to be your recollection and your thought process at the time but we the public are also interested in actual deliberation about the decisions made. This will help dispel the impression that no general deliberation is likely to occur today. It will also dispel the impression that you are perfectly happy to keep the public shut out of your decision-making process. The New Mexico Open

Meetings Act states up front that a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate, and it is public policy of the state that all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of the government. Where are the materials that councilors reviewed that caused them to conclude that there are qualified candidates for position in house as the resolution states? To comply fully with the act the public must have the opportunity to read and study all non-confidential documents that the council uses to make its decisions. Today’s agenda packet includes nothing but the four resolutions and brief explanations. At a minimum the candidates resumes should have been made available to the public to read and to study. I am also very concerned about the criterion of preventing institutional disruption. This is very troubling. Unless you found a clone every change in staffing in a healthy organization will tend to lead to some disruption. This comes with the territory. You want to have healthy organizations that find new personnel that help improve things and don’t want to have coverups whether it is malfeasance, financial difficulties, or any sort of noncompliance.

Peggy Strahan, Member of the Public said it is clear from the resolutions that everything is designed to lead to the hiring of Mr. Taumoepeau as the new City

Manager and payment of a disgracely high salary with an extremely generous benefits package. The council should be starting over from the beginning and choosing a new City Manager. This was a clear option provided by the Attorney

General to cure the council’s violations. Why isn’t the council starting over? The council could do that. It would be a much more effective way to conduct decision making in an open manner while allowing an informed public to observe and participate. This is the only staff position the city council appoints, and it is a position with a great deal of responsibility. Why not carry out the selection process correctly from start to finish in a manner fully compliant with the Open Meetings Act. I just ask that you vote no for this resolution.

Patti Hartman, Member of the Public said I didn’t have anything planned because this

9 o’clock meeting kind of surprised me. I don’t know why it is called a special meeting or why it was moved because it was going to be on today’s City Council Meeting. The biggest thing that I am disappointed in and especially Councilor Flores that you don’t

see how you did anything wrong. I look at you all as serving our city and the people in it and I don’t feel that is reflected in the things that you do. You seem to think that you are an independent governing body that doesn’t have to consider the people who live here, and I would strongly suggest starting over from the beginning. I don’t think there is anything to justify a $216,000 salary which the highest paid city manager in the state of New Mexico, it is $111,000. So I just would ask you to consider the public process is important in a democracy and I feel like you have kind of slapped us all in the face by not only the way you did it last year which I was upset but by the way you are redoing it now which is to just to boulder through and do what you were going to do anyways.

Liz Rodriguez-Johnson, Member of the Public said I just want to preface what I am going to say that I truly, truly appreciate good intentions and I have no reason to believe that there was nothing but good intentions, but good intentions cannot replace transparency which is what was missing in this process. There is one laudatory feature in the council’s agenda packet for today’s special reading. The council does admit wrongdoing for many, but not all of its violations of the Open Meetings Act carried out over weeks related to its decision making to put Mr. Taumoepeau into the

City Manager’s position and without any information to the contrary because like I said there was a lack of transparency here. It really looks like the selection was a forgone conclusion. With that in mind the city needs to start over from the beginning in choosing a new City Manager. This is the AG’s option two. The public needs to be fully included from the very beginning of decision-making process. Every discussion and meeting need to be in public. Every meeting needs to have public notice and an agenda that fully explains what actions will be considered. You know especially when it comes to a selection of a position as important as the City Manager. You cannot be making that decision behind closed doors. Also, we need to know who were the other folks. I mean we know their names, we know they work in house which is fine but the public needs to know enough about them to arrive at an assessment regarding the council’s judgement and validity of its decision to eliminate consideration of anyone not on the staff. The resumes at a minimum should have been part of the agenda packet. The council’s failure to provide the resumes appears to be another violation of the Open Meetings Act.

Jim Wilcox, Member of the Public said I am on the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory

Committee, and an attorney came to us and presented the importance of us following the Open Meetings Act. So, this is kind of personal to me as far as membership on that committee and actually I pushed back because we are an advisory group. I contacted the organization of the state for open government, and they said no. You do not have to be subject to the Open Meetings Act. You just advise and it is the people who are elected that you advise that must be following the Open Meetings Act, but I thought well I am going to have to give up some freedom of speech. I can’t talk to somebody about any subject that might come up in our meetings so I will have to keep my mouth shut and lose some of my freedom of speech, but I will follow some of that particular advisement. The thing that kind of concerns me a little bit here is that some people are saying well we wanted to expedite this, we had a bad experience.

The Open Meetings Act is not part of that. We don’t say well, we don’t really have to talk about this stuff in front of people because we had a bad time before. It’s because the public is what comes first. The public knowledge so when they go to vote they say

oh I know why those people voted. I am voting for that person, so let’s look at it positively because I like their answer. That is why we have the Open Meetings Act so that the public can make decisions when they vote. So, I would suggest that those kinds of things to be considered being primary rather than having a bad break up in the past.

Kathleen Sullivan, Member of the Public said I am a little disappointed this morning that I haven’t heard anybody take responsibility. However, I do think at this point there should be some kind of transparency about the compensation that you may be offering this candidate for City Manager, $216,000 per year, $18,000 a month, four weeks’ vacation, 96 hours sick leave,16 hours personal leave, car allowance, and a very generous benefits related to professional development. By contrast Albuquerque with five times the population of Las Cruces, they pay their City Manager about $106,000 a year. So, I think the citizens of Las Cruces should be asking the council what kind of person is going to be equivalent to this salary. It is going to be about $250,000 when it is all said and done, his compensation package. We need to know why you think that this person is deserving of this.

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

Approve Resolution No. 25-081.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Becky Corran

SECONDER: Councilor Becki Graham

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

Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, and Mayor Eric Enriquez

NAYS: Councilor Cassie McClure and Councilor William Mattiace 3.2 RESOLUTION NO. 25-082: A RESOLUTION FOR THE DISCUSSION AND

DECISION AS TO WHETHER TO NARROW THE INTERNAL CANDIDATE

FIELD TO THREE INTERNAL CANDIDATES, ORIGINALLY TAKING PLACE

DURING A CLOSED MEETING ON OR ABOUT MARCH 18, 2024, NAMELY,

IKANI TAUMOEPEAU, SONYA DELGADO, AND DAVID SEDILLO. Brad Douglas, City Attorney gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure asked I think a discussion would be helpful that HR gave us an original list of nine, right?

Brad Douglas said if that is your recollection absolutely, now would be an appropriate time to discuss that.

Councilor McClure said I know that that was the original. I am not entirely sure how they made those decisions internally because I am not part of the HR process on that.

So, at the time I recollect that we had those three come about due to sort of a hefty discussion partially because more on the dais than I had any experience with working with them. So, it was a lot of how do we pair it down so that we don’t spend ten hours doing interviews, right? I was fine with selecting three at that point. So, I trusted in the limited experience I had and the experience of my colleagues.

