[Music]
hello
good afternoon everyone welcome to our
city council work session
today is monday
march 28
2022.
before we begin i'm going to ask if you
please rise for the pledge of allegiance
please
is
and jennifer martinez from our
communications office going to introduce
our pet of the week
good afternoon mayor and council i am
jennifer martinez with the city's
communications office
and today i have a very handsome cat for
you to get to know
this is remington this guy is about five
years old he loves good conversation and
he adores getting smooches from humans
remington does have a sensitive stomach
which has him on a prescription food
and that is to keep him healthy and he
knows that the right family will spare
no expense for him
and then we have bell
bell is four years old she was a mommy
when she arrived at the shelter
belle has since cared for her puppies
until they found a home but now
she is looking to get her turn for a
loving home
unfortunately belle does have heartworms
and she will need some treatment the
treatment can be costly but the amount
of love she can give is guaranteed to be
more than worth the cost of her
treatment you can meet bella remington
by calling the ascmv to make an
appointment there is a lucky pause
adoption special that's going on at the
shelter right now through thursday where
you only pay half of the adoption fees
you can call
382-0018 to learn more thank you mayor
thank you jennifer
and now we're going to hear from dr
francisco payadis the jobs of the week
update
good afternoon mr mayor members of the
city council these are your jobs of the
week and for today the city of las
cruces is hiring a community outreach
manager and this position is paying
between 26 92 to 38.38 per hour this
position will be closing on april the
18th for 2022
we also have a cervantes uh sorry a
position available with cervantes
enterprises incorporated and this is the
forklift driver this position is paying
between 12 to 13 dollars and six cents
depending on the experience and this
position will be closing on the 20th of
april of 2022. there's also position
available with tresco incorporated and
this is a direct support professional
caregiver this position will be paying
between 11 50 to 13 an hour depending on
the experience and closing on the 20th
of may of 2022 there's also positions
available with la clinica de la familia
this is with behavioral health support
specialist this position will be paying
15 an hour and it will be closing again
on the 20th of may of 2022
there's also positions available with uh
la with the distinction center llc
roswell jobs corp and this is for
enrollment specialists for las cruces
the salary for this position was not
this close but this position will be
closing on the 9th of april of 2022 as a
reminder there's going to be a
recruitment event this is with youth
development incorporated and this is at
the new mexico warface connections
office here in downtown las cruces on
wednesday march the 30th from 9 00 a.m
to 3 p.m so if you're looking for
unemployment if you're looking for a job
there's there's this event going on at
the um wednesday sorry in at the new
mexico workforce connections office on
wednesday from 9 to 3 p.m again as
always for a full list of jobs
internships and volunteer opportunities
please visit employeenim.com
also the government jobs dot com forward
slash careers forward slash las cruces
and for the information with our friends
at the new mexico workforce connections
the phone number is 524-6250
and they're located at 226 south alameda
boulevard here in our downtown las
cruces thank you mr mayor
thank you dr payadis
okay we have three items on the agenda
and to help accommodate some of the
media's uh
deadlines we were going to move the
adult use cannabis first and then the
arms quarterly second
so
sorry amir can i it's me here sorry to
interrupt you i just wanted to follow up
really quick on something in the pet of
the week
oh sure sorry to interrupt you just in
the zone but uh
as an individual person who
loves mama animals that
need new homes i just wanted to offer
that whoever and i'll get with the
animal services folks to follow up on
this but whoever is up for adopting
bella i will happily pay for her
heartworm
treatment to throw in something to sort
of incentivize folks to take her home
because she's an adorable dog so i just
wanted to put that out there in the
record so thank you sorry to interrupt
thank you very much thank you for that
generous offer
i'm gonna have to get you a certificate
okay so we're going to go ahead and go
go
to the adult use cannabis update and
looks like assistant city manager ikani
demopaio will start it off mayor
did we want to allow
councillor bancomo to participate
telephone
she's on the phone so we're going to
need a motion a second to allow
counselor ben cuomo to participate
telephonically
second by flores a motion made by mayor
potem kandara second by councillor
flotus to allow uh councillor joanna
mincomo to participate telephonically
christine
this is on the motion to allow counselor
ben cuomo to participate telephonically
counselor abeda yes
councillor graham yes
counselor ben cuomo
yeah
cancer koran yes
councillor flores yes councillor gandara
yes mayor yes
okay now we're at the adult use cannabis
update and assistant city manager hikani
tama ikani damopael will present
thank you
mayor miyagi shima and city council
ikani tamo pal assistant city manager
