4 000 or almost 45 000 employees
and over the next 10 years at those two
rates i mentioned that 1.7
and 1.7 percent um you'll see a net
increase in residence of about 14 000
and a net increase of employment of
about 3 000 a little more than three
thousand
um
so
beyond just counting the residents we do
actually have to take we have to
understand for a for a house or for a
given commercial establishment how many
residents or how many employees will be
in those establishments and so we have
something called occupancy occupant
density um
we for the categories of a fee we use
the existing existing categories from
the existing pew program
we use the american community survey
city building permit data as well as ite
data i think that's the institute of
traffic engineers it's a nationwide
database used for traffic studies but
also
estimates employees
by type of commercial development say
retail a typical measure is how many
employees per thousand square feet for
example
we use all those factors to estimate
here in order to do the calculations for
the p program
and here you can see the estimates of
occupant density for residential you can
see the sort of bands of music square
feet so 900 square feet or less up to
2100 square feet or more and a
corresponding person's per dwelling unit
and that's a way to measure sort of the
impact because after all it's not the
homes themselves that cause public
safety impacts it's the folks living
there who need assistance or you know
make a phone call
and so the more people are living in a
home for example the higher probability
that someone in that home is going to
make a call or need services
the same goes for non-residential there
you can see it varies
by use and its employees were thousands
square feet with the exception of hotel
motel which is a employees per room and
that's the same idea you know the more
employees are there the more activities
they're more like the higher the
likelihood that for a given thousand
square feet of course things don't get
built in a thousand square feet it might
be five it might be ten depends on the
size of the establishment but um that's
a way to estimate how much of a burden
and given type of non-residential
development will be on public safety
services based on the density of
employment there
so in addition there's a capital
improvement plan i think we showed that
to you before but
basically it's it's the sort of things
that the money is going to be spent on
it's part of the nexus study that we put
together
and it's important that they because
this is linked to new development
because it's about mitigating impacts it
isn't just sort of a wish list of stuff
you want to build it is actually things
that expand capacity
you can't be replacing or rehabbing
existing things it can't pay for
operations costs of any kind this is a
capital facilities plan
and there are a couple of specific rules
for new mexico the facilities have to
cost at least 10 thousand dollars last
more than 10 years
and and
in working with the with the departments
these are all the facilities you'll see
are all facilities that are identified
uh as things that are needed to maintain
service levels as as growth occurs
throughout the city
so here you can see the draft capital
improvement plan um it's a lot of
buildings and a significant number of
vehicles
if you have any questions about this
the fire chief here's all you can offer
any details you want a police chief as
well about the items here
now i can go back to this you know we
can ask questions and feel free to ask
questions as i'm going through this i i
think you all know that but of course we
can go back to whatever you want to go
back to once that finished yeah yeah
sturdison we prefer to probably get it
done completely because if we do it in
stopping you'll never get done all right
fine fine
so um
using all these factors the capital the
capital plan the existing facilities the
these factors we basically put together
a public safety impact fee analysis that
calculates what the fee is the fee per
unit
based on the size of the unit or the fee
per square foot for commercial
we're using an existing facility
standard which main which basically
looks at the facilities in place now to
serve the public and the relationship
between those facilities and how many
people and how many employees are in the
city now that gives you sort of a rough
relationship of what what it costs on a
in facilities terms to serve the public
so then you know looking forward if you
add a person if you add an employee
proportionally you know about how much
it'll cost you to do that how much it'll
cost to provide those additional
facilities
so we use that existing standard and
then in order to estimate the relative
impact of commercial and residential
units we used actual call data we looked
at the types of units and how many calls
types of developments are and how many
calls they generate based on both police
and fire calls to get an estimate of the
sort of relative burden
and then finally uh you'll see there's
two fee schedules we calculated um one
matches the current land use categories
uh and then uh i think at the suggestion
of the ciac we also did a sort of a
simplified one that consolidates a
couple of categories uh that this is for
you know simpler administration
essentially
um so here you can see the service
population this is based on that uh
the growth factor i mentioned and the
other piece is that in order to estimate
the sort of overall burden of the whole
city both employment and residences
employees and residents we have to
actually combine them because they
together are creating demand for for
uh services um
so we um
that worker demand factor is actually
based on that service call analysis
where you looked at sort of for a given
employee in a business and for a given
resident in a in in a home um what's the
relationship between the number of calls
that they generate and we saw that
actually that on a per worker basis
workers per worker generate more calls
than residents do in looking at and this
is looking at the relationship
essentially between commercial and
residential development so you can see
there what we get to eventually is this
service population which is sort of all
the people getting served but we waited
it because as i said workers
on a per worker basis
place a few more calls and so to add
them together to get the service
population to calculate the sort of cost
per service population which is that
number i mentioned which is our estimate
of the capital needs
compared to how many folks live in the
city or work in the city um
you can see the residents those resident
and worker numbers and the new
development numbers are from the earlier
analysis i showed you with these census
along with the growth rates that's where
those numbers are from
and if you combine that along with this
worker demand factor you get that
service population of 186 000. that's a
number you'll see in just a minute here
in the next slide
or one after that
so this is the existing inventory i
mentioned about the
other facility the other list i gave you
was the cip which are the plan
facilities these are all the facilities
the public safety facilities that are in
place now the things that are serving
existing residents that are sort of the
the investment if you will that the
city's made today in providing these
services
so
in order to estimate a cost per capita
or
we take that
existing public safety facility which is
the
number you just saw on the slide before
it's all the existing facilities uh the
existing service population which is a
was two slides ago it's which is the
combination of employees and residents
and there you get essentially a facility
standard per service population cost per
capita of both employees and residents
that it costs to basically provide
police police and fire facilities and
that is if you will an estimate of in
the future every time
every time development commercial or
residential development brings an
employee brings a resident to the city
that's an estimate of what it will cost
to provide the probably the public
safety facilities that are needed to
serve them and you can see the resident
per worker are different because it's
one you know there's a 1.0 waiting
versus a 1.7 weighting
so with that
you can see that existing facility
standard per capita the 497.
the service population growth surface
population again is the combination of
residents and employees there you get
the sort of total estimated impact of
your revenue over the over the next 10
years
through 2030.
so then based on that factor we then can
calculate a maximum justified fee
schedule
um this is the schedule based on the
sort of your existing fee schedule that
is the categories are all the same you
can see there's a range of residential
sizes as well as non-residential
categories
and then we also did an alternative fee
schedule and all it really does is it
combines um the warehouse into one
category and also removes the 900 square
feet in less category which i think
based on building permits there haven't
been any of those built
in the last few years um
so the idea is to combine you know have
one category that's 1300 or less and put
as opposed to making more fine grain
than that um they're both perfectly
acceptable it's essentially a policy
decision you know they both are
calculated the same way they both have
the same nexus
it's a matter of administration and sort
of what makes sense
uh and then finally here's a comparison
to current fees um
you can see the uh the current fee
schedule on the left and then there's a
maximum justified draft which is the
first set of it's the first set of fees
which is based on all your current
categories and then the alt is the one
with the couple of compressed categories
and you can see basically across the
board um
the fees go up by a bit that's not
surprising i mean usually costs go up
that's the
usual trend um some go up
disproportionately a little bit to
others some of that's because the
methodology we're using is different
from the methodology in the the last
time the study was done i think i
mentioned that the last time i presented
to you um it was an unusual and this is
much more standard this is what we do
across the country in terms of how we
how we calculate this
and with that uh it's the end of my
presentation happy to answer any
questions thank you
very good thank you
mayor pro tem councillor koran
okay council koran and council graham
sure go ahead okay thank you so much i
really appreciate your presentation and
the
the coefficients that you've included as
far as
what what we need to consider and so i
just want to get a picture for
it seems like we've underestimated our
public service impact fees and or needs
by like 26 million dollars or 17 million
dollars i'm trying to
figure out six minus the ten monthly
yeah
um ish it historically so we we've been
underselling ourselves both in terms of
estimating what we need and estimating
the number of new dwelling units that
come in so i i think it seems like the
things that you project will then
it seems like it will only cover about a
third of what would be on rcip for
public service necessities is that is
that accurate i think it might be a
little more than a third but essentially
yeah okay
so
i i say this as again i live in the
district where much of that new growth
is occurring and i really do firmly
believe that if folks want new houses
part of that is
is really paying our fair share to
to build the services there rather than
distributing them across
the city like we might in the case of
things like using geo bond funding to to
fund public safety things so i would ask
so that this seems like it's based on
all of the
sort of
research that you all have done but we
underestimated before i think to our
literal and figurative detriment deficit
i would rather we over
not over correct but get get us closer
to what our actual needs are
if we're going to implement a change
and so i don't know if this is all the
market can bear if that's sort of where
this this comes from or if it's
um just based on sort of actuarial norms
or where where does this fall in that
and as a policy body can we possibly be
a little bit more proactive in thinking
about how we apply impact fees generally
i would argue for all of us and public
safety ones in this case right
given the methodology we're using which
is using an existing standard so looking
what you have in place now in terms of
facilities and the relationship of those
facilities to your current population of
employment what we're presenting to you
as a sort of maximum justified fee you
can charge based on proportionality in
nexus
now there is potentially more there are
more aggressive ways to do it that are
more speculative about future
development um but we find especially
for police or public safety services
because it's a whole system
it's pretty hard to to fish out future
development future i should say future
improvements future facilities that are
only for new development because really
every time you build a new fire station
it's kind of for the whole city and
maybe not quite but really they cover
each other they and and so it's very
difficult to say to new development you
know
this new fire station or this new
facility is entirely your responsibility
it's often sort of a shared
responsibility um and so that's why we
often use this other methodology saying
look we're not going to get into exactly
you know who's served by each station
and exactly how much of that's new
development how much is not we say no we
already know our existing system is in
place it's serving the community and we
treat that as a as a proxy or an
estimate for future costs
now what is true is that
over time
things were always surprisingly more
expensive in plans and there's a
political process for what gets built
and i mean that's that's all above my
pay grade but in terms of the
way we do the calculation this is the
most conservative approach and but we
are offering you the sort of maximum
justified fee that you can under this
methodology
no thank you that totally answers my
question i appreciate it
kelser graham
thank you mayor
um can you return to slide 13 please
yes yes perfect
so just trying to make sure i understand
this concept of service population um
using myself as an example and stop me
when i'm wrong which maybe really
quickly
i am both a resident
and a worker
in this formula right so far so when i'm
becky graham at my house i'm a resident
when i'm counselor becky graham here at
city hall i am a worker yes and i am
cheaper
public safety wise when i'm at my house
than when i am
at city hall
as a worker
on average i mean you in particular it's
hard to say but uh on average yes
okay great um so i think
i i see the number 186 383 and i think
we just we have this narrative in our
mind like oh las cruces has a hundred
thousand people and i stumbled over that
for a moment but
okay that using myself as an example
that
that helps so thank you that that
answered that one um and then slide 15
please
thank you and that
497 and 631
is that a per per year per person what's
the
reference point
the 497 is per service population which
also is per resident because resident is
the baseline and that's
the sort of total cost when say a new
home's built and it's got
three new residents in it
it will cost
based on your existing facility
standards your existing relationship
between
the equipment and the fire stations and
everything else compared to your current
population to stay at that same
relationship then for those three new
residents you would need to build
fifteen hundred dollars roughly speaking
of new facilities uh not annually just
as a one-time charge this is a one-time
charge a building permit that you'd have
to that it's going to cost that now
there is no
item there's no line item of fifteen
hundred dollars for that house it
doesn't work that way but this is an
estimate of sort of in the accurate when
there's enough new houses
you need a new ladder truck you need a
new station you need to expand something
you need to make you know all the things
that are on cip list you start to need
to do some of those as they accumulate
just does that make sense
yes that
that helps a lot and
presumably somewhere in all of this math
i'm sure there's way more math that
you're keeping behind the scenes because
it's already a little overwhelming as it
is
um this factors in the fact that we have
an aging population
generally speaking i think across the
nation and certainly here in las cruces
we're getting older
on average and
i'm sure that that
has an effect on public safety impact
fees and how much it costs to service
the population is that
is that kind of thing all worked into
your no it's not i wouldn't say that it
is okay we're using
in terms of the future population we're
using those men you know from your own
from your own plan we're using that 3.7
and 1.7 i may be misquoting it now but
those two growth rates um
and for the sort of estimated cost of
providing services we're using what's in
place now
and
now the cip reflects and that may be
where some of that delta is right the
cip reflects sort of what you're going
to need and this has been noted already
it's not all covered
and some of that may reflect that shift
the calculations we do don't take that
into account
okay and i
i think oh yes please
mayor councillor graham fire chief jason
smith
so the the weighting of the
call volume is where i would look to a
place that says this explains where
we're going in the health of our
population as we respond more to
residents or residential occupation
occupancies that reflects an aging
population a less healthier population
or a healthier one if we're going to be
positive right
and then the worker is actually per
commercial so it's like a representation
of commercial property so
when we first started the analysis
before we had all of pd data in there
the residential side was weighed much
more heavily because fire department on
on average we respond to people's homes
more often
police department actually responds to
commercial occupancies more which is why
the workers have a heavier weighting so
as our population demographics change
our call volume will change and then
that will reflect in the weighting of
of our residents versus commercial
properties
okay great thank you chief
um
and i think yeah that i'm probably just
i'm adding on to what counselor karan
was mentioning um you know she and i are
the two new people here and i think in
several situations um
utilities rate increase for instance
we're facing some situations where we
maybe have a little bit of sticker shock
because we
tend to
maybe not revisit these issues as
frequently as
as we should so i just add my voice to i
i totally believe in your math but yeah
add my voice to saying like
fine with more too
thank you mayor
okay we've got mayor pro tem councillor
beta and councilman cuomo thank you
mayor thank you mr edison for your
presentation chief smith
um
will you go back to the list i believe
it's the capital um improvement
plan yes that one there
are you tell just to clarify are you
telling me that this list factored into
the impact fee
yes no this is not used for calculations
this is this is used to show what the
money is going to be spent on but as has
been noted you know the total estimated
revenue in 10 years is less than this
it's about 10 minutes a little less than
10 million dollars although some of
these items you know some of these items
longer i don't remember now they all
these are within 10 years or some are
longer time
yes so some of these items are not
needed in the first 10 years they may be
needed a little further out so in that
sense it may not be as much of a
shortfall as it seems
but this is this is just to show one of
the things you have to do in the impactv
program is show what you're going to
spend the money on yeah yeah no i'm
appreciative of that and if that's the
case you should probably
say that somewhere that it's not going
to be affected during the 10 years that
it probably will be the 11th year the
twelfth year i'm not sure i'm concerned
because some of the things that i know
through our geo bond um public meetings
fire hat the build a building nine
is something that you're advocating to
advocating for
and so
is it
putting this on this list at this point
concerns me
if we're going to go if
the voters will
agree right that it's going to be part
of the geo bond this next year bond
cycle
and then my concern about the fire
energy efficiency and sustainability
component
i'm assuming
what does that consist of
mayor uh mayor pro town county fire
chief jason smith so the first item on
um
station nine and geo bonds and funding
so
everything that we could possibly spend
impact fees needs to be listed in the
capital improvement plan which is why
you see it at such a robust number so
that we can
actually have the option to pay for it
so for station nine um
kind of a spoiler alert what we're
looking at with our consultants on the
cost of it
the
impact fees will not cover the whole
amount and what we might be helpful in
is sharing some of that cost where we
can pay for the apparatus pay for maybe
some of the capital this is ex
very similar to what we did with the
east mesa public safety building when we
first started it was through bond
cycling and we had the the funds to
build the station we purchased fire
engine eight with
impact fees and then as we were going
along through construction some of that
construction was actually paid for out
of the impact fee balance
and then moving forward after a little
bit of time and we were moved into the
station we moved all of the debt service
to the impact fee so currently we're on
pace for revenues and expenditures and
the impact fee to match each other and
our only ongoing expense for the impact
fee is the east mesa public safety
building
so that's where we need kind of a dual
approach of
of doing this of coming up with the
funds to actually build the
infrastructure
to james's point earlier about building
a fire station and how much of that do
you contribute to new growth so if we
look at fire station 9 and where it's
potentially located at snowmobile ranch
and angler
if we were to put a ladder truck there
that would help with our iso rating and
our iso points
throughout the city as they would serve
as a ladder truck to not only their
district but also station 5 and station
6 and part of where station 8 responds
to so more the community is actually
going to get that benefit of the new
resource that's where we look at the
multiple funding sources for it but we
can look at the
cip list and we can take direction from
council today on what items you would
like to see and how we might change that
to reflect properly or in your eyes what
you would feel is
appropriate
for the sustainability and efficiency we
talked at length about this
last week at the capital improvement
advisory committee
they want us to only have that money
dedicated for new growth so not
retrofitting an existing station i can't
go and use this money to put new solar
panels at station one but they
understand the ongoing cost and
escalation of of prices and they say use
this
for
your new your new buildings so if you're
going to do a new training building and
you need to add sustainability and get
lead points
use that separate line item to fit that
bill not knowing what it's going to cost
so we estimated that the efficiency of
sustainability would be for new
buildings
that's hard to say three times really
fast right um thanks chief i appreciate
that
um the so where does johnson controls
fit into this um
this specific or do or do they as it
relates to new
um
buildings and fitting for solar and such
is that not
currently something that gets discussed
at these at these um
meetings
may or may
johnson control specifically has not
been
discussed it's more of just like when we
talk about station 9 we don't talk about
jane's corporation being hired to do the
building we just talked about the need
of sustainability and energy efficiency
and i believe historically and look for
somebody from facilities to address that
but usually we use it for retrofits of
existing facilities to low cost
that's what we've typically used it
right for retrofitting and older
buildings okay okay
is that not something mayor that we
would be or
evo
considering in new buildings is using
johnson controllers that have has always
been just for older buildings
retrofitting older buildings mapping
time if i if i may or if you want equal
but basically the reason why johnson
control installs their new equipment is
to bring their costs down so they don't
have to pay us so they're probably
assuming on new
new buildings we're going to be using
energy saving appliances or equipment or
energy star okay okay thank you
um and let's see
slide 14
[Music]
on slide 14 i have a question on that
i noticed the police department tactical
vehicles what those what do those
consist of
corvettes and
interceptors
mayor mayor pro tem the technical
vehicles would include a rook
a bearcat and a mobile operations
command center
say that last one a mobile operations
command center
a mock uh an emergency vehicle that can
take over
everything encompassing a critical
incident bearcat what would that come
from a bearcat is a big vehicle with
armor that allows our officers to work
safely as they're trying to de-escalate
and negotiate during a critical incident
is that some necessary do we need that
do we do we have one currently and why
would we need something like that
mayor pro we have one currently it's uh
all about 20 years old right now and um
the armor that's that comes with it has
a uh
a life expected it has a yeah it has a
life expectancy so for example the the
glass that we had we just had to replace
the windshield and and one of the uh
driver side windows and it was about
fifteen thousand dollars just for the
glass okay and how often do you use that
chief
we use it quite often uh most critical
incidents it goes it goes with our our
tech team
again to buy time and allow safe cover
we also use it throughout southern new
mexico because we have an moa with the
swat team with the state police so we uh
we assist pretty much the southern 14
counties in the state
would you say that is used mostly for
that
for
state police in the region
uh mayor mayor pro tem no we use it more
here locally okay all right thank you
chief appreciate that okay those are all
my questions thank you
councillor beta and then councilman
cuomo thank you mayor and thank you i
know we touched upon this a little bit
earlier but
um looking at how we kind of changed
some of those services by including
our mih program we're going to have
the new cit program does that bear an
effect on
the type i guess
cost per service because it seems like
those items might
have a higher cost
by implementing those programs and are
refactoring that into these knowing that
they will have be happening in the
future and we will probably see some
growth with it
um for anything where there's not an
existing facility we're not the fee
doesn't reflect that now when you update
the fee the next go around then it will
be included
remember you don't you know this is not
this is not the end of the story for 10
years right you'll revisit this in a few
years and update the fee and when you do
you can use existing facilities at that
point which would include whatever the
services are but for the for the current
proposed vino doesn't include those
expanded services okay and so i think
along with my colleagues it seems like
we're just
we're starting at that deficit it seems
like and always running on that deficit
which doesn't seem
to place these departments in a a strong
position and so i think that's kind of
my concern with that too if we're always
running behind
you know it's going to be just harder
and harder to catch up and so that's
that to me is problematic for
not just right now but looking on what
the future looks like five to ten years
from now
thanks mayor
thank you councilman cuomo thank you and