Councilor Mattiace said I agree with my colleagues that the three finalists in attending that closed meeting were very well qualified. Again, the mystery to me is if this the same process that we always followed, and I didn’t get that answered but if you can’t answer it maybe HR can? And that is what I am concerned with in the past. I understand we had some ugly situations under Covid but was this a different process or was it the same process that we always followed for either external or external and that is my question that I am not getting answered.

Councilor Bencomo said so in 2020, the last time council hired a City Manager, I came in when the consultants, the decision had already been made by the previous council to do a national external search. That council I remember had decided to wait till the new year started given that there had just been a recent election and they wanted the two new councilors then to be part of that final decision given that this is our only employee and I guess this is an assumption of course that I am making but I assume that every council when faced with the decision to hire their only employee gets to decide how they want to go about it. Obviously the mistake we made and I feel like this whole thing is taking responsibility for whoever said that we weren’t taking responsibility, this whole thing is taking responsibility that we made a mistake and so I think every council when faced with a decision to hire a new City Manager has to decide that for themselves as to how they want to go about it and I also want to note that in the name of transparency which everyone is here for to make sure that we are very clear about misinformation. I pulled it up. There is one news source on March

19th that names all of the candidates, the top three candidates that were selected and the others that were in that pool and there were certain guidelines given by HR to city council about who had moved on through the process and who met certain qualifications and from that we all got the resumes and we all reviewed them and we all came to that closed meeting with our sort of top candidates that we then decided to move forward with. But I will say a bit of an issue I have with item 3.2 and 3.3 is that in

2020, please forgive me that is a long time ago, and so I don’t remember clearly someone may have to look at the record and correct me if I am wrong but I also don’t remember making the decision of narrowing down the candidate pool for either the first or the second process in a public meeting. Last year I was operating under the guise of these are the limited matter of OMA gives exemption for so that was my mistake that I was operating under the one other time I had gone through this process myself. I don’t think there was one set process because I think every council decides how to do that when faced with that decision.

Councilor Mattiace said I just want to thank you for the current explanation of how it is done. I guess I am going back to the past when I was on council previously and as

Mayor we had the candidates actually in an open forum in city council and they would meet the public and so that is the part of the transparency that I am concerned with and so maybe my past is influencing what I think is happening in the present so, I just like that older process.

Councilor Graham said like Councilor McClure and then confirmed by Mayor Pro Tem

I also recall receiving information from about nine candidates, nine or ten maybe who had cleared the initial HR process and had been deemed meeting requirements qualified on paper, I am not sure how to term that. I also reviewed all of the resumes

in advance and came in with some opinions. I think if we are speaking specifically to how Mr. Taumoepeau and Ms. Delgado, and Mr. Sedillo became our three finalists I feel that at the time both Mr. Taumoepeau and Ms. Delgado had relevant current

Assistant City Manager experience serving the council. Mr. Sedillo, as a councilor I don’t know how many would agree with me up here but I think Public Works is probably who I talk to the most frequently in terms of reaching out with constituent issues so I had confidence in Mr. Sedillo’s knowledge both of the city infrastructure, literally and figuratively that I felt absolutely put him in the running along with folks who had current experience in the City Manager’s Office and that is how I reached my decision at the time and then agreeing in the narrowing of the candidates field to the three finalists and I hope that will suffice.

Councilor Corran said I would parallel the events that happened. We were provided the HR summary of what folks put into the city HR system which included I think their initial screening which in my mind is parallel if you have an external search that is what the search firm does and then it presents the candidates as they are in narrowing the field to three internal finalists. Again, we had a pool of qualified folks in terms of education, in terms of experience, in terms of what I was looking for particularly and I used a rubric of maybe half a dozen to ten different variables that I ranked all of the candidates on after receiving their materials. Experience and a breadth of spaces which included as Assistant City Managers or as City Managers, education both formal education and also training related to being a City Manager and my experience to the folks and relating to the public which is being responsive to the public that is a big component as Councilor Graham mentioned and what I had seen in that space as those candidates came to be. It was based on those categories for me. I used my excel spreadsheet so I used the numbers related to it which is pretty nerdy but that is how I would evaluate any pool of applicants. So for me that is what informed the narrowing of the pool and again we had what I consider to be the best type of problem, people who were very well qualified, had a long history of service within the city, a commitment to what we have consistently been adhering to in terms of our values as an institution and so going back to the prior resolution it would have been really difficult for any external candidate and I think Councilor McClure was eluding to this. It would have been very difficult for any external candidate to match those expectations and see what those values are of our institution and make that case in terms of their experience, but these candidates came in that way from my measure.

Councilor Flores asked for clarification this is a comment coming from each councilor regarding our summary of all discussions? I don’t remember what I had for breakfast.

Am I supposed to remember what happened? Narrowing the candidate field to three internal finalists. What do you want me to say? It was tough, it was one of the toughest decisions besides deciding to have a second child. It was a very, very difficult decision. Discussions and comments made outside of a public meeting? The comments I made then would be I don’t have a problem with a public meeting on this.

Let’s be without a City Manager and have more chaos. I don’t mean to be facetious but okay if this is what it is going to take to be open about everything, we will do it and also on a personal note if there is anybody out there in District 6, please take my place I would be very happy to relinquish it. I am way past my retirement time in many respects. Does that answer the question Attorney Douglas?

Brad Douglas said I was concerned that this might be an issue because it took New

Mexico Department of Justice about nine months give or take to conduct their investigation and then generate an opinion and so in speaking with the AG’s Office I did ask that question. Paraphrasing I said, this has been almost a year ago, what if certain councilors cannot recall what they discussed or their thoughts at the time and the direction that I received was that each councilor should summarize to the best of their ability, their thoughts and conversations at the time and so it sounds like you are doing that to the best of your ability and that is all we can hope for.

Councilor Flores said all I remember is that in terms of the conversations how we came upon the decision, again I think I already said this it was very, very difficult to narrow it down to these three candidates and I wish we would have had that luxury when we hired Ifo because we had to go several months and again we had two national searches. So, what I remember is that I was totally happy that we wouldn’t have a City Manager who has to look at ways or whatever that app is to find out where City Hall is. It was wonderful to know that the finalists were I mean top notch,

Ikani, Sonya, and David and the other candidates to. All I remember is that it was such a relief to know that we knew what we were going to get. We weren’t going to get some guy out in California who is retiring and wants to retire as a City Manager in

Las Cruces. That is a slap in the face, and we have the internal talent is to die for and

I can’t speak highly enough about these three candidates. I truly regret that there was a faux pas as far as the DOJ is concerned. In my humble opinion, or my experience there were no shenanigans. I think all of you have the right to question everything we do, that is how it should be but it doesn’t feel and I don’t know how my colleagues feel but it doesn't feel good to be out here and have tomatoes thrown at us.