i have
with with me
our internal team that has been working
to update cannabis
behind me i have from community
development catherine rogers and
from building i have tim
from
from budget i have matthew economic
development monica
and irene from public safety i have d.c
daines and also from legal have rob and
jennifer
these are the members of the internal
team that will share on the impacts and
the updates from the various departments
on
on the
on how
we addressed
cannabis
from when this was passed last year to
where we are now
so here's the cannabis landscape just a
refresher for those joining the cannabis
topic here in new mexico new mexico
became the 17th state
in
the the nation legalizing recreational
cannabis
after new mexico passed a few weeks
after connecticut connecticut became the
last and most recent state to have
passed
adult use cannabis
what you have in green is
are all the states that have passed
medical
only medical
adult use
cannabis legislation
blue are all the states that have
legalized adult use cannabis and medical
and in gray
or white
are all the state states that still
remain illegal so what you have here are
a visual impact of what's happening
around the nation
the cannabis timeline that we
sought to reach when
governor grisham passed this back in
june 2021 and this went into effect then
uh
september 1st just a refresher for those
that are during this conversation there
were three types of business licenses
that were opened and accepted these were
the producers the micro business
producers and cultivation companies so
that they could catch up to when
dispensaries were selling this opened up
september 1st 21st and as a team that i
introduced briefly
that we
had our goal to meet this deadline
september 7th city council addressed
cannabis legislation and zoning in the
zoning code and policy was passed
september 7th a few days after those
licenses opened in september 1 2021.
new mexico accepted all business license
at the beginning of the year at new
year's
all other 10 business types and here we
are before april 1st with an update to
you council
so that if there are any questions
that you're getting from businesses or
the community members we would love to
hear them so that we can
best address them
so uh
just wanted to give before i turn over
the time to our community development
team there are a few updates happening
at the federal level
there is the marijuana opportunity
reinvestment expunge expungement act or
the more act
this is currently
on the floor right now
on the federal level it is on the house
of representatives this was actually
approved back in 2020 so this is not the
first time
that this has come
to
to the floor on the federal level
this essentially would do what
the new mexico bill last year did for
new mexico it would decriminalize
cannabis
and
it would deschedule it from the schedule
one drug on the federal level
and it would expunge records from those
that had any
priors this again
for those who are in the industry the
sentiment is they feel that it will pass
on the house
floor
but going to the senate is a different
question just wanted to share this as a
heads up of what's happening at the
federal level
as things are
there is momentum
towards towards this push at the federal
level but again
the sentiment is is that it'll get stuck
in the senate
one of the things for
updates to to be aware is
you at mayor and council
that we should expect shortages
typically states opening with adult use
cannabis there are shortages that happen
there are a lot of things that are out
of our control um
cit the state is being bombarded with
applications
dispensaries are trying to open
also the city has to approve those
applications as well we have testing
facilities
that we currently do not have at this
time
south of the the border patrol and the
border checkpoints
but we do have one anticipating to open
at least by the end of the year
there are two testing facilities up
north and there have been companies and
producers already testing samples and
successfully
checking through and passing through
checkpoints
there is a cannabis expo
set for later this year this is
hosted by the southwest cannabis trade
association which is
representatives of a few associations
and organizations here in this region
that is planning to host in las cruces
the expo and they are right now branding
it as a southern new mexico cannabis and
hemp expo uh planned for late summer
and that is something that i just wanted
to make everybody aware as an update
that there is plans to have this
uh happen
at this time mayor and council i would
like to
introduce to you
the community development katherine
rogers will have some updates on the
landscape
pertains to community development thank
you
thank you connie
good afternoon mr mayor members of city
council i'm going to talk a little bit
about
zoning basically what's occurred and
what we've learned
as we've moved forward with this
endeavor
a little refresher about what was
approved in september
this is a
chart that that indicates the types of
land uses that the city has the state
license types that may correspond with
those land uses and then ultimately the
zoning districts in which we've placed
those something to note for the most
part
cannabis retail is is allowed anywhere
retail is allowed in the city so that
would be all of our commercial zones
and also
in our industrial zones if it's
