i love you
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board meeting next will be our work
session of las cruces city council but
before we begin if you please join me in
the pledge of allegiance
please of america and to the republic
for which it stands
one nation under god indivisible with
liberty and justice for all
okay so today is uh monday april 25th
2022 it's approximately 103 pm
also a quick happy birthday to my middle
son frank
turn 24 and um
yeah yeah and with that we're going to
start with our called order so we've got
the action items the approval of the
minutes from our january 4th
excuse me january 24th 2022 tit board
meeting
motion in a second so moved gandara
second a beta okay motion made by vice
chair gandara second by board member
abeta christine
this is on the motion to approve the ted
board meeting minutes from january 24th
board member of beta
yes
board member graham
yes
board member ben cuomo yes
board member koran yes
board member flores
yes
board member gandala yes and chair yes
okay so we have three discussion items
first one is going to be the financial
update chris faber will be presenting
good afternoon mr chair remember i also
want to introduce our ex-official
members
i'm sorry chris is a commissioner
shannon reynolds from the county donate
county commissioner welcome commissioner
uh it's a it's a little bit we got to
get back used to it again so we're back
to regular distance and it's hard to
believe that we were this close which is
fine yeah so
so now i should not have any problems
wondering who said the motion in a
second
all right
there you go chris
good afternoon mr chairman members of
the tidboard uh chris favor economic
development i have um a couple
few slides
real quick a financial update
move into
and we can pause for questions after
that if you want an update on the
current tid projects
an update on the plaza shade
structure
process and then public works is going
to do an update on the compost street
redesigned study
so here the monthly revenues above
baseline for the tid starting with
fiscal you being in the fiscal year in
july uh you can see that you know
beginning in august they've been right
around 300 or 400 000 a month in
collections and holding pretty
steady revenue above baseline for the
fiscal year uh we're at about 2.9
million almost three million dollars for
this year which is up from the previous
years
the three funds 2815 which is revenues
and operations 5.9 million
fund 20 42.70 capital projects
unrestricted is 1.4 million
and then funds 4271 which is bond
projects restricted specifically for
street projects within the tid that sits
at a little over six hundred thousand
dollars
bringing the total uh
for the three funds in the tid to just a
little over eight million dollars
current projects so i'm
back here again talking about parking
lot 7. we've had some delays with the
structure coming in from the
manufacturer
covid supply chain those types of things
have really slowed down this process but
we spoke with the contractor this
morning and they're giving us a date of
approximately mid-may
for the restroom facility to arrive
once that's in place they'll begin the
demo of the current
restroom facility and then finish the re
the repaving of the rest of that parking
lot the first half was done
last summer and so they'll finish up the
second half
this summer an estimated completion
of about mid-august on that project so
campo street redesign i'm not going to
go into a ton of detail here because i'm
going to turn it over to public works to
give you a little more but just some
background on the project
about a four hundred thousand dollar
project budgeted from the tid about a
little over two hundred thousand dollars
was set up for this study
and the purpose of the study was to make
campo street feel more
pedestrian friendly and visually
look more like the rest of downtown so
they were working on a few different
things related to architecture
landscaping lighting traffic control
ada compliance
we did hold several stakeholder meetings
in january april and august
following um the
the recommendation regarding the
redesign we're looking at about six to
eight months for the actual design to be
completed there is money in the tid for
that specifically for the street
projects
estimated construction is probably
somewhere around 3 million dollars
any questions on any of those projects
board member flores thank you mr mayor
and thank you mr faber
can you go back to
slide
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that one
so um
in fy14
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why why does it go up and down so much i
mean fy
14 was 2 million plus a little over 2
million
but then it really goes up a whole lot
and then it really goes down like an fy
that was pre-coveted so why was that so
low so
the tid
part of the tid there was a match from
the state up until a certain point that
was around fiscal year
2018.