Councilor Bencomo said again at that time I know that I remember feeling like I hadn’t expected to see as many names in that list as I did. Though what a great problem to have that all of these folks are qualified, confident, and want to step up to the challenge of what is a City Manager in a city manager form of government, I might add, right? Las Cruces is a city manager/council form of government. City Managers in other cities are hired by the mayor perhaps and appointed by the entire governing body. Here the City Manager works 24/7, every day, every hour, except for his mandatory time off because the job is so demanding, so challenging, and it is literally

24/7. I just want to clarify that. There is this misconception that the person that was ultimately picked that it was his all along. That is at least for me couldn’t be further from the truth. I went into reviewing these resumes with an absolute open mind about who would be right for this job. Having supervised one City Manager, one fulltime City

Manager for almost four years and a couple of Interim City Managers for a little bit of a tumultuous time there during 2020, and I went in ultimately with that eye of having the experience of supervised one City Manager for several years and I remember being definitely surprised that there was a lot of agreement amongst the council and perhaps the more experienced city councilors at the time had more of a weight on these folks because we also had individual professional experience with all of these folks. I know that I was very confident and felt very good about the top three candidates that were selected in moving forward in both their experience with city management, their experience at the city, their experience with the public, their experience with the council. I will say one thing that I thought was interesting in the

applications asked, one of the questions the application asked about what is your willingness to work? One of the candidates did answer that they were not willing to work after a certain period of time, to me disqualifying them given that this job from what I know having been here five years is a 24/7 job. Again, I want to reiterate that in

2020, I do not remember having this conversation publicly about the qualifications of the finalist of either of the two processes. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

Mayor Enriquez said at that time on March 18th I know that HR, the HR Director at the time came up with the minimum requirements for all the candidates that were listed.

That list was provided to Mayor and council where a discussion took place to narrow it down and we narrowed it to the three finalists that you see on the screen, Ikani

Taumoepeau, Sonya Delgado, and David Sedillo. Very pleased with the process and the understanding and I too am trying to recall in the past having any kind of process publicly with the selection of any City Manager while I was working here at the city as

Fire Chief or Assistant City Manager. I knew at one time we did have internal candidates that applied and were not selected and then they moved on to a national search but there was never any public meeting that took place and that is at the discretion and I believe Brad under the State Statute we as a mayor and council we have the authority and the right to select our City Manager?

Brad Douglas said you are correct. This is a home rule municipality. We have a City

Charter which is as you all know. It is my position that pursuant to our charter, you all obviously are the ultimate arbiters of who your City Manager who is your only employee, your only direct report employee on how you want that process to work and who you want those candidates to be. The crux of the AG’s opinion is that nothing about those actions was wrong inherently, they just should have taken place in an open meeting.

Councilor Bencomo said I do want to note just once again that through every process of getting to the final three our then City Attorney was present the entire time.

Councilor McClure said what bewildered me basically as a novice that we didn’t actually have for such an important position that person and all three of them present in public because it is a unique position and Councilor Flores said we know what we are going to get but the public didn’t and a lot of times I really grappled. I came home after watching the presentations and thought to myself how am I going to make that decision for the rest of the city? A lot of times I take in account what other people tell me. If I get emails, if I have discussions that is how I build those decisions. I kind of felt a little rudderless to be real about that and thought to myself what have we done in the past is one of my least favorite phrases but going forward, having that transparency for something that is such an important position left a kind of bad feeling in my mouth because I do think the public should have had the ability to hear those presentations to give us feedback and I think that is what was stripped out of this in a lot of times was feedback that I find crucial in my position.

Councilor Bencomo asked do you remember in 2020, I vaguely remember, was there some sort of Citizen Committee? Does anybody remember in 2020, I know it was

Covid and everything that we did was via Zoom but was there any sort of public? I hope to not be part of another City Manager hire while I am here, and I have three years left and I certainly hope that doesn’t happen again so I hope for those of you who are here in the future that is something that gets implemented from now on. I think because it is our only employee, city council’s employee to me that is a decision that and that responsibility that I will carry myself right as the person who has to supervise the success of that person so again, I don’t remember what happened in

2020. I think for me what was the most different about this last time was that it was a lot shorter and that is what we are discussing here and that some of these decisions needed to be made publicly not necessarily that they were the wrong path.

Barbara Bencomo, Chief Administrative Officer said to your question regarding the process in 2020, in addition to the interviews conducted with the mayor and council there was a community panel and also a staff panel that participated in interviewing the candidates.

Councilor Bencomo asked do you remember how big the community panel was?

Were those meetings public or were those meetings via Zoom?

Barbara Bencomo said I don’t remember the exact number. I do remember that the mayor and council had the opportunity to nominate the community members who were to participate on the panel, and I do recall that the meetings were facilitated via

Zoom and as interviews they were allowed to not be public meetings because that is one of the exceptions.

Mayor Enriquez asked how many processes were during that time frame, was there more than one process?

Barbara Bencomo said in the 2020 search there were two rounds of interviews. One that did not yield a selection and then the second that yielded a selection and as I recall that was the same case for the 2016 process as well that there were two rounds.

Lynn Moorer, Member of the Public said I like your idea Mr. Mattiace very much of having public being able to observe interviews with candidates. Many other public bodies that I am familiar with use that process, and it really does help a lot to achieve transparency. The big hole that you still have here is today in all your recollections is that you haven’t provided any resumes. At least two councilors have mentioned that you reviewed resumes for these candidates. Why has this not been provided to the public? That could have easily been a part of your agenda packet. Who are the other candidates who were eliminated from the narrowed down three? You mentioned there were nine, we would like to know who those folks were. It is important for us as the public to be able to review resumes and get a sense of what we think of your judgment and your decision-making acuity in deciding who you think the best three are. You haven’t come close to achieving transparency today. I understand your great desire to follow the specific directions from the Attorney General which I totally respect but you are falling far short with respect to actually being transparent and giving the public an idea of your field, the choices that you had available to you. It still

very much looks like the skids were totally greased and continue to be to totally be greased today for your final candidate, Mr. Taumoepeau. None of us get the impression that any of you are inclined to change your mind or revisit any of these issues. Rather everything that you are doing here today seems totally directed toward exactly the same decision in the end and leaving the public out. We haven’t seen a single resume.

Patti Hartman, Member of the Public said I moved here in 2016, and I went through I think it was the first Neighborhood Leadership Academy and I ended up being on a

Citizen Committee that was chosen to help select and I don’t believe it was the City

Manager but it was a Department Manager and I was kind of quickly perusing the City

Municipal Code, I guess it’s called and we do have a process for that. For having citizen engagement in that way. When Ms. Bencomo mentioned that there was a community panel, I never trust that because it is always chosen from within and just like this process. I know it is going to sound really crude, but it is a little bit like inbreeding. When you keep the same people and the same processes, and I feel like nobody did anything intentionally wrong. I don’t feel like you were out to hide anything from us but when you keep everything within you don’t have any knowledge of anything beyond that and I know that when I look at anything that I am not familiar with the first thing I want to do is learn and a lot of times I will compare what are other cities in the country are doing and I can tell you there is an immediate difference when you look at cities that are transparent. I was looking at the Farmington City website and their City Manager. Farmington is a completely different city, but I would suggest that for everyone here have some sort of frame of reference where you compare it to something else because in your only hiring within you are doing the same thing and you might do your best, but it is pretty limited.