thank you for that uh council beta
because that was going to be one of my
first questions was i i guess i just
i feel like we're already in a place
that we're trying to catch up it's clear
that station 9 is needed to protect the
iso rating
and
thank you and
so that already feels like a huge
deficit that's a good word and
is this
formula
going to allow us to catch up or are we
always playing catch-up because we
municipal government because for
whatever x factors but it just feels
like
we're always playing catch-up
even though
we understand
somewhat how the city will continue to
grow
right um i think that's a fair
characterization i think in in a
situation where you're
always improving or expanding services
in the future which
creates additional costs we're using
a sort of a conservative
in retrospective if you will a
methodology that says and not
retrospective maybe current spective it
says what's in place now and that that's
an estimate of the future it's correct
that to extend you expand facilities
you're not accounting for that if you're
just looking at what's in the present um
but the problem we have is if we
actually try to sort of project those
additional services you need to find
some way that's legally defensible to
say what portion of it you can attribute
to new development and you know the law
about this is fairly conservative and
and and actually it's i mean there is
state law for impact fees but the impact
fee
themselves are governed by what's called
takings laws federal law you know these
these programs came about mostly first
from a couple of cases called nolan and
dolan uh and
went to the supreme court that's that's
how it started and then it came back
down to the states of like you guys need
to find a way to
routinize it to not
you know
to put a program in place that treats
everybody the same because it used to be
the way it would work as if somebody had
a project a city or a county would say
well that's a nice project how about you
throw in a a park how are you throwing a
road how do you throw which then led to
issues but
the other side of that is if you do this
in the sort of root and eyes treat
everybody the same way in a conservative
way you you lose this sort of
your policy concern i think is valid um
i'm afraid i don't i'm sorry i don't
have a good solution to offer do you
have the answer to that
um but once one answer is to update the
femoral group right right i mean that is
one thing you can do yeah absolutely and
you know it's not just this public
safety fee i feel like every time we
talk about parks when we talk about
our utility system we're just always a
little bit frankly sometimes a lot a bit
behind and
it just feels like to me that
someone something isn't paying their
fair share and i would like us to get to
that place and if this is going to help
us get to that place that
closer to that place i'm glad and if
there's other ways efo that we can look
at getting closer to that place i'd be
really interested in that even if it is
i don't know lobbying state law or
whatnot but it just feels like we're
always playing to the needs of our
communities
and really critical needs i mean even a
park isn't
a privilege to me it's a utility right
like it's a need in a community so
i think all of these
this begs a much bigger question it
feels like above your pay grid like you
said
um when my other question is when do we
get to hear will we get to hear the
feedback from stakeholders before this
last step
mayor counselor ben como fire chief
jason smith
so we've had a total of six
public meetings including one public
hearing this past saturday
and also a presentation to the home
builders association we had
one posed question the same question
you've asked why do we need impact fees
and things like geo bond how do they
work together
we've had that question other than that
we've had a total of four
citizens attend the meetings so we've
had the meetings all all the way across
the city at different times in different
locations as including one that's
virtual to try to gain that input we had
much more robust input in 2006 2011 when
this was brand new
at the home builders association there
wasn't any
issues raised at that time about the
maximum justified fee and the capital
improvement advisory committee
their committee made up of of builders
and people in the community uh they're
voted to support it as as presented to
council and they did not voice any
concerns that we had
or that wilden had not already in uh
folded into the response okay that's
good to hear chief thank you and then
earlier um you mentioned just really
quickly on what you were looking for
today the guidance you're looking for
today and in our packet it sort of says
that um you're looking for a council to
guide the specifics of the fee structure
can you revisit that can you tell us
specifically sort of what you're looking
from us today
um well really it's a matter of uh you
know i i mean one could be actually
between the two alternatives whether you
have a preference um
you know what we did is in we use the
existing in terms of the types of
development that are charged and the
unit sizes we use the existing fee
if that's acceptable and that's fine
we'll just go with that and you know
asking for input doesn't mean there's
any real giant decision point here but
it's really a matter of sort of
presenting it to you and you tell us if
it still makes sense or if there's
something that we need to adjust
we did with the ciac come up with this
alternative which is a little simpler
but it's not a huge change
but in terms of guidance it's really we
don't necessarily have to have any
guidance i mean we we've done the work
we're doing the calculations we can
proceed
but it's a matter of whether you've got
anything to tell us or share or guide us
that's really you know that's the
question we're posing not that we're
expecting guidance exactly okay
well i mean for me right now i want to
do the option that gets us closer to
what feels like
we're meeting the needs of our community
that's that's the option i prefer
counselor now by no means am i
advocating for property tax but let me
just share something with you since we
have this this schedule up
so i took a thousand houses
you'd use an average
valuation of 250 000 our tax rate is
0.0088
so that's um 371 dollars well that we
get from the county
i know the county is here but we get
three we have almost 17 percent of the
property tax
and you put that to the thousand houses
i'm going to get 371 000 which you can
tell
is nothing
for a thousand houses that's why
when you see
and i'm often reminded of years ago when
southern park
annexed the business part of santa
teresa they didn't want the houses
because that that cost money they wanted
the business because that generates
revenue
and so
as you can see the comparison of an
average house of three that we get 371
dollars compare that to the fee it's
i mean you can only
you so you see the difference so it's
therein lies why i had supported or i
liked the fact that we did a geo bond
because it spread it out
but again it's up to my colleagues here
i'll go with either way because i know
it's important to have that because
when the fire department became such a
high iso rating
to many people sometimes it saved them
30 40 a month in property tax i mean
insurance
so
and which is a lot more than that
increase in in property tax for a geo
bond not to mention lives yeah well it's
it's it's good
yeah
okay who was uh yes yes counselor uh
thank you mayor um
so
you know you you said very plainly that
you really don't need to hear from us
that you know where you're going with
this so why are we here
what do you need from us
i mean
this is money so
that that's baffled me i just said that
i really didn't have any questions
before that but that's my question what
does that mean mayor councillor flores
fire chief jason smith for the record
i've prepared the work session that is
my request because if you're
not in favor of the maximum justified
fees i would definitely like to hear
that hearing your support for pursuing
that that helps if you have feedback of
the capital improvement plan the objects
that we may need to
evaluate or remove
even thinking about this your comments
made me think that well the current
existing east mesa public safety
building since that debt service is
there
i need to ask our consultants if we need
to add that to the cip plan
for council to approve so that we can
continue that debt service
so i do want your your feedback it is
important because we need to be able to
answer those questions because the
voters hold you accountable and we need
to give you the information you need to
answer to them
so
we're not voting on it today so it'll
come back to us for a vote
um
so the fee the impact fee
as you call it is
one that we're looking at for the
possibility of taxpayers to carry
that burden
or it could go to a go bond vote are
those the options
or am i totally misunderstanding
i think what the chief was talking about
was that one of the permissible uses of
impact fees is to pay debt service so
you you this impact impact be right on
these fees are paid one time a billing
permit um they usually accumulate in a
fund um over time to essentially save up
for the collect excuse me the fees are
collected from whom
from builders the builders so when
someone goes up so impact fees generally
are collected from the builders so
why wouldn't any future increase
go to the builders that's see that's
what boggles me my my mind
it doesn't increase in what would go to
the builders
the rise in the impact fee
you're talking about impact fees you're
talking about services
impact fees go to builders
um no well they're paid by builders yeah
um the builders don't receive the
impacting money
no they're they pay the city yeah that's
correct yeah i know that but so
what what is it we're really talking
about here we're talking about an
increase
in impact fees
yes so
we have to authorize the city to
be sure that they collect that from the
builders
well
you you're the ones with the authority
to impose the fee so you adopt the fee
once you adopt it then the city staff
will charge it to builders when they
come to get their permits
so why is this different than any other
increase in impact fees
i'm sorry council what was your question
again
why are we here
okay the impact fee is collected from
builders so why are are you asking us to
decide whether it goes uh
that money that
the increase in the impact fee
that that should go
to the vote to the
to that it shouldn't go to the builders
i i mean i i always thought that impact
fees were collected from builders so why
is this different
that's all i'm asking why is this
different
i don't believe it is
what's what's before you is a
recalculation and a refresh if you will
of the impact fees which results in
anything yes i saw that an increase in
those impact fees but in order for that
to happen by a new mexico state law we
have to go through this process and you
have to adopt them by resolution and
once that happens then staff can charge
the fees and the developers will pay
okay
so the okay and so
how would it be awarded to our
constituents
if we were to abide by new mexico law
how would this uh
we this body would decide how we collect
those impact fees
what the source excuse me the source of
the payment of the impact fee
well the the source is the people
applying for the permits this fee is
limited only to new development so if
someone already lives here someone the
only people paying or entities paying in
many cases is corporations or when they
go when they go to pull a permit to
build a house or to build a shopping
center they pay a variety of fees at the
counter and one of those fees is this
fee
so we can just say yes we'll continue to
uh
impose the impact fee on the builder
yes at this higher level
see i always thought
i think this is the first time it's come
up in in my
this is what we've done in the past and
and council
just to clarify it the reason why we're
here today is i think they showed the la
the current fee
really doesn't generate enough to build
another fire station so okay so then
they went back and they have this newer
higher amount but even that's still
falling a little short and i probably
confused my colleagues when i talked
about a geo bond
yeah now that goes to the voter but this
one here we could actually pass here
ourselves and then every time they pull
a permit then that fee
you know is collected
from whom from the well from the builder
but then of course they pass that on to
the consumer
okay so it's really no different than
anything else we've done before that's
correct
well
thank you thank you thank you very much
council koran i just wanted to say thank
you again for coming and sort of hashing
this out and i support always
simplifications of things so i would
like to voice my hope that we can use
the alternative fee schedule because it
sounds like
uh residential 900 feet or less is not
very common so i
support that approach and the maximum
justified fee in the
can you go back to the slide before mr
uh
comparison the one there you go so what
we're looking at if we were to the
maximum justified is additional
anywhere from 126 to 344 on the
residential
and then anywhere from 97 to
17 1701 on non-residential
for the most part
so and i'm
i'm wondering
if it's possible to do hybrid i mean if
we were just if we were to pass this but
then also keep the option open for a geo
bond for the actual structure and maybe
if are we allowed to use this for more
for some of the equipment i think it i
think it sends a better message to the
public that
you know we're doing this here and we
have we're we're trying to
do certain parts and and
growth is paying a good a portion of it
but yet at the same time um it's it's
spread out among all the residents in
the city is that a possibility
yes yes and there's a variety of
equipment there are allowable uses okay
especially apparatus
okay yeah i mean that way there we don't
have to wait around for the first
several years because it'll take a long
time for the money to collect to build
another fire station that's why i'm
extremely grateful to the residents of
district 3
and four
four who
and you know that that was able the
whole city paid for that and
district 4 benefited from that new fire
station
and uh and that's good because
you know
most of our residents for the most part
are aren't always going to just stay in
their one district you know some will
but a lot of times they move and they
move different parts of the city and so
invariably
they could also benefit from it that's
why i think that's it's a good option at
least keep it open that we might go to a
next geo bond to build another station
and if we have some funds
at least it shows that we're
contributing to it
good
okay
any comments from the public
chief you have any closing comments
thank you mayor members of city council
as always thank you for the opportunity
to present to to you on the topic and
for your support for
public safety in our city thank you
i will say one thing and maybe larry can
attest to this but usually when we're
talking increase in impact fees
we usually see a room full of
contractors or builders but i guess we
haven't
either we haven't advertised this but we
have i've seen the advertisements many
times but i will tell you this much
when it comes to public safety
they support this they know how
important this is i mean this is
you can't put a price on that
okay so it looks like we're
okay to move forward
all right
okay so the next item will be the donand
county triage center update
and we have program director carina diaz
and clinical director jess spone spawn
and i see city manager fernando macias
back there
now if the county was to give us all of
our money from property tax then we
would you know be good
[Laughter]
oh
hello
good afternoon
my name is karina diaz i work for ri
international and i'm the program
director at the crisis triage center
and i'm jess bone i am the clinical
director of the crisis triage center and
i'm a lot smaller than karina is
thank you very much for this opportunity
mr mayor and city council
so we are employed by recovery
innovations international our
mission is to empower people to recover
succeed in accomplishing their goals
find meaning and purpose in life and
reconnect with themselves and with
others right through ri international we
focus on what's strong not what's wrong
we're very strength based we use a lot
of
recovery-oriented practices
to make sure that we meet the needs of
the community for mental health and
substance use
let's see if the video works
not working okay that's all right we'll
skip through the video so there is a
video that you can find on youtube it's
the ri way
it's the first episode and what it does
is it really does explain
what ri does
in terms of the four keys kind of our
four
core principles of the work that we do
okay so
[Music]
i think it's important to delineate the
model that we follow
um
ri international um
started a contract with
dona ana county to be able to provide a
crisis receiving center in the donyana
community
the following people actually
contributed to this expertise
we follow the crisis now model which was
created by samsa
and this is the best practices tool kit
which in part was also created by ri
international leadership who's still
there today
21st 2021 have been open for almost a
year
um i'm going to talk a little bit more
about the model
right so like a physical health crisis a
mental health crisis can be devastating
for individuals families and communities
as we know
while an individual crisis cannot be
fully predicted we can plan how we
structure the services and organize
approaches to best meet the needs of
those individuals who experience a
mental health crisis
so as we know primarily the way that
mental health crisis has been handled
has been through the 9-1-1 medical model
right receiving a call to the call
center 9-1-1
then
dispatching ems fire police and
ultimately if unable to
stabilize a crisis in the community then
those people are transported to an
emergency
response center so
emergency department we are saying
in some and with this new model is that
we can provide
that level of crisis now care
through a behavioral health lens
right so crisis services are for anyone
anywhere anytime we say yes to anyone
coming in to our center
we of course have the example of crisis
level safety net services seen in
communities around the country that
include 9-1-1 accepting all calls and
dispatching support based
on the assessed need of the caller
so similar to that we will have which is
coming to fruition in july
of this year
we will have a three digit number that's
988 that is on a national level
so in part this crisis receiving center
is in following this model is the first
in line to be a part of this response
all right so the ideal model as
delineated by samsa the national
guidelines for behavioral health crisis
is having a call center similar to that
to 911 988
statewide
nationwide then having a mobile crisis
response or services in the community
and finally a place to go a crisis
receiving facilities such as the crisis
triage centers
so we wanted to give you kind of a brief
overview on what we do at the ctc at the
crisis center
we are open 24 7 365 the way that i
consider our crisis center
is similar kind of in line to a mental
health emergency room right when you go
to the emergency room they don't say oh
you had a broken arm last week sorry you
can't come in and when you go to the
emergency room you know they don't say
you know what there's already like 15
people here sorry we're full right they
will take you any time
right any day no matter how many times
you've been there to that emergency room
or to similar emergency rooms and so we
provide similar services for mental
health and substance use
all individuals that come through our
crisis center are referred to as guests
instead of clients patients customers
right because it gives that more
personalized warm welcome feeling to
these individuals that are needing care
when they are feeling most vulnerable we
also right now with the crisis center
have a co-located mobile crisis
response team
which connects with 988 initiatives
so the ctc serves adults we are able to
host individuals who are 18 and over who
are experiencing a mental health or
substance use crisis which is identified
by that guest
we're not in the business of saying
sorry your crisis isn't a crisis enough
we're here to say yes to anyone that's
requesting services from us that is at
least 18 over
and we do take individuals on a
voluntary basis right so they have to
want to receive services identify that
they do need that help
and be able to sign the consent forms
for
the service providing
each staff
each shift excuse me at the center
includes a registered nurse
a licensed mental health provider
and our peer support specialists
as well as our night shifts include
behavioral health technicians
level two and we have our psychiatric
providers available 24 7 via telehealth
and peer support specialists are
individuals that are in recovery
themselves from mental health and or
substance use if somebody that has been
through
their mental health and substance use
journey they have received some kind of
treatment and are in recovery for a
minimum of three years
our peer supports are either currently
certified through opry which is the
office of peer recovery and engagement
or they're in the process of becoming
certified
and then myself and karina are also
licensed independent clinicians and so
we are clinically run right
so that we can provide
a psychosocial model to the city for the
individuals that are needing help
so one thing that we really do focus on
is making sure our staff are adequately
trained
and so some of the training and
development that we use at the crisis
center is therapeutic options which is a
non-violent crisis crisis intervention
that's very relationship based
we
follow trauma-informed care practices
suicide safer care practices we use our
recovery-oriented language
we provide reflective supervision
and
as a leadership team as a whole we
definitely try to emphasize and
encourage self-care of all of our staff
to make sure that the people that are
providing this care are also taking care
of themselves
and all of these practices are in line
with following through with the crisis
now model
so the ctc provides so what what kind of
do you expect when you come into the
crisis center right so when an
individual comes to the crisis center
they are welcomed by a peer support
specialist that's our peer first peer
last
model so a peer will come and welcome
them
they'll be present throughout the
guest's stay
and they're the last person that sees
them before they go
they'll receive a nursing assessment to
make sure there's no major medical
issues
that would preclude them from being able
to stay with us for the 24 hours
they'll receive a clinical assessment um
which is a biopsychosocial it's mostly a
needs assessment to see where it is that
we need to go with these individuals
what is the individual needing what are
they looking for how can we best help
them so that we can do these community
referrals and then they'll also receive
a psychiatric assessment
by a psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse
practitioner and medication
if necessary and if agreed on you know
between the guest and the psychiatric
provider we also have three meals a day
showers laundry
art activities games you know friendly
helping individuals that are there to
just have sit and have a chat
our staff play uno with the guests and
you know get them to
open up and to be able to
stabilize and de-escalate themselves
we also do comprehensive discharge
planning either back to the community
or to a higher level of care as needed
all right so i'm sorry the ctc
leadership also provides training
outreach and presentations to the
community about our services
self-care 988 and our connection to the
crisis now model and what we're trying
to embody every day
as we work to
helping the needs of the community so we
have
a vast
kind of network of providers within the
community and the county to be able to
because at the core of what we do
right
bringing in folks welcoming them to our
center
being able to provide
psychosocial
evaluations psychiatric evaluations
nursing assessment all of this is an
evaluative care and observation to be
able to connect them to the next level
of care so we are consistently triaging
from the moment the person gets to our
center although we are open 24 hours
the person does not have to stay there
the 24 hours we are consistently
observing assessing what it is that is
needed in order to connect them to the
community so at the heart of what we're
doing is providing a warm transfer to
ongoing care we will not provide the
treatment ourselves in the center we're
providing an intervention
and connecting them to resources in the
community which is why these
relationships to us are so important
with that said
thank you
we are also
providing
in continuous training and
to staff not only to
these behavioral health providers but
also
one of the things that we're really
excited about is
having a partnership for example with
las cruces fire
their staff are going to come
the week of the june 6
i believe it's three
days out of the week four tours each day
for one hour
um four the four times a day where we're
going to present train on what it is
that we're doing in the community how
they can connect to us
um
to the level to the staff level the
direct practice kind of level
and we'll provide a tour as well of the
community which is we're really excited
about actually messiah valley regional
dispatch is also going to send some
other folks to these trainings as well
how do we access the ctc
anyone can walk in
or could be dropped off
we do not require any referrals and
insurance does not need prior
authorization to receive services
we accept all insurances and guests
without insurance there is no
out-of-pocket cost to the guest
guests can arrive as a walk-in come on
their own or loved one case manager can
bring them
or through the first responder transport
law enforcement fire or ambulance
so currently we do have a mobile
response team
we're gearing up or aligning to a true
mobile crisis unit which means that we
can assess in the community stabilizing
the community or being able to bring
them back to our tour assessment center
currently we are
we have a peer support worker and a
clinician or a
master's level provider going out into
the community engaging someone either in
the emergency
department
out
leaving outside the detention center or
in their home or out in the community
we're able to engage with the individual
and bring them back to the center for
assessment
we are working towards the design of a
mobile crisis team at the ctc that is
aligned with samsa crisis now guidelines
and recommendations two staff like i
said are designated to respond a staff
member either a clinician or behavior
health technician will be accompanied by
one of our certified peer support
specialists our mobile response team can
pick up guests from anywhere in the
county community to bring back for
assessment and triage
we have had 246 mobile response
utilizations in the last five months
so about 888 it goes into effect
nationwide july 16th of 2022 most cell
phone carriers already have the number
active
988 is a direct three-digit line to
access trained individuals at the
national suicide prevention lifeline
call centers
that will connect a person to a trained
specialist or counselor who can address
their immediate needs help connect
individuals to ongoing care reduce
health care spending with more
cost-effective early intervention reduce
use of law enforcement and other public
safety resources help and stigma we hope
towards those seeking or accessing
mental health care
um you can now
join in this conversation actually every
wednesday it's called the 988 crisis jam
learning community and here's the link
every wednesday at 10.
