[Music]
okay good afternoon everyone welcome to
the work session last cruise city
council
today is monday april 11th 2022 it's
approximately 1 pm if you please join me
in the pledge of allegiance please
okay now we're going to have our pet of
the week and jennifer martinez from our
communications office we'll introduce
them
good afternoon mayor and council i am
jennifer martinez with the city's
communications office
and i actually have a picture of a cat
and a dog this time i think i left it
open at my desk and
i don't know why it wouldn't open last
week but
we have them today i'll begin with our
cat bullion he is a six-year-old long
hair who may seem a little bit scruffy
past his uh exterior he is a sweet
gentle soul he loves to be pet but if he
does get too much he will very politely
let you know he does well with older
kids and people that treat cats gently
he's a very unique boy and he does even
have thumbs
and then we have edward this little guy
is uh well i can't say little guy he's a
little on the heavier end weighing in at
65 pounds
um he is a big teddy bear he loves
cuddles and he's doing pretty well on a
leash edward may need a little time to
develop friendships with other dogs so
if you do have other dogs at home he
would like to meet them before you take
him home you can meet bullion or edward
by calling the ascmv at
3820018 and making an appointment this
weekend there is an adoption event at
staples from 11am to 2pm on saturday and
there's also a reminder that all
adoptions are 50 for the entire month of
april and they're calling it the spring
fling adoption event thank you so much
mayor
thank you jennifer
okay so next is um jobs of the week and
dr francisco paya this economic
development
co-director or deputy director will
discuss
thank you mr mayor members of the city
council for this week's jobs of the week
um the public works department at the
city of las cruces is hiring a project
specialist with the engineering and
architecture portion and this position
is going to be paying 21.95
this position will be closing the 25th
of april for 2022. that's supposed to be
2022 not all the way to 20 000.
uh warehouse and backup delivery driver
we have this position available with
monger water service incorporated the
salary for this position was not
disclosed and this position will be
closing on the 24th of april of 2022
there's also a position available with
the commissary operations team member
and this is with keith commissary
network llc again the salary for this
position was not disclosed but this will
be closing on june the 8th of 2022 new
mexico state university is also hiring
for an administrative assistant paying
13 with 44 cents an hour and this will
be closing on the 29th of april of 2022.
we also have a position available with
glacier with opulence llc doing business
as all seasons windows and glass paying
14 an hour and this position will be
closing on the 29th of april of 2022 as
a quick reminder for the members of the
city council and the public in general
may is going to be the next uh
date for
the the job fair for the city of las
cruces in conjunction with the new
mexico department of workforce
connections so we will have those
announcements ready for you probably by
next week and promoting the job fair and
for a full list of jobs internships and
volunteer opportunities please visit
employeem.com and
www.governmentjobs.com forward slash
careers forward slash las cruces and the
information for the new mexico workforce
connections office is
524-6250 that's the phone number and
they're located at 226 south alameda
boulevard in las cruces new mexico here
in our downtown thank you mr mayor
thank you dr payalis
okay we've got three items on the agenda
first one being the amador health center
update and pamela angel the director of
the amador health center will looks like
she's going to kick it off
good afternoon thank you so much
mr mayor mayor pro tem
and counselors
i really appreciate the opportunity to
come today i'm sorry we could not be
here
on
i think it was january 24th or so
we had already planned a successful we
didn't know it was going to be
successful trip to the legislature
for more capital outlay funding for our
project
um
pamela even though i announced your name
can you state for the record who you are
my name is pamela angel and i'm
the ceo of amador health center
and i think i go right here
to pull this up
so
here's our powerpoint do you think i
should leave this side on
or i think i think if you hit f5 is that
what it is
that's what sword used to say f5 f5 in
fact i forgot to buy him a t-shirt and
says that f5 yeah great and then let me
just practice going ahead okay i love
the front cover of our powerpoint
because it shows one of the first weeks
when we were doing vaccinations
back in probably january february 2021
right when they came out
so amadar health center is located on
the messiah valley community of hope
campus
we're we were st luke's healthcare
clinic and we're actually going to be
going through a formal name change
hopefully by the end of
the the before the end of the year
and maybe even as soon as the fiscal
year
so we we were a free clinic for about 25
years from
20 from 1990 to 2015 when we received
federal funding through a competitive
grant application from hersa which is
the health related services
administration under the u.s department
of um
human
health and human services
and this federal funding was
just amazing it
it made st luke's health care clinic
become
in fuhc a federally qualified health
center
and it
it helped us join forces with 1400
community health centers throughout the
nation and with that with the funding
comes a lot of regulations a lot of
compliance
and a lot of technical assistance and
adherence to quality improvement on the
community health care system
some of
they provide some of the best care in
the nation to vulnerable populations
and we're very proud to be a member of
that it is a competitive grant process
so we're waiting and crossing our
fingers that our latest we have to
reapply for funds every three years and
we should hear sometime in may about our
next application so far it looks good
we've always received the
grant they really want us to succeed and
we do play a very important role in the
community
so we're some of you might be a little
bit new to mercia valley community of
hope i'm not sure some of you are new to
me
and congratulations
um
but
briefly you know we're on a 10-acre
campus owned by the city of las cruces
and our partners in the alliant we call
the alliance of hope our messiah valley
community of hope which is
kind of the building and land manager
and they have a the contract with the
city they have the lease and we have
subleases with mercedes valley community
of hope
we are right next door actually we we
surround el caldito soup kitchen they're
in the middle our clinic is to the left
and on the right is our amador recovery
program it's a substance use and harm
reduction program that's funded also
federally from
samsa which is substance abuse mental
health services administration
we're also very close to casa peregrinos
and
um jardine de los ninos which gives us a
great base to provide services to the
people that are in their care
so our mission is to provide access to
integrated to vital integrated health
and wellness services to our community
and promote dignity one life at a time
we really pride ourselves in being very
open and welcoming to
everybody my staff is really dedicated
to the population that we serve which is
about 50 percent
are people who are experiencing
homelessness
um about five percent are migrant farm
workers and then the other 45 percent
are
um people community members whether they
be low income or not low income i was
just at an event this weekend and i was
really excited to meet somebody who said
that they decided as a family they were
going to use our services and they
aren't a vulnerable target population
but by coming to our clinic
one it it creates you know a diversity
of patients so we're not just
you know serving this low-income only
population but it also provides more
diversity
and um
and they they recognize that we have
quality of care just as
you know just as well if not better than
other places that they can be served by
i was really excited to hear how
wonderful they felt
from the provider because i don't get to
be in the room
and see how our providers are caring for
people
a lot of our patients are
migraine farm workers
we did dip lower we were at about seven
percent before the pandemic but then
there was a lot of issues at the border
there weren't a lot of people
immigrating
and also i think people were just afraid
or not able to come
get out and come to our clinic so we
actually did go below the five percent
mark and those are just kind of a
you know a target of what
who we serve
there the services we offer and these
have really expanded with the federal
funding
we have
medical care chronic disease management
behavioral health counseling and
medication management we have a
prescribing psychologist we have a nurse
practitioner who's our medical director
who became a prescribing
nurse practitioner she got her
certification to
prescribe mental health medications and
she's going on to get her doctor of
nurse practitioner by the end of the
summer
we also provide hepatitis c treatment
and we have a couple staff that
specifically
focus on that and we do it through the
project echo program and unm so where
they can present cases to other people
in the state and get
information and technical assistance on
that
we've started in the last two years
providing hormone replacement therapy
and one of our goals of our board of
directors for a strategic plan this year
or last
2020 they did they met and did it no
actually 2019 was to reach out to the
lgbtq
community and i think on particularly
people who are transgendered i think
they particularly have it hard in our
comm
in throughout the nation in the world
you know a lot of people don't
understand it ten years ago i didn't
really understand it i think we're all
learning um
but they thought that because we're
really we pride ourselves on being
non-judgmental loving anybody who comes
from our door
that hopefully people who are
transgender will feel welcoming and they
do we've had some really
neat interactions with people
to find out how how much
what a benefit we were to them into how
they felt one woman early
a few years ago
who was an immigrant and she was very
poorly treated in detention and somebody
she found a host family here and she
came to us and she left in tears saying
you know she felt so welcome and i think
that's what we try to instill with all
our staff we don't turn away anybody for
failure to
you know to not have not having the
ability to pay but also
you know for anything behavior you know
if people
we we serve a lot of people who are
seriously mentally ill and we do have
certain behaviors we require them to
not
make people too uncomfortable but we
will work with them
on that it doesn't matter what they look
like what they you know
anything
if they're dirty if they're clean it
doesn't matter we just you know love
everybody in the community
it's kind of
um
i don't know our new logo you probably
can see some place here as a heart and
when the graphic designer came up with
that i thought that's really nice that's
pretty appropriate
so here i've um if you can see it
what's really cool is that in 2015 we
only had
394 patients
and that's the first year that we got
the federal funding and we actually in
2019 we hit our largest number 1024
and then covet hit and we went back down
to 847 but then last year we came back
up and now we're
going up even further um i think we had
988 in 2021 21
but some of the other services we have
matte medicated assistant assisted
treatment with buprenorphine narcan and
naltrexone
substance use treatment through the
amador recovery program that's located
in
the right side of the soup kitchen
and
farm worker health
soar helps people get
onto expedited social security
disabilities so they don't have to wait
years and years for something that
they're
clearly eligible for
dental currently we're referring our
patients to the donated community
college
but we're going to be breaking ground
probably in the next few months
on um adding a four operatory dental
suite to our building and then also
six behavioral health offices so that's
really exciting um almost all of our
staff is bilingual with spanish english
except me
and a few others
um we actually have some
couple people on our board our board of
directors has three people who are
monolingual spanish
about i think we have to have 51 of our
board members as patients
according to our guidelines of our
funder that's part of the compliance and
we're proud to see we have about 65
percent
and they really contribute a lot to our
organization
it was hard dealing with
working with monolingual people but
fortunately last year i was able to hire
a resource developer who part of her job
is to help with the board and so that's
been wonderful to see them really feel
included
we also have a pharmacy
and currently we're using it really only
for patients that don't have insurance
and about
37 percent of our patients don't have
insurance
and we do have an eligibility specialist
that helps people get insurance but to
tell you the truth from our evolution as
a free clinic
a lot of people are not going to apply
they're not going to
qualify for health insurance
and they're not going to be able to
afford health insurance
so we play a very important role there
for them
um
and then we have peer support
and those are people who are
experiencing
similar
you know it might be somebody who has a
substance use
um
i'm some of the term terminology changes
so you no longer say substance use
disorder you you say us
i think i don't know they use substances
at one time but they're in recovery also
some um peer support can be for a
behavioral health issue too and we have
peer support and that really gives
people who work with them kind of they
feel like they're up here and somebody
that can really understand the shoes
that they're walking in now as opposed
to somebody else you know a counselor
who might not have been
in that situation
um
here's some of our pictures this in the
center it's this beautiful van that we
got with our rehearsal funding actually
at the cares act covet funding
and we're here below it we're going i
won't worry about the pointer but here
we are
delivering jackets and masks to
farmworkers
suiting up to get vaccines here's one of
our vaccines for a child
and then events that we're doing
and um
let's see i think that's about it
i'm very happy to answer any questions
you want but before i go there let me
just say
thank you to the city of las cruces and
to let you all know that
when the
city council back in 1998
decided and maybe a little bit before
then
to create the messiah valley community
of hope
it's just phenomenal it's a jewel i
think of our city is that we have a
place
that the city supports
and that you know that we care about
people in our community who might not
feel you know cared about in other
aspects of their life and i just want to
say that
the fact that we're in a city-owned
building
allows us to get capital outlay funds
from the legislature
currently you're expanding the area
where we're going to serve people i
haven't read the master plan yet i got
it i got the final draft on friday but i
had a busy weekend
so but it's just phenomenal you should
be very proud of the legacy that you're
continuing
and as a person that's worked on the
campus
since 2001 for my first two years
i was the director of
my first 10 years
the director of messiah valley community
of hope and then the last 10 years
as the director of st luke's
it's just phenomenal what we've been
able to do there and how we're able to
serve the community
and five years or 25 years ago i was the
animal shelter director
and i think it's very interesting
because for 25 years
i've been working in city buildings in a
leadership position
it's been really exciting
and i don't have
um
city
retirement
because i work for non-profits
but
