[Music]
okay good afternoon everyone welcome to
the work session on las vegas city
council today is monday july 11 2022
it's approximately 1 pm before we get
started if you please join me in the
pledge of allegiance
okay jennifer martinez from our
communications office will introduce our
pets of the week
good afternoon mayor and council i am
jennifer martinez with the city's
communications office and today i am
going to introduce you first
to tyrone
folks at the animal services center call
tyrone a schmooze when it comes to
people he does love attention and
getting pet and if you try to stop
petting him
he will let you know that you are not
done petting him as he will grab you and
ask for more
he's a one cat in the house kind of guy
but if you adopt him you won't need
another cat because he has as much love
to give as an entire room of cats and
how do you not adopt this guy knowing
that
and then we have rose rose is about a
year old and a medium dog at 40 pounds
this happy-go-lucky girl is always up
for a walk she gets a little excited
sometimes but she is still very gentle
rose loves snacks and getting pet she
does have a tendency to jump a little
but she is willing to learn to be more
patient with some training after hanging
out on the trails or walking she turns
into a lap dog with a lot of love to
give you can meet rose or tyrone by
getting in touch with the animal
services center call
382-0018 with either of the animal
numbers that you see here on your screen
remember this month is red white and
cute that's the adoption event where all
adoptions are 25
the humane society is sponsoring the
first 80 adoptions and there is also an
adoption event going on at petco this
saturday from 11am to 2pm thank you
mayor
thank you jennifer
okay next is going to be our jobs of the
week and dr francisco pallades deputy
director of economic development will
present those
good afternoon mr mayor members of the
city council for this week's jobs of the
week we have a director for the quality
of life department the city of las
cruces is paying between 47 to 68
depending on the experience and this
position will be closing on the 8th of
august of 2022. there's also a position
available with dearson charities
incorporated and this is for a counselor
and resident monitor the salary for this
was for these uh two positions are not
disclosed and they will be closing on
the 20th of july of 2022. there's also a
store associated this is with
sherwin-williams the salary is not
disclosed and this position will be
closing on the 20th of july of 2022
there's also an administrative assistant
position this is available with american
document services and this position will
be paying 11.95
and they will be closing on the 23rd of
july of 2022 there's also a position
available with new mexico state
corrections department and this is uh
for an information and records clerk it
will be paying between 11 50 to 1969
depending on the experience and it will
be closing on the 17th of july of 2022
also as a reminder there's going to be a
july and on wednesday july the 13th from
10 a.m to 2 p.m new mexico workforce
connection will be hosting a community
resources fair and also on wednesday and
thursday
um that the 13th and the 14th from 9 a.m
to 11 a.m there's also going to be a new
mexico workforce connection employer
connection event both of these events
will be at the 226 south vale media
boulevard here in downtown las cruces as
always the full list of jobs internships
and volunteer opportunities is at
employeenim.com and also at government
jobs dot com forward slash careers
forward las cruces and as always the
information with new mexico workforce
connections the phone number is
524-6250 and the location is 226 south
alameda boulevard downtown las cruces
thank you mr mayor
thank you dr payalis
okay we have four items on the agenda
and the first one is going to be the
oversight committee initial presentation
and i believe
jennifer
vega is going to make the president
initial remarks
i'm sorry oh you know what sorry
mayor pro tem gandera is on the line
and so we need a vote and a second to
allow her to participate telephonically
i forgot sorry about that mayor pro tem
so
is there a second second dead coin okay
motion made by councillor beta second by
councillor koran to allow mayor potem
gandera to participate telephonically
christine
this is on the motion to allow mayor
pro-tem gandera to participate
telephonically
counselor beta yes counter graham yes
counselor ben como is absent counselor
quran
yes yes
counselor flotus yes counselor gandada
and mayor yes
okay sorry about that jennifer
good afternoon mayor and city council my
name is jennifer vega i'm your city
attorney i'm going to introduce the
first
item on the agenda which is the overview
of the oversight committee i will just
go through one of the slides and then
the chair
jack ekman will
present the remaining
let's see here
as you are aware the city
internal audit department is under the
legal department the legal department
mission statement is that the mission of
the legal department is to provide legal
risk and compliance services to the city
council the city manager and all
organizational units of the city so the
public will be confident that the city
government is protecting valuable
resources and operating ethically
effectively efficiently and
transparently
historically the legal department was
comprised of the city attorney's office
and the city clerk's office in 2017 the
city manager added the risk management
division and in 2018 the city manager
added the internal audit office
and i'm going to
defer to our city auditor to talk about
the internal audit office
thank you mr mayor councillors viola
perea city auditor
the internal audit office is comprised
of five individuals and this is a brief
overview of what we are responsible for
audits are objective and systematic
assessments of how well an agency
carries out its programs and operations
audits conducted by the city of las
cruces internal audit office are
conducted in accordance with policies
and procedures that are based on the
institute of internal auditors or the
iia standards
audits may have financial and or
performance objectives and are subject
to in-depth requirements for sufficient
appropriate
relevant and complete evidence and
documentation that supports audit
findings
audit reports contain findings and
recommendations issued by the city
auditor and the final reports are public
documents subject to ipra
a cornerstone of audit standards is for
the auditor to remain independent and
objective at all times
and now i'm going to introduce mr jack
eckman our chair of the accountability
excuse me the oversight committee and he
will discuss accountability in
government ordinance
good afternoon mr mayor
madam pro mayor pro tem telephonically
our honorable city council
esteemed city manager
administrative staff
i think my time is up
no i think i will get to my presentation
now
um very much i will take us through a
few slides and then have a comment to
make
excuse me
counselor i just need you to state your
name for the record my name is jack
heckman thank you so much mr mayor
and the ordinance itself which was
passed on november 19
it set these standards
the brings internal audit of office
closers to the standards in section 2a
it improves independence it codifies the
importance of objectivity it creates
requirement for peer review
it creates an independent oversight
committee it establishes the authority
of the city auditor and requires
cooperation of city departments and
employees
and it maintains transparency and
adheres to best practice models
the inspector general
that position in investigations
conducted by an ig are usually
undertaken in response to reports of
misconduct and often focus upon a person
or small group of people
and by the way we've learned a lot about
this inspector general position because
we have the inspector general from white
sands serving on our oversight committee
the association of inspector general
professional standards are followed
reports may be prepared to refer matters
for prosecution inform the city of a
basis for potential discipline
correct serious deficiencies or inform
other government agencies of the need
for action within their jurisdiction
and the internal audit office will focus
on operations efficiencies and
organizational improvements and ig
serves to create increased
accountability to the public
the inspector general jurisdiction is
quite broad
the authority to investigate municipal
matters involving elected officials
appointed officials employees municipal
agencies
instrumentalities
contractors their sub-countries and
subcontractors have lower tier
subcontractors and other parties doing
business with the city or receiving city
funds
the purpose of the ordinance itself the
accountability and government ordinance
is to provide increased accountability
integrity and oversight to the entire
consolidated government to insist in
promoting economy and efficiency improve
operations and deter and identified
fraud waste and abuse
the oversight committee itself
i will pause the powerpoint presentation
at this point to make a few comments if
i may
our first meeting was in october of
2020.