so i wanted to
present some of our initial data for you
all since we've been open almost almost
a year here so the number of guests that
we've served per month as you can see
from the graph is steadily
increasing
i put the may
graph numbers in kind of a lighter color
because we're still in may right and so
this number is continuing to evolve but
just to show you kind of the process
throughout the month
um so in april we did see over a hundred
guests at our at the ctc um and we're
reaching right now in may so far an
average guest of near average guests per
day of nearly four
and so as we
increase our census of course you know
we're decreasing the number of um
days that we don't have anybody in the
center right so we're frequently and
actively utilizing the center every day
so we have currently through may 19th
seen close to 600 guests
and about 72 percent of the total guests
that we've seen has been through january
and april and so as we mentioned earlier
right we are
um completing you know presentations and
outreach and trainings and all kinds of
things to actively engage the community
and let them know that we're here and
we're well you know we're serving our
community for mental health and
substance use needs
and so we've had a more recent
increase in gas due to these
presentations that we've been completing
we also have a high satisfaction rate so
in the last eight months we've had an
average guest satisfaction rate of 95
and then so this is a breakout of the
individuals that are referring to the
crisis triage center right so most
guests are coming on their own um
they've either heard about us through
word of mouth right we know that las
cruces is a very close connected
community and if you're if you say hey
you know i'm looking for somewhere that
i need i need help and you know my mom
told me this or you know my sister is
here or i know somebody that went to the
crisis center and they had a good
experience right and so it's a lot of
word of mouth
we do have partnerships as we mentioned
earlier with the emergency departments
with the detention center with community
of hope gospel rescue mission
our law enforcement various outpatient
and the act teams on the assertive
community treatment teams through peak
and la clinica
the air recovery center for substance
use rehab services
and various other community providers as
well as inpatient facilities
and so our discharge locations the
majority of individuals go to outpatient
facilities um some of them are
transferred to higher level of care to
that inpatient level of treatment
we do have some individuals that have
medical concerns and therefore are
transferred to a
medical hospital for
for services there or they're discharged
home to their family
and
our most recent data
for our law enforcement engagement
is that we've had 93 drop-offs by law
enforcement agencies the majority of
them are lcpd
and then we have engaged 335 guests at
the detention center
at discharge and we've had from those
335 guests that we've engaged we've had
35 individuals come
over from the detention center to
receive services with us
and we are currently working
um
we are currently
working on
as we started this i believe this was a
pilot that started in october with the
detention facility and their medical
team to be able to engage anyone leaving
or being discharged or released from the
detention center
we are able to then send a peer they
have a direct line to our nurses
in each shift and we are able to then
send a peer support worker to be able to
engage with the folks leaving the center
and being able to let them know about
our services so that they could come in
and we can connect them to services in
the community
one of the things that we're working on
is being able to and we're in the
process of having some peer support
workers that can be that have gone
through background check
and have had some training to be able to
go into the detention facility um since
we're seeing in practice
that kind of engaging them at the end of
their stay at the detention center
sometimes doesn't always work
so we want to be able to engage them
earlier
so that they get to know us what we do
that we're not just that we're not an
extension to the detention center and
that we're
we want to be able to welcome them to be
able to connect them to services we have
we're also working
with memorial medical center's er to be
able to have a certified peer support
worker also
be have a few hours of the week in the
emergency room
to be able to engage with folks earlier
to be able to have to be a liaison of
sorts with the medical staff in the
emergency
room
so that we can connect to them as well
thank you very much any questions
we have mayor pro tem and then
councilman cuomo
oh answer me como first thank you
tim um thank you both so much i really
appreciate you being here and thank you
to iphone your staff for making this
happen this presentation you know i i
know clinical director respond for a
really long time and
um
several months ago we talked about how
could i how could the city uh support
them and really getting the word out and
really helping our community
truly understand what they do and the
incredible work that you do at the
triage center given that it's so new
given that it's maybe a little bit scary
right and so i've been working with them
to figure out
how to get this information out there
and i thought a work session would be a
great platform for not only
information but for us to be able to ask
questions and engage in a conversation
about
crisis triage especially i think right
now i mean crisis triage is clearly
data-driven it's best practices for um
helping reduce
the risk to someone
and their families and as we sort of
hopefully on this tail end of a global
pandemic where people have suffered loss
illness there's grief there was loss of
income there was all of this trauma
and we're seeing it play out in our
community in many different ways and
i feel like
i know actually that the triage center
is a huge part of that puzzle in helping
our community recover from all of that
so i'm so thankful for you being here um
and for this presentation so thank you i
do have just a couple questions
and really the biggest one is how else
could we support the triage center as
the city
to be able to get information out to the
community i worked with our pio to put
insert in our in our utilities bill with
information um but that just seems so
small and tiny still so how else could
the city of las cruces help you
in getting information out to our
community
well first of all thank you for the
space right um being able to have
platforms where we can continue to
educate
and understand so that people can
understand really what we do and so that
it is not such a scary place and it is a
new concept in behavioral health as well
what we are doing right and being a
crisis receiving center
what is it that we do right
again a psychosocial
center not necessarily a psychiatric
inpatient right that people are kind of
used to hearing about or even going to
another way that we can um
help each other i think one of the
pieces that um
ideally
the center was also kind of during
implementation
in aligned with was to have or to be
able to create diversion from
the criminal justice
um
system
to one that is more adept to the needs
of the
behavioral health needs right of the
community
so that's still a bit of a missing piece
uh we definitely are continue to develop
our conversations with las cruces uh
police department and other enforcement
law enforcement entities and we'll
continue to do that we'll continue to
train we just have discussions and to
understand each other um i think for the
and we all know that for the last
decades they've been the first
line
of defense
in connection to the needs the
behavioral needs com in the community
so we acknowledge that and we thank them
for that and at the same time we want to
partner with them we want to make sure
that we are working together so that we
can help everyone in the community and
that it is not only law enforcement who
is
having to do that work right so
one of the great things about ri is that
um across all of the ri facilities in
the country right ri's been doing this
work for this crisis work for over 30
years
you know and they have these types of
centers in 10 11 states or so
but one of you know one of the
focal points is that
at our all of the ri facilities the goal
is to have law enforcement officers in
and out in under five minutes um right
now we're sitting in about three minutes
for our officers that bring individuals
to us right so they can come
and they can you know talk with the peer
support we can welcome the guest in you
know and we can say you know just get
their badge number and say thank you
very much and they're able to go out
back into the community to do public
safety much quicker than
typically we would see if they brought
someone to the er right because then
they have sometimes they have to sit
with the evaluation and wait and so this
way it really increases the
efficiency of our law enforcement
officers to be able to do the public
safety positions right and it puts
mental health in the hands of
individuals that are trained with mental
health as well
and so i think one other thing
additionally right is just having that
awareness right so we wanted to come and
present to you all today to city council
into the mayor
to
talk about really what we do make sure
that the correct information is there
and so that you all are aware and you
can spread to your constituents right to
the individuals that are looking to you
for guidance and support um to say hey i
know this place that you can go you know
and it's reputable and it's available
you know and it's not going to cost you
anything right out of pocket sometimes
if someone that doesn't have insurance
maybe due to documentation status or
something else right
they
are afraid to go to the er they're
afraid to go get help because
they are afraid of deportation or
they're afraid of being involved in the
criminal justice system they're afraid
of inpatient or they're afraid of a big
bill
right um and we're
not
gonna give them that bill right we bill
through medicaid um and we have other
funding sources but
um all of our individuals are there all
of our staff are there to treat the
individual as a guest right as a person
to make sure that their needs are met
regardless of whatever kind of barriers
and challenges that they're seeing in
their personal lives
thank you so much for that i really
appreciate that answer
and especially those last few comments
you made
um you know the rest of my questions
really are around
and perhaps these are questions for our
city manager for chief
dominguez around
our own internal policy regarding the
use of the tree center you know how is
pd or even mih and hopefully in near
future rcit project light
partnering with you all do we have
a written policy do we have something
that is very clearly explicit saying
to the best of our ability in whatever
circums and x circumstance we will be
partnering with um the triage center for
diversion efforts um
you know in the past i know uh chief
dominguez your predecessor had
introduced me to
lead the law enforcement assisted
diversion i'm curious if that is still
at play
um but so that's my question it you know
for the folks up here um
how
do we have that policy what is what is
best practice for us in terms of
utilizing the trigger center
mayor conservance
it's not in our policy yet but it is in
our training uh constantly i have our
subject matter expert sergeant bob
mccord in in chambers today so he can
explain a little bit more of how we
train and how our officers are utilizing
the crisis trio center we have seen it
our officers using it more and more
and a lot of it has to do with word of
mouth and and and the public just
knowing that it's there our super users
if you will don't necessarily want to go
in a police car but now now that they
know that there is a safe place for them
to go when they are
escalating if they are in full crisis
obviously we have to probably take them
into protective custody and take them to
the hospital but i'll call sergeant
mccord up and and he can uh provide a
little bit more information if you will
while he's making his way up can you go
back to the slide earlier because i
thought you had uh you had a pretty
interesting number there at least maybe
i misunderstood it
right right there it looked like it said
86 of 93 come from lcpd
where the other six come from
i mean i would think
i'm sorry go ahead sergeant please
my name is
mayor city council i'm sergeant mccord
las cruces police department's crisis
intervention unit
so
refresh me on your your question you're
wanting to know how we utilize it yeah
what is uh really i wanted to know if
there was an explicit policy around how
lcpd
operates
and partners with the triage center so
i'm curious to hear from you what that
process is sure
i feel like
so at this point
the the triage centers is basically a
volunteer position for us
um they don't fit under state statute of
involuntary so at this point we
by state statute if we have somebody
that's taken into protective custody
we're required to take them to an er
which is basically we have to take them
to a place where they would not be able
to just walk out the door
and that's that's an issue that comes up
with the taking involuntary to the
crisis triage center
now this is what we train
i attend several briefings
throughout
well
i mean i i can't put a finger on how
many uh briefings i attend but i attend
the briefings through all three shifts
so that they're aware of exactly how we
can utilize them um if i'm not mistaken
i think we used it three times yesterday
when i was working overtime um and
they're exactly right they're we're in
and out of there in three minutes which
is great police officers they love it
gets them back to the things they like
to do
so
i've complimented them numerous times on
their ability to do that
so hopefully
in the near future whether it's state
statute that changes or
um we're able to take involuntaries it
would be really nice and i've said this
for the 14 years that i've been doing
this
that it would be nice to have one
singular facility that we can take
voluntary or involuntary to
so hopefully we'll see that in the near
future
thank you sergeant mccord so right now
state statute says that you are required
to take people that you deem in
protective custody to an emergency room
it doesn't say emergency room but the
problem that we have is
if we take them to an emergency room
there they when they do their evaluation
and they decide that they're going to
put a 72 hour hold on them
then um they're detained they're kept
there or they're processed through the
courts and that's our problem with the
crisis triage center right now if
somebody were to go in
even before or after their evaluation
and decide they wanted to leave they
would not be kept or detained they would
be allowed to leave
forgive me sergeant mccord i'm unclear
about who makes the termination for a
72-hour hold
well that would be the evaluator that
does there at the hospital for example
yes ma'am okay okay that's interesting
yeah i would um oh let me back up
actually at what point do you deem
someone necessary for protective custody
well there's several factors
you know i my team has a little more
experience
with with crisis intervention
so they're able to look a little bit
further into say grave passive neglect
how this person could be a danger if the
police officer were to leave most
officers
look at
being able to take somebody into
protective custody as a dangerous level
are they dangerous to themselves
are they suicidal or are they homicidal
um but like i said my team we're pretty
we're able to look on a little bit
further and do a little more evaluating
to determine if this person needs to be
taken for grave passive neglect
basically meaning their living
conditions or
their lifestyle presents a danger to
themselves or the community
we still train all of that even in our
40 hours of crisis intervention
but it's it's depending on the officer
and the
the way they feel as far as being able
to take somebody into protective custody
okay um
i'm curious about how we could have
a conversation internally around
i mean i would like to see
i understand that your officers are
trained 40 years and
this clinical director
was trained for several years on
determining those kinds of things right
whether folks are suicidal
or they're in mental distress i just
at what point do we allow
mental health professionals to make
those determinations over
the police officer you're not getting
any argument from me there um absolutely
we we don't go to mental health training
outside of the crisis intervention or
what we get from experience
so
they have to do just counselor the best
they can i mean to make that
determination i think we do a really
good job of training we've been do we've
been at this for over 14 years
i believe that we're ahead of the curve
in other departments as far as training
of cit i think our department has
has done what's been necessary to to
make sure that we're there
i can relate numerous incidences to you
that
i feel like we've we've protected
the department and the city from
liability just by the training that
we've done
you know
i use a
i'm also a negotiator for the hostage
negotiation team
and
through my experience 27 years in police
work i've seen where police officers do
a really good job of handling people in
crisis and i'm going to give a prime
example
there's a man by the name of dominic
messina and he is he's deceased now but
he was actually the negotiator that got
the negotiation team started in new york
city so all my negotiators are trained
under his um
under his school of thought
and one of the stories he had when they
were first getting started is that they
had a guy a roof
on a roof that was getting ready to jump
off the roof so this new team of
negotiators went to speak to him
and basically one of them said hey just
on the floor below us is a psychiatrist
why don't we go get him bring him up
here to talk to this guy so to the
negotiators went down and talked to the
psychiatrist and the psychiatrist says
yeah i'd be more than happy to help him
um get him down here and put him in my
office and i'll talk to him and i guess
what i'm my point in this is man we deal
with this every day we deal with
de-escalation we
i think we've done a good job in our
training
um
do we go to school for to become
psychiatrists and sociologists and
social workers no ma'am we don't
um sergeant are is your team the only
folks right now in lcpd using the triage
center or are all
everybody is okay
everybody trains in it um you were
asking about the lead program yeah you
know the i'm also in charge of that um
there's been some other issues that are
outside of the police department that in
my opinion have
made it hard for us to operate um in the
lead program but i think we're we're
ironing those out
um
but no all officers have the ability to
use both programs okay okay great and
maybe this question is for either of you
around this conversation around
protective custody and if you have any
additional thoughts on
how could this be improved this process
thank you i'm going to step in as a
partner of the ctc my name is jamie
michael i'm with donaiana county
government director of the health and
human services department the issue
about protective custody involuntary
versus involuntary is something that
sergeant mccord and i've been talking
about for years probably when i was not
director and he was not sergeant
but it is something that we all need to
collectively come together and go to
santa fe and advocate for some changes
in legislation so the regulations that
set up the licensing for crisis triage
centers use the word voluntary
and in my opinion it shouldn't be there
it should just say a facility and then
let each facility create their own
policies internally to be voluntary or
involuntary
on the treatment side you heard kadena
and jess talk about when a guest walks
in we want to engage them we want them
to willingly be there and that is the
treatment perspective it's going to be a
much better interaction if the person is
willing to be there versus their
involuntarily law enforcement has a
different perspective they see that
there's a need and they want to take
action so they take people into
protective custody but some people might
need services but still voluntarily go
to the triage center
in a lot of the other communities where
the facility can accept someone
involuntarily at the moment so they
start off involuntary in the back seat
of a law enforcement car they get to the
front door of the crisis triage center
and within a couple minutes their status
goes from involuntary to voluntary and
this happens 80 to 90 percent of the
time because it's a different person
it's a different environment so it's
much easier for the individual to
voluntarily agree to stay there but we
do need to change that law because
they're not their license doesn't allow
them to keep someone there
involuntarily and we don't want to get
into trouble with licensing the other
side of that coin is a different state
statute that gives clinicians the same
authority as law enforcement officers to
basically take someone into protective
custody if they fear of imminent harm to
sell for others so if someone comes in
and decides to leave but it would be
very dangerous for them to leave jess
can do the same thing that a police
officer can do but at that point they
can't stay at the triage center because
they've become involuntary and it does
say law enforcement at that point
transfer to another facility so that is
a an area where there's kind of a rub
between the two the two fields
and just additionally it is written into
the lead policy that the triage center
is the drop-off place and i want to just
thank the chief in the next couple weeks
we're going to have some additional lead
training
to become part of the academy so people
officers graduating from the academy
will immediately be aware of the triage
center and the jail diversion
opportunities that's great thank you so
much for for that very um good answer i
appreciate that making that very clear
um those are all my questions for now uh
thank you mayor and thank you all so
much oh i'm sorry if you do pursue
something like that in santa fe please
let us know how we can be involved in
that thank you
thank you council mayor porter
thank you
thank you jess thank you karina for
being here today great presentation um i
appreciate
your willingness to come and present to
our health policy review committee gosh
that was like a year ago i think more
than a year ago
we learned a tremendous amount and and
and just afforded us the opportunity to
to talk and that was still we were
virtual if you remember that
and then you've um so you're aware you