but i think it's really cool that i work
for 25 years in city buildings um you
the city's been doing the maintenance on
the buildings i've been working with a
lot of your maintenance and facilities
staff forever
if i wanted to i could have tried to get
a job in the government but i think
certain things like
dress code
you know
lack of adherence to a schedule
you know i was in leadership positions
so sometimes you know i've worked my 60
70 hours a week when it's necessary but
for some reason i just didn't want to
have to be at work at 7 59 every day of
my life
so for that reason
um
i
i never did apply for a government job
but thank you for your commitment um
another thing i don't know do we have
time limits here
i just want to say i was thinking about
this driving over
um
you know back in the i grew up in the
60s and 70s
and
i remember my mother was like you have
to take typing she knew i could not be a
nurse because i just wasn't good with
blood and things like that but i'm like
why
she said because all you can be as a
homemaker or a secretary
you know when i was growing up that's it
she didn't know you can be a ceo of a
community health center she didn't know
you know but i was kind of rebellious so
i did learn typing but i think most of
what i learned was i worked at the las
cruces sun news
for my first five years in las cruces
but um who knew back then
i guess i did i did i probably did
really well in typing um
but anyway to see seven
seven women up here
six sorry
i'm bad at counting
but it's phenomenal i guess i was
including the county clerk and the city
attorney so
it's great and um
mr peeley
um you're wonderful i'm so glad
you got their support this year he came
over
like his first month or two on the job
maybe first week and it was wonderful he
just came over showed up said hey i'm
the city manager and he was so impressed
by our campus
so
thank you for your support mayor we go
way back
i've lived in the community for 32 years
when our mayor was on the county
commission
so
thank you for the opportunity i'm very
excited to say when we went up to santa
fe we were able to get 740 000
740 or 760.
for your asset to add to your asset
because we we do go up there we do we do
it's your building
and it's your asset and we try to take
good care of it and
make it work for you as well as for us
in the community
does anybody have any questions
counselor ben cuomo
um thank you mayor i just really wanted
to say thank you pamela for your lovely
presentation and
for everything that you all do at the
center i think it goes a really long way
and
clearly there's a lot of passionate
people working there so i just really
wanted to say thank you
thank
you so so when i was a county
commissioner i used to wear my hair
really long to shoulder length so that's
probably why she got confused
now in all fairness uh pamela i just
want to take a moment to tell you how
much we appreciate what you do you know
you you serve such a very important part
of our community
and you've been able to do this uh seem
like very effortless effortlessly but
nonetheless um
which you which you provide as well as
the others in that campus that we have
is just incredible and i know that the
few people that have come from visited
from hud and they've been able to see
this the housing
housing and urban development have seen
this they've been really impressed with
not only your dip your center but the
others that we have and combined
they've always thought that this is the
blueprint of what
the future looks like for various
american cities and so thank you very
much for what you do and you do such a
great great job and we appreciate the
the
update that you have
i'll ask if any members of the public
have any questions that they may ask on
this particular item
okay seeing none well thank you very
much and so how many words can you type
a minute
i'm pretty fast because i took type i
took typing too yeah i got fast when i
was a reporter and i would have to
interview people over the phone and type
i think the fastest was 60 i could do
it's pretty good mrs white in las cruces
high school
19 about now but i still do pretty good
if you read my stuff you can kind of see
auto correct mistakes sometimes it helps
with my 500 emails that i have to do
every not so much every day now
everybody every other day i kind of skip
a day so thank you very much for all
that you do sure thank you all
[Applause]
okay next is going to be the
sustainability quarterly update
and lisa larocque is going to
were we going to be able to show that
video
i don't know i didn't have a chance to
check and see
so
mayor council i'm lisa larocque the
sustainability officer for the city of
las cruces the mayor asked to show a
great pbs
short
special on the
on climate change and what the latest
reports are from the international
panel of
intergovernmental panel of climate
change experts so i hate to have to
follow them but um i do think it's a
great video so i'm going to
uh let
uh adrian turn it on and you and
stanford turn now to climate change and
the un panel latest report stressing the
need for dramatic cuts in greenhouse
gases to head off the worst impacts of
climate change william brangham has the
details can we turn it up a little bit
jury has reached the verdict and it is
damning
this report of the intergovernmental
panel on climate change is a litany of
broken climate promises
in his typically blunt language under
secretary general antonio guterres was
withering towards the world's leaders
calling today's u.n report an indictment
of their inaction against climate change
the third and final part of the latest
ipcc report written by hundreds of
scientists from around the world finds
that greenhouse gas emissions from 2010
to 2019 were at their highest level in
human history at this pace the planet
will blow past the goal of keeping
warming below 1.5 degrees celsius in
just eight years
the un report argues that without
substantive sweeping changes warming
will make life on earth increasingly
dangerous and deadly while the report
cited some increase in positive climate
policies it said much more were needed
this report is principally focused on
the concrete actions that nations can
take to reduce the emissions that are
driving climate change
those include a rapid turn to cleaner
ways of generating electricity and using
it as the principal source of power in
our buildings and our vehicles
adapting the infrastructure of our
cities where over half the world's
population lives to make them more
efficient harnessing the ability of the
land
forests waterways and how we farm to
release less carbon and store more oven
human activities got us into this
problem and human agency can actually
get us out of it again it's not all lost
we really have the chance to do
something
so given those warnings how likely is it
that world leaders will in fact do
something i'm joined now by someone who
looks closely at clean energy technology
and broadly at the politics of climate
policy dave roberts writes the
newsletter called volts which is also a
terrific podcast dave roberts great to
have you back on the newshour this u.n
report again paints a pretty damning
picture warming is accelerating
the the pledges thus far to do something
about it are nowhere near enough
but they try to lay out all of these
things that we can do if we really get
our act together what do you take away
from this most recent warning
well it's interesting there's two two
parallel paths going on here with each
passing ipcc report on the one hand we
continue running out of time and not
acting fast enough and the sort of uh
cliff if you will of 1.5 degrees gets
closer and closer
but on the other hand there's the second
story running alongside which is the
tools we need to solve the problem to
mitigate the problem are growing ever
more sophisticated and ever more cheap
and ever more plentiful so the need to
do something and our ability to do
something are both rising alongside one
another so it's just a about
the intensity of the whole messages
cranking up and up and up i mean i know
this is one of the things that you have
written about that people don't really
appreciate the real revolution that is
underway in clean energy technology we
always hear about the doom and gloom
side and less about that flowering when
you look at that landscape what are the
things that give you some sense of you
know what this stuff really could work
sure well i'd say the biggest
chunk of decarbonization biggest single
item on the list is clean
electrification which means cleaning up
the electricity sector generating
electricity uh without carbon and then
hooking up the transportation sector to
electricity by electrifying vehicles and
then hooking up the building sector
to the electricity sector by
electrifying building heating and
cooling and then to the extent you can
hooking up the industrial sector to
electricity to use electricity for
industrial heat and process heat and
stuff like that
so electrification is the big
menu item and the tools for
electrification which are mainly wind
and solar power
batteries and then electrolysis to
create a green hydrogen all four of
those technologies are on what are
called learning curves which means every
time the deployment the global
deployment of those technologies doubles
their price drops by a predictable
amount this has been going on for
decades now it's very predictable going
forward and if they just stay on those
learning curves that they're on now
they are going to dominate
uh the landscape within a few decades
purely because they will be so much
cheaper than the alternatives that no
one will um you know the sort of
political argument around them will fade
they will just be the obvious option
it's all just a matter of speed trying
to nudge that process along faster but
it's underway already
so what are the levers to nudge those
things along are they happening at a
pace though that is fast enough or does
this require the lever of say a state a
government a nation to to push them in
the right direction
well
yes
they require policy to get to to hit our
target you know to hit our temperature
targets that we're talking about we
definitely need public policy to
accelerate them because we're at the
point now where
no sort of market purely market driven
substitution could ever
work faster we're talking about you know
completely transforming several seconds
of the economy the global economy within
10 years and that's just not something
that will ever just happen no matter how
cheap they get so they've got to be
pushed along by government policy and
it's been very frustrating government
policy has not kept up it's not pushed
hard enough
on the u.s policy front i mean president
biden surprised many with the bill back
better
legislation which had a lot of very
substantive climate change policies but
that has thus far been shelved as far as
i can tell
and doesn't that make it very difficult
for the president both to meet america's
goals but but also cajole other nations
to try to do the right thing yes
absolutely if the us does not if the
congress does not pass the climate and
energy provisions the buildback better
act which manchin says he's okay with
and everyone says they support if we
don't do that it will be a failure
complete failure on climate change and
we will lose credibility in front of
other nations and conversely if we pass
those provisions we will be almost
very close to the trajectory we need to
be on and it will be an enormous boost
for our credibility on the international
stage
all right dave roberts of the boltz
newsletter and podcast thanks so much
[Music]
thanks for for showing that i was going
to come back real quick and talk to the
chief for just a second but before i do
i just wanted to show that because
interestingly they talked about three
items and those three items we're doing
you know one is excuse me
electrifications for solar
the other is electronic vehicles
and then the other is the building the
heat and cooling when we're talking
about elimination of the gas system but
more importantly how we're trying to
help
organizations
the all-electric subdivisions and how
we're trying to help give them a little
boost and expedite their approvals so i
just wanted to congratulate you that's
why i wanted to show that you think that
that video was about us but
anyways thanks to you also lisa for you
leading the charge we're one of the few
cities
when we when counselor small brought up
the idea of having a sustainability
coordinator to have one
and i still remember when we when we
created that position we didn't know
what they were going to do
but you've really defined that role
thank you so much
that's okay
lisa here you go there you go
good afternoon lisa good afternoon
this mouth spans i'm kind of crazy
okay
so good afternoon
mayor and counselors and uh city staff
thank you for this time to present
i um
i'm
i think we're all aligned in our
thinking here and i appreciate the
mayor's suggestion
to
have us look at this presentation
my goals today are really just to
review what the impacts are of climate
change
highlight what the
intergovernmental
uh panel of
climate change scientists has projected
with this last report that was
highlighted in the presentation with pbs
and then outline what i'll be covering
the next
several quarters in my quarterly report
i won't be going into a lot of the
details now but i wanted to give you the
big framework for
the following presentations that i'll be
doing
so
first of all i just wanted to give some
basic uh
description of climate change
and
carbon is
always been found on our around our
atmosphere and it provides a
thin blanket that holds in some
of the solar radiation that comes in and
it's a predictable amount of energy
and heat that all life depends on
but what has been happening
is that as we accumulate more greenhouse
gas emissions we trap that heat energy
inside of the atmosphere and it's
analogous to the planet being on
steroids in all the negative ways that
you would expect
so according to the last ipcc report
which i read and so did pbs
is that for the last
decade this was the hottest decade in
human history so
our challenge to address climate change
is not indicated by the data of the what
the
planet's average temperature is
and the reason that this is so
significant
is for many
different impacts that we'll see one of
the things that you can see in the
bottom left hand corner
is a map or a schematic of florida and
this is what is it's predicted to look
like by the end of the century if we
continue on this pattern the red star is
where miami used to be
the
and this will all be caused by sea level
rising from melting polar ice the other
thing that's very significant
is that the carbon dioxide that gets
dissolved in the ocean
causes the ocean to be more acidic it
bleaches coral and it kills
it ends up killing it and all the life
that's
dependent on it
the third thing that happens
is
that the water is warmer and the jet
streams are impacted by that as well
as storm events like hurricanes so we
see things like ida's category 4
storm
that we just experienced
the other year
equally we see lots of impacts
on land one of them is that
there's often
more drought that we experience because
of evaporation it can weaken trees it
can
cause weakened trees to be
attacked by insects and that further
weakens the trees that cause fires this
can happen
in our agricultural communities as well
and really
harm
food security and all the while there
are
lots of climate refugees that are
displaced because of all of these
burdens that you've seen here
these impacts are not just global
they're local as well and we have
experienced many of them we have heat
that we know has been increasing drought
is always a serious consideration and
will remain so
dust storms are
really significant and
you all experienced them as did the
transit center just a while ago and
fires and floods
are equally problematic in our area
and if you look at
the data that has been shown from
climate modeling you'll see that
right now in 2025
or or
2022 i'm sorry that uh the last summer
we had a one month of temperatures over
a hundred and about nine days
that were temperatures over 105.