that was during the covet outbreak and
we were meeting remotely over zoom
some of us had never met each other
in person
and so we started off without a template
without a guide we started off with a
bare slate as you'll remember
and so from that we started to put
together a corpus
of what we could effectively do as an
oversight committee
so
what we did was set up some filters
that we could possibly look at from city
data readily available
to see if there's
to see if we could find a pulse for the
city to see if we could find a baseline
and so we looked at things such as
hotline reports
litigation summaries
other things that were coming into the
city routinely financial status
and since that time we've added some
some more but we had to really crawl
before we could walk
we decided we would meet monthly even
though the
ordinance says we need not meet any more
than quarterly but we said we would meet
monthly and wondered how that would
establish thing we had to set up a
regular meeting date and time and things
of that nature so all those
very important but basic things needed
to be put together first
and then our membership get getting
acquainted with each other at this point
i'd like to introduce
another voting member of the oversight
committee so that you can learn who he
is and a little bit about him mr charles
tucker charles
hello mayor my name is charles tucker
and i serve on the
oversight committee as a voting member
like jack said
is that too loud seems loud okay a
little bit of history about me i served
in the army for 22 years
i retired in 2006
during that time i also served as an in
uniform inspector general for the united
states army
when i retired i took a job as an
inspector general at fort knox kentucky
worked there two years until 2008 and
then i moved out here to white sands
missile range i was the last command
inspector general for white sands
missile range under general ferrari
and then now i work as the only
inspector general on white sands missile
range but i work for the army test and
evaluation command our headquarters is
at aberdeen proving grounds maryland
as a military ig our
our setup is a little bit different as i
have two bosses that are reports who i
report to lieutenant general
i'm major general gallivan at atec
headquarters
and the department of the army inspector
general in the pentagon who who controls
our positions within the army are by
directing authority is major general
gallivan the a-tech inspector the a-tech
commander
i
i hope that
being an ig on the oversight committee i
give a certain insight into how the
reports
and
the things that we're looking at
fall into an inspector general realm
and
with my experience i'm hope to give more
information as time goes so thank you
charles before you leave yes yes sir so
you were at ig at fort knox i was an ig
of fort knox kentucky is that where the
gold is stored
they tell us that oh you didn't see it
you can't get close to it even on a
military installation
general can't determine if the fort knox
of gold is still involved no it belongs
to the treasury department
all right thank you yes sir
we were finally able to get together in
person
in july of 2021
and
it was amazing number one for me to see
mr tucker's height
and
get to know him
and
karen ryan
the honorable municipal retired judge
had many years of service here to the
city i think you're familiar with him
so
the genius
of the accountability and ordinance
itself
is the fact that the three voting
members this will you'll see slides
later
that will clarify some of this but we
have to come from three different fields
and
so mr tucker an inspector general
has a completely different viewpoint of
issues than retired municipal judge ryan
he sees things very much as an attorney
and as people who've been in conflict
and resolving disputes through the court
system
and i come from a hospital
administration background previous city
councilor so i feel the administrative
position on the council on the
committee
we think of ourselves like a
three-legged stool
that's hard to tip over
because we see things in such a
different manner we can really make a
hole
out of a sum of its parts and
i'm
really edified by how it's been working
so far
and i certainly hope you're pleased with
what you've seen so far but it's been
quite brief
quite condensed
because we're probably not where we
should be yet
we've added some more filters to what
we're doing
we're now looking at the audits from the
oir group the lcbd
auditing firm
and we're giving feedback we gave
feedback to the city manager on about
well a lot of things we'd like to see
improved through oir and they have since
been informed that they are to improve
those things and then we're still making
other recommendations on those reports
as they come in
so at this time i'd like to go through
these slides
and
it might clarify a few points i've
already made or
maybe raise questions we'll see
and i need to get here to you
there we go
the mission of the oversight committee
is to assist the city's objective of
accountability in government so that the
city serves as responsible stewards of
fiscal resources in compliance with the
city charter by making recommendations
reviewing the effectiveness of risk
assessment and internal audit activities
and insurance ensuring independence of
city-wide audit functions
here's how we look at oversight we break
it down this way
oversight is composed of the word over
meaning above preferably about thirty
thousand feet in the air
and sight
meaning looking but not touching
we are not to get are involved in city
operations at all that would be totally
irresponsible and not be of help
but
those charged with oversight functions
are asked to look at a process a program
or a project from abrupt from above
but not to get involved in the
day-to-day management you have
professionals here for that
the committee shall consist of three
members who are residents of the city
and who are not employed by the city or
in a direct contractual relationship
with the city
at least one committee member shall be a
certified public accountant or auditor
that would be mr tucker as the ig
at least one committee member shall have
law enforcement or legal background
and judge ryan
completes that in spades
at least one committee member shall have
experience or background in professional
management or business
the mayor and one counselor appointed
annually by the council shall be
non-voting ex-officio members
and all appointments shall be subject to
council approval
and the existing committee members may
make recommendations to the mayor and
council for candidates to fill vacancies
on the committee as they occur
the committee members shall be appointed
for staggered three-year terms
the committee members shall elect the
committee chair annually
the city of las cruces oversight
committee began their terms october 1
and here's a list of those
so
mr tucker came on for one year and was
just reappointed this past year
and i have this current year to serve
and
judge ryan has a decision to make on
whether or not he wants another term we
have the mayor and councilor abeyta
and
they are very helpful in our
deliberations but they do allow us
independence
karen ryan was the first committee chair
and
i have the honor of being that chair at
this point
the various experiences and perspectives
provided by each of the three voting
members provides a balance and strength
within the oversight committee
and there we have
those again
our duties
the committee may provide the city
auditor and the inspector general with
recommendations for priorities and
potential areas for investigations and
audits
and the committee may lend advice to the
city auditor and inspector general
regarding technical issues that may
arise
if a majority of the committee members
find that an audit investigation or
strategic review is questionable then
the committee may issue a cautionary
statement to the inspector general or
the city auditor
as appropriate with a copy to the city
attorney
and the committee shall review any audit
investigatory or strategic review
reports at each meeting the committee
may draft a cautionary statement for
inclusion in the published report
and we do
review at least one audit at every one
of their meetings and we have not been
limited to one meeting a month there
have been some months where we've had
three meetings within a month because of
the importance of the issue at hand
here is one
example
of a statement we made
as a result of an audit
and you might remember this this was uh
in the utel utilities payment in residia
got it
forgive me i'm going to read this the
oversight committee notes that a prudent
performance measurement system
must not have been effectively in place
regarding the cash handling and
receiving processes in the clc utilities
department
a robust system must be in place to not
only follow new mexico state
requirements but also clc city policy
we recommend performance standards and
what those are to us is in parentheses
answering the question what conditions
must exist
for this responsibility to be done up to
standard
close parentheses and performance
measures for cash handling be
established and aggressively monitored
that guarantee alignment with all
current policy statutes and regulations
the oversight committee finds that cash
handling has been cited as not meeting
audited requirements in past external
audit
examinations noted from findings from
different areas areas and departments we
recommend the city auditor's office
conduct a root cause analysis to
determine how practices recommended by
previous external audits have not been
adopted and placed into returning
operations this situation is now being
corrected to our satisfaction
one thing we did because
we're a kind of a do-it-yourself
committee
is we did a
and that was done this spring
it was
i think very very helpful to us
it was completed by eight participants
the three voting members of the
committee the two non-voting members two
legal department staff and one city
manager's office representative
so
this
looks like
uh where our
questions landed let me just tell you
that
what we found to be our strengths
were having the talent necessary that
was presently there
we had a valuable meeting location
because it allowed us to do zoom and in
person at the same time see the audio
visual aids we had a very good location
and all felt positive regarding being on
track
with where we needed to get to
now our top three weaknesses
were
having the respective key stakeholders
in the organization we didn't feel we
had it
possessing adequate resources to perform
our function specifically in inspector
general mainly
and agenda and materials for meeting
being distributed in a tiny timely
manner
i'm getting a little
here so uh
we are
using the staff that is available from
our legal department and our auditing
department
and
that
they're doing absolutely the best they
can and we appreciate every effort they
have
and is there something we can do about
my
sound i don't want to bother anybody
yeah
let's take a
just a quick
minute or so to see if um
if our communications office is picking
you up
or
counselor do you want to grab one of the
mr microphones right there on the table
maybe we can use that
that might be better
is this better
you may want to move that
current one out of direction there you
go thank you
okay
i'd now like to sing
so from this presentation on i move on
to a couple things
the current resources to carry out to
function and fulfill the oversight
committee's mission and purpose can you
speak a little bit counselor all right
okay the current resources to carry out
the function and bill fulfill the
oversight committee's mission and
purpose
our reliance on the legal department
staff for meeting minutes correspondence
to city management city council
presentations
and future resource needs
we do have those needs we continue to
need
an inspector general
we're finding that the hotline system
itself
might
might need improvement or something of
that
nature it's even come to my mind that we
might have a way
for a hundred thousand constituents and
fifteen hundred employees
for a hundred thousand constituents and
fifteen hundred employees
to anonymously if they wish to get in
touch with the oversight committee with
something so that that's just the
thought that we're looking toward that
and uh
a recommendation is coming
that was asked for by the non-voting
members
of the
oversight committee and that would be a
recommendation
on the auditing of the regular things of
the police department
is the ori group working
appropriately or should there be another
method or system and we will have that
available to city council
in
october
so that that'll be ready for you when
you make your decision in march of 2023.