Fred Huff, Member of the Public said it was pretty clear walking in here this morning and looking at all the printed-out resolutions that you are going to stick by the same decision that you had made last year, that was pretty much a given. What I had hoped is that you would have use this as an opportunity to look at the last one year’s performance by the City Manager and ask yourself is Las Cruces really better off after this year? What I as a citizen have seen and I am just a normal citizen living on the edge of Burn Lake, I see the city spending money like drunken sailors. I watch these budgets, and they are absolutely crazy. I watch the raiding of the Telshor Fund. I see an excessive salary as somebody mentioned over twice of what the highest other city. this is the highest paid person basically in the state of New Mexico unless a new

County Manager exceeds it. As Councilor Bencomo keeps mentioning about conditions in 2020, 2024 was a totally different situation so you should have handled it differently, but my big question is, is this really a distraction to keep you from working on the important issues that you need to be working on? You are going to make the same decision you did as you go down the road, but we need to be working on the issues that are plaguing our city and get the crime and lawlessness and homelessness taken care of.

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

Approve Resolution No. 25-082.

MOVER: Councilor Becki Graham

SECONDER: Councilor Becky Corran

Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Mayor Eric

NAYS: Councilor William Mattiace 3.3 RESOLUTION NO. 25-083: A RESOLUTION FOR THE REVIEW AND

DISCUSSION FOR CANDIDATE IKANI TAUMOEPEAU FOR THE VACANCY

OF THE OFFICE OF CITY MANAGER. Brad Douglas, City Attorney gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure said if we are looking at internal candidates, I did not select Ikani as the highest rank. We did a rubric filing and based specifically on his past history of leading cities that were much less density of population wise than here. I also think the other two candidates were stronger.

Councilor Mattiace said again the voting was difficult. All three candidates were very qualified and, in the ranking, came very close to another candidate, very close to

Ikani. My decision was continuity. He knew exactly what was happening in the city of

Las Cruces with dealing with a City Manager that I unfortunately I didn’t serve under, I had just come aboard. Ifo’s retreat and what I could hear from many of the directors of the different departments I think, all the directors were very pleased with Ifo’s performance, and he had decided to take another position and resign and due to continuity and following through on some of the retreat visions and planning I thought it would be the best choice unknowing that I was participating in a violation.

Councilor Graham asked to clarify this refers to the kind of day long closed session where we conducted the interviews?

Brad Douglas said that is correct. This would summarize and capsulate March 20th, closed meeting and if you could all to the best of your abilities be like I stated earlier, summarize your thoughts at the time, any actions that you may have taken that resulted in Mr. Taumoepeau being council’s selected candidate.

Councilor Graham said in preparation for that session we were briefed by Human

Resources. I remember this specifically because it was reiterated several times that each candidate had to be asked the same set of questions without deviations. So, the questions perhaps, I think there were six or seven questions. Each council member read one question. The interview process was frankly emotional at times. Again, regardless of whether the context, when the hire was made should be relevant or not the city was hurting, and I think that we were all feeling that. I felt that each of the interviews went incredibly well. You are going to hear over and over again I am sure that we had a very difficult decision to make because each of the candidates was exceptional. We went through the three interviews. I believe there was a brief, we had time for discussion after each and in deciding to choose Mr. Taumoepeau was my top ranked candidate as Councilor Mattiace mentioned it was close. I felt again that the preponderance of experience that he brought not just as an Assistant City Manager but as a former City Manager just gave him that little bit of an edge that made me

confident that he would be the top choice.

Councilor Corran said I echo a lot about the process that my colleagues have mentioned. We went through a series of conversations with the candidates. They did presentations. We deliberated at the end, ultimately voted in our rankings and tallied that up and accompanied by HR, all guided by our City Attorney as well in that context very similar to many searches that I have been a part of. So, I think at this moment folks really want to just say we hired the wrong person, and you want us to do something different and what I am saying is first of all I believe our deliberations were considerably more thoughtful and asking critical questions than may have happened in any other setting. I think we were all struggling with this decision as has been mentioned many times, but I think it is telling the sort of context of saying you should have hired someone else. That is always what people say after a search, they have their own perceptions of who the best person is and I acknowledge that there is often many people who can fill positions and sometimes there aren’t any which I would argue is a much worse situation but I would also say that in these conversations I think that it is harmful to an institution to air out every discussion point and so I would argue that discussion was within our purview to have in a closed meeting. For me this particular sort of airing of qualifications and deliberations is not something that should be subject to public comment because we all had a discussion where HR told us this is how you check your biases, this is how you consider things, this is how you can measure your support for folks and we used that guidance in that context and I believe that often public comment especially when considering individual people is not informed by that foundation and I believe that this process that we engaged in this discussion was again completely above board in terms of our understanding and frameworks of what we use and there wasn’t a consensus among us but we did vote using a closed ballot process and folks had a chance to make case for their candidates and so I get folks say we want someone else. That is not what is going to happen here today and as you can tell we are discussing this resolution but I also want to point out that folks this discussion and again this is March and I have not heard, at the time I didn’t hear this feedback but I also want to point out to the salary question a few other salaries in our state that might be relevant. The Albuquerque

Chief Administrative Officer makes $216,000. The El Paso City Manager makes $350,000. The Dona Ana County Manager makes $220,000 and if you wonder the

City of Las Cruces has 1,600/1,700 employees including Police and Fire whose jobs are life or death and then a number of folks whose impressions on people’s lives are pretty big and so the City Manager job is one deserving of the best candidate and the best pay and I will always make that argument in this context. NMSU’s football coach, $600,000. So, if you want to indite us on how public money is being spent I urge you to please have the context for what you are critiquing us for because I will always advocate for us to have the best candidates and that also includes paying people better, all of our staff and so I just want to speak to, this is about the hiring of Ikani and folks have really suggested this particular topic as something that we should consider and I just want to push back on that narrative because this is an extraordinarily difficult job as was mentioned, 24 hours a day, heavy lifts, supervising a team of really great people who are responsible for a lot of things in our city and the suggestion that we would pay someone that much less is, I just want to push back against that topic as well. Again it is a ponderous decision, it’s a ponderous job and we did our diligence in these conversations about narrowing down the field and I would again argue that is

not something that is helpful for any sort of public airing because I think it is harmful to the institutions that are engaging in a type of Monday morning quarterbacking in particular with the public, in particular with folks who definitely want to have input but don’t have as much context as we do. So, I think that I just want to say that our deliberations, there were no wheel greasing or skid greasing. We took it very seriously and I am just going to push back on a couple of those points.

Councilor Flores said I would like to thank Councilors Graham and Corran for being very well spoken and I don’t think I can add much more than what they have said. I will share with you that there is the undertone that there was some shenanigans going on and meeting in dark and all that sort of, no. In fact, I don’t socialize with any of my colleagues for that reason. I don’t ever want to be accused of violating the Open

Meetings Act. I want to thank all of you though for keeping us on our toes and again I invite each and every one of you to consider running for city council and making this a better place because obviously you are not very happy with us right now. I don’t mean to be facetious, but I am very upset by this process and offended quite frankly.