by mid-century
we're going to see two months of
temperatures over
a hundred and three of those will three
weeks of that will be temperatures over
a hundred and five and by the end of
the century three months will be
temperatures over a hundred
and two of those will be
temperatures over a hundred and five
we will be described as another phoenix
but the question is will we have the
appropriate infrastructure
to be able to
handle that level of temperature
and
this is really a health risk
that impacts the old the young those
with chronic illnesses outside workers
recreationalists or athletic athletes
and even people who travel on bike and
foot
and the united nations
intergovernmental panel of climate
change predicts that
we won't be able to keep warming under
1.5 degrees celsius
in the next eight years by 2030 and what
that means in terms of projection for
our surface flows within new mexico
alone is that we will lose 50 percent of
our water flow in the southwest by the
end of the century and that will have an
incredible
impact on our agricultural communities
so
the climate
um the ipcc reports were just put out in
the last week
and and so we've all had a flurry of
information and activity about them the
mitigate so is mitigation of climate
change and impacts adaptation and
vulnerability and one of the things that
they've said is that it is really urgent
right now and
we're not
necessarily equipped to be able to deal
with that urgency or or not equipped but
have internalized it as as an urgent
action
and the good thing is that the
technology is available now
and that it as was described that it's
more sophisticated and cheaper and more
plentiful than ever so we have the
ability to be able to use that but are
we employing it
and one thing that was brought out in
the pbs special as well is that market
forces alone will not make these changes
fast enough though it will be the least
expensive alternative but it won't
happen at the rate that we need it to
happen
to
stop the
impacts that we've just described
so policy needs to be the driver
which puts you in the driver's seat here
and climate financing for mitigation for
lessening those greenhouse gas emissions
must be three to six times higher
to keep warming under two degrees
celsius
so what does that mean for us
we've done a climate action plan we've
looked at where emissions occur
and what i propose to do for the next
upcoming quarters is that i want to take
a deeper dive into the policies and the
investments that we've made to see
is it enough is it
creating that outcome trajectory that
we're hoping for we're not able to meet
those outcomes in a year or two but are
we going in the right direction
and and if you look at what we're doing
and this is what the mayor said earlier
is that the strategies that we're
choosing are the right strategies
according to the ipcc
designing walkable cities shifting to
electrification of vehicles is the right
way to go we're doing that with our
buses
where we've made a
resolution to do that to our fleet and
we have elevated the idea of the action
transportation plan with new staff and
new ordinances
and
is that making a change can we predict
that it will continue to make an
impactful change
in the case of
oh i forgot to mention that in the
transportation sector
more than 80 percent of our
transportation greenhouse gas emissions
just come from
people driving around the city in in
cars or trucks that it isn't any other
form of transportation that is that's a
that's a very high number for cities and
one that we should be concerned about
when we look at
the percentage of emissions that comes
from buildings
we that comes from the energy that we
use either natural gas or electricity
natural gas contributes about 47 percent
and the the balance the 53 percent is
coming from electricity
so we have different strategies that
we're addressing there we want to make
sure that the city takes a leadership
role
in having construction be all electric
we want to
look seriously at what decarbonization
means
in terms of
choosing energy sources that are clean
and we want to
remain diligent in addressing energy
efficiency when we can
and when you look at what the ipcc
report says again it says to scale up
that clean energy and incentivize green
building so again we're on target
and
the last two sectors one of them has to
do with waste and it has to do not only
with
looking at landfills but looking at how
we use
the earth's services to be able to help
us by composting by sequestration by
flood control and all of those areas are
we fighting it or are we working with it
is the challenge that we have in front
of us
and the last sector
is has to do with the transition to
clean energy and the policies that both
that we have as a city for the las
cruces utilities energy transition plan
as well as
whether or not el paso electric is
complying with the energy transition act
so how is the very energy we use
clean
enough to move us into a new transition
and the ipcc in this
instance says
using renewable energy to get zero
emissions as soon as possible and no new
fossil fuel infrastructure
so our challenge before us is to find
out
if our policies
are strong enough if they're moving us
in the direction they're not what
barriers we need
to remove in order to be able to make
the change that we want to make so i'm
setting the scene for you today and
wanting you to see that it is in the
same
vein as the ipcc reports
and
looking forward to sharing
what uh
how we've been addressing these sectors
and what we can do
to strengthen that so i stand for
questions or comments
for right now thank you thanks lisa
councillor florida's counselor corran
councillor vancouver uh thank you mr
mayor and thank you so much lisa for
your presentation
and um it's very thorough
and the impact is
necessarily dismal
i think that five years ago
we were looking we were saying well if
optimal conditions and everybody every
city every
every corner of the world starts doing
this
we should have uh reduced greenhouse you
know carbon emissions
in 30 years
well
those five years have gone by and i
don't think the needle has moved do you
know yeah i mean for a fact i mean i you
know
so um
inter you know and and i think
i've said this before the first time i
heard inconvenient truth you know al
gore came out with that documentary and
um
and
that was i think in the 90s or around
the turn of the century or something i
can't remember but um
anyway it was kind of like okay we've
got to move on this really fast and then
michael moore did the thing and it's
like we've got to move on this really
fast
fast forward 20 30 years and we're still
twiddling our thumbs and not not us here
i mean we're
we're a class act here i'm sure
but you know what i mean so what
are you do we have any
any information on what other cities in
the united states are doing
what um
other cities in the world are doing and
i know that the
united nations
convention the framework convention on
climate change
comes out that was uh that was the
outcome of the paris agreement december
of 2015
but
nothing has really really happened i
mean
so do you have any
prognosis
more analysis on that
mayor councillor flores i
i know
that there are
a whole host of cities
nationally and internationally that are
working on this
and i
am happy to say that we are in that pack
i think what is happening now is that
we've gone past the stage of
piloting and testing and we need to
scale up and this is just
the beginning of that scaling up and so
the new challenge isn't just to say is
this a good option or is this a good
option it's
how to really
make it a big option and that's where i
think we are right now i think it was a
daunting task to be able to figure it
out but the technologies are there
and they're
they're affordable
and and i think that it's just i think
this new challenge is how do we how do
we really
get it to be a serious
uh part of our our lives well thank you
lisa well it has been serious i mean
it's been serious
for
at least three well really started in
the 70s with earth day and all that all
that awareness coming about but 1970.