councillor i think the microphone should
be working now the the main one on the
podium
sorry about that
all right
so at this point before i move any
further i was wondering if mr tucker the
mayor or councilor abeda might have
anything they'd like to add before we
discuss
i'm sorry uh counselor uh counselor
avatar i'd like to say something thank
you mayor um and thank you councillor
edmund i did want to say thank you to
all the members of the oversight
committee that have been giving their
time and attention
to a very new committee and there's been
a lot of
issues that you've had to look at and
review and some tailoring that has had
to happen so i appreciate
your willingness to really be thorough
and to engage in some very uh
in-depth conversations with everything
so it's just a thank you thank you mary
thank you thank you
anything mr mayor yes sir
we're good
okay we're good so
are there any questions from city
council or anyone mayor pro tem did you
have any questions
thank you mayor um
i do if i if
if it's okay to ask the question
yes did you have any questions ask of
counselor eckman as chair of the
oversight committee
i do
thank you councillor ekman and
members of the committee that are
present
can you hear me okay
yes
okay
um
you made mention about the inspector
general
and i wanted to ask where we were at
as
administratively
mr feely regarding the hiring of an
inspector general i think this was
something that early on council
really wanted to see happen
and i'd like just an update about where
we're at with that
thank you mayor and counselor and
counselor pro tem this is jennifer vega
as you are aware the inspector general
falls under the city attorney and i am
the hiring manager for that position
it's taken some time because that is a
new position so we had to come up with a
complete job description
there was um originally there was a job
description that didn't quite match the
city ordinance so we had to adjust that
sorry and then i'm unable to hear you
can you hear me now
may protem did we lose you
i think we lost her
so if you want to go ahead and explain
and then she could always uh okay thank
you
um so we had to come up with a complete
job description and needed to match the
legal requirements for the city
ordinance and then there was um the
question of salary so we had a salary
recommendation that came in about a year
and a half ago that was quite low and so
we asked for an adjustment of that
salary and that that was adjusted we did
get a recent recommendation for that i
did
the requisition for the position was
ready on the 29th june 29th i just
happened to leave for vacation that day
so
i did approve it first thing this
morning and so the requisition has been
approved and it's and it's ready for
posting
thank you
any other questions or comments
yes can i make one comment
thank you again i just wanted to say
that um
with jack charles i just need to state
your name oh it's charles tucker um with
the oversight committee again
i just wanted to say one thing
with me jack and and kiernan
we tend to look at things one way
or a certain way so it's always great to
have
whether it be miss abeda or miss flores
or
i mean miss gandara
who adds stuff to our meetings so i
always like to
say that
it's good to have the different insights
coming in because we tend to do group
think sometimes
and
it's it's good to have the other people
adding to our meetings so
not everything comes from us i should
say so i just want to say thank you for
that
we have had visitors to our meeting
and as long as we don't
go over the
meeting quorum act
it's fine if if counselors want to see
what we're doing that is absolutely fine
if i think trading would be in order
and we do have to watch our time
sometimes
but uh it has been helpful mr mayor you
have something to say i was just going
to ask if you could get closer to the
microphone yeah oh okay
councilor flotus has a question thank
you mayor and thank you
mr eckman and thank you mr tucker and
uh miss pereira thank you and um
attorney vega brown
um
i um
i've enjoyed sitting in i've sat in on
two or three of your meetings and um
i'm really uh
impressed by the professionalism of
everyone
so i want to thank you all for that
you made a comment about um whether you
question whether oyeed oir
is sufficient
can you explain what you mean do you
mean
that perhaps
another oversight
an outside auditor
should be assigned
is it too constrained to certain issues
what what is it exactly that you mean by
that mr ekman thank you
we have actually been asked by
other non-voting members of our
committee that is absolutely the best
way of doing things let me say they are
meeting their contractual obligations
they are doing what they are supposed to
do
but is what they are supposed to do
sufficient
at this time would be our question
um is it helpful to the city police
department
um
can they learn and grow from some things
that are happening there the purpose of
this is absolutely not to criticize the
police department it's to help them grow
and to build and to get stronger and to
give them some insights into how the
public might be reacting to some of the
things that
after a while you might feel insular
about
so
we'll be ready in october to discuss
that
but as i look around the nation right
now
i see
a minimum of 68 different methods
for cities to provide oversight for the
police department
a minimum of 68.