Councilor Bencomo said I will say that this particular item is the one that I have the most concerns about. The interviews that we partook in with the three final candidates to me were sacred. They were emotional, they were deep, they were serious. For there to be a demand that we discuss those publicly violates so many, really it violates privacy that those three folks are entitled to at the end of the day. I get that this is a public job, but can you imagine applying for a job where you thought where your qualifications or lack thereof would be discussed and scrutinized publicly. No one would apply. I do not believe that the DOJ, which by the way I will be speaking about in my comments at the end, and I will be asking for a meeting with them to discuss some of these concerns. There is an OMA guide by the DOJ that talks specifically about the exemptions on limited personnel matters and one of the paragraphs here says, this exemption permits a pubic body for closed meetings for the purpose of discussing certain matters concerning individual employees of the public body, specifically a public body may close a meeting to discuss the hiring, promotion, demotion, dismissal, assignment or resignation of an individual public employee or the investigation or the consideration of complaints or charges against an individual public employee. A public body may also close a meeting for matters that are closely related to those specifically listed in the exemption such as performance, appraisals, and interviews with job candidates. I get the suspicion that so much of the criticism that we have been receiving on this is perhaps this desire for there to be something juicier than there was and the reality is that this body has a responsibility of hiring one employee. That is the City Manager. That is very important which is why I ultimately respect and honor this process and I am here to engage in thoughtful discussion around the very real violation. I also want us to consider some of the impacts this would have especially on these very real three people and thank you Councilor

Graham for recalling some of the process that took place because I think if anything you should know about is that. There as a very long list of questions that HR provided to us in which council then chose, narrowed down because we wanted to have a timely yet deep interview and not a day long interview for each person. I recall there being very important questions about the job. There being questions that helped us to get to know those folks better and for that I will for always be grateful. Ultimately, I felt so proud at the end of that day that these three people work for the City of Las

Cruces, and I continue to be proud and I continue to be proud of the final choice we made and of many of the choices that person has consequently made in building his team and leading this city.

Mayor Enriquez said on that time on March 20th I remember that we had three finalists that we held interviews with and they were all asked several questions where we rotated as Councilor Graham had mentioned but they were also given ten minutes to do a presentation orally and perform so that we could get to know them on a better note and that created a lot of discussion because that was like we all said three very good qualified candidates that work for the City of Las Cruces. For me my selection was Ikani Taumoepeau. He just had more time and experience and service as a City

Manager, in the City Manager’s Office and I felt that had always that he was a good fit for the city of Las Cruces and the organization. That was my selection at that time and nine months later I am still happy with that selection.

Lynn Moorer, Member of the Public said what is missing from all of this just to reiterate is that you haven’t provided any materials for the public to see, to review, and to get a sense of. No resumes, no letters of reference or any other materials whatsoever. It’s like it’s the immaculate selection. In my experience with public bodies except for this one, they invanably go to considerable lengths to provide the public a good quantum of background information on candidates for key government positions and this has been brought to your attention, and you still haven’t provided anything. It makes no sense. No other public body that I have experience with has ever handled it like this. Like it is all quiet and you are not providing a bit of information. Like for example I would like to know what Mr. Taumoepeau’s qualifications are. I would like to know what his education is and what his experience has been and what his skills are. This has not been provided to the public at all, and we brought this to your attention now repeatedly. It is both arrogant and unlawful for any elected official to act upon their view that notwithstanding what the law requires all that really matters is that the officials are able to review and study relevant documents as much as they care to, and it does not matter as to whether the public has had adequate opportunity. You don’t have that option. New Mexico Public

Records Act and Open Meetings Act require that you provide these things, it’s basic.

Members of the public may not be shoved over to the side like they are hindrance.

Public officials are elected to serve the interest of the public in an open manner. When citizens see nonchalance as we are seeing all across except for the exception of one here today, I think from elected officials about citizens are able to observe and participate fully in the democratic process from an informed perspective citizens work even harder to penetrate that dangerous undemocratic attitude and make sure that official leaves office as soon as possible.

Patti Hartman, Member of the Public said while I am not satisfied with this as any kind of a do over. I will say that the more that I hear councilors speak the clearer I understand how little the public is respected. While I was sitting here, I am going to jump to something really quick. I just found an article which I can send to you that was local from February 28, 2024 and the last line of that article from CBS 4 Local, I think says, “leaders said the next City Manager will be an internal hire coming from the existing city employee pool”. That is not what I was looking for but that definitely caught my attention. So as of February 28th, it was very clear what the council

planned to do. I think they played right into the hands of our previous City Manager who was friends with our current City Manager and when you talk about experience our current City Manager was a City Manager in a city in California for one year.

There is something to look at there. I don’t like being characterized as oh we think there is some shenanigans, or it is really insulting perhaps to say that the public is looking for something juicier. That is extremely denigrating to us to come here as the public. No, we don’t want to be in on the personal interviews. I would like to know some of the questions that you were given from HR to ask. I would like to know the format. I would like to know everything Lynn Moorer brought up. The process.

Peggy Strahan, Member of the Public said I sat here and listened. I don’t mean for anybody to think we are throwing tomatoes, we are not. We just want answers, that’s it and really there are a few answers that haven’t been addressed. I would like to know what specific characteristics or experience that you liked about this candidate that made you think, oh yes? Not because it was an easier process, you didn’t want to go through a long process of getting another candidate. I just want to know what stood out to you? Tell me as a public because these things matter. I want to know about these things and that’s all. I just want to know why you think he is the best candidate? Not because he has been that way before that he has served as an assistant, not because he has just been established here. He did this and he has this idea, and this really sparked my interest and this is good for the citizens of Las

Cruces. That is all I am looking for. I have no bias, and I have no opinion, but I would like to have a little bit more knowledge. Councilor Johana Bencomo moved, seconded by Councilor Becki Graham, to

Approve Resolution No. 25-083.

MOVER: Councilor Johana Bencomo

Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Councilor Cassie McClure, Councilor

William Mattiace, and Mayor Eric Enriquez 3.4 RESOLUTION NO. 25-084: A RESOLUTION TO CURE AND RATIFY THE

LAS CRUCES CITY COUNCIL’S PRIOR INVALID DECISION AND

DECISION TO SEEK CANDIDATES FOR THE VACANCY OF THE

POSITION OF CITY MANAGER FROM AN INTERNAL POOL OF

CANDIDATES, AND TO APPOINT IKANI TAUMOEPEAU TO THE OFFICE

OF CITY MANAGER, THEREBY APPROVING AND RATIFYING BOTH HIS

SELECTION AND EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT. Brad Douglas, City Attorney gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure asked do you just wish that we say that?

Brad Douglas asked what makes this item somewhat interesting is that everything included there in are items that you all have voted on today, correct? This was the

AG’s preference. The whole point of this final action would be to cure and ratify every invalid decision or action as identified by the Attorney General’s Office. This was their preference but in taking this final vote this council will either cure and ratify all of those concerns that the AG identified as of today January 13, 2025, or it will not. I recognize

that this final action or this final item may be a bit redundant, arguably but this is the format that the AG’s Office preferred in the spirit of collaboration, cooperation, and accountability. I brought this item to you, I guess in a nutshell maybe the simplest way to think about this item is that it will be the final curing and ratification of anything and everything that we identified by the AG.