may not be
um this is a standing agenda item on our
policy our public safety select
committee so we talk um this consists of
our fire chief
chief dominguez and his d.c
dc's
and and we speak to
sort of the numbers where
because we feel that there this is a
service and a very needed service and um
to free up um you know law enforcement
apart to do the work that really they've
been hired to do this is a an excellent
way so you know we're prompting them how
many cases do you get
how many are you referring to them
um
and i also know that they have sat on
your wednesday meetings with the 911 or
988 i don't know if they're your
meetings but they they've had those
discussions so we're really encouraging
the coronation and collaboration if
there are issues and concerns that those
courageous conversations are being had
very clearly and and some sort of
solution or strategy um you know is is
being implemented if there are any
issues and and really i think there you
know any of those um if there are issues
they're being discussed and work through
and it's more about just building
relationship engaging trust right and
making sure that there's that line of
communication so i appreciate you both
being very open
about and your willingness to do that
just you sit on our suicide prevention
death sports which i um appreciate
um
and so you know my questions are around
um
the dialogue that's occurring in terms
of the process right and around 911 now
going to be 988 as it relates to those
people in crisis that typically police
are responding to what sort of dialogue
and conversations and process and really
do counselor bencomo's point about a
policy i think that really needs to be
discussed with merv done
those folks and how you know what sort
of dialoguing is happening so that you
know the appropriate calls are going to
the appropriate
source if you will
but
the more the merrier but i do want to
say that we have had engaged in
numerous conversations with messiah
valley regional dispatch we continue i
continue to have a conversation with
them every monday along with 98 with
new mexico access crisis line um that it
will be turning into 988. um so there's
still a lot of things that are kind of
if you want to help us that are still up
in the air keep turning back and they're
just not willing to get up here and and
but i do want to say that all of those
conversations there's a lot of things
okay that on the state level that are
still kind of being worked through and
we're at the forefront of that
conversation but
so i'm interested in the local level
right making sure that we're
communicating and coordinating and
collaborating those you know just in
collaboration making sure that those
calls are going to the appropriate right
responding
response whatever that might be and i
just want to make sure that that's
happening and if it's not how can we
help ensure that that takes place
so jamie michael county's health and
human services department i believe it
was almost two years ago that the city
and the county established a crisis now
work group
so public safety fire from each agency
is invited each month along with the new
mexico crisis and access line the crisis
triage center and mirvda so those are
the those are the three components
represented in the crisis now model the
call center the receiving center and um
mobile crisis and then all of the
law enforcement and ems people that are
part of the current 9-1-1 system so we
all get together
and discuss what's happening at the
national state and local level so we can
do that local planning the state is
taking care of the call center so new
mexico crisis and access line is already
basically our 988 center and they have
created the connection with
the mervda with 911 so calls that come
in that they deem appropriate would be
transferred over to 988
988 call takers who are clinical
behavioral health specialists will then
address that caller and if needed
dispatch the mobile crisis team that's
at the triage center
they go out and do their behavioral
health engagement and assessment and if
deemed necessary bring them back to the
triage center that's how the system is
supposed to work
and
we know that it takes a while for a new
system to to come to play so it's going
to be a big mind shift we're really
asking people in law enforcement and
9-1-1 to move away from what they've
been doing for decades and move into a
different system move into a behavioral
health system which is difficult to get
those changes so they have been doing a
lot of training with the 911 dispatchers
to make them feel comfortable because
very few right now very few calls get
transferred to the new mexico crisis and
access line and we know that each day
there's probably a handful that should
get transferred and could
be be
addressed in a more appropriate way so
the state is standing up that call
center the state is working with ri to
contract for mobile crisis we've
contracted with them for mobile crisis
and we'll keep the triage center we do
need some
new policies around how when law
enforcement is on scene with somebody
and they're either on the fence about
protective custody or they know that
this is a protective custody situation
but if it's not a public safety
situation there's not a firearm or a
weapon or something call mobile crisis
and have mobile crisis go out because
mobile crisis might be able to engage
voluntarily we want the least
restrictive intervention so if someone
is willing to engage in treatment or
willing to go somewhere voluntarily we
should it's going to be much less
traumatic to ride in the back of the van
with jess or karina than it is to ride
in the back of the car with sergeant
mccord as wonderful as sergeant mccord
is that's not a fun place to to be
so if we could get mobile crisis on
scene more often i think that would be
very helpful and then i'm chief smith
and i are working to figure out how the
mobile team that the phillips city is
creating how that's going to
work with the mobile team that's part of
the 988 system so how do we not
duplicate and fragment the system what
type of calls what type of response
how do we address
that within the 988 system so those are
some things that we're looking at
locally
one area and i know you're probably very
concerned that there is not a lot of
conversation and not a lot of resources
is mobile crisis teams and crisis
receiving centers for youth
so the services that we're talking about
are 18 and over
so if a young person needs behavioral
health it's going to be law enforcement
and hospitals
so that's an area where i think we all
need to focus and the licensing is very
different
for for each of those populations for
good reason
thank you jamie i appreciate that um i i
tuned into
the deem appropriate language quote
unquote
will you
explore that in more detail with me
what do you mean by that
so i'm not i think i know what you mean
by that
i'm more you know making sure the public
is aware of what that means it's not as
black and white as i would like it to be
but i'm not a clinician i'm not a law
enforcement it's difficult to put a
bucket that's public safety and to me
that means when there's a weapon or some
kind of public safety issue there's
medical
something's happening with your heart
your circulation your
other organs in your body then there's
behavioral health that's more of a
behavioral a brain
a mental illness so it's hard to put all
of the calls into separate buckets
because some calls are all three and so
it's depending on you know who's going
to take the lead because it could be all
three of those things happening at once
but for the most part
you can look at different circumstances
within
the the call and get information and be
able to determine deemed necessary so
suicidal but there is no means
a crisis triage or a crisis
mobile crisis response is probably
better than a law enforcement response
some substance use if there is not a
medical emergency the triage center has
a nurse there the triage center has a
pharmacy with medication so for some
substance use
issues the triage center might be more
appropriate than
a hospital so definitely a lot of the
the suicide and other
behavioral health
when the behavior is just not
not what the individual is expecting
it's scaring their families scaring
their friends i think those are the
types of calls that can go to a call
center
and then that behavioral health expert
might be able to do a better job of
deeping what's more appropriate to go
into to which system
it's not a clear list of call types but
we can learn from other communities and
i think there are some low hanging fruit
where we can say these calls should be
part of the 988 system
i appreciate that i know it it's so bla
gray i get it
so i i am i'm thinking about how we
provide
you know more information to the public
and
do you have flyers and brochures and
posters and
um
maybe stickers and i'm thinking about
businesses that might have that you
might have a sticker where in crisis you
know here's the phone number so that
someone can
get because we're hearing a lot from the
business community right especially
um around our homeless population a
cohort of our homeless population that's
in crisis that's probably co-occurring
disorders that that are you know jamie
mentioned fear scaring the you know the
public if you will so i'm just thinking
of ways that we can inform the public
that you all are available in a number
quickly that we can which which will
soon be 988 i think right
hopefully
one of the things that we are doing is
working with the county to be able to
have
a logo being able to have a marketing
material so that we can
disburse to the community
ideally i imagine
commercials
24 7
radio kind of commercials tv
newspaper um in english and in spanish
to be able to inform the public of the
services and educate the public of what
it is that we're doing and how we can
access us um a lot of the times and we
see this and we foresee how much more or
we will receive a lot of calls hopefully
through the 988 number but
habitually 911 has been utilized right
so there will be
there needs to be which to your point a
lot of communication between
and for us to develop and trust
uh our relationships so that we can work
together
um to kind of dissect what it is that we
need to do and who responds to the
community's needs
so i did bring with us today i brought
some of our flyers um i don't know if i
can just come bring them up to you
christine
they are they're double-sided english
spanish um
to you know meet a wider need of our
community um we also do do community
outreach um in presentations right so we
talk with
councils and um local businesses our
peers take flyers out to local
businesses we've gone to some of the gas
stations and
um and a lot of other
like locations for them to either put up
the information or just have it at hand
or you know so that they know that if
they have someone that's coming in
crisis that they can call us and we can
use our mobile team to come out um to
bring that individual into the crisis
center
thank you appreciate that um and then
lastly i'm interested in
your recidivism rate i didn't see it you
know people who are coming back back to
the um
triage center and and might you have
those numbers
we do not have that data at this moment
we do
up to right now we have 560
some individuals served since we started
we do not have that data of the people
who are coming back to the center okay
okay and i guess i'm interested in in
that data and and sort of the source why
right i'm i'm interested in um how we
coordinate right through our local
behavioral health collaborative and some
of their game changing
strategies really glad that you're
speaking
and working with mmc and sort of that
discharge planning the discharge
planning that's occurring really from
the detention center you know when or
people that are coming out of the our
acute facilities right to no home i mean
all that work that's being done and then
they're just
back into the
with no house right some of the very
basic things i think those are really
important um to hear back um and and i
think there's some very valuable and
critical information as a council that
i'd love to see from you all so that we
understand i think where
you know we might plug in um funding and
you know maybe a different program if
you will
so that's wonderful that's wonderful to
hear and we will definitely work to make
sure that we have that data
i think also just from a behavioral
health lens
even the folks that are coming in
many multiple times
we actually see that as a positive
which is i know it's it's kind of
daunting to hear but we see that as a
positive because this person is engaging
continuously with our services
we know in behavioral health and
substance use that a person will come
through our doors multiple times before
they're able to hear or are ready to
engage in services sure so we're at an
advantage point right being that
welcoming place
where we don't turn them away
and could
it maybe on day 10
know or understand something that they
weren't able to hear on day one and we
didn't turn them away right so the
higher the chances because
we know in behavioral health that it can
take a lifetime for a person to
modify behaviors um we are an advantage
point that we're not turning anyone away
so even if that person is here in the
their 30th time in that 30th time
they're able to something clicks for
them
and they're able to move towards this
more ongoing kind of recovery of care
then that to us is gold right no i
appreciate you saying that and i didn't
mean it or if it sounded as a criticism
that's not what i'm i'm it was more
around ensuring that we understand you
know social determinants of health
ensuring that our base that you know our
folks basic needs are being met and if
they're not and clearly you know i'm
hoping the public is listening to this
and they're getting a lot out of the
fact that you're around that the city is
doing what they can to
support you
and encouraging really our police
department to work more closely with you
and that idea that come july that 988 is
available and the crisis triage center
is available there for folks mental
health needs right and and and it could
be that that co-occurring disorder right
the people falling off that they need to
get back on maybe it's that hundredth
time and and it's going to be the more
positive time right where they're more
inclined to to
to
engage in the services
it for me it's more about hearing what
are those needs that are not being met
that the city needs to be aware of
i have a
suggestion
for that jamie michael again county
health and human services department
i know that they don't have the the data
here in numbers to show you but based on
my conversations with them about their
most familiar faces it is people who are
experiencing homelessness
and i
what i see with our lead program with
the crisis triage center with some of
our other programs
people don't have a like a quick
easy place to live
that is not a motel
next to the same people where they
get substances from every other day of
the week so we i think our community
needs
a nice
location that is away from some of these
negative environments so putting
somebody in a motel again that's
going to put them back in the same
environment is not going to help them
make change we need a new way to address
temporary emergency housing for all
people
substance use no substance use families
psychosis no psychosis so we need a
really
no wrong door i guess we would call it
temporary emergency housing so if
somebody needs to stay there for a
couple of weeks before moving into which
i know we have a lack of permanent
supportive housing
but right now a lot of people come to
the triage center because they have no
other place to go and i do know that one
of the the folks who comes fairly
frequently to the triage center
was there a few weeks ago was
intoxicated was
knew that
they were not doing well they showed up
at the triage center they immediately
began having an opioid overdose
crisis and
they were able to save their life and
that's huge this person if the triage
center hadn't been there if it hadn't
been a nice place for them to go they
wouldn't have gone back and that night
there would have been another opioid
fatality yeah in our community yeah so
um i wanted to share that story and just
say temporary emergency housing that is
supportive and clean and
a nice environment for for people thank
you thank you jamie i appreciate that
and then lastly ifo i was hoping that
we could um not only do press releases
but i know that in the past
mandy and before mandy they would do
interviews right for the clc tv and
maybe i don't know if that has happened
yet i don't recall it i don't remember
seeing it but maybe something like that
um
you know regularly having an interview
with both karina and just to
um
you know
you know just interview them and and so
that folks can understand um
what the what the crisis trio center is
about and and then we used to have
a covet website but a website that had
like our
our mental health screening tools and
um phone numbers i think this would be a
good place to add um you know the triage
center and a number and that interview
so folks can know
i don't know where it needs to reside
and i haven't been
you know sort of bruising through our
website
but those things need to be visible for
our public so that they just see it and
can click on it and seek the help
those are all my questions mary well
thank you
thank you mayor mayor for tim uh yes
ma'am we will i'll get with my
communication staff and
mayor and leaned over a while ago and
asked me about our capability and what
resources we have to offer and
those are some of the things that came
to mind commercials with our clctd and
and communication so i'll get with our
communications team
okay we have a couple questions from
counselors abetta and counselor quran
and then counselor flores
thank you mayor
thank you karina and thank you jess for
the presentation and for all the work
that you do for our community members i
think you can see not only is this such
a needed service and vital for so many
people
but i think pretty much most of myself
and i know a lot of my colleagues
share
the
enthusiasm for these type of programming
and addressing people's needs
and i think the numbers also show that
we are working with within our lcpd
communications we have it as a standing
item in another public safety select
committee so we're trying to have those
actions match the words that we say so
they're working together
but as we
are building up this of support
and really trying to train people to
utilize these programs of course we have
to think of how long are they going to
stay and my questions probably are more
directed towards
county officials for the next part but
that is just um
you know there's been some concerns
about
reimbursement rates private insurance
doesn't um
cover some of the cost of crisis care
and so how are we looking to have kind
of solvency with all this
jamie michael county's health and human
services department right now medicaid
is the only reimburser of crisis care
so i believe in new mexico we should be
advocating our office of insurance
to
make it required for private insurance
to cover crisis care i have a full-time
job with dona ana county government i
have blue cross blue shield if i go to
the triage center the county's indigent
program is going to cover the cost of my
visit because blue cross won't
if i go to the emergency department
which is probably going to be four or
five times more expensive blue cross
will cover that so it only benefits the
insurance companies to cover the triage
center but right now private insurance
does not cover triage centers primarily
because they're new
we didn't even have a license for a
triage center four years ago
in new mexico so it's going to take a
while for the insurance companies to
catch up but if we don't push them i
think it will take too long so we need
private insurance to to cover the
county's indigent program
will cover uninsured and we consider
people who have insurance but their
insurance doesn't cover that type of
service
uninsured so the county's integer
program will continue to cover it if you
look at
where's the
the
days sorry
so
um daily average number of guests the
reason that's important is because that
can indicate when there is enough
medicaid billing
to
break even so the county's investment
right now is up here medicaid billing is
here the more people that come into the
the facility and have medicaid then we
can can change that because we can't
keep
a high reimburse or a high you know kind
of grant
program covering all the the operating
costs we need medicaid and we pay a lot
of money into medicaid so it should be
covering that so we need about six
people a day to
have that break even
point and we know right now
that every day there's probably that
number showing up at the hospital
emergency department that don't need to
be there so not only is it the wrong
place for the patient but it's not
contributing to the sustainability
of the triage center but right now our
county manager and county commission is
committed to using the indigent funds
the health fund and some of our arpa
money to support and make sure that this
is successful it's
an investment that we knew was going to
take some time but knew that it would be
worth it for our community
thank you the second question will
probably go to you as well thank you and
it is um kind of
some of the ex possible expansions of
licensure to help aid in some of those
areas that we lack within our community
if you want to expand upon that
well the mobile
services are the first expansion that
we're working on right now they're
providing mobile services
but we need the state to come up with
the regulations
so the state will also reimburse the the
mobile services again it's never going
to be 100 coverage of the operation but
there will be reimbursement for that
expansion into mobile and one reason i
think that's a great expansion for the
triage center is because you can have
shared staff we don't have a lot of
extra clinicians especially extra
bilingual clinicians in our community to
set up multiple
organizations i'm doing different
service lines so if we can combine them
we have some shared workforce in that
area so the mobile
is the first expansion the other
expansion for the future new mexico's
license around triage center has two
categories a 23-hour stay and a license
for a 14-day
stay
so we can we are asking the state if we
can dual license this facility and have
one wing dedicated to the 14-day stay
and that would change things because
you're going to then be residential so
you need beds you need
on-site food for breakfast lunch and
dinner
and you need you know that type of of
care but for folks who
aren't sick enough to get admitted into
a hospital but not quite healthy enough