associated with a manufacturing facility
and
this is a chart that i can make
available to to all of you if you'd like
it as a quick sort of reference
guide but ultimately we're treating it
mostly like any other business
manufacturing is in industrial zones and
retail is in our commercial zones
there are some alternatives outside of
what i just showed there
ultimately we've got infill development
that's allowed in the core of the city
it does require special approval through
planning and zoning commission we have
our cottage industry provisions uh which
allows people to do something unique in
zones that would not
otherwise allow industry um there has to
be a retail or service component with
that a really good example or something
that's comparable is a microbrewery
if that helps so you can brew at one
location and then you can serve at the
same location
we have some overlay zones of course in
the city
many of those do contain
more generalized zoning and so as part
of the process we looked closely at
those zones
to see if there were like uses so for
example in the north mesquite we have a
commercial greenhouse allowance because
of that we're allowing
grow facilities for cannabis
we also have some residential
opportunities for cannabis use of course
for personal use if you're not selling
it you can grow six mature plants or uh
12 per household if you have two adults
in that household there are also some
home occupation provisions that do allow
for a limited amount of cannabis
businesses
so for example couriers the cannabis
couriers could utilize
a home office and use the home
occupation
provisions to allow for that
and then we do have the opportunity to
allow for micro businesses in the
equestrian estates as well as rural
estate mobile
residential districts and those are only
allowed with a special use permit
some conditions just to refresh you
about what's what applies to cannabis
businesses all cannabis businesses have
to be 300 feet away from a school or
daycare
consumption is limited to indoors only
there's no consumption in c1 that's to
align with how we deal with alcohol
consumption also in c1
cannabis retailers and micro businesses
again must be 300 feet from
single-family residential zones and 300
feet from other retailers
and then cannabis micro businesses in
the ee and rem zones
must be accessory to retail um the
primary use test has to be a
single-family house
and again there are some limitations in
terms of what can occur there
and then
you can have some deviations to these
these buffering requirements either
through the special use permit process
or the variance process
some things that we've observed over
time
about how this is functioning
from a land use standpoint
is that
we've seen that commercial corridors are
often adjacent to single-family
residential zones so what that means is
people who want to place their
businesses let's say on valley are
really limited in terms of where they
can place those because they're going to
back up to those single-family
residential districts
there of course is the solution through
a special use permit process that's a
use that might be allowed
as long as it's mitigated um
you know in terms of potential impacts
what we've observed is that
ultimately as long as as people are
showing that they can utilize a site
just like any other retail establishment
and aren't creating additional impacts
which we have not seen
then those special use permits are
supported both by staff and planning and
zoning commission
so far one special use permit has been
approved by the planning and zoning
commission we have three in the queue
that will be going in the next couple of
months
we also have one variance that was
approved
variances are slightly different their
numeric deviations from the code they're
a lot harder to support
and those are only required if you're
trying to deviate from the distance
between a school and ultimately there
are some specific hardships that have to
be outlined
in order to support a variance in this
particular instance this one was
downtown it was near the new america
school
the planning and zoning did determine
that it could spur some economic
activity and ultimately the new america
school is is frankly a special case in
terms of
in terms of the other schools that we
find in the city there are actually
quite a few adult age
people that do attend that school it's
in an urban setting slightly different
but it was supported at planning and
zoning commission
some other things that we've seen is we
haven't really seen a proliferation of
these uses in one particular location
one of the reasons that we had
recommended a buffering distance between
retailers was so that we didn't end up
with an area where those where the
cannabis retailers were all in one uh
place in the city we haven't really
noticed that at all
so i did want to point that out
some other things that we've we've
encountered is that people who are
interested in micro businesses or small
scale businesses
have really requested perhaps some
mechanisms or some assistance from the
city to expedite those
and to make those a reality there
they've been asking about incentives for
those types of uses they've been asking
about expedited review
broader application of perhaps our
zoning provisions allowing for maybe
some exceptions for home occupations for
these and then also have been asking for
some maybe reduced code requirements