Councilor McClure asked what do we say? I as a city councilor wish to cure and ratify one, two, three, four.

Mayor Enriquez said no, basically he is looking for any kind of discussion how you feel about the whole thing and how you want to move in that direction, and we will vote after the fact. If you have no comment, then there is no comment based on what we have already voted on or you can comment to any of the whole process.

Councilor McClure said let me just go ahead and say I would like to cure and ratify, and I apologize to the public. I partially to, what was I six weeks in this when this all started kicking off. I think a learning experience is a hard thing to say but that is what it was for me, and it has been full barrel the whole time. But I do very much value transparency. I do think that we should have had this in a more open way. I do think that there are other entities here that do even in Las Cruces that do when they have large positions will ask the public to have that input. Have people that work with that person intimately. I didn’t know that we had a community panel last time. So, you know as much as I have said in the past, I really wish there was a binder of info that I was given. I am collecting that as I go so, I hope to do better and still appreciate you guy’s faith.

Councilor Mattiace said last statement, I hope to do better as well on my previous vote. I feel that I have had nine months. I just want to share with the public comment what is the character, and what is the overall reason why I chose and my ranking with

Ikani. Well, it has actually come to reality that in the eight or nine months that I have been dealing with the City Manager just as the other candidates because I also have dealings with both of them, his response has been fantastic. In other words a city councilor has a lot of problems going on in their district from a pack of dogs, sink holes, you name it, things happen and when a resident who voted or didn’t vote for me, I am not loved by everyone, but if they contact me it is my job to respond and to take care of that issue but without the help of a City Manager, the City Clerk, and other staff members I can’t get that done and I have been able to do I believe a good job in the months that I have served because of his 24/7 attitude towards helping. His notifications when things happen in the city of Las Cruces and during the interview he also hit on a cord that I really the reason I ran again for city council, I mean I was having a nice relaxed life, I didn’t really need to do this but I am upset with the crime and the issues and the problems that we have in the city of Las Cruces and this is one of his key policies, Ikani would also like to make the city a safer city and that means as a City Manager he supports the Police Department, the Fire Department, the

Public Safety Department, for that reason I felt my vote was being part of my policies that I like to see happen in the city of Las Cruces. We all want a safer city and that has to be a priority, and Ikani I believe hopefully through transparency, transparency is very important. We don’t need any more secrets about what is happening in the city

of Las Cruces that will determine our actions, and I really commend Chief Story for bringing this out. For bringing out the crime stats and what is happening so that combination of having a City Manager that appreciates and supports public safety, infrastructure and works well with David. David, I just have to give you kudos and thank you very much for being very responsive in Public Works and then Ms.

Delgado, I know you have helped me recently in some things that are happening, things in the city in particularly in my district. We have three great internal candidates, and it was a tough decision, but I believe I voted for the correct person.

Councilor Graham said since we do have the opportunity for council comment after this specific item, I am going to stick with the past here and I will save my comments on how I feel since my vote for bringing Mr. Taumoepeau on as City Manager for comments. I also appreciate the opportunity to have cured, ratified, strange legal terms to have dealt with this using one of the options. I am presuming that if this wasn’t a viable option the AG’s Office would not have supplied it and I know that there has been a lot of talk of just starting the process over but I trust in the AG’s Office that this is a way of properly curing and ratifying the issues moving forward. I agree completely with Councilor McClure, this job is a constant on your feet learning process. I have learned from this process, and while I like Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo pray that I will not be involved in another City Manager hiring decision in my time left on the dais, it has certainly driven home to me the importance not just transparency but of public perception of transparency.

Councilor Corran said I would say I know we could have done it better. That is what we are saying here today. You will see that we do future things better, this week at the

ASCMV meeting we will start a very public process to look at an Executive Director so

I can say that we systematically have changed a number of things that we do and the types of conversations we have and we are making notes for future actions as a body and also that I still maintain that we relied heavily on HR and our attorneys to guide us through this process in the ways that we understood it to happen acknowledging that we could have done better now and understanding the context for that and committing that we will see changes. You already have seen a number of these changes in terms of our announcements of public meetings and closed meetings and how we do searches going forward will look different consistently as we can make it so I appreciate the opportunity to cure this. I appreciate the AG and the folks who advocated to the AG for bringing this up. I do regret that this is nine months after all of these things happened. I think we could have made more dynamic changes along the way at a different time but I also do want to reaffirm my commitment and I will talk about that in councilor comments of why we hired Ikani which I think again is one of the agenda items here today but I think the big picture is we could have done better, we will do better and that is what we are committing to.

Councilor Flores said I would like to thank all of you for being here and keeping your elected officials on their toes. I expected the entire population of Las Cruces be here and it is good that you are questioning all of the decisions that we made and that should continue in so far as all of voted officials or elected officials including the one who sits soon in the White House. I will continue to represent and work as an elected official in the most ethical manner possible, not possible period.

Councilor Bencomo said thank you Brad and the City Clerk for getting us to this moment today to cure these important issues. I learned really early on actually that even the appearance of a conflict or the appearance of anything is enough to deteriorate the trust of the public and I hold that very dearly and I do want to apologize to the public for acting in a way that was outside of that and so actually I don’t know how to show up any other way but really authentic and it has gotten me in a lot of trouble in the last six years that I have been here. I will continue to do that, again I truly hope that in the last three years of my term that I don’t have to go through another City Manager hiring process. This has really taught me a lot of things as well about OMA and I always appreciate an opportunity to learn about a pretty complex issue that I think for a long time that I felt was pretty clear, pretty clear cut to me and that is obviously not the case. I also want to apologize specifically to Ikani, David, and

Sonya for having made decisions that put you in this situation nine months later and I honestly couldn’t be more grateful for the three of you. For all of you, for JC, for all of you up here and everyone in the city who are and I have said this before, we come and go, there are dedicated public servants who work in this building and outside of this building every single day and to them I want to just express my sincerest gratitude and an apology to those employees as well for having caused several weeks of confusion about the functions of government and so I will leave it at that and will have additional comments to make as well in my public comment section.

Mayor Enriquez said I just want to mention that I do want to cure and ratify this process. I am in favor of that. Can we learn from it? Absolutely. Can we do better from it? Absolutely. I just want to sincerely thank you Brad and your team for working with the AG to ratify this, to cure this. I know it was two rounds, it was two separate attorneys that you had to deal with in order for that to come through and I appreciate all your hard work on it.