to be in the community or don't have a
place to be and you're not going to get
well sleeping at the park or under a
bridge
so a 14-day observation unit can serve
our community the state is also looking
at how do these facilities become
regional they would like every person in
new mexico to be within 90 minutes of a
receiving center
if you're going to come from another
county
if you're here for six hours it may not
be worth the drive but if we have the
ability to do
a week or two weeks observation it might
be worth the drive so that observation
unit is the second expansion
thank you and i know that observation
unit is such a need for a community and
we have a lot for that
with one of the items uh karina that you
spoke about that are
firefighters or going to be doing
specific trainings
um this last week i was also curious is
that the same type of trainings that our
police department has got you said that
or have they done the same type of
training so we've done presentations for
las cruces uh police department
what we in in conversation
with one of their lieutenants is trying
to figure out a way that would make the
most sense for their staff to be able to
receive the information to integrate the
information and to really understand
what it is that we do on a
kind of direct level
way manner
so then we came up with having
developing kind of like a a credit
ongoing uh education uh for no more than
one hour to be able to have kind of like
a presentation at the same time that we
have a tour of the facility and that all
their staff and that we record these so
that they are integrated into their
continuous education kind of learning
community um so that it is ongoing and
even if they have newer staff they're
able to to receive that information
so we're working so that that is
something that we do for all first
responders okay okay thank you
um and then that is the the same
training that the
firefighters are getting as well yeah
okay thank you and thank you mayor
council correct
oh
right now that training is for fire only
we will be continuing to do that with
the police department okay but they
haven't had that training before then
they've had presentations so similar but
not this training specifically okay yeah
i
highly encourage that and i think that
would be great for them is since you
said that they were the first
interaction that it would make sense
that they had
that training as well
thank you i just have one sort of quick
genre of question thank you both for
being here so much i'm really excited to
see you um and jamie for for weighing
into my question is really related to
sort of i appreciate what my colleagues
have brought up related to sort of
thinking about how we can divert folks
who are who are interfacing with law
enforcement um in crisis but i'm curious
what other kind in particular for people
who have substance use
disorders i'm curious
i i think there's there are a lot of
great harm reduction
sort of activities in our community i
think related to narcan and now fentanyl
test strips and i'm curious i think that
there's a really great opportunity for
us to go even further upstream and in
sort of creating a community where folks
can save my my friend recommending their
friend not that not by calling 911 but
at a place even before that and so i'm
curious if you all have had the
opportunity to do
outreach to the populations of folks who
might be doing harm reduction and then
secondarily
if you find that the referral
opportunities are enough in our
community to to support those folks who
might want to come in at a time prior to
an immediate kind of
law enforcing interface
moment
thank you
so we do
work very closely with some of the mat
providers the medication assisted
treatment
in town so we work very closely with
amador recovery project through
community of hope south
southwest pathways and ideal options
to make sure that our guests are that
are
using substances have
you know various options right so um we
actually have the peer support worker
from amador recovery we'll give them a
call and say hey we have somebody that
might be interested in services and he
comes over so that we also have that
warm handoff right because we know that
an angel that sees this person and says
hi like i'm going to be working with you
and you know then they're much more
likely to be engaged and return into and
actually follow through with those
referrals and the services
so they come over and they start the
process with us
as well and then we also work with the
recovery center in town
for
individuals that maybe need a longer
stay for substance use rehab they begin
they can begin the assessment kind of
intake prescreening process with us
and you know give them a call on the
phone work with the peer support and and
continue that process
and each agency also refers to us so if
they have somebody that they are seeing
that maybe needs the crisis services
they'll refer back to us as well we also
refer
to other inpatient places across the
state
because we all know that you know
substance use
prevention you know treatment services
are in high demand um and so there's not
always a bed readily available and so
we're able to work with the guests
especially those that have medicaid and
may have a safe ride transportation
capability available to get them to
farmington to carlsbad
to albuquerque for inpatient substance
use treatment as well
i don't know if i answered both parts of
your question it did okay thank you so
much
thank you mayor thank you for your
presentation
so um
what what are your um
what's your training because you're the
ones who receive people at the center
right
or is it just the two of you or is it
it's open 24 7 right
so
how do you assess someone coming in
let me get back okay
um so we have a an rn a registered nurse
in every single one of the shifts we
have four shifts okay we have one rn per
shift we have a licensed clinical
behavioral health provider
i'm a licensed art therapist jess is a
licensed clinical social worker we have
other licensed staff yeah there is is
this is this 24-hour step 24 hours okay
thank you
okay so say for example um officer
mccord
drops someone off because
it meets his criteria
how do you assess that that person is
not suicidal or homicidal and then what
do you do then
we start assessing from the very
beginning um as soon as someone walks in
through our doors yes okay how do you
assess someone
so we have a cssrs we're part of the
zero suicide initiative so safer care
practices so as soon as that person
comes in we have what is called the
columbia suicide severity reading skill
assessment which is assessed by the
nurse at first entrance and if that
person is showing signs of suicidality
then we create a safety plan and we
observe the behavior and continue to
continuously engage through continuous
assessment including the psychosocial
where we ask the same
questions this is the national how long
is that person there
is it a 24 hour maximum stay or yes it's
okay 24 hours so what do you do with
someone within 24 hours to accurately
assess that person and to therefore
provide the services that person needs
yes we provide the psychosocial
assessment the psychiatric evaluation
and specific assessment for suicide risk
plus observation and engagement
what happens if that person is suicidal
and or homicidal
yes we engage with them to decrease this
the crisis
we have uh ongoing activities where
we're talking to them we have therapists
on staff peer support workers that have
lived through some of the stuff that
they've lived through to be able to
engage them in decrease what happens
after the 24 hours
where does that person go
yes so we have relationships with the
providers in the community to be able to
connect them to services ongoing care
okay how many people have you had there
since you opened
i you put some numbers up there so my
question really should be
you indicated earlier that
some of the people go back are repeat
visitors
and
so
those are you do you count that as a new
person coming through the door or is you
know or
every time you have someone show up at
the door it counts as a new number is
that correct so some of these people may
be the same people coming back over and
over again so how do you assess whether
your services are really working
so with the individuals that are our
friendly faces the ones that are
returning um they're what did you call
them friendly friendly faces
okay um i don't um i personally don't
like the term like frequent flyer
revolving door things like that um so we
use friendly faces because it's it's
more
engaging more recovery oriented more
strength-based for the for the
individual
so for individuals that are friendly
faces each time they return
we re-evaluate right so we're not going
to provide the same
types of services the same referrals
every single time they come
some of them may be similar because you
know if it's someone that's coming for
substance use
let's use for example we're going to
continue to
involve them and you know encourage them
to go to see emerald recovery to you
know get some type of service to help
with um their substance use while
they're in the community
but if they come in and you know they
say you know what i tried to go here and
it didn't work then we'll say then we'll
come with the guest and you know all of
our services that we provide are very
collaborative okay so yeah i get it so
how many people
have come back do you know just off hand
have you had five 10 15 20 30 all of
them i mean i want to know
how successful
or how effective
your program is and
and also i think the numbers you have
number of guests
that's a euphemism
server per month
it looks like the the most you've had
was 102 back in april
and how many do you have any follow-up
on these people are they homeless are
they people whose doors you can knock on
or do you partner with other services in
the community to see how they're doing
i mean i just want to know whether
someone just shows up and then it's all
very nice to have a guest in your home
but
i just want to know exactly
whether there has been any success
stories as in effective
treatment
we do um by practice we do have a
72-hour follow-up with each guest
and so what we do is within 72 hours of
the guest leaving our facility
we give them a call we try to you know
whether we give them a call with the
phone number that's provided to check in
with them hey how are you doing you know
did you make it to that appointment um
you know and um and then if we don't
have a direct phone number for that
individual maybe they don't have a phone
number but they're connected to an act
team then we have a release of
information on file that we can call the
act team and say hey how is this person
doing we want to check in and make sure
that you know everything's going okay
so that we can continue to make sure
that this individual is receiving the
services that they need in the community
so how long does it take you to assess
whether someone is suicidal homicidal
and definitely should be in under
psychiatric care right so right from the
very beginning we do do the columbia
suicide scale so that's a
evidence-based practice that determines
if someone is experiencing suicidal
thoughts or not um and then while that
person is with us so let's say the
person is either expressing themselves
that you know hey i don't feel like i
want to live anymore you know and or on
this
screening tool
they respond that they are suicidal then
we begin to do our triage process which
can include
an inpatient stay so we can transfer to
higher level of care for individuals
that do need longer because sometimes
when you're you know when you're feeling
suicidal sometimes you just need someone
to talk to and maybe there's some
environmental factors going on at home
and we can address those you know in a
psychosocial way in our facility but
that's not the true case every single
time and so with some of those
individuals that do need longer than we
can provide within the 24 hours we're
able to refer to higher level care and
we work very closely with mecia valley
hospital with pique
and we also work with okay so do you
have um
you have your nurses but not doctors on
staff right you don't have medical
doctors on staff or do you we we have a
psychiatrist who's an md who's available
on telehealth 24 7 too to our nurses but
it's not present
not currently on site
okay
and um
so you've had 246 calls in the last five
months
and those calls are
based on
just calls people just calling and
then you just keep track of the number
of calls that you get and or what what's
the significance of keeping the calls um
i believe the 246 is the number of
mobile responses that we've engaged in
right so we've had you know 584
guests that we have seen in our in our
center um and then there's been that 200
and you know
and so times that we've used our you
know team to be able to go out into the
community to bring somebody into the
center to engage with them yeah well i i
would like to um say that i'm glad that
counselor beta said that we're working
together
and um
and there's just so many
concerns i have one is the um
the the
the cost that's being incurred i i don't
know how much the county is paying i
don't know
um because when i look at numbers and
some of these are repeat people coming
back um
you know as 102
persons walking through the door
in the month of april which is the
highest number you've had you've had as
little as two
and it looks like maybe the average is
well just looking at the graph i'd say
maybe 30 people 25 people walking
through the door
and i'm just trying to figure out
whether
the cost assessment has been taken into
account by
the county manager or the this county
the commissioners
and just to assess whether
there's something maybe more effective
for people in need
of intervention
so um
okay
uh those are all my comments and
concerns thank you very much thank you
mayor
councillor and jimmy was going to come
come up here but i don't think the
county pays for this i i thought the
they build medicaid
for this
and but i did have a question so you can
answer that one and then the second one
is
and i don't know if
if you can expand on
it seems like
the city pd is using it more than the
county sheriff's department you know i
don't know but it just maybe maybe
that's where the other
hundreds of people go but if you can
expand on that and and i should know
this this answer but so let's say a
deputy picks up a county resident takes
them to the detention center
do they have to does do they have to pay
does the county have to you know i know
it's an enterprise fund or used to be
but they don't do they charge themselves
no
so jb
county health and human services
department
if someone has medicaid
medicaid will reimburse for the service
any other
guest visit
is covered by kind of like a supplement
that the county provides to operate the
facility it's a brand new operation so
we were never expecting the first day
they opened to be at full capacity we
were expecting it to take some time to
get to full capacity and knowing that
during that time our financial
investment would be greater because
medicaid only pays
when that medicaid-funded individual
walks through the door they also work to
enroll people
so they do work to enroll people in in
medicaid but that's never going to be
100 and that's never going to be enough
to cover all of the operations just like
the ambulance the ambulance gets
reimbursed when they go on a call but
nobody reimburses them when they're
sitting waiting for for a call we have
the place staffed 24 7 and there may be
a person there
there may not be so we need to pay to
have it open all the time and obviously
we want the numbers to to be as high as
possible but there's not a magic number
we're not looking at
our investment is only good if we serve
500 people we're looking at in our
community this number of people
experience a behavioral health crisis
and we want that number of people
to be able to go to the triage center
and whether that number is 200 or 500 we
want to be able to meet the needs of
everyone who needs this type of care so
are you keeping stats on that miss
michael yes so we know that there are
still people every day going to the
emergency department that don't need to
be at the emergency department need to
be at the triage center so we're trying
to figure out how do we shift
utilization
from that medical facility to this
medical facility so you are tracking
people who walk through your door
tracking when i'm talking about
statistical follow-up do you attract
people as to your services the
effectiveness of your services
the effectiveness of the services can be
measured in a variety of ways so if
there's um something particular that
you're looking for we can we can look at
that this is an intervention a brief
crisis intervention so we're not looking
for people to leave there having reached
recovery or having you know be be all
better when they leave what we're
looking for is for those 23 hours or
two hours i understand that part that's
why i was asking the question whether
there's any kind of follow-up to see
whether there's an effective transfer of
services
to a
to a to a facility that is able to meet
the needs but it looks like you're you
don't do that so well the 72 hour they
make a call
they try to contact the person or the
person's provider 72 hours after they
leave the facility and they document how
many
of those individuals did connect with
their
next level of care so there is that that
piece that they currently do here with
their
guests that come to the facility there's
also
more business-like analysis that is done
and you can plug in yours and look at
how much money if you want to look just
at money
having a triage center can save a
community because we know how much a
hospital bed costs we can estimate how
much law enforcement
response costs or an ems response and we
know how much
it is to operate a triage center or
mobile crisis team and you can plug in
your your numbers and look at the cost
effectiveness
but that's not going to happen in the
first year or two that's not going to
you're not going to have that um
that i guess
your your dividends not going to start
paying back until we are at full
capacity and that's going to take a
while because it's a new system and
we're changing we're changing the system
we're changing where people are used to
going
so we need everybody to get behind it
and help us make those changes okay and
when did you
open the doors there
june 21st 2021
okay
so um
you will be having some stats hopefully
within the end of the year thank you
very much thank you mr mayor
i thought you were done like five
minutes ago so let me just let me follow
up on some questions okay so
so the can you expand a little bit on
the sheriff's department i don't know if
the sheriff was here to speak about that
but then she left
but um
i mean
what is the participation rate i mean
this is a
it's right near the detention center
near the sheriff's department i would
think that it's been utilized a fair
amount
or
sorry jamie michael county's health and
human services we are working with the
sheriff and the sheriff's department
they are looking for some additional
guidance and framework and agreements
before they will begin using the
facilities so we have been meeting with
their designated person like karina said
to to build that trust to build those
relations and inform
each other about the services so at this
point the
sheriff's department is not using the
crisis triage center that's why most of
the numbers are
your agency and obviously sergeant
mccord has been a great champion and has
been working to see this facility open
for years so i think that's one of the
reasons why there's more utilization
from the pd there's been some nice
success stories with new mexico state
university messiah marshall's office and
other agencies but they're much smaller
than your police department sure of
course i
and in a in a small way it saves
county taxpayers and then it helps us
utilize state monies uh as well and so
uh well we hope to
to see a higher utilization rate
okay so i think counselor ben cuomo has
a question or comment no i just wanted
to comment i thought we were getting
close to wrap up mayor and i just wanted
to note a couple things that the bill
insert with information about the triage
center in spanish and english will be in
june in the utility
bill so i'm hoping that gets to a lot of
people
a lot of people's eyes and maybe on
their fridge or something
and then
you know i really do hope i'm excited to
hear what kind of conversations come out
with chief
smith about project light and
i'm certain there is enough room in this
community for two mobile units that are
helping people in crisis and distress so
i just really want to say thank you
mayor for staff city for making this
happen and for all of you not just for
coming today but for what you do and
it's hard work and i just wanted to
extend my sincerest gratitude thank you
thank you and with that
before we leave i just want to take a
moment to recognize sergeant mccord i
thought i heard you earlier say that you
have 27 years
it's very rare i'm sure there are some
but rare to have someone who stays you
could retire seven years ago and for you
to continue to stay on and and you
obviously love what you're doing your
true asset to the city as well as the
department and i just wanted to thank
you for your
i service have 16 years here 11 years in
michigan okay
okay
so
for the record he said 16 years here in
11 years in michigan
okay well we were going to give you a
standing round of applause
all right all right well thank you very
nonetheless thank you for your service
to both communities
okay that ends the the presentation
thank you very much and continued
success thank
you okay so next
is going to be the office of emergency
presentation
stephen lopez emergency manager
and former chief of police at mexico
state
probably not used to sitting in a
suit for so many
hours not moving
good afternoon mayor and council deputy
chief justin allen with las cruces fire
department
bringing stephen lopez he's the
emergency manager for the office of
emergency management and he's joined
today with amanda bowen who is the
deputy emergency manager we've had
several opportunities over the past few
years to work directly with oem on
different
events that have arisen in our
communities so this is their opportunity
to provide an annual update to
city council
thank you for the introduction dc
mayor miyagashima members of the city
council and senior city leadership thank
you very much for providing us with this
opportunity my name is stephen lopez and
was mentioned i am the emergency manager
for the joint office of emergency
management
just some brief history for those of you
who haven't been around with the city
since 1965
the city of las cruces started
the civil defense program in 1965.