i mean it's like someone who was born
1970 is already a senior citizen
so
so is there any
real is there any organization
that's really pushing this is there any
except for the united nations framework
on climate change i mean they meet you
know every year cop 27 i think just took
place and it's like
um
and there was a lot of actually
dissension at this last one as to how to
move forward
so do you
i guess i'm feeling
really sad and down about it can you
make me happy lisa
please make me happy no i
yeah i i need to be happy i know i know
i know i know and i think
no we we i know that we the city is
doing really good things and and there's
pockets and cities throughout the united
states that are doing well there are
countries in the world that just can't
do a lot like indonesia has made it very
clear that they they need airplanes
they're an island uh country so they
need that transportation otherwise
they're literally islands are literally
isolated so
but so so is there any
is there any real
i guess
a real wake-up call to really energize
um
movement towards a real goal and it
looks like now we're looking at what 20
50 before we reach some of these goals
mayor councillor flores
i hope that we see
that we will be
chipping away at those goals
the whole
stretch from now until 2050 but i think
i've seen that many cities are trying to
even push that forward to being
net zero by 2040 and other strategies
like that but to answer your other
question to make you feel happy
i'll try
i
i feel very fortunate
i think jenny and i both do that there
is
a host of organizations that are out
there that are working diligently and
looking at issues of equity of looking
at issues of how to scale up of doing
the research that's needed to
to show the benefits of of these
areas to write the draft policies that
help solidify the changes that we want
to make i think there's a lot a lot of
resources out there and uh and many
organizations
that are out
that are around to support the city and
and i think that if if we didn't have
that support
we would not be where we are today
and lisa you mentioned that our
emissions here locally 80 percent are
of those
greenhouse emissions here in the city
are
it is now up to 80 percent
so it used to be 73 so when you said 80
i thought i thought we were doing a
great job why is it now
so did i hear something wrong yeah i
probably did nothing new mayor
councillor flores the
um there's a lot of percentage numbers i
was trying to avoid the majority of them
today
because i you know i can dive deep into
numbers but it it was 80
of all of our
transportation greenhouse gases
come from us driving around
and so half of our greenhouse gases come
from transportation and of that the
majority of it just come from us driving
around the city because we are not
walking we're not using public
transportation we're not building cities
that are walkable because
everything is spread out and
that
those are the baseline numbers that we
have i'm not sure
what it's going to look like as i
try to analyze those numbers
in in
from since 2018 when we did it i hope
there's
some a little glimmer of hope but i'm
not sure and do you
do you work with other cities that have
similar
populations as we have not necessarily
all the demographics but
just population wise
in terms of how they're doing and
do do we as a city
work with other cities or
i mean you did say there's organizations
but is there a real cohesiveness there
and so far as doing
you know apples to apple comparisons and
in so far as growth and progress in that
regard is concerned
mayor councillor flores there are a lot
of other cities that we work with we
have a strong network
in
new mexico the mayor is a
co-director of the coalition of
director of um
co-chair chair thank you thank you the
co-chair of the um
of the coalition for sustainable
communities in new mexico
the um
we have a whole network of people
that deal with climate adaptation issues
in the southwest
that i talked that we meet with all of
the time that are in
texas arizona
southern california utah colorado
and that we share best practices there
and
then there's national organizations like
the urban sustainability directors
networks that really drives a lot of the
change
so yes we are all learning from each
other we have the ability to share
rfps or
contracts or
[Music]
best practices or test pilots that's
what we do all the time
great so yeah that's i just really
wanted to know exactly where we were in
so far as a
mass movement so oh i i believe that
there are a lot of crazy people like us
wonderful
thank you so much
thank you so much lisa thank you mr
mayor before i get to council koran and
councilman cuomo
council florida looks like of course the
united states is doing quite a few
cities
europe quite a few
canada
a couple in south africa
south america one in south africa
um a few in australia and then also it
looks like japan
um korea north south korea and like
thailand but it looks like the biggest
improvement should come from china and
russia and they don't have i don't see
anything there and like i said just one
in
in africa
may i ask another question okay it's
your fault it's his fault
so speaking of russia
um
and i don't mean this to be political at
all
but um i did hear that if um there was a
uh
out and out war i mean it's pretty bad
as it is as far as i'm concerned it's
there's a war out there but
that if certain
i guess certain warfare was being used
that that would have a super negative
impact on climate change do you is there
any analysis on that
not getting political just in terms of a
war
mayor council florida's i don't think
i'd be able to speak on that right now
i'm sorry
yeah
okay sure council
koran lisa thank you so much for your
presentation and for representing on
sustainability i think um in every venue
so i really appreciate you elevating
our land and us paying mind to
how we treat it
and our impacts i just wanted to sort of
point out that the transportation
sustainability and infrastructure
prc which lisa contributes to
significantly we have a meeting coming
up on may 3rd and i just met with andy
this morning to talk about what might be
on that agenda and among the things
we're
looking at the elevate
policies and ordinances that
or things that come from
from our elevate guidelines sort of that
we might start working on in terms of
policies and ordinances and i'm hoping
that we can have a sustainability
orientation in those and identifying
some of those policies so we we barely
just talked about that right before this
meeting so i was going to look back with
you and ask if we could prioritize
sustainability in particular in those
conversations so that we can
make sure that we're paying attention to
the policies that we could that we can
enact sooner rather than later and so
may 3rd at 8 30 in case anyone cares to
join us but
i just wanted to point out that that's
some on the agenda coming up
thank you lisa thank you you also bring
cuomo thanks mayor and thank you so much
lisa um i think you know how much
um how grateful i am for you and
how grateful i am and how lucky i think
that city of las cruces is to have
someone like you who's really an expert
in this field
um
you know i also i recently also read an
article about
how climate change is impacting pollen
thus impacting allergy season which i
hear many sniffles in the audience right
now
and so even if you're like why is it
that bad i mean even something like your
allergies
will be impacted by is being impacted by
climate change so those
these are not things that are in the
future those are these are things that
are happening
yesterday right now
um and so i just i just wanted to point
that out because sometimes we don't
fully understand why there are things
why this allergy season was so much
worse than other allergy seasons
but there's always a reason
um you know lisa i think you probably
you probably feel this way too but i
always feel like we're just not doing
enough it always feels like that and i
think
until congress acts in some pretty major
ways it's just going to continue to feel
that way but of course
as policy makers at the city we can do
you know what we can do best and i think
we're doing a lot of we are doing a lot
of those things things we can control
within the institution of the city we
are doing
um
i think the private sector is going to
need a little bit more encouragement
though and so
you know i
really want
to figure out how to
find ways to
incentivize and encourage the private
sector developers
residential developers to do these
things
and i just wanted to ask you if you had
thought about those things i mean i was
sitting here thinking
could we have some sort of
sustainability
assessment that we run almost every
ordinance through any
um development that we're approving any
any sort of new business license i don't
know can we run it through some sort of
sustainability assessment to give people
input and feedback about how to they can
do that better just like last week i
asked
um
the new folks going up and at the
industrial park right like what i just
feel like those are
really good questions we need to be
asking the private sector and i'm
curious if you have given thought to
that and how we can do that lisa
mayor councillor ben cuomo that's a
great question and challenge
i think that there are several ways that
we
look at
what the challenges are in front of us
one of the things that we want to do is
to electrify the new construction
or get it at least
all electric ready
and so we have to look at the obstacles
like
that there's a certain way of doing
business there's a certain perception of
what cost is there's a
a certain number of workforce that is
ready to make that transition and so
what are the ways that we can support
things we
are planning on doing a
um
an expo and training to highlight the
different technologies that are out
there and to provide training to
the construction workers and developers
toward uh to be able to
learn about those new technologies and
the rebates and incentives and tax
credits that come with it so
that that financing won't be an obstacle
in their way so we're looking at all of
those different factors
that
will break down the barriers to adoption
and those are you know some of the
things that were happening and uh that
are happening now and i've already found
that in the private sector that there
are a lot of
developers that are supportive of these
change they they see the merits in them
and they recognize that
the
country
is doing that too and that this is
something that it's inevitable and is
cost effective as as was evidenced in
there so
i
i do believe
i feel the the sense of change coming
and that there's a greater amount of
support
uh
for that and and
i welcome anyone's feedback on how we
can you know further
that and
in encouraging others to do that but i
um i'm very cognizant of it and
and if there are other incentives that i
hear about i try to share them as well
that's great thank you lisa i think i
just what i want to avoid is
having
um sustainability be an afterthought
like it just needs to be weaved into the
dna of everything we do and every
decision we make and so i don't know
maybe that's a challenge for you and our
city manager to figure out how best
we can
navigate those
waters no pun intended
um that's that's
[Music]
yeah very much so lisa anything and you
know that's why i'm going to continue
advocating to make sure you're part of
um
you know the energy transition planning
with utilities and ensuring that your
voice and your expertise are part of
those conversations because i just think
it's so critical so thank you thank you
thank you councillor bingham and
councillor graham
thank you mayor tem thank you so much
lisa
i'm i'm going to take us down even
another step because i think mayor and
counselor flores
were speaking really cogently to the
global councillors
koran and ben como bringing us to the
municipal level
and
for me personally i find these
conversations like this can be so
overwhelming and disheartening and
you're kind of left feeling
helpless but
i also like to turn it around and say at
the individual level what can we do to
feel empowered that we
as as the citizens are doing our part
and it sounds an obvious answer
is
being a little more mindful of our
driving
but what are those
what are those individual actions that
we can take to help make a bigger
difference
mayor protem i'm sorry i'm talking to um
and
and council graham
another good and tough question
i think that
we have to be open to change to explore
that there are better ways of doing
things that aren't a huge leap but an
important one an important step
and i i feel like people get into the
habit of doing things the same way all
the time
and it's difficult for people to make
change
it wasn't that hard for people to put
masks on during covid but it's really
seems hard for people to bring a
reusable bag
to
a store
and and i understand the paramount
importance of being healthy and safe in
a mask but
how do you change those simple practices
how are you aware you know just
thinking about whether you buy organic
whether you buy local whether you
avoid plastics of any sort in clothing
whether you repurpose things i mean
just
being
aware of your consumptive habits that
have such a great impact is really
significant like why are you using
styrofoam i mean there's just i'm you
the and i am i'm sure that you're like
oh you know i'm not trying to make
anyone feel guilty it's just
that
you
being aware that those choices are out
there and saying you know what
today i'm i'm not going to do this and
just continuing that until it's a habit
are really important things it doesn't
you don't have to change climate change
but you can just change a behavior and
and i think just being cognizant that
you want to do that is is a good as a
good step
yeah thank you so much i'm doing some
self-reflection up here thinking about
my own habits and maybe maybe applying
that same sustainability lens that
counselor bencomo was mentioning for our
ordinances to
my everyday life
i appreciate that i appreciate that
reminder thank you thank you mayor pro
tem
thank you councillor graham something to
think about i have a couple of questions
lisa
mayer's still out so i'll continue to
preside over the the meeting but um
let's see slide 10.