and we'd have to know
what the city council the city manager
wants out of it and we also have the
city charter
which clearly clearly states that the
city manager is in charge
of the police department and in fact
every single employee you have
and so everything must go through the
city manager and what the city manager
is looking for to make the police
department as effective as possible and
so i'd say real communication on this
point would be very helpful to us
thank you mr marion thank you again mr
ekman i'm the person who asks a lot of
questions all the time so please forgive
well you're used to it i've served with
you yes
um
so
um
you mentioned the city charter and you
and you stated that it was uh the city
manager of course who um is
like is responsible or the ultimate
overseer of the alaskas police
department
yes but there's also a provision for
city council
to be sure that the positions that we do
have are fulfilling
the responsibilities of the city
there is and in fact it says that the
city council is responsible for the
organization of the employees that then
the city manager
administers but the city council is to
set up that
those roles and responsibilities and
divisions within the city yes
that's a big onus thank you
ebay
thank you mayor and council this is
jennifer vega your city attorney
regarding the oir
contract and any other issue that comes
before the oversight committee
barbara deleon and myself sit
at every meeting and what we're trying
to do is identify any lack or gap of
information right now the contract is
being fulfilled as we progress this
we've never had this type of oversight
we've never had to
have an a committee review any audit or
or anything like this
so we can identify
not
what anybody's doing wrong but if the
city manager has all the information
that he needs and so if we're noticing
that there's a gap in
retrieving that information so maybe
there's a deficiency in the contract
it's not whether or not the
police department may or may not be
doing something it's whether or not
we're capturing that information so we
just want to make sure that as we review
it we're identifying gaps so that we can
make sure that the people who need the
information which is the city manager
and the city council have that
information and how can we best do that
that might require an adjustment in the
contract
ms deleon has been doing the same thing
with financial reports
does the information that the finance
department is providing to the oversight
committee is that enough information or
or can we provide additional information
that may be more helpful so we're
constantly trying to look at that so
that we can make sure that the people
who need the information have it
miss
vega brown thank you for the explanation
however
the contract provisions would be
between the city and
oir
however
i think that some
there may be a need to look at
not only the provision in the contract
but the information that is submitted to
oir
and i i don't know
what information is being submitted
i have read the oir reports
and
it's clear to me that they are being
responsive to the information that's
being provided to them
so
maybe there's a gap there and i don't
know how to close that gap i don't think
it's within
my parameters to do so
i think it's outside of the scope of my
duty as a city counselor
but not outside of my duty to identify
that there's there's a gap there
thank you
and and mayor and council that that is
precisely what we're trying to do so
because we have different insight with
we we handle litigation we see police
reports we are city prosecutors so we
can see if there's a gap in information
and provide that information to
either oversight we've provided it to
the police chief we can provide that
information if we see that there's a gap
and that might need
a requirement in the contract to be
adjusted so
we can add that additional information
that we realize is not being received to
be gathered we just have to identify
where those gaps are
one thing i thought would be helpful if
i could
and that would be for mr tucker to
explain
how the ig works
with
the military command system and so mr
tucker would you please
yes sir
thank you mayor city council it's
charles tucker again
i stated earlier that we work for
two separate entities i work for the
department of the army inspector general
who has control over my position my
position can't be taken
from the army test and evaluation
command without permission of the army
but i also work for my directing
authority which
is
the
um
my commander
major general gallivan so
like when we're done here i have to head
to the airport and i have to fly to
huntsville
i have to do i have to conduct an
inspection this week on redstone test
center
which is part of the army test and
evaluation command now the general
provides me a directive
he tells me what he wants me to look at
he gives me two objectives for the
inspection
i conduct any inspection i'm looking for
systemic issues
if he wants me to conduct well let me go
back just a little bit
as an army inspector general i have four
functions i conduct investigations i
conduct inspections i do teach and train
so
if a
when a soldier comes into my office
and he has a question about
why his first sergeant is yelling at him
i can show him in the regulatory
guidance where the first sergeant for
the unit has control of all discipline
within that unit and sometimes to get
the word across to people you have to
get a little vocal
and he's not breaking any regulatory
guidance that's just what he does so i
teach and train the soldier that the
first are then breaking any rules by
screaming at
but
there may be a better way of
communicating your thoughts so i'll go
back and i'll talk to the first sergeant
and say you know maybe you need to tone
down a little bit because it's not
coming across to your soldiers but
that's part of the teaching train
on top of that i do teach i do
inspections investigations teach and
train
and um assistance so
personnel in the army that have problems
with pay problems they'll come see me
there's an ig
at the defense finance and accounting
service
i contact him we get their problems
fixed so that's one of my functions also
is assistance
misuse of government vehicles
i don't always have to do an
investigation on that i can do it teach
and train
to tell people that you're misusing
government vehicles or i can do an
assistance
to help a person get a government
vehicle if they don't have one so
there's certain functions that we do but
i do nothing without the directive of my
commander my commander tells me what he
wants me to focus on
there are certain things that just
happen with assistance teach and train
that i don't need a directive to to do
certain investigations i can start but
for me to finish i need to have a
directive for my commander
i don't investigate my commander
the department of the army inspector
general investigates my commander
i can't investigate the guy that i
i work for
somebody else has to do that so
that's a little bit where we're
different and that's how we run in
within the army's
inspector general corps so
just to make it clear for everybody
is there any questions maybe i can
answer for somebody or
i was going to return to see if mayor
pro tem was on the line and if she had
any further questions okay
mayor pretend were you still there
okay i think we
lost her for the
we're having interference on the on the
microphone okay any questions from
council of uh charles
yes council photos yes i do have a
question perhaps for mr ekman harford
for mr tucker
so in what you just stated um it seems
to me that
that in your as inspector uh general
you're able to i am mayor can you hear
me
yes mayor pro tem if you can
say hi and then we'll get with you in
just a moment
hello
i'll text you
are you able to um
you know spot some issues or
see that there are some gaps
in so far as
what you need to deliver in order to
correct a situation
yes
yes ma'am um
one of our things that
when i was
when i was on active duty and i served
as an inspector general
one of the issues that comes up is an ig
is never off the record you
you can't claim to ever be off the
record so if somebody comes and talks to
you
and they bring up something
about
um misuse of a government vehicle again
and they just complaining about their
neighbor or something
what a lot of times they don't realize
is now you've thrown it in my lap you've
done it inadvertently but you've done it
so now i have to go chase this down
um
if i'm if i'm out at an um an annual
activities day and trying to relax and
play
softball or something and somebody
complains about something
to to somebody else if i hear it i have
to act on it that's the way
we we have to um
so there's never a time when
you you can't turn it off as an ig in
the army somebody had this great idea
one time to put a big patch on on the
shoulder that says ig
and all that does is like flies in honey
so now everybody's talk no matter where
you go in uniform you have somebody
complaining about something
so it
it never ends there's always somebody to
complain about so as we walk around and
when i was in afghanistan
we would take helicopter flights to
different fobs
and
our job was to just wander the fob
talking to the soldiers that were on the
ground
to find out what was going on the
commanders didn't like it that were on
the ground because they don't want
somebody else in their battle area
but that's what we did so we would talk
to people find out what's going on if
there's an issue getting ammunition if
there was an issue with
you know people weren't getting enough
sleep or you know they were um
you know the the jay lens wasn't working
i don't even want to get into the chain
lines but if
if the weapon systems weren't working
correctly or if something wasn't
happening that was supposed to happen
that's what we do we look for systemic
issues we look for things that we can
fix
so along those lines mr tucker and mr
ekman and attorney vega brown and uh
auditor internal auditor viola perez
and looking i'm talking from where i'm
sitting seeing
and
reading the reports that they issue
there they do make some recommendations
about correcting this or correcting that
however
i you know it seems to me that um it's
apparent that they're not getting a lot
of information
and the information i'm referring to
is
information
that we read about in the newspaper