Lynn Moorer, Member of the Public said there is a long list of questions that you have not yet provided an answer to. I hope you are all planning to jump in and do that here in your last comments. Why haven’t resumes been provided? All of you are talking about turning over a new leaf, it’s all a little too little too late with respect to this process today. What was the extent of the council’s research in come up with the salary and benefits package offered to Mr. Taumoepeau? Which other municipalities did the council examine as a comparison? What are the various options of terms the council considered for the employment agreement with Mr. Taumoepeau? What was the salary range that the council considered? Two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars is the same salary paid to the previous City Manager Ifo Pili who according to news reports stated that his salary in Las Cruces must match what he had been paid by Eagle Mountain, Utah for activities that included various responsibilities additional to the City Manager responsibilities. In light of this, how can this same amount, $216,000 be justified for the new candidate? We look forward to hearing your answers today to these questions as well as the other questions we have posed to you in today’s meeting. Each question is directly relevant to responsible decision making in selecting and hiring a person to fill the top administrative position in the city of Las

Cruces. Moreover, the monumental salary and benefits package the council is considering awarding Mr. Taumoepeau requires full vetting explanation and justification. I ask that you provide answers to all of these questions. If you don’t our

concern will be substantiated that the city council isn’t actually carrying out full deliberation, careful deliberation deserving of this particular job. I urge the council to vote no on this resolution and restart the selection process from the beginning.

Patti Hartman, Member of the Public said when I look at things that are going on I look with a bigger picture in mind, but I also listen between the words and tone is rather important. I appreciate my city councilor who was the first to speak, Cassie McClure who sincerely apologized to the public. Actually, everything that she has ever said to me, first of all she responds to me when I email her. That is something that I don’t get from anyone else here, but her sincerity speaks volumes. Her intelligence speaks volumes about needing to do more than just follow the rules blindly. What I hear from several is the defensiveness of your positions and so while I appreciate your actual apology Councilor Bencomo, I am wondering what is going to be different. I hearing you are going to see differences right away. I agree with Ms. Moorer that this was not really a process. This was kind of a defense of what you did and why you did it and why is the public here annoying you with trying to change your minds or get something juicier. No, we are here in the name of public process, and I think we need to have some serious considerations about what public process means.

Diane Starbuck, Member of the Public said it has been clear to me that listening to this whole thing that apparently there is no standard process to hire a City Manager and that you rely on what is done in the past and since many of you weren’t here in the past that you have to rely on people’s memories. May I suggest writing, somebody writing, sorry if this falls to you Mr. Douglas but writing a standard operating procedure on how to hire a City Manager. I also want to say that I appreciate every single person that is up there today. I know your job is not easy. I know you take a lot of grief, but I still appreciate you representing the citizens.

Councilor Johana Bencomo moved, seconded by Councilor Becki Graham, to

Approve Resolution No. 25-084.

William Mattiace, and Mayor Eric Enriquez

4. CITY COUNCIL COMMENTS 4.1 COUNCILOR MCCLURE

I want to thank Brad and Christine for letting me be the pain that I kind of have been. I appreciate working with everyone in the city. I haven’t run across a bad egg maybe in three years I still will but who knows. I get a sense of what everyone is genuinely doing a good job and cares about the city that they work for.

I also want to say too for the record that as much as I object to the process, I haven’t had problems with Ikani in the time that I have been here either. He has been very

forth coming in working with me and helping the constituents in my district and to me that is what I care about it. How do we work together? How do we move forward?

How do we actually help residents in the city? So, I want to say that. I want to thank my colleagues because this is an uncomfortable process. I knew going in that this was going to be unfun today, but I think it is part of it, and I think I have spoken to each of you, and I don’t know if that rolling but how fun this all is.

Lastly, I want to thank the journalists in the room because without this this would not exist. There is something very potent about the ability for journalism to hold elected officials accountable and I am glad for it so thank you. 4.2 COUNCILOR MATTIACE I want to appreciate and thank the attorney, and I just want to comply with the

Department of Justice and actually ratify and get these violations in the background and move forward. I think some good comments were made today by the public and I think we do need a standard operating procedure in selecting a City Manager and I think that needs to be a priority. I also think in hearing from Barbara Bencomo, I think it is important that we do have transparency and have panels that will review in that standard operation procedure and there needs to be public involvement in selecting a

City Manager so if we could actually get that done I think that would show the public that we do want to change and that we definitely want to avoid any future violations in the future. Again, I believe Ikani has done an excellent job, and I hope he continues.

4.3 COUNCILOR GRAHAM I follow the Pew Charitable Trusts research on government writ large pretty closely and trust in public institutions is at a historic low and I don’t think that I understood that so deeply until I took office. If you show up here on a first or third Monday of the month when we have general public comment you will hear a lot of mistrust in institutions, federal government, people who are upset with the Governor of this state, with Congress, with their state legislators and representatives and I think the beauty of being on city council is the accessibility. I run into constituents at Albertsons and that is amazing. On the other hand a public body this accessible, this local, this close to you is going to catch a lot of anger, valid anger and mistrust at all levels and I am committed to trying to push against that from my space as a local elected and I will also point out I am not trying to curry sympathy but we were joking about throwing tomatoes or rotten tomatoes. When this story broke on social media it was shared around pretty roundly and I came across a comment suggesting that they bring out the gallows for us and after a quick Google search to make sure I know the difference between a gallows and a guillotine which I did, that means that we should be hanged, that we should be hanged for this breach of the public confidence and I reported that comment to the social media platform and was assured that it was perfectly fine with community standards and who knows maybe that is a joke, maybe that is somebody else who is angry. I am sure that person would probably not have the guts to come and say that to my face, if you are out there, I am ready. That is the reality of being a small part of a much larger suite of government institutions and again I take that seriously and if I can do anything to help rebuild trust in these institutions that is one of the most important things I can do in the time that I have left here.

In terms of speaking specifically regarding Ikani Taumoepeau and how I feel about the decision I made. One of the most amazing things that I have experienced, it’s not just being to meet with him or being on the dais with him it is just how often I run into him at community events. All times of day, all levels of formality. I’m like oh my God there is Ikani, and you can’t miss him because he is super tall, and I am like this guy is everywhere. I don’t feel like this is performative. This isn’t a guy trying to get the job, this is a guy who already has the job and who I think puts not just amazing expertise and efficacy into but a ton of heart, a tone of cariño as we like to say up here. So, in terms of how I feel about the decision that I have made, rock solid.

Finally for the thanks, thanks of course to all of city staff who are constantly doing the heavy lifting behind us. Specifically in this case Brad for very tireless communication back and forth with the AG, working on a situation that you were really not a part of and especially to Christine Rivera, our amazing City Clerk who again because she is accessible, because she will answer her phone, because she will respond to emails, I think that is a lot often of unfair blame. You know what it is easy to blame the person who you can actually see and your commitment and expertise and your willingness to keep putting yourself out there is truly inspirational, and I just want to acknowledge how rough this has been.