such as landscaping or parking things of
that nature
ultimately to make it less expensive to
be able to really start up these mom and
pop shops
some of the other things that we've
encountered is a lot of confusion
regarding
what the rules that the state has and
the regulations the state has versus the
city's rules and regulations and they've
really looked to the city to try to help
explain that
another thing that we've encountered and
we see this
frankly on a weekly basis is that
there's an underestimation of the
complexity of the costs of starting a
new business i think a lot of people
have jumped into this thinking that this
would be sort of a
an easy and exciting field to to get
into not realizing all the small
components that really come into play
not just with the city but with the
state as well
we do have some recommendations moving
forward at least from the zoning
perspective
so realize las cruces of course we're
rewriting our land development codes
and we're shifting towards more
generalized land uses i'm not sure if
any of you have gone through our land
use tables to see how many uses are
listed but it it is very specific to
things and we're really looking to
broaden that and to basically state that
retail is retail and manufacturing is
manufacturing and so one of the
recommendations moving forward is to
really lump cannabis uses into these
groups as a as opposed to having them as
a specific use category so if it's
retail it's retail
commercial agriculture for example
instead of cannabis production
but that could apply to tomatoes or
cannabis
some of the other things that we're
looking into is perhaps adding
operational requirements outside of the
zoning code so this would be similar to
alcohol or tobacco or other business
types like flea markets where we do
require specific provisions in terms of
limiting hours of operations requiring
certain types of signage
etc etc
some of the other things that we've
talked about and we would like some
feedback from you perhaps
is either reducing or eliminating some
of these buffers that really don't seem
to be um
impacting
things in a negative way if those were
to be reduced or eliminated
that would be between those
single-family residential zones and
between retailers
however we do think it's really
important to retain those school
distancing requirements
again some policy questions that we have
for you is should we look to
prioritizing those micro businesses in
small-scale cannabis businesses as we
move forward with our code rewrite
some other things to think about is
consumption
should that be retained to indoors only
should we just monitor those impacts if
there are any
or should we actually include a special
use permit provision
or other operational conditions that
would allow for outdoor consumption
areas
some of the questions that we've gotten
from the business is hey i'd really like
to pair perhaps cannabis products with
with food with a dinner service is it
possible we could do that on a patio
things of that nature and so it's just
something to bring to your attention
these are the questions we've been
receiving just want a little feedback on
those and with that i will go ahead and
turn it over to dr tim pitts
thank you catherine
thank you tim pitts deputy director of
building
and development for the
community development department uh so
i'll move on to um some of the things
we're finding in terms of the uh and i'm
sorry uh councillor you're way over here
i need to turn this way so i can see you
too um
in terms of the permitting in terms of
the business registrations in terms of
getting businesses uh businesses going
so
um just to again go back a step uh
what's what's the purpose of the
business registration process well for
us for the city of las cruces we use it
for multiple purposes
other other jurisdictions might do
things a little bit differently but this
is the way we do it we ensure that the
tax and revenue
department has correct information so
that our taxes our grts are paid
properly to the right location
which is one of the reasons we ask every
business to register at its proper place
of operation
so that we make sure that the taxes that
maybe they're they're selling here but
they have a business operation in the
county that the county doesn't end up
with our taxes uh we actually get our
taxes um it it
uh notifies people that come into a
business and that business registration
certificate notifies people that that
business is in compliance with the code
and ensures that people know that this
is a safe place to go and conduct
business
and then we also use this as part of our
in the existing building code there is a
a
a permitting process for
changing your use changing your
occupancy or changing your occupancy
class all of those are kind of big words
just to mean what are you doing in there
how safe is it
what what sort of operations should we
be expecting you to be doing so it's the
difference between being a mercantile
operation which would be a retail store
or being an office operation a business
operation which you'd have different
expectations if you're going into a
retail store you have a different
expectation of safety
i go into a store i have been there once
i expect there to be marked exit signs i
expect there to be easy ways for me to
get out if i go to the same office work
every day i know how to get out of that
place
and if i'm going into an assembly
occupancy and perhaps i'm doing