and we know about that
but it's not covered in the oed
reports so i'm just trying to figure out
either
through your the oversight board and
your respective expertise
and our
attorney and our
internal auditor
if there's any way that they can
work with
mr peely or you all can work with mr
peely i'm just trying to stay out of it
i mean i'm not i don't want to in any
way step on anyone's toes or
overextend the parameters of my
charter obligations or limitations thank
you
mayor and council i think one of the one
of the issues well it's not an issue
it's just a process
the oir
reviews completed internal affairs
investigations and it could be that if
there's a pending criminal action
or
a pending
determination to be made either by the
attorney general or the district
attorney that might that might delay the
completion of the internal affairs
investigation and so there might be some
delay in that
um if those things are happening so
there won't they won't be reviewed by
oir immediately it has to be a completed
internal affairs investigation
thank you for that explanation and
that's probably
what creates the gap because some of
these pending litigation issues go on
for years before they're resolved and in
the meantime the same behavior is being
repeated
anyway i hope that over the course of
the next decade or two
we'll see some improvement thank you
again
mr ekman and thank you mayor and again
we'll have some prescriptive advice on
that by october we believe the oir group
is doing what they are contracted to do
and doing it effectively
we would
we might be recommending
some expansion of what
an a an outside auditor or perhaps an
inside auditor is looking at in the
police department we
or any agency of the city whatever would
be of most benefit to the city in
improving things for the department with
the department is what our goal would be
thank you mr we've got a question from
mayor put him and then i know councillor
koran and i don't know if you want to
answer this or jennifer it says the
question is how does each council member
receive keep recommendations
specifically to any recommendations of
the oversight and
what
and what efo agrees
or not is it by report quarterly monthly
is it by email we need to close the
communication gap to us
we we are replying as soon as we see the
audit and have anything to comment i
think we've commented on everyone except
one or two
and so those are a part of the process
they do go to city administration for
review
in fact they're on your city web at this
time
so the process is working that way so
even the public knows what our comments
are it might not be as timely as we wish
but
they they are thorough and they are
there to see
and i'm sure mr pealey could help you
find those and show you them if you
haven't
really had them on your eyes before
okay and then council koran you have a
question
my question sort of goes to what you are
alluding to uh mr checker regarding the
the reporting but the recommendations
that you all have made thank you for
your presentation i really appreciate it
but just in the big picture um it seems
that
and i'm not sure how the ig position
will fall into that but it seems that
you all sort of sort through a myriad of
inputs ranging from
direct reports to audits to things that
that might be elevated to you from
through some other capacity i suspect
there are also gaps and that's partly
why you're alluding to
the potential to have your own
single communication place that folks
can reach out to you
i'm wondering
uh
how all of that
and i think about things like we're
going to hear about ipra requests
there's an extraordinary amount of work
associated with all of those things
conducting additional audits and and
sort of human and material resources
that the city has to put into that
i wonder one if if there were a sort of
a channel directly to report things to
you all how how would that fit into the
sort of cue
and then does the inspector general
position
if
filled how would that sort of relate to
all of those
various inputs that come through and may
or may not be related to each other or
unrelated or
validated even in an initial screen or
not validated and that so i'm curious
how all of that would fit together
excellent question
we
have yet to have a
a
comprehensive feedback scheme we rely
totally on audits and on inspector
general reports we are not to look into
anything on our own to see if there's a
problem that is
absolutely
void we can't do anything of that nature
right now with our audit team is finally
up to staff
but if they get called away to do what
an inspector general could do
that bumps every other audit that we
wanted to happen and all those audits
that you just approved for this coming
fiscal year are very necessary to see if
we're giving the city the efficient and
effective government it relies on
and so
there we will have more information
available to us
if we have an inspector general working
with the city manager working with
whoever to find out what we can do to
help improve
there are
there are issues
they do come up
and
rather in the future from them
being
publicly displayed maybe we could
we want them to be publicly displayed
displayed that's not what i mean it's
just that we should have solved it
before it became a front page issue
thank you mayor council this is jennifer
vega your city attorney um
one of the one of the things right now
that how we receive a lot of information
is through the hotline we have a
community hotline and we also have an
employee hotline it's the same it's the
same phone number all every single
hotline complaint is reviewed by city
management the two assistant city
managers the city attorney and the city
auditor they review every hotline
complaint that comes through
if it's a personnel matter that's
directed back to the director of that
particular department
if it's if it's not a personnel matter
and it's something else then the
committee will determine how to best
handle that will it be referred to the
internal audit for an audit will it be
referred directly to the city manager so
there is a lot of information that we
are receiving and it is reviewed by both
assistant city managers
and the legal department
another thing that is important to
remember
the city auditor and the inspector
general the ordinance requires that they
they are allowed to initiate their own
investigation or review they do not have
to wait for any type of direction they
do not have to
in fact the city manager or the city
attorney we cannot interfere with an
investigation we cannot redirect an
investigation and we cannot alter a
report so we can make recommendations
for investigations and we can request
investigations but they can investigate
however whoever
as long as it's aligned with the
ordinance itself so they have
more independence that way
than
the federal government may have because
they don't need a directive to initiate
any type of investigation the hotline
committee can also make recommendations
to the city auditor or the the future
inspector general to investigate we can
make requests and investigations we can
also make a request to the oversight
committee so to for recommendation
because the oversight committee can
make recommendations to the inspector
general and the auditor for technical
issues and they can also request
investigations or recommend
investigations they just can't direct
investigations so right now we do
receive a lot of information
our hotline we we have
that's going to be covered in our next
presentation but we do receive a lot of
information through that the oversight
committee is provided a hotline report
monthly
jennifer before you go why was there
just two council members on the
committee i can't remember the reason
for two as opposed to say three
um mayor and council the recommendation
was for two because we're always
concerned first of all with the open
meetings act because these
some of the topics that could be
discussed might involve confidential or
privileged information so we wanted to
make sure that we did not violate the
open meetings act and that we these were
not public meetings these are
directed by the chair
okay thank you
and i thank you for the opportunity to
present here today at your first work
session of your new fiscal year
and we hope to see you next year
thank you
okay so we're done
so now we're going to go to the
internal audit report
oh i'm sorry counselor
thank you mayor um
with the respect to your last question
um what i would say is
um having
two counselors on i believe
obviously
is very good to have but
there has been a lot of interest from
other counselors to attend these
meetings which has gotten us into issues
if i'm not present
then
if other people are on then i have to
get the information in a different way
so my recommendation as we're looking
at this ordinance
is to either formally
adopt a process where there are three
counts named individuals on there or
just to leave it at two and just work on
communication between council so that
there's no ambiguity on attendance
you know i just thought of something
when you were just mentioning that
if
if we were to have a proxy or if someone
was to alternate then theoretically more
than more than three members could
actually be a privy to information that
yeah so we'll pay
we need to have a specific number and if
they can't attend then they can't attend
and
you know this is probably one of the
rare
uh times and we may want to adhere to
that so okay thank you for bringing that
up
okay so
you're the doing the fiscal year 20 2022
annual internal audit report
yes good afternoon mayor city council
viola perea city auditor today i'm going
to present a look back at fy 22 and
provide you all with a report for the
activities that have taken place within
internal audit
and some of these slides have been
covered in our previous
discussion so i'll go through them
rather quickly but internal audit is a
division of the legal department the
city auditor manages the division
reports directly to the city attorney
who reports directly to the city manager
in the city council pursuant to the city
charter
the mission of the legal department is
to provide legal risk and compliance
services to city council the city
manager and all organizational units of
the city so the public will be confident
that the city government is protecting
valuable resources and operating eff
ethically effectively efficiently and