could you go back to slide 10 i think
and what made me
oh um
sequester
what is that oh sequestration sorry i'm
bad for no it's okay i just i'm going to
be vulnerable out here and say i don't
always know everything about this so
please help so
there's
there's different ways that you can
minimize the amount of carbon that's in
the atmosphere one of them is not to put
so much carbon not to burn it and send
it up to the atmosphere the other is to
have places to store it so storing it
can be in the ground
that's a way to sequester things and
another way is to put it in plants
because plants photosynthesize they take
the carbon out of the atmosphere and
they use it to grow and to
photosynthesize and so the carbon is is
embedded in that so having trees would
be a way of sequestering carbon got it
yes okay so um
i
i was reminded last week a couple of
times about
in in several different meetings about
what we could do
together right and that truly work in it
together and so i see out in the
audience one of our
sector leaders in transportation
dr michelle adams and
we had a lot of dialogue
and maybe not
really understanding the impact it would
be to ride the bus right as it relates
to this
and how
even in that dialogue and really talking
about what our current reality is what
are the aspirations and what gets in the
way it's like we don't want to be
uncomfortable like literally us getting
in our
right our vehicle and moving and getting
to a place quickly as opposed versus
what it takes on a bus right and then
being overwhelmed that i'm like oh my
gosh i don't know the routes that need
to be taken and will i be there on time
and you know those kinds of things so i
was thinking about those situations and
and realizing that there needs to be a
lot of education right in the public
to to
really understand what
carbon emissions are about and us
driving from place to place is creating
havoc on our our climate right so
i
i am going to continue to push that our
systems within the city and even our
like south central solid waste authority
the board that council graham and i sit
on you know and the importance of what
it would take to just get
recyclable bins out at our parks
right and that concern that it it is to
take that step to do so right and how we
just need to really understand or like
understanding the sustainability lens in
every single policy review committee
that
that that we're that we have and
understanding what is it going to take
from the complete streets if we're on
health or
right right
our health policy review committee so i
i think it's i think we have to be here
on the dais um
more cohesive and collaborative in the
way by which we're
promoting um policy in those ways and or
walking today on the telavera area and
seeing at least five new developments
with propane tanks
and i'm thinking don't we have
electricity that runs over and what
where's the disconnect and i really
believe it's around communication and
educating the public
about that and for some way
somehow we're disconnected and i think
we're disconnected at the individual
level the local level the state level
and the national level and i think it's
about just bringing awareness to the
public in lots of different ways it's
like
trying to understand remember when we
moved into um some of these things like
we were
for example
animal services like the importance of
taking care of animals and we've gone to
the city or recycling i mean i learned
recycling from my kids someone went to
the school and spoke to my kiddos about
recycling right and and so just being
more conscientious i think and this is
not pointing fingers at anybody but it's
really being very mindful about how we
present information to the public
because i think people are getting used
to bringing their bags right i am i know
i am
but i'm and i'm more cognizant of like
going to places that don't sell
styrofoam like getting you know a drink
and and bringing my own drink my own cup
if that's even feasible those are things
that we all have to think about i think
so for me it's um
you know getting very strategic lisa i
love what you have here and i like when
you do those matrices right like the
side by side comparisons about where we
need to be and then
just just um understanding sort of the
policy so when you talked about the
landfill i think you got a call because
i got a call and i told them about you
our sustainability officer but also
shared with councillor bencomo
putting
solar panels on our landfills and what
that would
what that would take and you know what
does that mean and i was like you know
it's a really good idea didn't really
think about that um
especially those that you know that you
know that we we um
move into different cells because we've
already used right that that land and
what would that mean
um so
i'm i'm thinking about these things i
don't always
know what the right move is and so i i
would really like to see a more
like a
more specifically this will help us in
this area with a time frame
kind of like when we talk to miss
delilah over there about our energy
transition what the time frame is going
to look like so if we have these sort of
things and then a matrix with a time
frame that'll help me to be able to
write push things in a way that
um is going to be helpful
so i'll get off my soapbox but i just i
felt like i wanted to say that i think
it's important that we also have well
how do we do it like what policies need
to be in place in order to meet this
particular particular thing so i'm
thinking like why don't we have
quarterly once a day once a week get on
the bus day
everybody
make a commitment to get on the bus and
that reduces for at least the day or
the week right it's fine to get lost the
only way you learn is to try and we have
to support each other in this in this
venture so i'm wondering if that would
you know a day that we really try to
reduce the carbon emissions
that's what i'm thinking along those
lines
so okay mayor
you're here you're back thank you
councilor graham
oh mayor pro tem caught me
so yeah okay sorry i didn't mean to
miscommunicate thank you
anyone else counselor
thank you mayor and thank you lisa for
the presentation
um
part of what you highlighted was that
about heat and how we are only going to
become a lot
hotter um so i think my
my comments are mostly for
us
mr peeley and staff in general but just
making sure that we're planning
um
for that because i think that's
something that i don't think is
preventable at this point um from
happening so when we are
you know as something i say as simple as
playground equipment which i'm finding
is not simple but just making sure that
we're designing
and accepting um those types of parks
that are able to withstand that
increased level of heat that we're going
to have that you know our bus stops have
shade appropriate shade you know so that
it does encourage people to use them and
knowing that they're going to have to
wait so i think that's something that um
i'd like to make sure that we're
planning for some of these items that
are inevitable
thank you mayor
thank you
anyone else
members of the public have any questions
i think for the most part
i'm just curious
on our
epa epe
franchise
that extra one percent how's that coming
along
for weatherization for our
low income houses
do we have a status on that i
maybe wouldn't be able to prov
mayor i don't have an update as to where
we are with that
yeah it was a ep franchise so i don't
know if ifo or jennifer might have yeah
yeah mayor we we're working on the
franchise agreement right now
um
i don't know if i can give you a
timeline when we bring it back but the
franchise agreement is to
raise that from two to three percent and
then separately we would come back
independent of the franchise agreement
to
determine where those funds would be
spent
but that increases is happening right
now oh okay
that kind of concerns me when you said
determine where those funds will be
spent um i i can go on the record saying
if it's not going to be spent for
weatherization for low income housing
i'm against it because that's the only
reason why i wanted to bring it forward
so i thought that was the consensus of
counsel maybe i'm mistaken
but i don't want to be raising franchise
fees off on electric bills unless it's
going to for that particular reason only
yeah mayor i actually remember you
bringing that up in in council it's just
not in the franchise agreement uh
currently
uh identified what that would be and the
thought is that the
identification will be made
once that franchise agreement is done no
if uh
okay if we have any other yeah
i do remember that you want to put a
resolution through before you sign off
on that because
no sense
well i know it's not on the agenda so
okay
um
yeah well we're good
um
okay thank you lisa if there's no other
questions i appreciate your presentation
thank you
okay last item is 3.3 which is the
arpa are new ways how we're going to
discuss this and elizabeth peters from
our economic
development department and chris faber
is here to discuss
okay
okay good afternoon mayor and city
council my name is elizabeth teters and
i am going to talk to you today about a
proposed new path for arpa
so a little bit of a recap on the
timeline city council approved the arpa
process the rfp process in september
applications opened in september as well
and then closed a month later
the council first reviewed the
the um applications that were chosen to
be funded on december 6th
there was a work session on december
13th to discuss the internal audit and
then it was decided to be tabled on
february 22nd of this year
a little bit of background just a
reminder that the city did receive 24.8
million dollars and we are getting those
funds in two different tranches we
received the first trunks and some of
these projects are already in motion and
then we're getting our second torrent
next month
so this the funding we're talking about
today is the 11.4 million dollars in the
community and economic development
initiatives well 10.4 million
and before i go into our proposed
process just wanted to give you a little
background on kind of how we got here um
chris and i you know are looking at this
with very new eyes we weren't part of
the arpa process at all so we really
kind of dug in and figured out from the
ground up exactly what's supposed to be
funded like what projects can be funded
and can't
we haven't actually looked at the
applications at all we've been focusing
on on the process itself and natalie was
great throughout the entire process you
know she laid all the groundwork she did
all all the hard lifting
and so she's been there to help answer
questions and and give us examples if we
needed it so um you know it's been a
really group it's been a group effort
and then city manager's office has been
reviewing the documentation as we go
along
um
so what we're looking at is is
potentially five steps so we're going to
recommend to the evaluation committee
which is going to be three people will
evaluate the 21 applications that
already exist for eligibility
um the second step will be an internal
audit review and at the same time
meeting with the ineligible projects to
talk about a potential appeal
step three the scoring committee which
is made up of six people will do their
evaluation and make their funding
recommendations step four another
internal audit just to make sure that
everything is still staying on track and
then step five is a recommendation to
city council for approval
so the eligibility is the biggest part
there are
three different areas when it comes to
eligibility
capital expenditure some categories and
compliance and reporting and we're
estimating it's going to take about two
weeks for the eligibility committee to
come up with who will and will not be
eligible
the first one is capital expenditure and
you'll see that we kind of tried to
break it down as simple yes or no taking
out any kind of gray areas
not all projects have capital
expenditure so if if you don't have
capital expenditure you just move on if
you do it has to fit into one of the
eligible categories that's in the final
rule if it doesn't it's not eligible if
it does it moves on
the next one is the sub-category so
there's four areas that projects can fit
into does it provide assistance to
households to non-profits to businesses
or to industry
and here's another a flow chart with
another
like quick yes or nos
so
for example assistance to households
what kind of impact is it going to have
is it direct or disproportionate yes or
no
and if it does fit into either direct or
disproportionate impact
is it an eligible project that's in the
final rule yes or no
if not you know you go through all four
subcategories in this way but if it is
then your project gets to continue going
on to the third part
to go into a little more detail about
the directly impacted and
disproportionately impacted so
the project has to identify a co-19
public health or economic impact on an
individual or class so if it is directly
impacted these are classes experienced
that that have experienced the general
broad-based impacts of the pandemic or
if it's disproportionately impacted
classes they've faced meaningfully more
severe impacts often due to pre-existing
disparities and
each one of these
disproportionately impact for every
subcategory has criteria in the final
rule so we basically have get laid all
that out for the eligibility committee
and it's either a yes or no and you
justify if one way or the other and then
whether it's directly impacted or
disproportionately impacted the project
just has to be built around that
and the last part of the eligibility is
the compliance and reporting so every
project has a budget and within that
budget it needs to fit into an
expenditure category that's written into
the compliance of um the final rule it's
so the number and the justification it
has to either be an indirect or a direct
impact and then there's also definitions
for reasonable and allocable and then if
they are
you justify it if not you also justify
it so at the end of that if you have the
necessary yeses to move on your project
will be considered eligible
so step two is an internal audit and
this is where the internal auditor will
review the evaluation process to this
point
we will not move on to scoring
applications until the audit is complete
and at the same time
there is going to be a sort of an appeal
process
uh i don't know if that's the right word
but i'm actually sitting down with those
projects who were deemed ineligible and
talking to them about why they're
ineligible
if there's an opportunity you know
there's not a lot of leeway between the
directly impacted and the
disproportionately impacted projects for
each of the subcategories
but if there's some leeway could they do