4.4 COUNCILOR CORRAN I second Councilor Graham’s last points but also her prior points, thank you for all that you have done and Brad, thank you for navigating this as you have. We rely on our attorneys to advise us, and I appreciate you doing so in this situation. I think of what has been said has already been said. I think I am going to talk about the things in part because mistrust of course assumes a lack of diligence on everyone and I want to get to those questions. Things like how did we decide on the contract? We took the prior contract as a variable. We took city salaries provided by HR as a variable. We also looked at neighboring municipalities, people within them, Albuquerque, El Paso,

Santa Fe, Tucson were among the places that we examined both whether they were strong or weak mayor cities which is an important variable in the salary the city manager is paid because in some cases the mayor is the person who is making those decisions which is not the case here and managing the city. So, we looked a number of variables. I understand the public mistrust means that you assume that we didn’t so those conversations did happen as well as an understanding of the national standards were for city managers and there is a lot of data and research related to what kinds of things city managers have within their contracts especially given that they are in political positions that they can be hired and fired at the whims of a body like ours. So, to that question about our diligence in our decisions those were part of our conversations and that didn’t come up in our discussion earlier so those things did happen in the last of our meetings and prior I had been researching all of these things prior to that conversation. To the other question as to why we and I think this to me is why I feel particularly strong about the time lapse in the space where folks are coming to us critiquing city employees, I believe that as the public office we should get the critiques. Folks channeling their anger at us into critiquing city employees and/or our hire is really problematic and so I am here to both defend that decision as my colleagues have talked about I think in the nine months since we made this decision we have experienced things but even in the interview I will say this is the reason that I

believe that Ikani has lived that came out in the interview is that he talked about this very specific story and sharing it and it is probably inappropriate but here we are trying to be open and tell you why these things are happening. He talked about in his prior city manager job driving past a couch on someone’s curb every single day on his way to city hall and I think about this when I seem there was a loose dog around city hall for a long time and thankfully our animal control officers knew the whole story and told us when I called to complain about that loose dog right down the street here. So

Ikani told this story, and I am telling you this because I think if you are wondering what our thinking was and again mistrust means perhaps not understanding what is in our minds and I understand that comes from that place. Ikani talked about this couch sitting on the curb right outside of their city hall at the place where he was previously city manager and driving by every day and going to work and thinking, man I hope solid waste does something about that, I hope somebody is paying attention. Is that going to be recycled? One day, two days, the next day and after several days, I don’t remember exactly how many days he realized that he was the person that should do something about it and that highlighted his management approach which was if you do something going above and beyond your job expectations I will always have your back and I think sometimes in city government we can be stayed and always thinking about something being someone else’s job and I myself have been guilty of that just like when I called animal control about the loose dog. That was an extraordinarily powerful anecdote, in addition to all the other HR related things that qualifications are experiences with staff. Many and all of the interviewees told us stories that made us understand who they were and how they would be city managers and so those conversations were very powerful. It was an extraordinarily difficult decision, but we did use the resources that we had from Human Resources, from our City Attorney, our meetings, our conversations and try to make the best decisions that we possibly could in that context using a range of inputs from a whole bunch of different folks.

That said I understand that we didn’t do the best that we could in public meetings and like I said you can judge us by our actions as we move forward in this context beginning with this week so as we begin a search for whatever kind of search we are going have for a new Executive Director in the ASCMV which is a parallel but separate position as a JPA. I say all of this to make transparent my thinking and usually when we talk about our own thinking and our own feeling from here it is something that we get hundreds of emails excoriating us about afterwards so I embrace those excoriations as they come but I think it is also part of what you all asking for so I understand that ask and that context. All of that said I appreciate very much as has already been said the folks that have worked to rectify this and the folks who brought it forward and continue to demand that we rethink the way that we did this and the way that we do things in the future and it has been absorbed and we feel it and we have experienced it and we are committed to working forward as that goes. 4.5 COUNCILOR FLORES Again, I want to thank all of you for keeping local government on its feet and I hope you do the rest with the state and the federal government. I think you are all very well informed and care about democracy, care about what the government has to do for you, but you have done a lot for us to bring this to our attention and Happy New Year. 4.6 COUNCILOR BENCOMO

I wanted to speak publicly about a couple of issues that I saw with this process, and I waited till the end because I wanted to honor the process that was laid out in front of us by the DOJ. Ultimately knowing that whatever I said was going to be filtered through a lens that would paint me as defensive, that would paint me as dismissive, because whatever, I am used to it. I think I get emails pretty consistently about the way that I physically show up, what I wear, that I joke with the Mayor, that I don’t say hi to you at Pilates, like those things come up quite often, this criticism outside of the scope of my job so I am pretty used to that and so I knew that coming into this that would be similar which is why I carefully thought about what to say but to wait until the end because I do want to honor the process and cure a mistake that was made. I think the concern that I have that I hope to write to the DOJ about is ultimately the process that took nine months that allowed for this to become a referendum on the current City Manager, a person who had nothing to do with a decision that was made at that time and that is what that became and that is pretty disruptive to the functions of government and I would hold that another government entity would have seen that and perhaps rethought the second recommendation that they made. Because I think them having turned around for as quickly as they did Bernalillo County by the way who had a very similar complaint around the same time and their determination, that turn around was pretty quick. Perhaps that second one could have been a recommendation that was very valid. I think nine months later feels like it placed the burden of guilt on the current City Manager when the guilt and the responsibility was to this governing body only and so I have some pretty serious issues with that that I would like to understand a little bit better. I think the other thing to me felt at odds was the lack of legal discernment between a malicious intent to keep the public out and a failure of internal checks and balances which is ultimately I think is what happened which is why I agree that we should have some sort of layout for future city councils on the best practices for hiring a new City Manager, something I actually brought up the Oversight Committee last week as well. So I think that the lack of legal discernment within their investigation to me felt really concerning and the last thing I will say is that there was some unresponsiveness that I hoped would have been different, DOJ is a big department and I know that they have a lot of things going on but I think in the process of trying to do the best we can at curing this and getting to the mission of what this determination was about I would have hoped there was a little bit more responsiveness and less conflicting guidance from the Department of

Justice.

I also lastly want to thank the Bulletin for their diligence in this and bringing this forth for the folks who are committed to public transparency. I think that is a very important thing. My only other ask is to those journalists is that you do not let misinformation go rampant and that is also a responsibility that we have in this moment to make sure that the public understands what has happened and what happened here today. I do want to thank the City Manager Ikani Taumoepeau for his work, 24/7. He has sacrificed time with his family. He moved his family, he built a team, it is pretty blood, sweat, and tears type of job, and I could not be more grateful for the kind of leader that I get to work with every day and not just him, all of you my colleagues as well for engaging in this conversation thoughtfully and I thank you. 4.7 MAYOR ENRIQUEZ As elected officials we are elected to do a job, and we did our job and we do what is

best for the city. It is not in any way to be deceitful or malicious. We wanted what is best for the city, for the organization so that we continue to grow and move forward.

Adversity, difficulties, challenges, scrutiny is going to come our way and we understand that and I thank council for sticking together, being professional, as

Councilor Corran said rowing together for the betterment and becoming a team and that is what we have worked on in the past year and Ikani has been a big part of that, creating that team so that we can move forward with all those challenges and difficulties. Can we learn from it? Absolutely. Can we get better? Yes, we can. We will prove that with our actions. We are here to do a job for the city of Las Cruces and make it a better place for all. So, thank you all for being here today.

5. ADJOURNMENT 5.1 Councilor Johana Bencomo moved, seconded by Councilor Becki Graham, to adjourn at 11:54 a.m.