transparently
in accordance with the accountability
and government uh ordinance again we've
covered this uh previously already but
this uh the ordinance just indicates
that the office of internal audit is to
be sufficiently independent with no
interference or influence that will
adversely infect
independence or objectivity
i'm going to skip through this we've
already talked about the members of our
committee
and gone through this slide as well
so this is a slide for the internal
audit office
internal audit currently has five
members the city auditor the city
manager excuse me the audit manager and
three internal auditors and i'd like to
take a brief moment to introduce two of
our auditors that we have today we have
miss rachel thielen
and we have will blanchard
he recently joined us just a couple of
months ago from our finance department
and our third auditor is vanessa
williams who also joined us from finance
in our treasury department she's
currently on vacation so she's not here
today
as reviewed in the report that was
approved by council last week internal
audit um has not been able to fulfill
100 of our past audit plans
um fy 20 fy 21 we were down to at one
point just myself we have slowly been
adding auditors on with like i said will
just joining us in in april of this year
we still have one vacancy but we are
making significant progress
so for fy 22 we either completed or had
in process approximately 67 percent of
our audit plan which is pretty great
but we are working to improve that goal
and with the addition of an internal
audit manager we do expect to exceed
meet or exceed the goals that we have in
the past but this gives you an overview
of what we were able to complete or had
in process for last fiscal year we
completed the utilities payment
receiving audit with a subsequent or a
an additional memo to treasury regarding
cash handling processes
and we have six audits uh currently
underway we have the juvenile citation
program which we just conducted an exit
conference last week so we'll have that
report to the city manager's office as
soon as we receive management responses
back from the parks and rec director
we have a follow-up audit of the pdmm
contract management
audit we have municipal court indigent
defense services underway that one is
near completion as well we hope to have
our exit conference soon
we currently started the rincon hills
park contract compliance
in addition to the the flsa payroll and
training requirements and a review at
coven 19 policies and procedures
in fy 22 internal audit also completed
four strategic reviews
as mr ekman mentioned when internal
audit receives information that is a
significance we might postpone our
scheduled audit plan and actually take
that those resources and commit to some
of these other issues as they arise
these are the four that we've been
completed that we have completed in fy22
internal audit is also responsible for
managing the anonymous hotline service
that we have as jennifer excuse me
attorney vega brown mentioned we have
two different avenues both for the
employees of the city as well as the
public and they can report either via
telephone or online
it is anonymous if the caller chooses to
remain anonymous and the only time we
would know who the caller is or how to
contact that individual is if they
provide us with that information but
they do have the option to
remain anonymous and therefore we would
not know who that caller is
however they would provide those details
in either to a call intake person
through a third party that we contract
with or they can type it in directly
that information is then gathered and an
email is sent back to the hotline
committee we have no contact with the
individual at any time unless they
individ indicate who they are and what
their contact information might be
our hotline committee is
comprised of the two assistant city
managers the city attorney and myself
and internal audit will investigate any
complaints that the committee determines
ties back to fraud waste and abuse if
the complaint coming in is personnel
related it'll be disseminated back to
the department director or possibly hr
if not both to complete the
investigation
during fy 22
when i prepared this slide we were still
in the month of june so we hadn't
concluded the entire month of june so at
the time i reported we had 79 complaints
for fy22 reported through the hotline we
actually ended on june 31st with 86
complaints
however not all of the complaints that
are coming through the hotline are
related to city operations or city
employees
for fy 22 we had 25 complaints or
approximately 29 percent of all of the
hotline complaints that have been
received were not related to a city
employee or a city function
and again personnel actions resulting
from a hotline complaint are kept
confidential will we we will report back
through the hotline that the
investigation has been completed and
that appropriate actions have been taken
but we will not give specifics as to
what that action might be
internal audit is also responsible for
overseeing the police auditor contract
and essentially what that means is we
help to initiate the contract we help to
create purchase orders for example we
just requested the fy 23 purchase order
to be created for this new fiscal year
and we monitor and review the invoices
that are submitted monthly by the oir
group they are reviewed for accuracy for
completeness and that they actually tie
back to a complaint that has been
submitted by lcpd over to oir
if we have any issues on the invoices we
communicate back with oir to get those
cr corrected before it's submitted for
payment
inspection of public records um we have
a presentation following this
presentation regarding ipa requests but
i just put this slide together to
indicate that internal audit does
participate in the completion of ipa
requests as well for fy 22 we responded
to 14 ipa requests within the allotted
time period
our peak performance measures
within the legal department strategic
plan within the internal audit section
we have four
performance measures that we are
responsible for
the first indicates by 2022 80 of the
annual audit plan will be completed by
the end of the fiscal year as i
mentioned previously we have not been
fully staffed and we have not been able
to achieve this particular goal we did
come close this year with 67 of
completed or in process but we do have
uh very high expectations that we'll be
able to meet this goal for fy23
our second is by fy 22 50 of employees
will successfully complete ethics
training
ethics training is a an annual
requirement for all city employees
and previously in the past internal
audit would participate with hr
department while we provided in-person
ethics training however during covid
especially during covid we had only the
online versions of the ethics training
so we have not been able to participate
in that up until now
we do intend through the legal
department to be more involved in the
development and improvement of our
ethics training moving forward in the
future
however i did contact hr and got some
information for calendar year 2021
ethics training
the training requirements are based on a
calendar year not a fiscal year
so what hr reported was
excuse me i can't read with my glasses
on this close
for calendar year 2021 we had 37 percent
of city employees who completed ethics
training online
so the completion of the annual training
requirements is dependent on each
department director to ensure compliance
but i wanted to let you know
at this point it is still online
an internal audit and the legal
department will be more involved in
in-person training moving forward our
third performance measure is by 2022 75
percent of city employees surveyed will
report that they agree or strongly agree
that they work in an ethical climate
so another aspect of internal audit is
we conduct an annual ethics survey every
year and we'll be discussing that
briefly in a couple more slides but for
2022 we exceeded this measurement we had
actually 77 percent of the employees who
responded to our survey indicated that
they do agree that they work in an
ethical climate here at the city
our fourth
and last performance measure is that 95
percent of audit recommendations will be
implemented by the effective department
within the agreed upon time frame
and again i
don't mean to keep repeating myself here
but without having sufficient resources
to not only conduct audits and special
investigations but also to conduct
follow-up audits to determine whether or
not recommendations are being
implemented we just didn't have the
resources to do that this fiscal year
however we do have it on our audit plan
to do follow-up audits on every
completed fy 22 audit so we will be able
to monitor that and report to you uh for
fy 23 activities
and a little bit now about the ethics
survey so sin every year since 2014
internal audit has conducted a citywide
ethics survey
for the fy 22 survey it was sent to
1779 full-time part-time and other types
of employees it was essentially everyone
within municip had an email address
we kept the survey open for about two
and a half weeks from april 25th to may
11th we had
531 employees respond to the survey
which is the second highest since we
started this in 2014 which is
approximately 30 percent of the
employees surveyed and they completed
that survey for us
in your packets you all received this
historical data from 2014 to current and
it shows you that the trending of the
information the responses that have been
received and over the years we've added
a few questions so you see those at the
bottom
so we measured compliance or not
complaints excuse me but response is
from the baseline in 2014 to the current
year but also the past year to the
current year so we can see how things
are changing or improving within the
city
and then lastly we have just a little
bit of information here some bios for
our audit staff as i mentioned we
currently have five individuals within
the internal audit office four are
filled one is currently vacant that's
our audit manager however we have made a
tentative offer it's been accepted so we
are in the process of getting that
filled as well
so with that i'll stand for any
questions
counselor
thanks mayor um thank you so much for
the presentation
on slide 11 um you had
referred to i think 79 complaints and
that was up to 86.