and shortly thereafter in 1967 dona ana
county started a similar program and uh
obviously that was a very different time
we were in the middle of a cold war and
the fear was very focused on a
particular nation-state actor
that apparently is back in the news
again
out of that in 2001 the city council and
the county commission joined together to
say we want to combine both of our
efforts into one office of emergency
management
so it was out of that that our current
operation really
became what it is developing into today
the office of emergency management has a
number of areas of responsibility some
people think of us as
public safety and first responders but
in reality we are the rest of the
responders the first responders is what
you get when you dial 9-1-1 and that is
typically going to be our fire
department our police department our
ambulance service
but when they are taking care of things
and it's either a certain scale or it's
a certain scale and goes beyond what
they are responsible for that is often
where the office of emergency management
comes in our primary roles are to plan
and prepare and that includes the
development of an all hazards emergency
operations plan that covers all of the
main entities within dona ana county
which is our area of responsibility and
when i say all of the the main entities
that includes public schools that
includes universities that includes
villages and towns and of course the
municipality of las cruces as well as
dona ana county itself
we also put together what is called the
thyra the threats and hazards
identification and risk analysis that is
kind of the main guiding document that
says these are the main things that
might happen here now there are other
things that are not included in the
thyroid that could happen
but are
either lesser significance to where they
are already being handled by our first
responders on a daily basis and we don't
need to focus a lot of effort on it
because they've already got that covered
or they are of such rare
possibility like an asteroid strike that
we don't want to waste government
resources on trying to plan for
something like that
we also engage with all of our partner
entities in conducting drills and
exercises conducting training and in
really resource building and the
resource building is an area we'll talk
a little bit more here in a minute but
something that we're really trying to
focus a lot more on because if we have
enough resources we can really handle
the majority of disasters without having
to wait for state or fema assets to come
in
and
in emergency management we like to say
disaster response starts and ends
locally it starts with what we do here
for our communities and ultimately at
the end of the day those other assets
that come in are going to leave and we
are what's left here to help out
on an ongoing basis
in addition to planning and preparing we
also look at mitigation mitigation is
what can we do to lessen the impact of a
potential disaster and with that we
actively seek out grants we'll talk
about a few of those here in a minute as
well as engage in activities that are
directly focused on mitigation
we also look at response
now some of that is incident management
that
the fire departments and police
departments really are not tasked with
so for example
a pandemic
might occur
and that's really not the responsibility
of our police and fire departments and
ambulance services to engage in on a
daily basis they have other things that
our communities need them to do so in
some of those cases we will engage in
incident management
will
almost always be in a coordinating role
because it's not really just the office
of emergency management it may be the
department of health that we're engaging
with it may be our first responders it
may be
senior leadership within the city in the
county
and it may be our hospitals and
community partners our voad partners
such as american red cross and salvation
army and united way so we serve kind of
that central coordination role
one of the key things that we are really
focusing on
we did a little bit before but really
the pandemic showed us the need is
common situational awareness gathering
information and sharing it with our key
stakeholders so that people who need to
make decisions have the information they
need to help guide that decision-making
in a thoughtful and evidence-based
manner we also look at
resource management and logistics
management how do we get the things that
the people out there doing stuff in the
field need
and how do we track people resources
needs and connect them all together
and the last phase
used to be a separate and distinct phase
recovery we used to say recovery in
started when response ended
now we like to point out that really
good recovery starts before we have a
response
we actually start putting together
our community lifeline partners
we don't want to wait to first
communicate with for example el paso
electric
until after a disaster has occurred and
they've lost all of their their assets
in a particular area
we need to really start that effort much
earlier on and as a result we now when
we start a response to a large disaster
we also start the recovery side of that
because there are people in need
right then during the disaster and we
need to start connecting those resources
for that long-term recovery
as quickly as possible
that may be through the state disaster
assistance program that may be
individual assistance through our voad
partners and i apologize for using the
acronym voad is the volunteer
organizations active in disaster and
that's a program that locally we just
got started here in january of this year
and we've had really good participation
from the american red cross the united
way the community foundation of southern
new mexico and a number of church groups
we get regular participation from our
partners down in the amador health
center and
through the community of hope and
really it is paying dividends in being
able to bring those people together so
there's not duplication of services and
there's a very rapid ability to reach
out and help people and then of course
there's the federal disaster assistance
if and when the federal government
agrees that there is a disaster and that
they are going to help us out and you
would think that is a lot more automatic
than it actually is even the state
disaster assistance program we have yet
to receive a dime from the state for the
flooding disasters that took place in
august of last year
and it is our understanding that is
very normal
that they take a while because they want
to make sure everything else that's
possible has been paid for by insurance
or whatever else before they will give
us any funding
on funding the office of emergency
management is
funded
from the emergency management
grant the empg for 50 percent of our
personnel costs for the emergency
management professionals that's my
position that is amanda bowen's position
and that is our emergency coordinator
position those are the three positions
in the office as of today
the city and county then split the other
half of those personnel costs 25 to the
city 25 to the county
plus we have an administrative assistant
that the empg program will not cover so
that is split 50 50 between the city and
the county
the city in the county also currently
split per the joint powers agreement
50 percent of the operational costs
starting july 1 assuming the state
approves our revised empg
grant application we're going to be
adding a fourth position another
emergency coordinator
and the city of sullivan park is going
to pick up what the city of las cruces
currently picks up for our other three
positions so they'll be picking up 25
percent of the personnel costs that
salary and benefits for that position
dona ana county will pick up 25 percent
and then the state will pick up the 50
that's going to allow us to really start
looking at what is a rapidly growing
area in our
region of operation
that really does have impacts directly
all the way up here into las cruces and
even into hatch
because they have a lot of very
very big things going on down there that
they are planning over the next few
years
a brief look at statutes
state statute is what gives the local
governing bodies the political
subdivisions of the state
the responsibility for all hazards
emergency management within each of
their jurisdictions
and it's i
put that in there just to make sure
you're aware there is that state statute
assigning that responsibility to you all
as the elected leaders for the city of
las cruces
in addition it then authorizes you to
establish a local office of emergency
management as the agency responsible for
that function
and
then subject to the approval of the
state director of homeland security
emergency management
that person also approves that and
helps coordinate our efforts across
counties
and this should not come as a surprise
to this body but sometimes
certain aspects of the state government
forget that southern new mexico
exists occasionally and so we actually
have formed a very tight partnership
with our surrounding counties and work
on a very regular basis including right
now we're assisting sierra county with
the fires that they have taking place
another interesting statute you should
be aware of is that the local
governments are directed during a
disaster response to utilize local
services equipment supplies and
facilities
to the maximum extent practical as well
as the employees within that local
governmental entity
this is basically the state saying their
expectation before they give us help
is that we have tapped out what we can
do locally
again i point that out because sometimes
we'd like to be able to say hey state we
need some help
this is what they expect us to be able
to demonstrate before they're going to
sign off that we need that help they
need some something that says yes we've
really reached that and so that's
something that if there is a disaster
declaration that's needed
that's important language for you to put
into that disaster declaration
to confirm that to the governor that yes
local resources have been tapped out
so key points on the legislation
you've got check marks right now for two
things
you are responsible for the all hazards
emergency management for the city and
back in 2001 passed that to the joint
office of emergency management and you
are authorized to establish that
emergency management program
the real key one that we don't have a
check mark on right now is really a
failure of that 2001 joint powers
agreement that really needs to be
revised because we don't have that
clearly laid out to meet the statutory
requirement of
of delegating that appointment of who
hires the emergency manager what type of
supervision and oversight happens we
don't have things covered like one-off
purchases and you'll see why that comes
it becomes important here in a minute it
doesn't cover the addition of another
entity like the sunland park
city of southern park
so those are some things that we really
need to work on a new joint powers
agreement
with all of the partners here over the
next six months we've had good
discussion with
city senior leadership on that need and
that is actually now waiting on me to
get with get back with them um on how we
proceed forward
so here are some crucial things sorry
for interrupting the city manager wanted
to kind of chime in on that last comment
yeah i appreciate it thank you mayor
just wanted to make note eric and
enriquez has been
our appointee from the city manager's
office as delays on to
uh
to to work with our oem so just
i i think all the council maybe knows
that but just wanted to make make that
aware
okay sorry about that thank you thank
you mr mayor and thank you mr pealey for
for yes confirming that yes uh mr
enriquez was thrown under the bus
some months back so
so some crucial elected leader roles
that we want you to be aware of um there
are on a lot of these but we've pulled
out the ones that we think are most
important for you to be aware of if
you'd like a listing the state provides
us with a three-page
single space document
that lists out elected leader roles
but you know most of your roles these
are the ones crucial when it comes to a
disaster really we need you to provide
us with what's called policy direction
tell us where you want things to go
if there's a disaster you don't think
we're adequately preparing for tell us
that so we can get on that and add it to
our thyra and add it to our
regular meetings develop a committee if
necessary whatever it takes
during a disaster we also need policies
that's something that we got a little
bit from and thank you for whoever had
the idea of putting together the city
task force for covet 19 vaccinations
because that is a policy guidance board
that said you know this is what we're
looking for
as the the elected leadership both for
the city and you had people from the
county and others to give us that you
know this is the target we want to meet
and by the way on that
96.6
of adults within dona ana county have
had at least one vaccine
that is way better than the rest of the
united states
to be at 96.6 is just phenomenal
and 83.5 percent are at what we consider
fully vaccinated
so really good numbers from that so
during a disaster we really need that
policy guidance as well as well as after
a disaster giving us feedback on you
know what we were satisfied with that or
we would like to see some some better
improvements in this area we heard a lot
of concerns about that
oftentimes it's communication and we
certainly know that that's an important
thing for us to make sure we're giving
you information that you can then get
back out to your constituents
we also
need your guidance
when it comes to emergency plans
and monitoring you should be holding us
to the fire to make sure that emergency
plans are developed and the ones that we
say we're going to develop are in place
they need to be approved and that
obviously is going to require a
signature from
in your case mr peely
and sometimes
mr miyagashima
but
some things may come to you for actual
votes but make sure those things are
happening and hold us to the fire that
we're maintaining those things
over the last year we've started putting
a lot of effort into catching up some of
our plans that are dated 2011.
and
as you all know we've had a little bit
of growth in our communities since 2011.
we also will need through the joint
powers agreement some clearly delegated
authority of who can speak on behalf of
the city of las cruces during an
emergency or disaster
who can release information how do we
release it there are some things that
are going to need to come out of the
emergency operations center quickly
that's life safety information usually
nobody argues over that that's the ready
set go of an evacuation for an example
but other things may start getting into
policy stuff and sometimes we may need
the counselor for that particular
district to come forward and be willing
to be on camera or at least give us some
information that we can release for
again that constituency and it may be
something that comes back to the entire
city council
for direction
emergency funds and spending authority
are also one of those things that
probably needs to be spelled out in the
jpa
mayor miyagashima mentioned i was the
chief of police at new mexico state
university for a
year or many
and
my spending authority during a disaster
there i was also served as the emergency
manager of the university in that role
was a hundred thousand dollars
that's
the entire authority that
our county manager has given to him by
the board of county commissioners i'm
not sure what you give to mr pealey
you know on that without having to come
back but
you probably don't want me having the
same spinning authority they do but you
know those are things that
need to be spelled out you know if the
fire chief says we've got something
going on and i need you to spend
ten thousand dollars on renting a bobcat
and some other equipment
that should be spelled out that yeah
that's good to go we'll break out the
procreamer card and get it done without
having to make any other calls
and then incident management and
recovery
again you know identifying yes we've got
all those people and they are good to
participate
and then again we need your assistance
in communicating sometimes back to your
constituents within the community to
find out what their needs are and making
sure they're aware of the help that's
available
it used to be we could post something in
a newspaper and reach a lot of people
that's no longer the case
and the social media that i
utilize my 18 year old daughter tells me
is not going to reach anybody
within las cruces
so
you clearly were elected somehow so you
had a way to reach the constituents and
we may need to take advantage of that
just a quick update for you on where
we've been over the last year we have
participated in one nationally declared
disaster that is obviously coveted 19
one locally declared disaster that was
confirmed by the governor to be a state
disaster that was the august flooding
that disaster declaration covered from
the southern border of the county all
the way up through and including the
city of las cruces because we had flood
damage that started here and went all
the way down including the city of
sunland park
we've done a restructuring of the office
of emergency management over the last
year
we took one of our emergency coordinator
missions and made that into the deputy
emergency management
position
the deputy emergency manager again is
amanda bowen
waving in the back here
we needed to do that because we really
saw during that flood response we did 96
hours straight in the emergency
operations center
and uh we split it in 12 hour shifts
amanda cover 12 i covered 12
plus briefing time it was really 13 each
and
we need somebody if i'm not there that
has full approval and signature
authority
that the emergency manager position has
so by restructuring we've created that
now and
if we are able with that addition of
summon part to get that fourth position
that actually now gives us a team of two
so we can actually send somebody to the
scene to do situational awareness
community lifeline analysis and
reporting while somebody is is running
the emergency operations center so we're
actually getting to the point where we
have the ability to run a large
long-term operation
we've also restructured our southern new
mexico medical reserve corps this was
started
over a decade ago in the office of
emergency management it's a national
program
to assist with medical and non-medical
needs during a disaster
but we discovered that the state statute
requires before they are covered for
liability that the governor has declared
a disaster
well that may be three or four days in
after we have already been needing them
and then there are other times when we
may want to utilize them that the
governor doesn't agree to a disaster
declaration so we are now on boarding
those people transitioning them from
just being medical reserve corps people
to also being county volunteers so that
we can run background checks
give them a county driving permit
because it really helps if they can
drive one of our vehicles with medical
supplies for example
and they also then are covered by the
county risk management policy so that
they actually have protection both for
workers comp as well as general
liability
the voad partnership i've already
mentioned we've been very excited that
that has stood up and we're actually
utilizing that partnership right now as
we support sierra county
we have obtained significant grant
funding over the last year we obtained
the one million dollar grant to assist
with coveted vaccinations from fema
we've received two grants with a total
of fifty five thousand dollars from
nacho that's the national association of
city and county health officials and
then we just secured another forty two
thousand nine hundred ninety seven
dollars from the new mexico department
of health so
when it comes for budget approval we're
not just taking we're also finding other
sources to help build the resources
within our area
and the last one there are the major
activities is we've really started
refocusing our plans and our efforts
towards community lifelines
during a disaster maintaining community
lifelines and or rebuilding community
lifelines because if we don't have the
community lifelines in place then the
individuals don't have access to the
things they need to successfully live
within the community
so that runs the gamut from
food supplies to transportation to
medical
to energy and
there's a whole science on community
lifelines but in general we call it the
whole of disaster response we're looking
at the entire community and getting the
community that's affected back up to as
much of normal as we can we can't help
necessarily every single individual
every way they need but if we can get
the lifelines in place then at least the
community has a good chance of recovery
so specific to our planning and
preparedness we have completed our
regional fyra
the thyra this is the first time that
the thyra applies to more than just dona
ana county it also applies to luna
county otero county sierra county
and the reason is if it's happening to
one of them it's impacting us one way or
another so we felt it was appropriate to
actually pull those together the threats
and hazards that were identified now
over a year and a half ago were flood
pandemic hazardous materials releases a
cyber attack terrorism and wildfire and
we have gone in now we've completely
rewritten our flood response plan we're
now working on our cyber plan
which has not existed before
so that one's having to start from
scratch pandemic we got a lot of
practice on so we are now doing our
after action on that and
reworking it
we have completed a tactical
interoperable communications plan that
covers eight counties in our
preparedness area so that if we are
assisting each other we have the ability
to talk with each other
we have improved our flood resource we
have obtained a portable sandbagger
based on grant funding and large
sandbags
for anybody who's handled sandbags
before we probably have handled the 40
pound version the small ones that you
can stack a whole bunch and and stop a
little bit of water
we have now obtained some that are three
foot by three foot by four foot
so that we can stop large amounts of
water we discovered that the small
sandbags can be over topped pretty
easily the large sandbags really help
when we're talking about protecting
those community lifelines
we are updating our current plans and
annexes including the development of a
mass fatality management for both mass
fatalities before hospital treatment as
well as mass fatalities that occur at a
hospital
and we are spending all an increasing
amount of effort on monitoring the
potential for a migrant crisis
we've all been through the 2019 migrant
crisis we continue to monitor what is
taking place and we do have a short plan
is what we call it it's not detailed out
like we have our other annexes
but it does talk about what our trigger
points are
where we would come back and say we need
to probably consider declaring a
disaster
with that being said
we know that the federal government is
very
skeptical of a local government being
able to declare a disaster on the
migrant crisis
because they are putting a whole bunch
of federal effort into trying to prevent
there from being a crisis
fema has front loaded a lot of resources
into our area they've obtained 51
charter buses
so that if our local ngo capacity is
exceeded
that's level one or tier one response
they will kick into tier two they'll
bypass trying to give hand people off to
the the ngo welcome centers and instead
we'll load them on buses and get them to
dallas denver and phoenix the major
transportation hubs around us
because if the ngos are backing up we
know from experience it's probably
because they can't get plane tickets or
bus tickets for people to get out of
here it's not like these people want to
stay in our communities they're trying
to get to where their sponsors and
family are so fema's plan is at this
point tier two response to
really beef up that transportation
infrastructure and get people to those
major hubs tier three is where we would
look at having to actually call a
disaster because that means that they're
just having to release people like they
did in 2019 on the street and at that
point is where we would look at
locally we really need to step things up
on resource building
the county provided us with 1 million
dollars to create an all hazards
disaster shelter for 300 people
that is underway it consists of both
congregate and non-congregate
capabilities at the county fairgrounds
people often ask us why the county
fairgrounds that seems a long way away
yes and that's one of the reasons why
because we don't want to put a disaster
shelter where it might be impacted by a
disaster if the fairgrounds is impacted
by a disaster well then it's not here so
nobody needs the shelter but if it's
here in our population centers we we
need to be able to get people to a
relatively safe place and it is much
higher than the rio grande river
especially right now
in addition it gives us a capability
that by federal regulation we were
supposed to have in 2008
which is the ability to handle animals
that come in with people
the number one reason we know that
people do not go to a shelter is they
can't take the rest of their family
their animals
by being able to utilize the fairground
to the maximum extent possible we've got
the ability to take care of not just
traditional pets like cats and dogs we
can take care of the miniature horses
the regular-sized horses the cows the
sheep the pigs
even the chickens
so you know it really does beef up what
we're able to do we put this plant into
effect last year and now it's really
nice to see it bearing fruit because the
state came down and did an overview with
us a few months ago and then they
started utilizing fairgrounds just two
weeks ago up in northern new mexico when
the same thing happened so it's nice to
see that our concept is actually
been tested and is working well
we also have a portable sheltering
capability coming out of that because
again we know that we may not always
need to put 300 people at the
fairgrounds we may need to shelter 20
people 40 people so we do have two large
army tents coming from a local las
cruces business out on the west mesa
called alaska structures
these are really nice durable structures
complete with heating and cooling so we
can shelter
comfortably
20 people per tent if we need to we can
bunk people and do 40 people per tent
and we can move those anywhere we can
stake down and so we have identified a
number of places where they may go to
include
city parks
school grounds and other spaces that
also provide some good opportunities for
people for mental health care because if
if you're having to live in a disaster
shelter for a while the ability to go
out and just in a green space and walk
around and enjoy some grass and trees
really does mean a lot to people
it also allows us to take into account
access and functional needs
most of our shelter plans up until last
year
centered on putting people in school
gymnasiums
we found out in 2019 school gyms are
terrible
because there's school
and uh you know the school has plans for
those gyms it's not like they built a
big huge empty space and didn't need it
so
they need it for their regular