so you'll notice the decrease there had
a lot to do with the match
ending from the state so the rest of the
money from there on now was just
revenues above baseline collected by
this you know by the you know by the
city
so then um
you have that big jump in fy 22 to
almost 3 million and to what it and that
is in spite of covid everything we blame
on kovatkovitz so can we blame that on
covet too you know
councillor flotis or board member flores
you know dr pietas and i have spoken at
length about the tid there's some of it
that is still kind of
a mystery so to speak in terms of how it
comes in but but we've sort of narrowed
it down to probably three things one
inflation prices and have have sort of
caused a bit of an uptick um
and so in price you know inflation and
then also just in price price increases
but additionally we think that there's
been a delay in just the state reporting
back monies to
to the city so i think that if you see
that the large numbers for this fiscal
year probably accounts for some delays
during covid with reporting back to the
city as you can even see
in this slide here a substantial jump
from july to august and then it
maintains a pretty high level so that's
kind of what we've sort of figured out
was that the money gets collected by the
state then it funnels down to the to the
city
and
that's kind of where we're thinking
there's a bit of a delay in the money
actually getting you know sent down to
the city do you have any idea why it
takes so long or what the process is
that they'll take such because 2019 was
pretty low too and that was before
kovitz yeah
yeah it was right around a million
dollars um
you know we don't really know we've
looked into it and there's you know i've
reached out to other
other communities to talk with some of
their their tid boards to find out and
there's some similarities in some places
and and not in others so we're you know
it's something that we're always kind of
trying to figure out there isn't a real
concrete answer right now the best we
can do is just kind of narrow it down to
those three
but it feels like
you know especially if you look at
you know fy 20 fy 21 that's when you
know we did some of our budgeting for
this year and we were thinking we're
gonna be about a half million dollars is
actually what we budgeted for the tid
this past fiscal year so
so
then
it's quite um
unpredictable
and so it would necessarily make it
difficult to plan anything
or
just some yeah to some extent i mean
large-scale projects yeah with would be
a little bit more difficult yeah but
there's a healthy balance in the tid
right now to give us
you know funds to work with some of the
projects we're dealing with now so and
mr faber so there's no way of
you
there are questions perhaps that have
presumably been made to the
distribution of tid monies
questions of the state by rn by our
municipality other municipalities i'm
just wondering
um
from our possibly yeah i mean the
revenues come in through treasury i
don't know if there's been conversations
between treasury in the state
i've reached out to other communities to
see if they're
seeing similar trends some of them have
some of them haven't this is kind of the
three things that we've sort of been
able to narrow it down to so
okay thank you mr favorite thank you mr
mayor
vice chair gandra thank you mayor thank
you chris um this question has been
posed before and i know that when you
see if you go back to the slide chris
um we have to remember that
we had big construction occurring
which is
the two-way conversion the plaza so
you're gonna see
and i'm looking at elizabeth and
probably
others that have
have taken on this matt
mandy
i think you can very clearly denote sort
of the compare
when you have larger
construction that's when you're going to
see some of these higher
higher amounts because they're money
coming in
and then you see the correlation between
the state's distribution is different
and and it i don't know that it goes
away completely but if we want to have
more of a robust conversation i would
bet that leanne and others
i see her over here smiling at us
and she she could probably um explain
some of that
and i think it's important for folks
that are new
on this tit board to understand that
mayor mayor pro tem you're absolutely
correct the state did end in 2019
and you are absolutely correct about the
17 and 18 that was when we were
finishing up the roundabout and all the
construction that we had going on
so of course all that construction was
hit with grt as well
the tid did not have too much of a slow
start but 14 as you can see we had a lot
of construction in our tid plan we have
multiple projects that we worked on
remember we got a couple of sponge bonds
and we use those bonds to pay for a lot
of that construction so a lot of that
construction did have grt
i will tell you i will gander to tell
you that on our grt
there is only a two month delay
okay as they collect all the grt the
next month it's analyzed by taxation rev
they get all the
the
documents in from each of the um