something a little different to make
them eligible but more realistically
is there something in your budget that's
making you ineligible that you can do
without
so if there's this is probably a bad
example say two employees you want to
hire for this project but it makes it
ineligible can you do this project
without those two employees
then it could possibly make you re-el
make you eligible
and then after that process is done
that goes to the internal audit as well
and we'll go through the process to make
sure that we're staying on track
so another thing to consider
is that if the eligibility committee and
earned an internal audit deem the same
applicants eligible
we will advance all eligible applicants
to the funding stage and
skip the scoring stage
if everything ends up being the same but
the only difference is the funding will
be based on the applicant's requests and
not on the previous
recommendations
so the scoring committee evaluation is
the same evaluation that
was written into the rfp the same
wanting the same categories for scoring
and then after that the internal audit
will be done again to make sure that
everything makes sense
there's agreeance on the recommended
funding
and then the two committees we've come
up with a three-member evaluation
committee and then
a seven or a six-member scoring
committee that's comprised of members
from all over
city employment
so this is the recommended staff
timeline or for the the process so
we're here today for the work session
in the next few weeks we're going to be
putting the eligibility committee
through a training it'll be like they're
back in college or something learning
everything
and then on may 2nd the plan is to bring
a process to to adopt for resolution
right after that we're going to send the
approved process out to the applicants
so they're aware of where we are and
what the plans are
we're going to have a virtual meeting
with applicants to be able to pro answer
any questions they have about this new
process
there will be a two-week
eligibility committee review
and then the internal audit review and
at the same time is when we'll be
meeting with the
the projects that have been deemed
ineligible
and then once that is done i put the
line there because if it's decided that
uh
the projects are the same deemed same
eligible as last time that is where the
process would would stop and
skip the scoring portion of it if not um
the scoring committee will have a few
weeks to do their scores and then
make their funding recommendations and
it'll go back to internal audit for a
month
and then we'll get our confirmations and
the plan would be august 15th to take
the the recommendation to city council
an alternate timeline that we wanted to
put out there was if we were to re open
the entire application process not sure
exactly how it would work but the
estimate would be about an extra month
for the application advertising
and the applications being due and then
another month for public meetings and
public comment period
and i went through that really fast but
if you have any questions
i
can hopefully answer them we have
counselor flores and councilman cuomo
thank you mr bayern thank you very much
miss teeters
i went through the
cfr
from the treasury
and
it was
interesting
because um
i didn't
see any language in there that said
sub-category i saw the language of
recipients which are the state and local
or tribal governments
receiving fiscal funds um in response to
the coveted uh
crisis that we're in
financial crisis that we're in
um so
i um i don't know what a subcategory is
in your presentation all
i'm familiar with is
the recipient which is the governmental
entity
the beneficiary who would be given money
directly and then there's the sub
beneficiaries and those are the ones
that would benefit from the beneficiary
and the other thing i didn't see
was that it was limited to nonprofit
organizations only
and the other thing i saw
and it's clear throughout because i did
mention last time because amy i believe
said
that
there was a lot there to go through that
they hadn't gone through those pages and
i think that's why we're here today
but
um and so it was um
uh my concern is that um
there isn't
uh
that what i what i said was that
she said there's just so much criteria
there was something about how it's
problematic to make determinations and i
don't know
exactly what she meant it doesn't matter
because we're here today
what the cfr says very clearly and
repeatedly
is that it's a given that everybody
suffered from this pandemic
so when i see your breakdown as to
showing the yes the no the yes the no
that if you and i remember saying to amy
you know courts a court of law
takes judicial notice and what the cfr
did the department of treasury did
was
take notice that everybody has suffered
from this pandemic
and
and i have no opposition to
um
501c3s
uh receiving money i personally give
what i can
as much as i can
and i believe in 501c3s and i think the
work that our
agency our nonprofits are doing here
are
monumental to keeping a safe and
whatever society that we have
all that being said
um
i didn't unders i don't understand why
only 501c3s are being looked at and and
and that
and
um
and if that's a decision that's being
made by the administration
um and you expect us to vote on it with
us
having any input as to how you arrived
and how that money is going to be
distributed that's what makes it so
difficult for me because if i don't know
exactly what
you know what other other beneficiaries
there may be
then why should we just be given a menu
without us creating the menu that we you
know collectively as a city council make
the decision on
so um so that's what i found problematic
and then going through those
uh 400 and some pages of and it was it
was not very well organized by the way
so i could understand how i mean i had
to keep going i had to keep going back
and whatever
but there was nothing in there there was
nothing in there there was no
provision in there that said and this is
the only place where this money can go
it can only go to 501c3s it doesn't say
that and it also says that you can take
do notice
and they did they didn't say that
judicial courts do that
you know for example if there's a
something in question where you're
trying to decide what time that train
came in that day
and then everybody knows there was this
huge wreck and everybody knows at that
particular train in richmond virginia
at that time at that point it was just
this worldwide horrible horrible train
wreck everybody knows that on
march 15
2020 there was this horrible train wreck
and and the court will say well the
court takes judicial notice on that and
that's what the government has done
that's what the department of the
treasury department has done and that's
what the cfr sets forth explicitly time
after time after time
so
how can us 501c3 and the one that i'm
particularly familiar with is um grusa's
creatives
and cruises creatives actually has job
training they have programs in there
where it's absolutely wonderful and if
people here
present today haven't been to kruse's
creatives it's a place that you really
should go to everybody in the city of
las cruces should go there and there
isn't one human being
that would not benefit just from uh
partaking in some of the wonderful uh
courses that they that they have
and in in in going through those pages
there was provision in there about
um how uh job training was curtailed
because oh people couldn't go there
and i know bruce's creatives closed down
and i know because i go there to make
donations or whatever and they were
closed and they would accept the stuff i
would take
um for some of the projects and of
course
there would be someone at the door but
it wasn't open to the public so that's
an example of the cfr
taking quote do notice unquote
and um
and so
and i
again i mean all this uh yes fits into
the eligibility uh go to step three no
does not fit to well under
the cfr my reading of the cfr
was that
everybody's eligible
and given especially
the state of new mexico which is like
the 48th 49th or 50th it sort of shifts
you know
but it's always
the poorest state
and
anything in the state has to be poor too
and we know what our stats are here in
las cruces
so
that is my concern about this and
somehow the presentation today
doesn't allay any of those
insights it doesn't explain any of the
questions i have miss cheaters
for the reasons i've stated
and i don't know if either you or mr
faber can
um
elab
you know respond to that or
uh answer the question as to why it was
done this way
and and i want to thank you for trying
to
correct it i really appreciate it but i
i'm just concerned that it's still the
21 original
well one of them would be i i suppose
would be cruz's creatives they were one
of the 21 who applied and that's the
other thing too i mean the road is pay
from here to
to
the colorado
[Music]
state line uh we we can pave the road
with 501 c 3s that we have here in las
cruces why only 21. one of my friends is
the um
she's a ceo of
oh gosh i can't even think of this right
now um
the ceo of cdc
the um
coalition of uh the
colonias
and she didn't even know about it
i said did i say dr bustamante who's
also a probate judge who's a friend of
mine
and i said
did you apply and she said i didn't even
know about it
and and they're one of the
few
uh 501c3s that help migrant people
so
those are the sorts of questions i have
uh miss peter miss teeters and i do not
in any way
want to minimize the importance of
everyone who deserves and the state that
we're in right now it seems like
everybody does but and then so
i don't know how you would answer that
question about that
[Music]
uh council de colonias
uh
why they didn't know about it you know
that sort of stuff and if she didn't
know about it because she's always
looking to see where she can apply and i
know that she's applied like the
community foundation and they were
turned down
um words they actually they
submitted a request but but they were
but decided not to pursue it because the
amount was too small and it required too
many hours of this this that and the
other
so
anyway so those are my questions and
those are my concerns and i don't know
if you can answer them
but thank you all right thank you mr
mayor mayor councillor flores i'm going
to start from the top going back to the
subcategories that's kind of a term that
we kind of coined to
to um navigate the process but it says
in the overview of the final rule which
is just a like a
condensed version yeah thank you chris
um that it says uh
addressing economic economic harms to
households small business small
businesses nonprofits impacted
industries and the public sector we left
the public sector out of it because that
is the like the um
the funds that we put towards
that we've already we've already
designated
but then if you go further into the
overview the final rule like for example
under assistance to households this is
just one of them
it gives a list of what is eligible as
an impacted householding community there
are
six items on there and if it's eligible
under that then there's a list of
15 projects that could also be
eligible so you know food assistance and
food banks is one of them emergency
housing assistance
health insurance coverage so the
eligibility committee would be going
through each one of these these
categories and breaking it down based on
exactly what's written in here
mr mayor if i may
miss teeters
does that mean that
you'd be looking at organizations that
provide those needs
it's mayor councillor flores it's based
on the application the 21 applications
if the city were to stick with those
would be making sure that
if that if the application would be
eligible it would have to fit into one
of these categories but all of those
categories my reading throughout because
it would come up repeat come up repeat
that
there's due notice
do notice that everybody was impacted
so
it seems to me that if there's
and those households receiving that and
all that sort of stuff i could i thought
well okay i could understand the part
where it would go to a founder it would
go to a 501c3
and then they would be the beneficiary
from the recipient the city and then the
um
and then the they would be the sub
beneficiaries of those who go to the
like casa de peregrinos you know the x
amount is given and then whatever for
example
but so
the eligibility
is really almost a given
because of because everybody has
suffered everybody has been impacted
under covet
so
how
you see you what you just explained miss
teeters and maybe i'm just being hard
you know just hard-headed
and
i don't mean to be rude or anything i
just want to understand
exactly
how those decisions um were made and i
don't know understand further why we
would still admit it to only 21 501 c 3s
i think there's more than that here in
the city maybe i'm wrong
or other organizations it doesn't have
to be limited to 501c3s
mayor councillor flores to address the
501cs it it's not just threes it's um so
government organizations can also apply
but the reason why it was decided to do
it this way is because
we wanted to use the funds as
pass-through funds so that another
organization a 501c would actually be
administering the program instead of the
city administering in-house so it's not
that you know you brought up small
business or business assistance um
somebody could have applied you know we
have a few applications that actually
address business assistance um but you
know more could have so that's kind of
why
that was done that way as for why others
didn't apply you know we did the full
notice of application
put it out there and everything so
you know maybe
people just couldn't get the information
in time i don't know i can't i can't say
exactly why other nonprofits didn't
apply and as for the eligibility
the
for the funds to be used we have to from
the city standpoint we have to be able
to
go back to the federal government and
tell them how we're using the funds and
why so the eligibility by doing this
process we'll be able to say we funded
this application because they're
eligible under this category and this is
the project they're working on so this
by doing this due diligence while it's
going to be timely
it'll give us the justification we need
to be able to give the funds to these
projects
but you know miss teeters i think that
we would not
being a city in
in the state of new mexico would have
any difficulty in explaining to the
federal government
why or how this particular distribution
or you know the beneficiaries were you
know
how they were determined i really don't
think that that's going to be
limiting us to the ability
to um to distribute the money
um
more
at least
more extensively
i really don't i don't think that
there's going to be any problem with