activities like pe classes they need it
for
whatever events they have taking place
so it just wasn't ever a good plan and
it really didn't meet those access and
functional needs so by being able to
develop a non-congregate capability
people who have special needs like
not being around a whole bunch of other
strangers will have that opportunity
the county's also provided us right now
with four hundred and eighty thousand
dollars for a new oem eoc building we
also have secured another 1.5 million
dollars from congress we're going after
much much more because the building is
going to cost a lot more we're looking
at a roughly 25 000 square foot building
on a roughly 10 acre site
we have the architect selected right now
and we're under negotiations and we'll
be taking a contract to the board of
county commissioners
hopefully within a few weeks to
solidify that architectural service and
start the formal design we are down to
three sites two of them are in the city
of las cruces one is very close by and
one is owned jointly by the city and
county so if that emerges based on the
architect's assessment as the top site
we're hoping that this body will
agree with the county to
allow us to put that facility at that
location i'm not going to specify where
it is because
other people may decide to start buying
up land around it in anticipation we'll
wait for the formal process to go
through but hopefully that's something
that we'll be bringing back soon
the county also provided another 127
thousand dollars for web eoc which is a
cloud-based software package that allows
us to share information among our first
responders among our elected officials
that software is currently being
specialized customized for us right now
so by mid-june we hope that it is
available and we can start rolling out
some training and we also received
another ninety five thousand dollars for
some new vehicles ratings and trailers
so those are resources we've been
building
within that portable sheltering
capability
we also are getting light tower trailers
and portable generators that can be
utilized outside of just the portable
sheltering so if we have a
city facility for example that suffers a
major power failure but we need to get
it back online in at least some level
we'll have a portable generator that may
be able to meet some of those needs same
thing with the light towers if there's a
major disaster and first responders need
to work 24 7 and they need supplemental
light we've got those to be able to do
that
on the mitigation side we have done
floods
flood mitigation down on la union
we have a oem flood committee that is
giving us guidance on mitigation and in
fact we have a meeting with our flood
committee this thursday
which will include a disaster exercise
with them
and we are seeking additional mitigation
grant funds were
we put in right now for 3.5 million in
disaster mitigation funds specific to
flooding and we'll continue going after
more of those based on the guidance we
get from the flood committee
on cyber security that team has been
stood up now for several months
we are looking at with our
future oem facility providing a place
where our local governments can
back up data to so that there is an
off-site secure location
that will be a little bit resistant to a
potential cyber attack to provide some
of that assistance and we are working
right now with the federal government on
trying to do a cascading failure
analysis of our community lifelines
should there be a cyber attack
and we are also working with the el paso
city and county office of emergency
management luna county and otero county
on a regional supply chain logistics
plan
because
everything that comes into one of our
communities is probably what supports
all of our communities we get it from
the same trucks that are serving the
same stores we've had really good
participation from
companies like walmart's
global emergency management program on
how we can help or they can help us uh
with a major community response we're
working with family dollar
you'd be surprised how many family
dollars there are in a community if we
can hit the walmarts the family dollars
and the albertsons we've pretty much met
at least 60 percent of the grocery and
food needs for our communities
on the response and recovery side we did
have the flooding response the kovat 19
after action as i mentioned is underway
and we are still working right now on
the wildfires amanda did go up for a
week to support the state eoc she was
the very first local emergency
management professional that they
requested and so she was up there after
that apparently they liked it because
half of the rest of the state has then
been invited up to assist them
we told her we needed her back here
though they couldn't keep her
we are now providing shelter support to
we've provided it to lincoln county we
provided shelter support
out of that 300 person capability that
we've built up we provided
the shelter supplies for 300 people to
them
then we restocked and
las vegas and los alamos requested
assistance and sierra county we've
restocked and ready to support them
so upcoming and this is our last slide
we do want to continue doing these
annual briefings if you find them useful
for our elected and senior officials we
need to focus on that jpa so mr enriquez
and i will be very good friends uh or or
not
in the next six months
we will be working on that edition of
sunderland park and potentially others
to the oem cooperative agreements
ipaws is the national way to put alerts
on cell phones
we have that capability right now at oem
and mirvda is within a week or two of
having that capability as well
mirvda will be the primary activators of
it and oem will back them up should the
dispatchers be overwhelmed during a
disaster so that we can put out those
type of for example emergency evacuation
notices
the great american shakeout um mr p uh
mr
ikani
tamapal
brought a great idea of utilizing the
great american shakeout
as kind of a regional disaster exercise
it's fantastic so we are moving forward
with that so on october 20th of this
year at approximately 10 20. and so if
you're putting the date and the time
together you know
you may have an opportunity to
participate in the great american
shakeout the great american shakeout is
designed to be a an earthquake drill but
it doesn't have to be because most of
the emergency actions you do for that
are the same things you would do for any
other disaster
so you'll have an opportunity
to participate potentially in one or
more ways with a disaster
on october the 20th
we are continuing to monitor and report
on the covet 19 situation and we are
working on a new strategic plan because
once we get the oem building built we
will have accomplished over 50 percent
of what's on our current strategic plan
so with that i'm happy to take any
questions any of you might have
thank you steve thank you counselor ben
thank you
and actually thank you for allowing me
to go first because i do want to say a
special thank you to mr lopez and to
amanda as well for all the work that
you've done not only with
just the oem in general but the work
that you've done on the vaccine task
force i think
in my experience and for what i saw
during this time
your leadership really changed i think
at the direction
of how we received communication and
that for me was very important and very
vital to be able to make the decisions
that we did within the task force
and for the community as a whole and
as
you've been
i think so communicative this whole time
even now for this as a work session item
stephen came up to me and said we
haven't done this there's now
an additional two more of you that are
on here that haven't had this education
i'd really like to do this outreach and
so i talked with mr pealey and i think
that just speaks to
what you want to do for building up you
know collaboration and that way we have
these relationships established
when we have emergencies we're not
necessarily new to each other we have
that base of trust which you need when
we're going into these high
pressure situations and so i just want
to say a true thank you and extend my
gratitude for that just first off so
thank you
um
and that's honestly about it because
i've asked you a ton of questions with
these things but i just i
just want to say thank you i think it's
really changed a lot of that
relationship and i
i very much value your expertise and the
expertise of amanda and all that your
department is bringing so thanks thank
you mayor miyagashima councilor beta
just thank you very much for that
feedback and for your comments we've
appreciated working with you over the
past
year 18 months feels like 10 years
so thank you very much and thank you for
your assistance
councilman cuomo thanks mayor thank you
so much and thank you castrovita for
the fourth out of of this work session i
appreciate it i feel like i learned a
lot i'm not even sure if i had received
this information yet i know that most of
our
interactions with you have been through
covet and so um i'm glad that we get an
opportunity to do this i do have a
couple questions um you know just given
the realities of the fires in our home
in our state and
i'm just curious about um the threat to
dona ana county to our community on that
and maybe that's a question for you or
um i'm not sure who could respond that
but i'm curious about the fire threat
and then so then there is through the
oem
um sort of scenario planning for like
evacuations for how would we would
respond in the event of a fire flood
um any of those kinds of things
mayor miyashima councilor bencomo
yes we've looked a lot at wildfires in
fact we've
become intimately familiar with how to
look at infrared signatures at three
o'clock in the morning to see where hot
spots are and that is a skill we did not
possess a month ago
so so it's been actually beneficial for
us
it is
a benefit that we don't have as many
trees around us as other parts of the
state to dry out
we do have wildfires that have taken
place here principally in the oregon
mountains
the year 2008 we had two large wildfires
2009 we had another large wildfire 2010
we had another wildfire 2011 we had
another wildfire
and then we've been kind of on pause for
a little while so we are due for another
one we had one just a few years ago up
in the oregon pass
almost all of those are taking place on
the missile range or fort bliss property
so they take care of the management of
those and then blm takes care of things
primarily on this face
there are some homes that in the
unincorporated area that do get
potentially threatened and we do it need
to look at the evacuation for them but
it has not been
frequent fortunately for us because we
don't have the large trees but we are
due for some type of of wildfire we did
have a little bit of a burn just a few
weeks ago down in the bosque
and that's the expected we have those
the small ones that
are in the dozens of acres on a pretty
regular basis because when the river is
flowing everything's growing and then we
turn off the water supply by september
and it dries back out and it's ripe for
a fire fortunately the way the bosque is
designed or built our prevailing winds
are usually blowing towards the river so
it really gives us a nice big fire break
and the the town of messiah backed up by
county fire and city fire
are able to usually get that under
control
almost always within the same day that
the fire broke out
but the potential for things to escalate
with anything in town whether that is
caused by people who are utilizing a
grill too close to their home
people that are trying to fry a turkey
inside their garage
or
i mean there are a number of things that
really present fire dangers that are our
first responders the chief and deputy
chief could probably speak a lot more to
so i'll provide them with that
opportunity to to do so anything you
gentlemen want to add on fire risk
i mean it is the reason you have jobs so
thank you for pointing that out it's in
your it's in your title
i'm gonna have to ad-lib now um fire
chief jason smith for the record
uh for fire danger when you talk about
our wildland urban interface we don't
have very much or a very high level of
of risk because of the amount of worldly
roads and
just
desert
even though the desert is very capable
of running with underbrush and our
creosote and
everything else that grows in there
that's beautiful to look at it can dry
out
but coming up
in the beginning of june we'll be coming
to the city council for a resolution on
fireworks restricting those to paved or
barren land
that is our probably our next most
significant event uh that we're facing
thank you chief i was actually headed
exactly down that road just
ways that we can mitigate our own
risk here so i appreciate that thank you
so much for that answer
um
in events like extreme heat for example
which by the way i think we should
probably
turn on our cooling stations here pretty
soon but i'm just curious in the event
of
extreme heat which seems like the most
likely uh emergency for us right is that
something you also have
a a roll in and a plan for
miramira yagashima
yes extreme weather is one of our
thyroid identified issues whether it's
extreme cold or extreme heat
the question and this comes kind of back
to earlier in the presentation talking
about policy guidance this is actually
where we benefit from getting
information from you all as to what
level you really want us to commit
public resources and funds
towards responding
because if you say it's at 105 degrees
we say we call that june right next week
right so
you know but
certainly most people in our area
not all
some are especially in the high social
vulnerability areas that is taxing by
itself
but certainly when we start talking 115
to 120 degrees now we're exceeding the
capabilities of a lot of people in the
community and that may be where we start
hitting a disaster level and at that
point we do have the potential to stand
up cooling centers the city of las
cruces actually has a plan to utilize
senior centers and recreation centers as
cooling stations the library city hall
and those make absolute sense
it's much more challenging actually on
the inverse which is the extreme cold
again if we get down to 25 degrees
that's really not that unusual if we get
down to 15 degrees 10 degrees fahrenheit
you know we're now well below freezing
and if we're going to stay at that
temperature for 96 hours plus
that that may itself be a disaster that
we need to really start looking at and
preparing for and then our cooling
centers
don't work out that well because the
temperature extreme that's really cold
is happening at three o'clock four
o'clock in the morning and those
facilities are not open so uh you know
if there is that expectation to be able
to do some of that that's where policy
guidance from this council can really
help us start making preparations
towards that direction okay that's thank
you for that that's really helpful and
perhaps that could go i mean i don't
know if and really any prc but
potentially health or quality of life
piercy could begin having some of those
conversations just because they feel
like
you know if these fires are not a
wake-up call for us for climate change
action i don't know what is and again i
think we have to assess our own risk and
i think the reality of us in a drought
and extreme heat that's that's
possibility and so i think that is a
conversation worth having in one of the
prcs regarding policy
um it seems like today our three
presentations were well aligned um and
because we just had one on the crisis
triage center i'm curious if you have it
seems like you do an excellent job at
collaborating with multiple different
kinds of agencies i'm curious if you've
had a conversation with the triage
center around the kinds of crisis
services they could provide very much
you said it right for people who are in
these facilities potentially for a long
time how that could impact their mental
health
miyagashima councilor ben como
the crisis triage center was actually
utilized by us before it was utilized by
them i remember that i realized that in
2019 during the migrant crisis
i
was very fortunate in my prior position
to have
advocated for the development of that
crisis triage center been there at the
the ground breaking and then the wait
wait wait for it to actually get to
being operational
really happy that it is operational and
it is absolutely something that we have
listed down as a resource in order to be
able to connect people too
we actually though start much earlier
than that
when we start talking about the mental
health and our voad partners have been
very instrumental in this
not only are we providing from from the
office of emergency management stockpile
that the county helped fund things like
blankets and pillows and cots
we actually have things like crayons and
kids packs
and it's not just kids that need crayons
it's amazing how many adults will sit
there with a coloring sheet just for
that kind of mental health break
so we're really trying to provide
something early on provide recreational
opportunities early on through our voad
partners and some of our voad partners
do have dedicated mental health
capability to bring to the scene and
then through the southern new mexico
medical reserve corps one of the
training areas that we have identified
for this next 12 month period is being
able to provide mental health first aid
so that those people when they're
helping us on a disaster know what
they're looking for to identify somebody
in pre-crisis
be able to do some interventions or
somebody who is in crisis recognize it
and help connect her resources great
well i see the clinic or director here
so maybe you can connect don't miss the
opportunity to connect before you leave
today
um and then so just so i'm clear you now
oem is the key entity in donate county
that will be
sort of
the head of um when we if we start
receiving asylum seekers again
mr miyagashima councilman como
no we hope not okay if we are doing our
job well working with
the federal partners and we've been
working very closely since january of
last year um
and with the ngos if we're doing
our role well we will never hit tier
three
okay it will be able to be handled at
either tier one through the ngo network
or tier two by getting people using
those federal assets out of the
community and to those other
transportation that's right so so we are
hopeful that oem does not need to be
utilized at tier three okay but if need
be then yes we are prepared to do so
we've even identified some of the
transportation
companies that we might be able to
utilize because we've assumed that by
that point all the local companies are
maxed out
so we actually amanda and i
looked at it how do we bring in people
um deadheading is always the issue you
know you take a bus full of people
somewhere and then you got to turn
around and bring it back without any
paying customers on it so we kind of
flipped the script a little bit and
figured that if we contact people in
dallas and denver and phoenix
hire the charter companies there to come
pick up they're not dead heading back
they're coming to pick up their their
transportation people are a lot more
willing to come get their opportunity to
make money than
on the other side feel like they're just
burning money on the back end um and we
think that that's probably a solid plan
uh we obviously are not at the point of
trying to write any contracts with
anybody um
again because fema believes that with
the 51 charter buses for this
region alone
they're pretty confident they can meet
that
we've also leaned forward a little bit
and pushed them that
we know in our conversations with el
paso office of emergency management
the el paso international airport is a
pretty much max capacity with their
regular passenger flights
but we do have air assets
here in dona ana county
some that you may vote on every once in
a while trying to create passenger
service for
and maybe fema looks at charter service
through the two large airports here in
dona ana county okay if that really
comes to be the need and then we're
again we can work on process and
throughput rather than trying to keep
people for a day or two days or three
days in a shelter environment
if if they release them and we can get
them straight on and going we can work
with ngos on the other end to do that
reception and help for them get to their
ultimate destination great thank you
that's great to hear about those charter
buses that's incredible and i just have
one last question and it may be a little
bit controversial and i honestly don't
mean it to i just
um
really lessons learned i think
especially after what we saw in el paso
in 2019
and i know that border patrol is a big
agency here in our community however i
think
it's important that oem and all the
agencies
when planning for emergency scenarios
that the use of border patrol is minimal
or at least very behind scenes because
that will impact the way that our
undocumented
neighbors
are able to receive emergency services
and and i say that you know
they were a big agency in el paso in
2019 and a lot of people who are
undocumented didn't go to the hospital
to seek help medical help and i just i
wanted to note that and
wonder if you've thought about those
kinds of things particularly because of
the community we live in
mayor miyagashima council bencomo
that's a great comment and
yes we have thought about that in fact
my experience with that started in 2006
with the hatch flood response because
border patrol was the first agency there
and they were performing rescues with
people and so we did a lot of outreach
back then
in my former role asking people because
we were second there because we had a
lot of four-wheel drives from the
university
you know
did that cause you any concern
and the vast majority
it did not there were some that it
absolutely did and so it was a very
sensitive balancing act
but we also were
pleasantly surprised that quite a few
were happy that their federal tax
dollars were helping them
they were pleased to see it wasn't just
local government trying to to save their
lives that it was all hands on deck so i
think that's a very
very careful balancing act that we have
to look at with each disaster sometimes
border patrol is just always going to
beat us there first
sometimes they're the ones
i try to use this carefully here
bringing us the challenge
in which case that partnership is very
important and and the optics probably
are very different and then yes uh you
know certainly there are segments of the
community and some disasters where
that's going to be a very big concern
thank you so much i really appreciate it
thanks mayor
council flores thank you mayor and thank
you mr lopez it's wonderful to see you
in person you look quite different
i barely recognize you and again thank
you so much for your presentation today
you mentioned something about
the the
fema coming in in case of mike migrate
you know we have migrants coming in and
i believe you said that the federal
government i maybe i heard wrong
didn't want
local governments to
do anything to that of i mean pretty
much that effect what exactly does that
mean
yagashima councilor flores
we've had some very frank conversations
with elected leadership in washington
d.c
and
they know that if local governments have
to reach a level of declaring a disaster
over the migrant situation
that it will reflect in a particular way
on those elected officials in washington
dc
so they are
trying to
front load resources
and plan
so that it never reaches that level
i'm hopeful that they are their plan is
is going to work it's a published plan
it's 20 pages long and for the most part
uh it looks
very good and is very much in line with
exactly those three tiers i just
described to you but they do acknowledge
that third tier does exist it's only one
paragraph out of 20 pages but they do
acknowledge there may be that time in
which we reach that level and that's for
us at the local level important to
recognize where it is because if we
start expending
our local financial resources
if we haven't reached that love the
federal government agrees yes this is
beyond what we can do
our ability to request federal funding
for reimbursement really goes down so
for example the federal government put a
lot of money into the emergency food and
shelter program the efsp
and out of that over six million dollars
has been given to ngos in las cruces
specifically to aid in developing
capabilities for migrant welcome centers
and reimbursing them for those expenses
on a per head basis
so
they're really trying to do everything
they can to keep that network
functioning as much as possible
so they don't have to hit tier two much
less tier three
uh mr lopez so have you seen those uh
plans that they have because my fear
is that
government any government
local government for example sometimes
moves move slower than molasses
on a cold day in january
so
is the plan that they have that which
they want to implement to assure that
the local governments don't go ahead and
do stuff
is that pretty well defined and
my concern is that um
they didn't come through last time and
and they knew pretty well we all know
very well they knew it was coming
um
so
you know we might be caught between
between a rock and a hard spot
when uh you know when push comes to
shove and
and i don't want to be in a position
where
we're going to be fearing lack of
reimbursement and not helping people
that need help
so
is that pretty much in place or is it
hard to tell at this point
and then fema
i mean fema really
mayor miyagashima flores
yes so fema was specifically tasked by
the white house to get together and what
they have done is they've created
regional
points of contact regional directors of
the response and in our area that is
actually the border patrol chief for the
el paso sector so
she has
the responsibility of managing that
all the way around so she knows that
if she starts releasing people on the
street she's actually saying the federal
plan
is no longer working so she is motivated
to keep that working now there are
people uh on
you know within dc within elected
leadership that think that it's
insufficient um and there are people who
think it's too much
which is probably a pretty good sign
that it's at least
adequate
when you've got people on both sides
i have seen the plan i can certainly
send that out to mr pealey and he can
disseminate it to the city council so
you can see the plan yourself
it is very reasonable and the fact that
they have front loaded that money into
the efsp program for the ngos the fact
that they have contracted already with
additional transportation assets is very
encouraging
i agree with you we never want to let
the federal government like the state
government told us in 2019 don't declare
an emergency we'll just kind of manage
this
if we need to declare an emergency at
the local level we need to declare it
and we need to make it public
we need to hold the other levels of
government responsible for helping us
out because this is not something we
have created and we need them to step in
they've got at the federal level the
responsibility for managing migration
and enforcing whatever laws and rules
and hearings that take place so we
absolutely need to hold that level
accountable
if we need to the caution is simply we
don't want to to start expending funds
expecting we're going to get
reimbursement
if we need to expend funds and we're not
going to get reimbursed and that's the