the businesses and then they document
all that and then the next month we
receive a distribution check
i do not know i will probably
ask either economic development but i
would maybe
gander that the reason fy 22
is so high just like our own grt is so
high is because of the internet sales
tax there could be some businesses down
in this area
that do
sales online and they're now being
charged
and sending to other states and
throughout and they are being charged
uh gross receipts are they're coming in
they could be charged gross receipts tax
so it could be that there's a gross
receipts tax for internet sales that
it's coming in
one of the things i will tell you about
our state
on the reports that we get from them it
is only divided out by industry we could
give you that information by industry
our largest industry is retail which is
probably
most of what downtown
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give or take is
it's hard for me to know without
actually looking at
and maybe doing some kind of survey down
in that area to see what all you know
it's going on in the businesses and i
apologize but the right now that our own
general fund grt is growing and it's
mostly due because of the we went from
destination based to location based
and it's the um grt the increase in
internet sales tax thank you leanne i
know that staff worked diligently to
ensure that
many of the
the addresses are specific to the tid
district
i know that was something that
happened under andy humes
time
i also know that during covet
jennifer
through the downtown partnership work
very diligently with many of the
specific retail to move and to pivot and
move and i know people don't like that
word but i'm going to use it because it
happened they moved into internet sales
very
very quickly
and and i know there were a few meow and
company
bex
coas and and so
those i think all contribute to what we
we see here
currently and i think we can't forget
that that total if you move into that
slide it's like eight million dollars
there's a lot of money in there um if if
people want more specific and and there
was a time that tax and rev work wasn't
two months
it was longer and there was a lot of
dialogue that was happening from staffs
to tax and ref to try to figure those
things out so thank you leanne thank you
chris i think that's
important to know
some of my questions regarding
slide six
in terms of where the allocation is
was that from the beginning of when we
first um
determined in
the tid that this is where the funding
was going to go to revenue you know so
much to revenue and operations capital
projects bond projects or how does that
go how did that get factored in chris i
know you weren't here from the onset but
i'm sure there's others that can help
answer that question mr chair board
member um
i can tell you that all the revenues
come into 2815 and then they're
dispersed in the other two funds as
needed the money that's in 4271 is money
that's left over from other projects
that were specific bond projects for
streets
and then
the money that's in the capital projects
4270 would have been moved out of
2815 for projects in the past and so
some of it is like the parking you know
the parking lot seven and things like
that so but all the revenues come into
the first one and then they're moved as
needed
and and and the board is responsible in
determining what projects that funding
goes to
and remember there's a big project with
the amador happening currently
that that i think contributes to the the
revenue or the total if you will so um
thank you chris um i appreciate that
um i
i don't have specific questions about
the parking the parking lot or the
yamador but i'm waiting to hear a little
more about the
shade structure i think that's
really very um
well
since you passed very quickly on campo
well then when do you estimate the the
the project beginning and
completion
mr chair board member um gandala i'm
going to let public works when they give
their full presentation next they'll get
into all those details this was just to
kind of remind her how we got to where
we are i appreciate that thank you chris
board member reynolds and then board
member flores
thank you mr mayor
my comment was going to be first uh
what councilor flores you know ask the
questions about where the money comes
from and all that is actually and what
how we can plan it i think that was that
was a great question pro temp gondora
did a great job of answering and
addressing that as well as the other
lady however i would like to point out
just finally that
being able to identify and understand
where those revenues come from
is something that is important i think
for this board and other board and the
and the counselor board later so that we
can predict and anticipate what revenue
we're going to have
and be able to plan better to use the
money appropriately and so understanding
that and doing more d finding more
detail about exactly where this money is
coming from i think is valuable to both
this board and the other board as well