something like drinking
we want to make sure that people who are
impaired are also safely taken care of
so that's the that's the purpose of that
that allows us to make sure that those
things are taken care of in the in the
process in the business registration
process we have three inspections we do
the planning inspection catherine's
already talked to you about our
experience with planning
and that is really the zoning issues
where is this business is this a good
place for it does it fit in with the
neighborhood does it fit in with the
the city in that location uh then there
is the building which is this this deals
primarily with the structure the
electrical system the plumbing system
the mechanical system making sure that
those are safe and sustainable and then
we have our fire code
which really deals with how the
operation in the business how does that
operate when it's there are they taking
care of the customers are they making
sure they're not putting
things in the way of exit routes and and
are they making sure they're not
stacking their stuff too high so it
causes uh some problems with
uh with fire um with with potential for
fire damage so those are the really the
three that's how we look at them we
generally do them in that order we look
at the planning first before they ever
do anything
and then when they finish building their
building or making their changes we go
in and look at the building
and then the last one to go in is fire
and they make sure that they're ready to
open that day
um
for cannabis businesses
um from the from from my perspective
from the business building safety
perspective
this is no different than any other
business
the only exception is that we may we
verify their status with the cannabis
control division before we issue a
registration
i don't see a cannabis business any
different than i do any other type of
retail business it's a legal action
as long as they're handling it legally
we
have spent an awful lot of time between
the building department and the fire
department have spent an awful lot of
time attending training so i would say
we we might be the most highly trained
cannabis staff in the state of new
mexico
with how many hours we've been to
to things and that includes
our fire our firefighters uh the
fire marshal's office has sent many
people and we use the book appearing
there to decide the applying the codes
to cannabis facilities to uh to apply i
would say we're further along we we know
everything in there where we're learning
new things now we're learning new
processes i i i say to a lot of people
i'm probably the squares guy that knows
exactly how to get
a cannabis oil out of out of a plant
all right and then probably the most
interesting thing that we have done is
is we do this weekly cannabis business
pre-application meeting and i copy that
right off the for off the flyer so i
know that's what it's called um seems an
awful long we need to shorten it just to
do something with it
but anyway we meet every wednesday at 2
30. what we found is that we get lots of
questions
and
people would come in asking questions
and they would overwhelm all of our
meetings so we decided let's get them
all into one day at one time and they
come out and what we usually find is
that people get their questions answered
by the previous person
because they all have the same questions
and as catherine mentioned to you their
biggest questions are not
have anything to do with cannabis
they're
how do i make my building
code compliant how do i
start a business
should i hire an accountant
just very basic business questions and
really that's what a lot of them need is
business help not so much
our help but we've learned a few things
from this um a few things that came out
of uh
uh came out of what we've found
for a lot of people and again i don't
think this is cannabis specific knowing
whether a permit's required is
the biggest question that we have
and convincing some people that a
building permit is required is sometimes
a difficult thing
but i will say this has been no more
difficult of an experience than it is
with anyone else so um but i think that
a lot of the people
well there's two groups i would say
there's a group that that came into this
looking as this is a good business
opportunity that maybe had business
experience
and then we have the ones that maybe
were doing this
let's just say not not fully legally and
and and now are looking to
to open a legal business and
[Music]
they sometimes
are not ready for the level of of
ex the level of
interest we're going to pay in their
business
we go into a business and we take
excuse me we take a look at it and we
say oh you better do this you need to do
that
the big things that we find when we go
in there and a lot of these we find
really when the fire
when the fire inspector gets in that
door and he says oh my gosh you're
you're a path of egress that means how
do you get out of here in case of a fire
uh you don't have a good way of getting
out and so we asked for uh some type of
of correction for that
[Music]
state requirements for security have
caused some very serious problems for us
when we get in there so the state
requires there to be a secure area well
when there's a secure area and a
firefighter is responding to a fire
how do they get to the secure area well
it's one of the things we have we have
asked for a fire marshal has asked for
the knox box i don't know if you're