the distribution of the the funds that
the city has received
in that respect i mean there wasn't any
problem in the other categories i mean
we already distribute some capital money
that went to our go bond
program
projects so
i i don't know i i'm still at a loss as
to um
i'm still at a loss as to how
and and and i thought well maybe it's to
expedite things and and to get things
moving along
and i think it's wonderful and i and i
think it's terrible for
organizations that were horribly
horribly hit
and will probably have irreparable
damage as a result of the economic loss
but i
just feel that since we have the
fiduciary
fiduciary responsibility up here we have
that again that moral and ethical
obligation to make sure
that we're doing this in a in a fair
manner and
again with all due respect somehow
um
i
am not satisfied i don't get that sense
that i truly understand your process or
procedure
again thank you thank you
thank you councillor you know i was just
going to just chime in real quick
you know of course it's up to council
but i was one who supports just the same
21 applicants
because it wasn't their fault
that because of the process they did
what they needed to do and it was you
know it was ours and so our fault and so
i guess i think about it is and i know
this has happened maybe to you i know
it's happened to me imagine we have a
we're flying out somewhere we have our
plane ticket and then all of a sudden
and we're almost literally getting ready
to be seated and then they change the
gate and and imagine if they said you
know what and that was all the tickets
they had to sell imagine if they just
said you know what we're going to just
open up to everybody
i'm going to say wait a minute i have my
ticket i i was ready to go i mean i get
the same seat but at least it should be
the same ones who were there the first
time that's me now the second thing is
and i the the colonia's development
council is a great organization
they do fantastic work for
the the farm workers but if i if i
understand this correctly they work
in the unincorporated areas of the
county and so
uh the county got arpa monies too so
they should have
the county should have let the cdc know
about it but typically we stay we we
almost always stay within the city when
we give out funding so those are my two
things i just wanted to point out
counselor ben cuomo and counselor koran
thanks mayor
thank you so much elizabeth and ifo and
the team
looks like you put a lot of thought into
it and bringing it back
um
i think you've provided to me personally
um
a great path forward
my biggest concern is
the time i wish it was sooner and i i
get why it's through august we don't
want to rush it i just feel like
these funds were supposed to go out in
january and now we have
families in las cruces who were
disproportionately impacted by the
pandemic
you know still dealing with the
financial consequences
from 2020 and so
to me that feels really heavy if
have you talked about all the possible
ways to make it both
in line with an audit to make it as
you know seamless as transparent as
possible and shorten the timeline
mayor counselor ben como yeah uh
i feel like we did the best we could
like for the first audit that's why
we're going to be doing meeting with the
ineligible applicants at the same time
so
you know she can be working on what she
needs to be working on what we can
[Music]
unfortunately the second audit is going
to be right before the recommendations
so like she has to have everything and
and taken to consider
you know everything that encompasses
this entire process so um you know if we
can if things move faster and we can
keep things rolling it can be a little
shorter but we wanted to give a
conservative okay
okay yeah thank you um
i definitely appreciate the two audits i
think that's good and transparent how
much of
will you be able to very publicly show
all of that both the results of both
audits
uh mayor councillor ben cohen yes great
um and it was so funny as you were i was
typing in here training for the three
people and then literally the next
sentence you said that there would be
training for those three people because
this is intense information and i feel
like we're so lucky to have people like
amy basford and natalie who like eat
breathe live this and so there will be
training for those people
okay and the rubric is the same that
we've already that this council has
already approved from last time for the
second phase
correct okay thank you
um
now i'm curious about
the 21 applications i fully support that
i'm just now curious though about
will they be able to make changes given
that they budgeted out
for a timeline starting in january and
now it's the funds might not be
available to them till late august
what will
that conversation look like with the
applicants and then if you say you can
change the 21 applications and then are
they going to be able to change them
fully and completely and then still be
within the time frame
mayor councillor ben como
i haven't really thought about that i
would say you know when we're meeting
with the ineligible applicants we could
potentially meet with all applicants and
talk to them about their projects you
know the impact that taking so long has
had on their projects and if there's any
potential changes you know i i think if
we allow each applicant to completely
change their applications it's just
going to take
a lot more time but sitting down with
them and getting to the point you know
what with since your timelines back you
know six eight months what what does
that look like at least the budget piece
yeah i think that would be important
um
can you go back to the scoring committee
you kind of flew right past that
um okay great how did you
um come up with this team
mayor councillor ben como um it was
decided by um mr pealey to have
city manager's office involved and since
but what one thing we didn't want to do
is have anybody that was part of it last
time correct so um that's why um ikani
is not on here but it was kind of
figuring out you know from kind of the
director standpoint or even the
administrator's standpoint who wasn't
involved last time and who we thought we
could do really fill in the gaps and and
assist with this process okay thank you
um
i don't think i have any other questions
mayor i hope you open it up to the
public i'd love to hear from folks i
will just say that
um a couple of things in reading through
the condensed version that you send
there's a ton of language about
disproportionate impacts
of the pandemic and in fact you know it
says the final rule recognizes that the
pandemic cost broad-based impacts that
affected many communities household
small businesses across the country and
then the next paragraph says at the same
time the pandemic caused
disproportionate impacts or even severe
impacts in certain communities for
example low-income and underserved
communities have faced more severe
health and economic outcomes like higher
rates of cover 19 mortality and
unemployment often because of
pre-existing disparities so there is a
ton of language around disproportionate
in this
document so i
see the benefit of that and counselor
flores made a comment about
her friend who is the edu of a nonprofit
which i think to me just proves the
point of why council should not be
involved in the final decision in in
which i don't think we're moving that
way but there was at one point a
conversation about all the projects
should come to council encounters should
be able to determine out of the 21 who
moves forward but because of that
statement i think is critical that
council is not involved in that
and you know i just think it's really
important that there's a lot of reasons
as a former executive director of a
non-profit there's a ton of reasons why
you might not apply for something you
could be incredibly overwhelmed with
work and don't have the capacity to
always be on the lookout for
grant applications i didn't apply
through my past employer because there
was a clear conflict of interest there's
just multiple things and i think
punishing there it's a form of
punishment to the 21 organizations that
submitted applications on time to say
that that work is invalid and we should
open it back up to a bunch of other
applicants so
um
i'm looking forward to this process
again if elizabeth there's magic you can
work in the timeline i would really like
these funds to me this is urgent to me
that these funds go out to the community
they're going to serve
to our community to disproportionately
impacted families and so
that's sort of my
one
critique is that i just wish
we could do it a little bit faster thank
you
council ben cuomo before i get to
council koran
we could and address my colleagues if
you want
probably utilize say a million dollars
of it now and give it to other
organizations in case they need access
to funds but then that represents about
a four percent decrease and then to the
rest of the applicants would be four
percent less i mean there are different
ways if you wanted to get it done
quicker at least some seed money there
but just something to think about okay
counselor quran
i i just want to thank you elizabeth for
working on this and reworking it
i have been following this after you all
approved this as a different council
than than exists now so it's been
interesting to see
what's developed since then but
um
in reading through all of the documents
that that you shared and that are
related to this in addition to thinking
about the orientation of the nonprofits
and the audit i feel like this process
really
addresses the key highlighted issues the
the the process that you propose
addresses some of the issues that we're
concerning and i think
gives me more confidence in thinking
about moving forward and i agree with
the timeline
wish and so to that end i guess i would
say i wonder this is the first tranche
of this funding my understanding is but
is the same process
i wonder what the site i think that
there's a second
tranche that that would is to be funded
and i would ask that
both to expedite it and to
take what we've learned and follow
through i would hope that some of the
work that's done here especially
training new people to be in eligibility
folks i think just making sure that we
carry that knowledge and process forward
to to be transparent and if that means a
longer period of time for organizations
that didn't have a chance this last time
and again i don't know what the second
trend how it will differ the second
trans versus the first transition how we
do it but i i hope that some of these
can go into revising that process which
i imagine will actually happen
in the fall i think i don't know
and maybe i look to you guys
if that's the case um mayor councillor
koran so the fund's the 24 million and
barbara's behind me so she can tell me
if i'm wrong um the 24 million the funds
were actually decided for all 24 million
at the beginning okay it was just one
process it's one process it's just some
of the projects won't start until we get
the second pot of money okay
thank you perfect thank you very much
too so thank you very much then i
appreciate that and i appreciate your
work on addressing the things that we
were concerned with thank you
mayor pro tem and then councillor beta
thank you mayor thank you elizabeth for
all your work chris ifo i know that i
can tell there's been a lot of work put
into that i know when we talked about
the tranches
and what to fund first i think we were
very interested in getting the
non-profits
funded immediately right and and
and looked to a request for proposals
and that happened and there was a lot of
work if you recall
in that the way the city informed the
public
in terms of public comment i mean we had
several work sessions um so i'm i'm good
about how this all sort of
rolled out
i'm interested i have a couple of
questions
elizabeth and one is how was legal
involved in this process in terms of
of um
well i'll let it go there
yeah mayor mayor pro tem so um
as for legal internal audit has been
i've been talking to viola throughout
the entire thing the plan is once we get
direction today is to put the entire
process together and send it to legal to
review so
okay okay so
biola was involved which is audit but
not like an attorney kind of reviewing
things and making sure that it was where
we needed to land
correct okay yeah okay
um but you will
you will
share this with legal
okay i think it's important to have
legal in the beginning not maybe
you know
it
kind of a
oh an afterthought right i think it's
very important especially because when
i've heard is that we didn't have a
matrix
the mate it would it wasn't clear from
the first person that first group of
people
sort of um
looking through
these um
applications that you know and you you
actually made a few ineligible right
there was no matrix as to what it is or
an understanding that it was out there
so i feel like you have a matrix now
that you're going to use and people are
clear about what that's looking like
um
then the the other
the other
question that i had is this first
opportunity
to to speak to the ineligible
folks
are you asking them you have a dialogue
with them and you're talking to them
about what made them ineligible
and
and what could make you eligible is that
what that conversation is going to be
like uh mayor mayor protem
i think one of the main reasons to sit
down with them is to tell them why they
were ineligible because i know that was
one of the concerns that they never
heard back because it was an rfp process
but um but also you know if they can
look at their application after hearing
why they're ineligible and be able to
say well we don't need that budgeted
item you can remove it um
you know that opportunity we want to be
able to present that opportunity to them
i don't necessarily feel like we're
going to sit down and be like all right
this is ineligible how can we make you
eligible but if they want to take that
effort and they want to you know because
it it says that there are in the final
rule there are other enumerated
other items that are not listed as
enumerated that could potentially be
eligible if they can show documentation
to prove us wrong and we can take that
to internal audit
then you know
we're all for that
okay
so i i'm interested i'm concerned about
the timeline so
and and the best and prudent way to
to utilize our audit
department both counselor um
abeyta and i
sit on the oversight committee and i
mean they're slammed with all sorts of
things and i i just don't know that
having that audit at that point in time
is the most appropriate
thing to to do because you've all i just
it feels
like it's it's in there
you know to check your work i guess i'm
not sure
but i think if you have your matrix
you're sticking to your matrix i would