uh mr mayor councillor graham yes ma'am
we are now at 86 uh for the closing of
fy22 okay great and if i understood
correctly there are kind of two separate
hotlines there's the employee hotline
and a community
hotline
okay under these numbers is that the
combined
of both yes ma'am mr mayor councillor
graham um what we have is two separate
telephone lines one is for the employee
telephone line one is for the public
telephone line and then we have two web
intakes so there's a link for the public
in web intake and then a link for the
community or the employee uh web intake
however whichever you use whether it's
telephone or the web and whichever
method you use whether employee or the
public they all route to the same third
party organization that collects that
data they format it into a report and
then those reports are individually
emailed to each of the four hotline
committee members
okay great you anticipated and answered
succinctly my next question which was
how were community
how community
inquiries were routed but it's all going
through
the the same sort of that is correct
okay great thank you so much thanks
mayor
council florida thank you mr mayor and
thank you ms viola
not all on page 11 not all complaints
related to city operations or city
employees
so
can you share with us what
those
miscellaneous
complaints might be i'm just curious are
they complaining about gas prices
the long lines at the gas station
mr mayor councillor flores yes ma'am we
get complaints
um literally about everything we get
complaints that might relate to a city
employee or a city operation or function
we get complaints especially during
covid people that wanted
through the hotline complaint system
they wanted resources for how to go
about getting food vouchers or housing
information
we've had complaints about kovid
from
employees of private companies wanting
to report their employees for making
them wear a mask or not making requiring
them to wear a mask it honestly it runs
the gamut we get complaints
from just about everybody for any reason
possible that are in addition to things
that relate to city the city
and so of the total 86 that we had for
fiscal year 25 22 excuse me 25 of those
were not related to a city function or a
city employee they related to other
things from the things that i've
mentioned to even reporting matters that
need to be addressed by the police but
they're reported through the hotline
so we just route those appropriately
whether it be the pd
or whether it be to utilities as a
service complaint
we've even had complaints of potholes
that we route to the 311 system so it
runs the gamut we we collect it all and
then we just disseminate it
appropriately
thank you very much ms peter and thank
you mr mayor
mayor pro tim are you there
i am mayor
do you have a question
i don't thank you
oh you don't
okay
okay so i'm going to ask this have you
received the complaint from me on on me
that i live in santa fe and only come
down for the
council meetings
uh mr mayor council no no i haven't so
it's i'm hearing it all over which i
don't i haven't been to the city
different in over a year but okay just
curious
thank you
any other questions
is that it for your presentation yes sir
that's all i have thank you i did have i
did have oh
sorry about that um
not a question just so much as a comment
i was reading through the um the survey
um which
most of it obviously ethically
ethically oriented but there were a
couple of questions
that i
i'm just hoping that everyone
took the time to read through all of the
comments um you know amongst the
counselors among city managers office
there were definitely some things that
made me
take pause
so for instance i wanted to put question
22 i feel physically safe in my work
environment
and again so not so much of an ethical
consideration but i also understand like
if you can get people to take a survey
ask them anything we possibly can
because it can be hard to get people to
take surveys so
uh i guess i just wanted to get it out
there that
i personally read through those comments
and
felt a lot of sympathy
for some of the responses that i was
seeing
and that i
i'm confident that others
you know who saw this are reading those
comments as well and i would be happy to
hear about how we might be able to
address some of those concerns so just
wanted to get that out there
thanks
thank you mayor
okay yes
thank you i really appreciate counselor
graham's um comments on that i i want to
ask a question and then comment
um
viola
in the
[Music]
um
internal complaints that you receive
from staff
is that
what what is the number that helps
remind me of what that looks like and is
that pretty standard
in terms of the number
of complaints
that we receive into i mean we
a healthy organization right i think
people
um
should be
lodging complaints and concerns if they
have them
um and can you tell me what the standard
is for a city our size
yes ma'am mr mayor uh mayor pro tem
gandera i don't know the standard for
communities our side but i can give you
a little bit of history for the city of
las cruces
when i first
was put into this position that initial
fiscal year we only had 50 hotline
complaints come through the system
and through our ethics survey we learned
from city employees that there was a
number of folks who indicated they
weren't quite aware how to report a
concern
and so we increased our visibility we
put the hotline on more within more
areas of the internal website as well as
our external city website so we have
increased our visibility and over the
last couple of years the complaint the
number of complaints being filed are
increasing last year we closed fy21 with
78 complaints and this year we closed at
86. so from 50 to 78 to 86 we are seeing
that increase so that increased
visibility has had a positive effect
because and then a negative effect if
you will in in a way that where because
it is more visible we have more
calls that don't relate to city
operations or city functions coming
through as well so we do have more
employees having that that avenue to
voice their concern as well as things
that don't necessarily relate to the
city
but we do see a positive increase in
having people have that anonymous avenue
to report their concerns so for us we we
do see that that positive change
is this an average are we below or above
that average i would have to get back to
you on that i'm not really sure how we
might compare to other municipalities
who have a hotline system but for us we
do see a positive increase in the number
of complaints being reported
i appreciate that biola and then my my
comment um along the lines of council
graham's commentary is
our health policy review committee is
looking at an occupational health survey
and in that occupational health survey i
think we'll be able to really ascertain
where people are feeling safe and
or if they're not why not and
it's been an interesting process for
working with new mexico state
universities
one of their
pro evaluation programs
and i'm really looking forward to
seeing what those questions
might look like and of course these are
questions that
cbc and
others department of health
have had
you know in the past occupational health
survey questions so i i have um
the copy of the questions that i'll be
sharing with etho
and and then
you know
um i don't know mr pealey if you
and and may or if you feel like a work
session is necessary
to share with the rest of council or
how we might you know get the feedback
um from the other council members we
have counselor politician counselor
um quran that said on that along with
myself
and i don't know if there are other
committees that you think
might
we need to vet that particular survey
mayor pro tem who were you directing
that question to
to you mayor and mr pealey
it was just a comment or to the city
manager
it was a question um in terms of
how do we vet that survey and would it
require
a additional work session to to
you know work through the survey
questions or is the prc
committee um enough to move it into
council
to vote
you know i can't speak for ifo it's a
little bit hard hearing all of your
comments or questions i'm open to having
a work session on this to help develop
maybe questions of your concerns as well
as the other council members and put
that out for something that could be
used for uh to gather input from the
public
yes okay thank you mayor
okay
that's it all right thank you viola
so next one is number 3.3 inspection of
public records and apra statistics
lisa herrera will be presenting
good afternoon mayor and city council
this is jennifer vega your city attorney
i just wanted to say a few things before
lisa begins her presentation as you are
aware the
um the records manager is under the city
clerk um this is these are
stats and information that we haven't
provided in the past
i thought it was important that we
provide you the information so that you
have an idea of the number of
requests that we fulfill how quickly we
fulfill them we have
started to track the number of hours
that it takes to fulfill ipa requests
i think this is just lending to further
transparency but also so that you know
our valuable city resources are used for
compliance we are in compliance with
ipra
we've had a complaint here and there
we've never been found in violation by
the attorney general we have been
asked by the attorney general for some
clarification and for a review of a
report but we've never been found in
violation i just wanted to make that you
all aware of that
the number of hours spent on fulfilling
these requests is substantial and so i
think it's important for the public to
know that we are doing everything we can
to comply and we're doing it as quickly
as possible
thank you
good afternoon mayor and council my name
is lisa herrera and i am the records
manager
it's going to be short and to the point
today
so in 2021 we received 1505 total
requests for the year
as of june 30th the report i ran we've
processed 1016 requests so we're
projected to go over 2000 this year
on average it takes our office to
fulfill a request from the date that we
receive it to completion six days
for a staff member to review a 10 page
document it takes about 30 minutes
that's including reductions
an average time for a one hour video
review with redactions and uploading it
to the requester is about three hours
this is just a
snapshot of the june
stats so there were 620 documents that
were provided to requesters
in june alone
449 hours was logged by staff for
researching reviewing and redacting
the city clerk does update these
statistics every month it can be found
on the city's website under the city
clerk's office there is a link for
public records requests and they can get
that information there
a quick rundown of staff that are
assigned to public record requests the
city clerk is the custodian of records
for the city of las cruces
she has designated myself the records
manager and the two records clerks in
the city clerk's office
soon to be three
to process and gather information for
public record requests she also has the
city clerks i'm sorry office also has an
office assistant senior that assists us
with documents review as needed
the city attorney's office also as
needed for document review they also
help our office to prepare