and so thank you
thank you board member reynolds board
member flotus
thank you mr mayor and thank you again
mr favor and thank you also um
where are you amy thank you amy oh there
you are
um i mean leanne i'm sorry um
so my question wasn't so much to
question what you're doing mr favor so
please understand that um
my question is directed is
to what the state is doing
and um
i just that was my question that was
that's my concern remains my concern
and you have no control over that but i
think that dr bayardis
started to
get up to
answer a question or address a concern
perhaps one of mine perhaps a comment
that mayor pro tem gun that i made
but
your input is always
invaluable dr baetis so
mr chair um
board member flores
let me bring this this this is the slide
right
okay
uh js board member flores just to
address your question regarding some of
the frequency in which it was reported
uh i just wanted to remind the board
that during copit uh there was a
suspension of reporting on some of the
taxes from for the federal and the state
level well not suspension but they they
were allowed to uh file later on uh for
some of the taxes so that may have
delayed some of the reporting and since
it is done in a in a case-by-case basis
by all the businesses they could have
very well hold back into paying some of
their grt and later on reported it which
is exactly what what chris was referring
to combined with some of the additional
things on the retail that was mentioned
by leanne as well as the inflation rate
which could have helped in jumping that
specific year
which is 2022
into that high level so it could be a
combination of all of those factors okay
thank you dr payatis and again thank you
mr favor but my then my concern is this
the accounting practices by the state
for them to be distributing that money
and not delineating exactly how it came
in when it came in and for us to have
that
and again for purposes of anticipating
what kind of revenue we can depend on
and to see whether the tit is really
working
you know just in terms of um and i think
that
we we can see that it's working but i
wonder if we can
maximize that or somehow i i mean i
i don't think i'm out of bounds by
saying that the state has an obligation
in my opinion
to give us that sort of an accounting
and that's
so when you talk to when you have dinner
with the governor next week be sure to
tell them no i'm just kidding you're not
having dinner with her but um but i do
want you to know that was the intent of
my per of the purpose of my questions
and again thank you very much mr dr
payatis and mr faber thank you
okay
anyone else
okay seeing none i guess we'll move over
to the
current projects update or
yeah i kind of kind of touched it
yeah so what i was going to do here is
just kind of jump into a little update
on where we are with plaza shade
and it's been a hot topic for several
months
um
we i put together a group of downtown
stakeholders made up of dlcp
arts and cultural district board members
the ardonian arts council downtown
businesses the farmers market and a few
event planners that do bigger events on
the plaza
and what we did was we went back and
reviewed all the options that were
presented to council i believe it was
like august or september of 2021
somewhere around there
um
as we recall no one was really too
excited about any of those options so we
started to look at what we liked what we
didn't like
and what some different directions we
could go
i'll be making a
more formal
recommendation to the city manager's
office once we pull everything together
but what we basically narrowed it down
to was
two different ways that we're looking at
and there's one here that we're
obviously a little bit more excited
about but we we met with the consultants
who helped us the first time around and
and presented one other particular
option for shade uh specifically on the
west side of the plaza that would deal
more with
the afternoon sun when it's the hottest
on the plaza so we talked to them about
some of the options there they're
actually looking at it and they'll be
getting us an evaluation
in here pretty soon
the other project that we
we really kind of liked was going back
to
what was sort of originally intended
with the trees on the plaza from the
beginning
so we met with the city forester
through parks and rec and talked about
going in and replacing the current trees
there with mature trees that would
provide
you know lots of shade in the summer on
both sides of the plaza
also would make it not a cold place to
be in the winter time because you
wouldn't have a permanent shock
structure providing shade year-round it
would just be
when it was most needed so
that's kind of the direction i think the
committee was really looking at going
was
more mature trees on both east and west
side of the plaza which would provide
shade in the afternoon when it's when
it's the most intense and obviously add
to the shade count downtown the tree
count which is you know
i think everybody can agree would
probably be a good thing so