decision made by elected leadership i'm
i'm right there with you
great so so mr lopez
so along those lines
at what point would we
be in a safe position
of
making that decision how far along
would we wait till we have 19 000 people
in the city or do we wait when we know
that those people that people are coming
and and will the federal government
recognize that it's time to to move it
do you know
mayor miyagashima councillor flores
no we would not wait until there are
people actually on our doorstep and
fortunately because of the three-tier
plan that they've put in place
we will actually have a pretty good
indicator when they go to tier two that
we should be prepared for tier three
at this point they're still in tier one
they they've kind of hit the threshold
on it a week ago sunday um when they had
to to release a hundred people and there
was a lot of fear that today they might
hit tier two
however with a federal injunction on
title 42 in place that the injunction
took place
starting on friday
it's likely that we are not going to
leave tier one 1 anytime in the near
future
so
that's basically our trigger point
looking for tier 3 is if we hit tier 2
level it's time for us to bring all of
our elected government officials or our
at least city manager county manager etc
together and start talking about how
we're going to manage tier three
great thank you so much mr lopez thank
you mr mayor yeah before i get to mayor
pretend councillor flotus let me just
share this with you i i think steve was
aware of this but uh
acm enriqus and myself were on a
conference call last week with
chief of the border patrol and
and
so what the plan was and it's along the
lines of what steve was saying is
if you think back in 2019 when
the migrants were dropped off here and
then we had to scramble we had to put
them different places we had to find
volunteers when we couldn't find them we
had higher attempts
the
federal government feels that that
didn't work that well and it didn't and
so
instead they have as was mentioned buses
lined up i mean a lot of them ready to
assume to take them to the travel
centers where they want to go the big
cities the dallas the denver's and then
they may either stay there or they go to
wherever their sponsors are
so what i had
told them and what i had committed as a
backup if they don't if they run out of
if border patrol or
something was a run out and needed a
portion i figure our portion is at least
10 percent so
to at least pay for those buses to
instead of them
going here getting
a day and then going back and flying out
if they have buses they're going to take
them from el paso right to dallas just
go right there
and
they're good they're good with that and
so one of the questions i was going to
verify with jennifer was
i i think it covers it but that that
emergency
ordinance that council passed back in
2020 or 2021 i can't remember i think
it's 2021
should be able to allow me to use that
if i needed to
and so
and then the last question is
who do you have against fema you know i
used to be the national council member
to the director and um yeah it's uh it's
i read the newspapers okay
fema
really yeah okay well i'm very happy
that you're happy with fema although i'm
not i'm only i'm only speaking from what
i read okay
i read okay yeah good all right so with
that uh we have mayor from tim
thank you mayor
thank you steven it's so good to see you
i too am very grateful for your work and
your leadership um i can't tell you
how wonderful it was to be a part of
covet 19 task force and have you know
the communication flowing you know
amongst um you and others and and so i i
really appreciate you um
so i've often asked this who's your
superior who do you report to god
uh yes
yes that really depends on
where where you're looking if you're
asking at home my wife will tell you it
is her okay no doubt
uh if we're talking in church that's a
totally different answer but my wife is
second
but the who i report to
on an administrative a regular basis is
the county manager okay that did not
used to be that way that changed last
year it used to be to the county fire
chief
and last year the county manager saw the
benefit and need to
move the reporting directly to him so
that we were closer to both the
decision-making ability as well as to
the elected officials
great thank you i appreciate the
clarification
you know when i first got elected i
attended the national um naleo the
national association of latino elected
officials they have an emergency
management um training it was in the
region and in el paso um and i found it
extremely just very informative right
and so i would recommend that if council
members have not done it that there are
a few
um like naleo or nlc the national league
of cities that have those kinds of of um
trainings it's just it just puts you
into that frame of mind
considering all that's out there related
to an emergency i just learned so much
so my my next question was going to be
along those lines and then i saw that
you have the training that you're
wanting to do
with elected officials
would that
fall into what maybe this the similar
type of training that's offered by those
organizations stephen
mr miyagashima and mayor pro tem gandala
first let me go back a little bit and
say thank you for your comments about
the kovid 19 task force and the
communication uh greatly appreciated
there um and for a second i thought you
were going to say you appreciated coven
19 and i was getting a little worried
but the task force absolutely worked
well
yes the training that we are looking at
being able to offer is very much in line
with uh some of what you've talked about
we are actually
actively discussing
as soon as we can get that next person
on and the hiring the the posting closed
last wednesday so we're just waiting for
hr to give us the name so we can
schedule interviews and one of you on
this committee is going to be on the
interview panel and i'm not going to out
anybody
but listen to the nervous laughter uh
you know
the uh
as soon as we get one more person on
then we're gonna really start looking at
offering training through
the new mexico municipal league as well
as through the new mexico association of
counties
and amanda and i are both uh in the
process of being on boarded by the state
as adjunct faculty of the state to teach
a variety of incident management courses
so we'll be able to offer that locally
without having to go though i don't want
to discourage anybody from taking
advantage of a travel opportunity if you
can also learn while you're there yeah
no thank you steven i i think that's an
excellent idea
i was i thought very it was very
beneficial because you're with other
elected officials from
rural urban um and and and really as
the borderland right we're in the border
that i think it's important to build
those relationships and understand
um from a regional standpoint what
emergencies constitute and what the
you know the various municipalities and
counties can be doing related to those
those emergencies so just gate again it
gave you
just a really good
view of those kinds of things so i'm
glad to hear that we will be having that
training i think that's excellent
um and then in that training or um i'm
familiar because i worked a few years at
department of health the tabletop um
the tabletop
um
i don't know at events
yes are you considering those and if so
what could we um
you know what could we experience or
look forward to
mayor miyagashima mayor pro tem ganda
yes the
exercises actually follow a pretty
standardized process that start off with
a seminar or workshop at the low end
that gets everybody kind of familiar
with the concepts and with the plan and
then you build that into what we call
the low functional exercises like drills
and so we're going to be working with
the great american shakeout
that'll be very drill focused
followed by
if we're able to pull this off a
tabletop exercise so that that will all
take place that day and then based on
that
if it goes well we'll we'll build the
next year to the higher level which will
be functional exercises where we really
exercise larger components all the way
up to a full scale exercise
but normally we are going to have in
process at any given time at least two
or three lower level exercises while
we're working towards a big exercise i
appreciate that and then stephen lastly
the plans that you made mention the
strategic plan the other emergency plans
now do they vary from type to type like
active shooter fi you know wildfire
those things and if so
where can we find those and is there
like a shared drive where a counselor
can can
right access that so i have an
understanding of what they look like
mira miyagashima and mayor pro-tem
gandala yes we have we have what we call
the basic all hazards plan
and that covers anything in the general
how we're going to operate and what
we're going to be focusing on and then
we have what are called our
hazard specific annexes and the hazard
specific annexes are those things
specific to one particular type of
incident whether that's flood whether
that's a large hazardous materials spill
whether that's a large cyber attack or
whatever
we do not have a
hazard specific annex for active shooter
because the police department will most
likely have the
situation resolved from the active
shooter standpoint
early on that is
correct me if i'm wrong chief that's the
goal
within minutes if not seconds
they they train very heavily on that
they have their own specific plan the
fire department over the last few years
has been integrated into that to work on
forming up with police department
personnel
medical strike teams and rescue task
forces to be able to go in and pull
people out
so
we don't need to have a hazard specific
annex just on that instead what we have
is that mass care mass fatality incident
before those plans start to come in if
we've got a lot of people who did not
make it then the mass fatality
may be something but we are working very
closely with our hospitals
we actually had two meetings last week
talking about kind of the next steps and
we've been meeting quarterly with our
first responders what we call the first
responder advisory group
to see how we can
really evolve for our county
specifically when it comes to active
shooter
beyond what has happened in other parts
of the country and i'm going to use el
paso as an example they've told us we
can talk a little bit about it
el paso when they had the walmart
shooting
leading up to that had done a fantastic
job of planning and training and
exercising and they worked on a triage
system where they would put triage tags
on every single patient in fact every
tuesday of any given week they had what
they called triage tuesday
every tuesday every patient got a triage
tag just to practice that that process
and on the day of the walmart shooting
not a single triage tag was put on any
patient
because the reality became it's about
saving the lives not putting a tag on
somebody
and they all did a fantastic job
doing what they needed to to save as
many as they could
and that really started changing the
dynamic when it comes to an active
shooter response of trying to do triage
at the scene
versus the reality of
they may come in an ambulance
they may come in a fire department squad
they may come in the back of a police
car they may come in the back of a
pickup truck to the hospital and really
the place that we may need to do the
triage is out the hospital rather than
at the scene of the disaster so those
are some of the discussions we're having
now and that's kind of an example of how
a hazard specific
plan can really
change as we learn things from the
actual world incidents
i appreciate that stephen i do i just
you know even in some of those
those times when some of the schools are
shut down right that we're receiving
calls texas you know instant message
about you know my school is
on lockdown and do you have any
information and often you know the
answer is no
because
really the communication is might be
happening with chief
with the superintendent
but i i have felt that and i know
there's reasons why believe me i've been
in enough of these situations
um at my other job
that
i understand why it sometimes
you don't communicate a lot of things
out to the public but i want to make
sure
that as city councillors we have what we
need to be able to
right
give information to our constituencies
so that they understand how to respond
or know that their loved one is safe or
whatever whatever that is and
you know i i feel like i i'm thinking
there isn't a shared drive where those
plans are so i'm recommending that there
is some sort of shared drive where any
of us can go in
and and um
right and and
understand what that plan is at least
the basics and that someone from the
public can do so
as well and i don't see a lot of that
kind of information sort of being
you know shared regularly and i think
those things are important and i think
we're all sort of thinking about what if
a wildfire happened here what would i do
and how would i direct right
constituencies uh let alone my family
right to a safe space so i i'm i'm
thinking of those along those lines and
i think to me that's important that we
know how to communicate with our
constituency how much to share with them
what to share with them all that
so thank you thank you mayor mayor
miyagashima councilor gandara just to
kind of follow up on that
so there is a place you can find some of
that information right now and that's
the dona ana county website
but it has not been maintained
and i think this is probably a really
good time for us to talk about whether
it should also be reflected on the
city's website
the city of las cruces i think it would
certainly make the information
much more available there are some
components of those plans that cannot be
made public such as the cell phone
number of the chief he doesn't want
those calls at two o'clock in the
morning um
and
at the same time we don't want to put
together put out our cyber attack plan
because i know somebody from another
country will download it quickly uh and
then use it against us but there are
absolutely parts of it that are public
and and it's great if the public
actually accesses it
when it comes to i'm glad you really
brought this up
because it's something that i glossed
over real quickly
one of our changes in our office
structure and how we respond to
incidents
is
we're shifting a little more towards
what's called the incident support model
for many years it was all about incident
command incident command incident
command in the emergency operations
center
and yet at the scene of the incident it
was incident command and you ended up
with two operation section chiefs two
incident commanders two logistics chiefs
and well that just really creates
confusion if incident command at the
scene has it the eoc really should be
functioning in what we call now starting
in 2018 the incident support model we
shouldn't be trying to direct what
happens at the incident we should be
facilitating a number of things and i
think kind of to your point
the very first thing that's identified
an incident support model is
situational awareness and that really is
we send somebody from the eoc to the
scene to gather information that can be
shared back so we can share it with
others so the chief isn't getting a
hundred phone calls from everybody that
does have his cell phone number already
and we can actually put information up
whether it's in web eoc or directly
shared
to the senior and elected officials so
you know what's going on and we'll
clearly say this is able to be shared
please do not share below this
so that at least you're aware of what's
going on and you can tell constituents
here's what i can share with you i know
there is more going on but i can't share
that we will rely heavily on the
incident
whether that is a
unified command an incident command
whatever the command structure is at
that scene they will be the ones who
guide you know what we can put out but
at the same time they may not know what
we're doing on the back inside such as
setting up a reunification center
setting up some of the mental health
components towards recovery and those
things so at the same time that person
on the scene can then know the other
components that are working in the
background so they also have situational
awareness of the big picture because to
be honest the first
two hours three hours of an active
shooter incident they're gonna have way
more work than they have bodies to
manage and they're still gonna be busy
for weeks afterwards so
chiefs anything you want to add in on
that
thank you sir fire chief jason smith uh
mayor mayor pro-tem
i would use this as a time to
advocate for city council and city
administration to take the ics classes
that are geared towards
your positions
to start to understand the way that the
ics structure will work and how we
function on scene because i really do
appreciate steven's comment on the
support function
um
it doesn't
when we're having an incident or there's
a declared emergency who we report to
doesn't doesn't matter anymore um you
could have a firefighter who is incident
commander of the scene
or you could have the fire chief
lord help you
but
if we have that base
education and that experience amongst
ourselves that's shared we'll know how
to fit in and when we have those pii pio
discussions or releases
it'll help you to understand why we're
not sharing everything so
so take steven's class
that's why i've said those are those
classes are very important because it
takes i mean it
delineates all of our roles
um very specific and it's not what you
think either
and so please
you know like i said naleo and these
other nlc there's very specific classes
cheat that you're speaking to
if you have a you know
schedule of those classes please share
with us i think they're important i mean
i i did it six years ago so i'm very
familiar but i also spent 10 years at
the health department where we did a lot
of this
as well
and there was another question from
councilman como about what exactly is
ics so to put him on the spot i'm going
to ask deputy chief justin allen to
jump in there he's sitting there so it's
uh deputy chief justin allen for the
record uh ics system is the incident
command system that was put into place
by the national fire agency um
1972. yeah so it started out with the
wildland fire service and then it has
morphed into what we use on a daily
basis our crews use they arrive on scene
they'll establish a command sure if it's
a multi-unit response and and then it is
you can upgrade it and expand it as
needed or
scale it back as needed as the event
evolves so that's what we use on a daily
basis it's very ingrained in the fire
service as well as a wildland fire
service and we also integrate it with
oem as well
anything else mayor pro tem
no mayor thank you so much thank you
stephen
yeah council corrine
thanks and i will be brief um i just
really wanted to thank you for for
bringing this and um i sort of wanted to
give a pitch to my colleagues i i worked
for the red cross where i became the eoc
liaison for the voad folks in
southeastern virginia and i the reason
i'm giving this pitch is in part
to emphasize the importance of local
leadership when we were there um us
marginalized i would say in every
decision-making process and for all it
was a very hurricane
prone place and if there were a category
five hurricane everyone in our entire
region would have to evacuate all of the
people
something like 600 000 people total in
the region and it would take 72 hours
for those folks to evacuate if we
reversed both lanes of the of the
freeway
and at that time the governor said i
will never reverse both lanes of the
freeway because
that would
possibly affect the commerce that we
might receive from your part of the
state so don't expect me to ever help
you
i will never do that
so
it was really just up to the local
leadership to put the priority on the
people who
who were there and constantly in danger
of this pretty serious um
risk and disaster disaster risk and so i
just want to say thank you for
encouraging us to think about this and
giving us opportunities of how we might
engage in in this type of decision
making and also
find places where we can sort of have
the moral clarity to say we're looking
out for our folks
because that's who's that's who our
constituency is and not
just defaulting to the state to sort of
tell us what that is because
um that experience certainly let me know
that you can't trust them to look out
for your folks so that was my
story all right
so thank you for that presentation
but i know a while ago a few years ago
we used to have a
something on our phones
for residents to
sign up for called nixle
and i don't know what happened to it but
fortunately efo and his team got it
started again and i think they're going
to be presenting it's i think they're
training on it right now and and then
we'll be able to allow residents to opt
in and then it'll be an immediate
message in case there's an emergency you
know what to do and and i'm sure we can
also work with our our other local
governmental bodies perhaps whether it's
the schools or things of this nature
so i think that that's really a good
thing but
i i do have a question so
in the event i i know it's going to
sound silly but i don't i'm not aware of
this someone asked me this i said you
know i don't believe we do but you know
some of the smaller towns that are kind
of in tornado alley they have like a
huge horn
and i know we we don't have tornadoes
although i think last year there was one
that was possibly spotted
but or was immediately went away but
other than if we were to have nixel but
what else do we have that could alert
those especially if they don't have a
cell phone or
you know things of this nature
mayor miyagi shima you are correct we no
longer have any storm warning sirens
the last system that we did have in this
region was owned by new mexico state
university it was a series of sirens
that went around the town but on a good
day you could hear it downtown
just right across the street here
in mms you learned that the financial
investment to put it in place was only a
fraction of the financial investment
required to maintain a rotating siren
system in a dusty environment
so often times when the sirens would be
activated they would be pointed towards
messiah rather than towards the campus
in addition the
maintenance of the network to those
sirens to be able to actually
activate them
became very cost prohibitive
and
the university
was encouraged to put those in by one of
the public safety professionals
when they had extra money the university
no longer has extra money for things and
they really had to do a cost-benefit
analysis on it and in doing that they
decided that
rather than having to cut a police
officer or a firefighter position to
maintain the siren system that they
would just get rid of the siren system
and instead
invest their money in something that was
much less expensive but much more
capable and that was what we now or what
they now call everbridge and the
everbridge system is exactly what you
were talking about that the city of las
cruces has purchased everbridge actually
services over 50 of the fortune 500
companies for their mass notifications
of all of their employees and customers
it's very capable
and i would encourage the city once you
are comfortable with it
to look at the next evolution
you're talking about it being
subscription based which is exactly what
nixle was
however
as a city government you do have the
ability to to utilize ipaws just like
the office of emergency management and
merv to have now right now we can
activate an ipaws message for you and
ipaws allows us to draw a geographic
boundary and activate every single cell
phone within that geography and not just
activate it right now but make it a
perpetual activation for the duration of
the emergency so if somebody drives in
after we've already issued it they get
it when they cross that geographic
boundary
which is very important in a mobile
society that we have that that
perpetuation of the emergency signal
everbridge is very it is one of the
systems that is capable of having ipos
integration we'd be happy to assist the
city team whenever you're ready to make
that or consider that next step of
integrating ipods so that you can
actually be clear to do ipods
activations and uh happy to guide you
through that process because
while subscribers are great and for some
notifications you want to just focus on
people who are willing to subscribe
sometimes you just need to hate
everybody and uh
the old days of sending it to their
landline phones
i think my parents and maybe eight other
people in las cruces are the last ones
with just land lines and no cell phone
and trust me i'll call my parents and
they'll they know the other seven so uh
yeah i think it's really a capable
platform that you all have obtained and
we're happy to help you grow that if we
can yeah
my mom has a landline too but but i was
going to just say
so this eyeball sounds very similar to
the amber alert i mean if we had that
amber alert
i think that's all we really need in the
event of a a city-wide emergency which
fortunately we
would have really had one
i think that's but so if we were to
still continue with the nixel
but then if it became
apparent that we needed something of of
this nature of ipol's
i think it would be good to have that
ready as a backup just in case
i think would probably be a good thing
mayor miryakashima absolutely and the
the everbridge mixel system can activate
ipods from within it so whoever's
activating it on behalf of the city can
choose which level of activation you
want to utilize and you're right it
sounds a lot like amber alert because
amber alert utilizes the ipod system
also
yeah you can hear that thing everyone's
phone's going up
okay well i think this this was pretty
very uh very important very informative
and very important and thank you for for
all that i will say that i don't recall
signing a succession plan lately usually
i do it every year that someone gives it
to me and i sign you know so i don't
know if it's if it's our fault or if
someone needs to get it to us july 1st
mr mayor july 1st okay all right
okay so um i think this pretty much
concludes our our presentation so you uh
you got your good hour and a half in so
you thank you i guess you were going to
get that and you waited here so long
thank you
thank you very much steve
okay i think that's it he full
so if there's nothing further entertain
a motion to adjourn
second
motion made by councillor beta second by
council ben como you're out of
counseling photos
christine
you hurt my feelings all the time you're
so mean
counselor i'm a counselor i mean that
christine
oh my god i've never seen him this is on
the motion to adjourn the work session
counselor beta yes councilor graham yes
counselor bencomo yes
councilor quran yes counselor flotus
to adjourn
no
of course yes councillor gandala yes
mayor yes
okay it's 502 pm we are adjourned
thank you
notice i'm very silent i'm just sitting
here i'm not
saying anything
ready for the agenda setting meeting
okay this is the agenda setting meeting
for our june
6 2022 city council meeting number nine
consent one non-consent two non-consent
to non-consent three consent three
consent for non-consent for
non-consensual five non-consent five
non-consent six non-consent six
non-consent seven non-consent seven
non-consent eight consent eight consents
you