responses
and also reviewing documentation to make
sure that privileged information is
redacted or removed before release
the police department has seven staff
members that are dedicated to public
record requests at this time the support
services administrator the records
supervisor three records clerks the
administrative assistant and cid and the
office assistant senior in ia
they all assist our office in gathering
documentation and they also review and
redact documents as well
each city department is also assigned a
records liaison
that is designated by their department
directors that will assist our office in
gathering information as well
i told you it would be quick and to the
point
if you have any questions i'll open it
up from you once more
councillor flores
thank you mr mary and thank you so much
mrs herrera
and insofar as page four goes um
so what's a administrative assistant
slash c id what's a cid
just wondering that's a section in the
police department i believe it stands
for criminal investigation division
okay
it's a section within the police
department so it's a department ca the d
stands for department great thank you
thank you chief and thank you mrs thank
you mayor
anyone else
mayor pro tem
no questions mayor thank you okay
council correct
i i really appreciate you sharing this
thank you and i know that uh it's a lot
to think about five requests a day and
and the number of things that go along
with that and i know that actually this
doesn't include all the work from ict
and folks that have to contribute to a
number of things and
and all of those things and i'm not one
to suggest that um
i think transparency is is key but i'm
curious
um
if you and this this is probably a big
ask but
uh
it
it would be great to hear sort of where
these
what these requests are aimed at
that is i know that
um
in a lot of cases these
come from folks who are working at some
sort of gotcha angle to try to catch
people doing something unethical and
um
and
those might come from various places
some of these come from you know sort of
media requests some of these might
relate to to things that are high
profile things that are happening
i'm curious if in the future we could
sort of know
um
what general types of hyper requests are
coming in i don't know how how that
would be um sort of calculated but sort
of requests from folks who
who are coming at this from different
angles and i think i asked this in
service of sort of the bigger question
that we're having here today the
conversation about oversight and
accountability and sort of transparency
and where
where the efforts are concentrated in
terms of
that that type of accountability
if that makes sense so
and i know that this is their your first
time presenting that but i'm just
curious i will be curious to see in the
future perhaps a little bit more nuance
to where these requests are coming from
not to suggest that any
um
spaces are
sort of more or less legitimate but i
would say that this is an enormous
amount of effort that we put forward and
and i would like the the community and
the city to know that
in being accountable to this there's a
cost um to to the city and to the people
who work here and to all the departments
that have to to contribute to that
and to consider that cost and thinking
about things like
um
what i would consider what i believe are
regularly spurious ibra requests
if i can name them frankly
i'm sorry was there was our question
just uh just next time if you can sort
of give a general detail like a little
bit more detail about like where do
these come from because i really
appreciate you all doing this this work
and i would just like to know if what
it's in service of right okay um sure
on the website now we do actually break
it down by what's called activities so
those are the um notifications that we
sent to departments so those are broken
down by departments you can see which
departments and sections get the most
activities but it doesn't really detail
the
i guess the nature of the request itself
just where it's going within the
city
yes yes
mayor and council is jennifer vega
a great deal of the upper requests that
we receive are directed at the police
department and this is
a method that a lot of attorneys use to
go through ipra
rather than the discovery process or any
other process that is allowable by law
they utilize ipra and so because we have
a three-day turnaround or we have to
provide everything in 15 days it's very
burdensome but we provide that but a lot
of the is for body-worn camera footage
and it may be
an incident that was a traffic stop as
simple as it's not it's not
controversial issues i mean we receive
those as well but it's usually for
just everyday interactions that may
occur
that is correct i actually have uh the
breakdown for the police department of
that 1016 that we received through june
30th 565
or for the police department 451 are
categorized as just other city requests
all right thank you so much i appreciate
that
so lisa let me ask you something
i and i i believe that there was a
request for additional help in the
this coming fiscal year but is this a
position that could actually or also use
volunteers if they're screened properly
i personally i wouldn't think so
you're dealing with a sometimes could be
confidential or privileged information
i don't i don't know that we would want
volunteers to be handling that type of
information
i'm just curious just my opinion
because you know if it's if it's
information that's public then you know
you just might not have them help in
addition but i again i've just merely
thought
and mayor and council we have to review
so the legal department has that well
the city has a confidentiality policy
overall but a lot of the information
that we review
has to be redacted and so it it would be
some of it is highly sensitive
gotcha okay
thank you
any other questions
okay lisa i guess that's it that's it
okay thank you
yeah i guess your last huh
lawyer succession plan
this is a lot of fun like if you win the
lottery and you take off
okay why can't i get back here
where is
our former counselor when we need him
it's not
work your
you're magic
thank you
all right
mayor and council this is jennifer vega
your city attorney um
what you're about to witness is very
riveting this is a new rule and this is
a requirement of um for all attorneys in
new mexico so i i have to go through
this and i'll have to go through it
every year so
we'll try to get through it quickly
um the new mexico supreme court adopted
nmra rule 16-119
and it becomes effective on october 1st
we are going to combine it with our
annual audit report every year just so
that we remember to do it
the rule requires every lawyer
practicing in new mexico to have a
written succession plan specifying the
steps to be taken in the event of the
lawyers in capacity
the requirements of the rule are to
identify the lawyer or law firm
designated to carry out the terms of the
succession plan the location of
information necessary to access the
designating lawyer's current list of
active clients client files and other
client information including computer
and other relevant passwords
and information on designating the
lawyer's trust in operating accounts and
corresponding records
the other requirements of the rule are
that lawyers must also notify their
clients of the existence of the
succession plan pursuant to the rule
and it mandates that every lawyer
annually certified to the state bar of
new mexico that the lawyer or the law
firm employing the lawyer is in
compliance with this rule and as of
course you are aware you the city
council is the client and the city
manager is the client and this is your
notification
the city attorney's office has
implemented the following lawyer's
succession plan upon the incapacity
disability or death of the city attorney
jennifer vega the city attorney's cases
will transfer to the deputy city
attorney
the city attorney's records passwords
and case files and current case
management database will be maintained
by the legal department office manager
vanessa king
upon the incapacity disability or death
of the deputy city attorney the deputy
city attorney's cases will transfer to
the most senior assistant city attorney
which is currently jocelyn garrison
the deputy attorney's records passwords
and case files and current case
management database will be maintained
by the legal department office manager
vanessa king
upon the incapacity disability or death
of senior assistant city attorney
jocelyn garrison
senior assistant city attorney's cases
will transfer to the city attorney
and the senior assistant city attorney's
records passwords and case files and
current case management database will be
maintained by the legal department
office manager vanessa king
upon the incapacity disability or death
of senior assistant city attorney brad
douglas
the senior assistant city attorney's
cases will transfer to the city attorney
jennifer vega this the senior assistant
city attorney's records passwords and
case files and current case management
database will be maintained by the legal
department office manager vanessa king
the city attorney's office financial
records and operating accounts are
maintained by leanne damouche the
director of the city of las cruces
finance department the city attorney
jennifer vega is responsible for the
office of the city attorney's succession
plan
the lawyers succession plan
this lawyer's succession plan fulfills
all the requirements of rule 16 119 nmra
and if you have any questions please let
me know right now we have two open we
have three open positions the deputy
city attorney position is open and we
have two senior positions open so i will
adjust this plan it will be very similar
in succession and that will be submitted
to mr peeley as soon as those positions
are filled
questions
have any questions
mayor yes the only concern jennifer i
have is that you've
listed names such as yourself and brad
and others
could we be a little more general um if
in the event somebody leaves would you
have to and not because of those things
listed would you have to go back and
amend and bring it to council
um thank you mayor and council mayor pro
tem no the rule requires specific naming
of each attorney in new mexico
so we as we hire people we'll have to
add their names into the plan
wow okay all right thank you thank you
okay if there's no further questions
this um
i guess pretty much will conclude the
work session people
yeah
okay great then i'll entertain motion to
adjourn
by flores second aveda
motion made by councillor florida second
by counselor beta to adjourn
christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor beta yes cancer
graham yes counselor ben como is absent
cancer quran yes cancer flood is yes
cancer gandara
yep
and mayor
yes
okay it's 2 40 p.m we are adjourned
thank you and we do have the
we do have the uh agenda setting meeting
here in a minute
so
okay you ready for the agenda city
okay all right this is the uh agenda
setting meeting for july 18 2022 city
council meeting number one non-consent
one non-consent two non-consent two
non-consent three non-consent three
non-consent for consent for consent five
consent five consent six consent six
consent seven non-consent seven
non-consent
you