well as things develop and i put
together my final report i will
certainly report back but that's kind of
where things stand right now so the
committee's kind of leaning towards more
of the
the green option versus a more permanent
shade structure
so chris when you said the first time
around are you talking about
seven six seven years ago first time
around yeah mr chair more in line with
what i think the original vision was is
to have different larger trees there
than what we ended up with now so kind
of going back to that
you know using the budget you know money
from the tid fund to sort of fund this
and do it do it you know the way that
would provide you know aesthetically
more pleasing to the plaza area but also
the shade that we would like to see down
there
but i think the the original one also
had
some longer
shade on there i mean it was
it was one
where i think if the city had purchased
all
three parts they could have have it
completely shaded half shaded or just a
fourth is that the one you were no i'm
mr chair i'm thinking specifically back
to just the portion about the trees from
the original idea of the plaza yeah not
not the designs that were presented last
year but like yeah
no no the idea that there'd be larger
trees on the plaza
sort of going back to that concept yeah
gotcha
okay
yes
thank you mr mayor and thank you again
mr favor
the the trees that we have there now
i've said this before
are really the wrong kind of trees
anyway so i hope that's an impetus
because those sycamores are going to
grow bigger than
um
i mean just bigger than big
i mean if we really expect that blasto
to be here 100 years from now or 50
years from now
the sycamores grow uh
they're just huge trees and i i don't
know why
that decision was made
back when
but maybe that be an impetus to get them
out now while they're still on the small
side but they're getting big already
you know i mean they've grown
so
um
what kind of trees do you think will
replace those you're just said shadier
but you really don't have any detail mr
chair board member florida
specifically i don't know that we've
identified a particular type of tree
part of it it also is going to factor
into this is availability
when that freeze happened in texas a few
years ago it really wiped out a lot of
available stocks so
finding mature trees is going to be more
of a challenge but
the specific type of tree i'm not
exactly sure but i do know that there's
some issues with the way that the the
soil was done and a lot of things there
that are actually prohibiting growth of
the current trees and their life
expectancy
isn't very long under those
circumstances so going in
doing it the correct way to allow those
trees to to grow under optimum you know
conditions would be ideal to sort of
provide a nice shade canopy down there
great well thank you i'm glad it's being
looked into thank you again thank you mr
mayor
absolutely
board member beta
thank you mayor and thank you mr faber
uh if those trees had to be taken out is
there going to be work that needs to be
done on the
patio portion of it and then is that
being factored into the cost
yes um mr chair board member beta so
part of the proposal we're putting
together would factor in everything from
removing the current trees there would
have to be utility work there to
relocate power irrigation work
you know work for you know on the soil
so all those things are being factored
into the project i still think all that
considered it's going to be a more
affordable option than going with some
of the shade structures which will be a
nice benefit as well but yeah we're
looking at all those all those factors
and probably looking at an ideal
start time would be in in january of
next year you get through the holiday
season get through the main event season
and ideally do it when things are still
dormant so it's ready to go for the
spring and fall season
okay thank you and then how long do you
think that it might take
as an estimate with that
if you started in january
mr chair board member beta we would
schedule we would shoot for some time
and i don't know specific because i
don't know how long it's going to take
to do a lot of that work but be ready to
go for sort of the
the late spring summer
event season so i i don't think we're
talking about huge amount of work there
to remove the trees and reduce some of
the the work there i think a few months
could probably be a good timeline but i
don't know until we get into the
landscape architects and they really
give us
details about how how something like
that would work okay thank you and thank
you mayor
okay anyone else
is that it or are you going to do the
company redesign mr chair so at this
time i'm going to turn it over to public
works for them to give you an update on
the compost redesigned study
good afternoon i'm steve pacheco with
public works and we brought the
kample street study
basically this is the public
meeting
show that we had
and
i know it's a lot of
information a lot of slides but we
wanted to
show
the board what