say eliminate that audit and move
through
more quickly
i guess i just feel like if you have
your matrix you have everything that you
need this timeline then you're talking
to
viola and audit then she's going to say
you know it's maybe not clear
i would say go through the process and
then have the audit for me having
several audits through these process
through this timeline
it doesn't make sense to me i know i
want i want us to be transparent but i
think the public now is aware and the
people are where this is the matrix this
is what we're doing this is how we're
going to do it and i think that will cut
down on the timeline i'm not suggesting
please no one take from this that i
don't want it to be transparent or that
we're not checking our you know dotting
our eyes and crossing our teeth that's
not it at all but i don't think that's
the best way to use our audit
department um in at the beginning and at
the middle and at the end i think it's
an overkill frankly and thank you for
that i appreciate the diligent i know
what you were looking for and going for
i just don't think it's necessary um i
think what i remember hearing is we
didn't have a matrix
um
and we have it now people are informed
you know you're very clear you have a
time frame all the things i think that
we sort of got dinged on have been
corrected from my estimate and legal
help me she's here to help us
move through this process i think we can
move this timeline and have
everything correct and ready to move by
early may
and that would be what i'm i'm going for
they've recommended counselor flores and
if you want to get on the mic so people
can hear what you're saying i'm happy to
have that dialogue with you right now
but i'm saying because that's what
they're asking us for is to have
a dialogue about this and then to say
they're getting they're wanting feedback
from us and that's my feedback is that
we need to cut the time frame down
um and this is my
my um
recommendation to cut the time frame
down
if i may yes sure well just while
they're looking it up i can maybe give
some commentary on
so i'll take responsibility for that
that initial audit
and the reason why i suggested that is
that was the main point of contention
from this last go-around it was that
eligibility criteria and the fact that
we didn't have one written
and so that's why we wanted to put a lot
of emphasis on that first
eligibility criteria and then
if
if there's any room like for example
like if we come through and there's
the same nine
then
then we won't have anything anything on
the back end it would come forward
that would really cut the timeline if if
it were but i think that was the biggest
issue is that it wasn't
one that we didn't have one written down
but my thought is that there would be
still be those that
contest whether or not that eligibility
criteria is legit right
and um and so that's just protection for
the people that are on that eligibility
criteria our committee
and then um you know also just to
resolve any any concerns
but
you know we're welcome to
i mean we can take direction to be able
to remove that but that was the reason
for it yeah i understand that i think it
i think to be clear what the criteria is
matrix the rubric that there's a clear
path that if someone had an appeal they
knew what to do next i don't think i
think that was unclear for folks so if
you put that out there very clearly that
there wasn't a pill because they didn't
agree with it and people have different
right they look at things very
differently from a different lens i
think if we did those two things i think
we could really
um
reduce the time frame i think it is not
the best prudent um use of our
our
and and no criticism against our our um
audit department i just i think i think
it's too many audits
um at at this point
mayor mayor perth um we were just
talking and if we were to cut out the
the first audit and wait till the end we
could potentially um
have recommendations by early june i
would say maybe end of may even sooner
if it does end up with the nine
applications before that's if it has to
go through the complete scoring
but we can put together a new
recommended timeline and send it to mr
pealey to get to you all if you'd like
so do we have does this is this common
before you release funding to have an
audit
i don't think so i think because of the
fact that it's federal monies i know
that when i was in washington and when
they were discussing this you know they
want us to get the money out quickly but
carefully because they're going to come
back and audit us and if we don't
conform they're going to want some or
all of it back right so i think this is
just being prudent to what the city is
trying to do i i i understand that and i
just
i understand that but i i think having
the audit and giving they gave us the
information and i feel we've corrected
it
i feel we've corrected it and then
you're going to ask people to give
quarterly reports or reports of some
sort and
which is prudent you want them to do
that because of we need to understand
how they were using the money did you
use the money like you said you were
going to use some money and so that's
where i think
audit comes in to be and i'm sorry biola
i feel like i'm owning in on you and i
don't mean to but i
i i'm just i think i've said it over and
over again i don't think i think three
times having audit review this is not
necessary
um i think there's other ways to get to
that and we don't do this anyway and
when we release funds and i think i
think we need to keep
keep moving in the direction that we are
moving in is is
we have a matrix it's clear make it
clear what that
process is if one wants to appeal that
process
um i think talking to people who have
who you have
at some point in time i'm not sure that
the beginning is the right time to talk
to people
because um
in relation to this is why we've we've
deemed you ineligible it doesn't feel
right at the beginning feels like it
needs to happen a little towards the end
in my opinion and
that's
my feedback thank you
counselor beta
thank you mayor
thank you elizabeth
and to mr pealey for
taking the comments i know from a lot of
our applicants from us on council and
from staff to help create all this
i understand
the rising of having an audit towards
the beginning and to establish that
based trust
with organizations and also with staff
too because we did hear a lot of
critique with staff about this and i do
think it's helpful to make sure
everybody understands that everybody was
doing their job
according to what uh the education and
uh
the matrix so i do appreciate that i
also recognize that this is a process
that i think all of us do want to see
go
as quickly or i should say as
efficiently as possible so if there are
ways to help with that i i think that's
something to take into consideration but
i do appreciate um having a very strong
upfront approach
with that trust and um just reviewing
because i do think it
it is better to have that in the
beginning than it is at the end and then
find out that there was a problem that
could have been caught at the very
beginning because we definitely don't
want to be back here again um at this
phase uh
you know in july or august
thank you thank you mayor
we have council koran and counselor
flores
i just have a quick question about
logistics and cutting out time um has
the
i know that you have the setup for a
council meeting two
what the the
two after this one or one
after i don't know what the right term
for that is
um may 2nd
is and this is just a matter of
understanding what the process our
process is if we said what you have here
today
i mean and again we're not really taking
action we're sort of discussing and
giving ideas but if we if we said
something like this this looks good to
us could it come back next week to the
to the council for approval
to cut two weeks off of the time uh
mayor councillor koran
i'll defer to the city clerk
mayor councillor cran um we have a
timeline in our packet process and
everything was supposed to be with me
last monday so okay it would be pushing
it for like up until the last possible
minute for me to do which agenda yeah i
was gonna say like it's like the agenda
setting is right after this so i
realized that that's okay thank you
council florida well apropos of um
councillor uh
koren's question um i mean i'm looking
at this timeline on page 17
and
so today is april 11 work session and
then 12 to 29 eligibility committee
training
and then you come for a resolution to
adopt the process so why would you have
an eligibility committee training
if it's not going to be consistent with
um
wouldn't you want to have that after
the resolution
may or council wouldn't the shouldn't
the resolution have the process
mayor councillor flores yes the the
resolution will have the process uh
we're going to take the feedback from i
mean excuse me the process which would
necessarily
have to include the eligibility
committee training
mayor councillor flores yes it if
there's anything after the resolution
has passed but there's going to be a lot
of education that like
that needs to be taught to this
committee from the beginning about arpa
because these are um people that just
haven't been kind of like we did when we
kind of took over is we took a week or
two when we just dug in so
we kind of see that that few week period
of kind of giving them the background
information and then when
the resolution is passed going and
actually filling them in on exactly what
the eligibility criteria looks like
i see
so that would happen irrespective of any
process so you want to get that started
as soon as possible
okay
um
but i do want to speak to how important
the internal
auditor is it's a very important
position that we have we're very
fortunate to have that and it is part of
legal it is part of our legal department
um and i think that given um
what we saw the last time around it's
all the more important to have that i
think transparency
transparency is definitely at issue
and process i think is at issue as well
so
we need our internal um auditor to go
through this it is very tedious
for her i imagine
because of all the checkpoints and
everything that has to
be looked at but
it means we wouldn't be voting on this
until late august or early september
but at that point i would expect or hope
at least hope
um well expect actually to have
something that is just crystal clear
acceptable to everybody
and
[Music]
and above all transparency but i do
appreciate everything you've done miss
teeters and mr favor
i'm sure it wasn't an easy task for you
it hasn't been for me
so thank you very much and thank you mr
mayor
okay so let me ask members of the public
who are here who would like to speak on
this issue can i have just my show of
hands
just one one person
okay three minutes please come forward
state your name
hello uh mayor
city manager counselors
ms vega
my name is rudy rayata senior
i'm very adamant about this whole
process about this whole situation
and i'm very very happy that you guys
decided not to table this for
infinity
it's great to see you guys take action
and to be up here
and to focusing and working as a team as
one unit because that's what it takes
you know and the thing is as a super as
an old superintendent
as far as 21 positions
well we took bids all the time i'm a
master electrician that's been disabled
but as a superintendent multi-billion
contracts and million dollar contracts
and even even just a house commercial
industrial record you know i can't even
say it no more residential commercial
and industrial electrician master
electrician anything i could build used
to
but what you guys are doing here is
great
but uh
it's not fair to everybody else who
didn't apply that didn't make it because
he had the criteria changed
so since there's 21 people that made it
on the old criteria which we know we got
we got in trouble for because we didn't
follow the guidelines and we got our
hands smacked and they said we got to
come back and fix it that's why we're
here today and this is a great plan
but to sit here and just start you know
changing uh what they put weeks into
you know it's just uh
just not even right they put a lot of
work and time and energy into this this
proposal here and i i mean i know these
501 c's and everybody else needs this
money but it needs to be taken slowly
done right what happens when you get to
the end you take out that first one what
happens when you get to the end of this
procedure and you find out three of your
people don't make it then all of a
sudden now
you've already cut everybody loose and
you've got to start back over and then
you start getting all kinds of criticism
because how did you get to the end of
the procedure and all of a sudden three
of these 21 people couldn't uh didn't
qualify after all because they didn't
make it past the last audit
i believe in audits
and uh but i also believe that these
people know what they're talking about
but as far as keeping the same 21
participants i don't think it's fair the
community
because uh it's a new ballgame it's new
rules it's new everything
and when we have a new game when a game
gets canceled we don't carry over the
score and i understand your your uh
your little thing about talking about
airplane tickets
well in reality we fly all the time so
we know we still get to keep our
airplane tickets and and everybody gets
to go the overflow gets to jump on the
plane
but uh
we all fly 37 countries i've been to
have a great day
okay i think that pretty much uh
concludes that so
looks like the direction is move forward
and see what you can to trim the time
and audits and things of this nature
while still keeping the integrity of the
of the process intact
is that what i'm hearing
okay well good job i know it's difficult
and thank you for everyone who's come
out here today and
and who's applied and hopefully
everything goes well
thank you mayor city council
okay so if there's nothing else then
entertain a motion to adjourn
so moved by flores
second a motion made by counselor flotis
second by councilor graham christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor beta yes
country graham yes
councillor bancomo yes
councilor quran yes
councillor flores yes consort gandala
yes mayor yes
okay we're adjourned it's
3 20 pm thank you
we had a good run
agenda city meeting huh
all right this is the agenda setting
meeting for our april 18 2022 city
council meeting number one non-consent
one non-consent two consent two consent
three non-consent three non-consensus
for non-consent for non-consent five
non-consent five non-consensus six
consent six consensus seven non-consent
seven non-consent eight non-consent
eight non-consensus nine non-consent
nine non-consent ten consent ten
concerns eleven non-consent eleven
non-penalties
and twelve non-consent
you