was discussed so i'll rapidly go through
the entire or all these slides
we this is just project limits
picacho to amador
we discussed
conditions
analysis analyzed all the different
options that we had
we
of course have a great need for
improvements along campo
and we discussed project goals
we talked about
trying to tie the
districts together
we talked a lot about landscaping
for the project
and how it
going to tie into the downtown
with the downtown street improvements
we talked a lot about the alternative
goals
um traffic calming being one of them
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pedestrian mobility
and parking and of course safety
we had a stakeholder meeting and two
public meetings that we discussed this
at
we had
our alternatives
that we sort of sifted through and came
up with a
final one this is our alternative here
that we came up with that has eleven
foot driving lanes
uh five to ten foot sidewalk of course
depending on right away there's a lot of
variants along the
compo
and
with landscaping we have a
bicycle path in the the final one we're
still finalizing this study but
it won't be elevated it'll be
street level
and
again this is just the concept from the
study and next we'll be
starting with the design
and we're thinking we should be
finishing this up in the next few week
couple weeks
study proportion and then we'll be able
to go to the design and that should take
six to eight months
so
end of the year beginning of the next
year
and that was
again i sorry there's so many slides but
i just wanted to show you what we
discussed with the public at the public
meetings
any questions for me
thanks steve without looking i'm sure
there's a question from board member
flores oh yeah there it is well you must
be a magician or something
um
brilliant brilliant mr mayor thank you
mr pacheco so what um where does this
begin where does gambo this
what you're presented where what are the
streets
that
it goes from
i have a
sleigh i think they're called
perpendicular streets
it begins they begin where in the end
picacho to amador
i'm sorry picacho to amador
oh so it's that big the whole stretch
there yes okay so then
how does that
there's that federal building there yes
and does that in any way impede or
affect or whatever anything that we want
to do there that the city wants to do
there do you know
that's one of the pinch points where
we're going to have a
narrowing of the right-of-way yeah and i
could see in one of the drawings that it
it was not it was skewed there exactly
and so they're not going to budge
they're just going to keep their little
federal land there or whatever yes
unfortunately there's not very much we
can do with the federal building there
so we'll have to work around it
but it will remain a two-way
yes
okay great thank you mr pacheco and
thank you mr mayor
board member ben cuomo
thanks mr chair thank you so much for
the presentation you flew by
i got it all right um
in terms of
the complete streets ordinance that's
currently being
worked and reworked and reworked some
more
do you feel like
this design is in line with those
principles yes we looked at
a lot of the
policies of the cities that and and they
are
the study took into
account those policies the complete
streets included okay great and then can
you go to the design
one where we can sort of see
you said the bike lane will be on street
level right
it wasn't in the design but you said it
would be okay
and then
um in terms of
yeah so it'll adjust the bike lane and
then it'll be raised for the sidewalk
yes correct
in terms of just because we had this
discussion at one of our prc's earlier
about
shade structures for
public transit stops
is that are you is that being taken into
account will those be put in place i'm
assuming how will public transit stops
be affected during this time and then
will you be sure to have shelters um it
is a bus route however
there is no there are no stops along
campo in this portion right okay correct
so they won't be affected okay thank you
so much appreciate it
okay anyone else
okay well thanks steve i appreciate the
update thank you very much
so chris does that pretty much conclude
your discussion items mr chair yes that
wraps up our presentation for the tit
unless there's any final questions
board member flotus no nothing okay all
right i think it's really good i can
think about i can ask maybe 10 more
questions but because i feel sorry for
the rest of you or have pity or
compassion i will not ask thank you
all right well then i'll entertain a
motion to adjourn
so moved by flores second aveda okay
motion made by board member florida
second by board member beta
christine
this is on the motion to
adjourn the tidboard meeting board
member abeda yes board member graham yes
yes
board member ben cuomo yes
board member koran yes
board member flores
yes yes
board member gandara yes and chair
yes
okay
oh he doesn't unfortunately he doesn't
vote we just take his money but no vote
yeah
so uh we're adjourned
give us a couple minutes and then we'll
start with our work session
you