familiar with these but these are this
is a national company that provides for
four business owners a box that
firefighters can get to
and only firefighters have keys to it so
in case of a fire firefighters show up
open the lock box they've got keys to
everything in the room they don't have
to go down knock down doors knock out
windows they can open doors and
hopefully will save people a lot of a
lot of time a lot of effort a lot of
money
so we're requiring that on everybody
because every
cannabis business has to have a secure
area
the other thing that we found was the
exiting doors
you can't keep people in a facility
right now
there were some people who were trying
using these uh electronic
doors where you
you you have to click it to open it well
that doesn't work in case of an
emergency you have to be able to get out
so we we have had them replace some of
their exiting doors to fix that
so say not been a
probably not any more difficult of an
experience than it is with any general
business
we've had issues with electrical and
plumbing retrofit i think a lot of
people are surprised at the difference
between a commercial electrical job and
a residential electrical job or a
commercial plumbing job and a
residential plumbing job and
the the the residential stuff just
doesn't cut it when you're starting to
deal in when you have a commercial
enterprise
and the costs are higher the the the um
the material you're getting is a higher
quality
it's it's a big difference and that's
been a hard thing for a lot of people to
and and to understand you can't do it
yourself you need an electrician
uh you can't just you know put your
sweat equity in and put in your own
electrical system um it's gonna blow out
with those uh with those those electric
lights they're putting in and so on
bathrooms have been an issue always an
issue in every business
and then
as i say understanding the scope of the
business and the safety risks for people
to understand what is it that's at risk
when they're when they're there and so
it's been explaining those things but i
think that wednesday afternoon group we
have people who show up now i think
maybe just to see my stand-up routine i
don't know why they just keep coming
but
they they have
a little bit of a little bit of
camaraderie between the the people that
that come
and we've uh we have a we have a pretty
good time there's always someone new is
the same five to seven people probably
every week
and people have learned how to
they know a lot better and so i think
that's been a very successful uh a very
successful meeting
just to give you some indication a
little bit of a busy map this is
something that's available on our
website if anybody's interested in
looking on the canvas page
the orange and green ones are businesses
that have applied with us for a business
registration or a building permit for a
cannabis business the red ones are ones
that have applied with the state
usually there should be two in every
location but you'll notice there's a lot
of red
these are people have not yet
begun their process so this is something
we're going to do the the red ones with
the little exclamation marks in them
they're in draft status so i don't
necessarily expect that they would have
applied with us yet so there are a few
of those
there's probably about 10 to 15 people
who are in some state status with the
state that have not been
discussed with us or have begun a pr
permit process or a business
registration process with us
but for the most part uh we do we have
seen or heard from most of these people
um
and i made this on friday it's already
out of date uh but
as a friday we had uh
um
we had 13 people who had applied for a
production license with us two of those
were issued we have four micro
businesses we have one person saying
he's doing manufacturing though i don't
know what that means
because it doesn't have a definition in
the cannabis
industry so i think i know what he means
we did have one courier get issued his
his business registration
we had three people come in and do
medical sales
two of those have been issued the third
one were waiting on a building permit
so we expect him to get that issued
before
the end
before friday we had 18 recreational
sales applied for two of those have been
issued so
and actually the numbers are slightly
different today
we have five so we have one more
registered for retail
as of today
and we have three that we expect to have
registered by friday
issued by friday
and
just for the state we did take a look at
the state what there are they have 72
applicants within the city of las cruces
only three producers have been approved
and one retailer has been approved so
but keeping in mind the medical
the medical people in a different
circumstance we do anticipate there were
about
12 medical
distributors
and
we expect all of them to be
also providing
recreational uh and they don't
necessarily need to go through us unless
they're gonna do a building permit uh
because they're they're a separate
they're a separate process and i think
yeah that's it for me so thank you
thank you not to pits
do we can we ask questions oh you have a
question dr pitts okay yeah sure all
right let's go ahead and do
that i call vasquez i thought you called
me no he's calling dr pitts or dr pitts
dr tim pitts
doctor
thank you dr pitts and thank you
catherine miss harrison rogers rogers
harrison um
so i i have and i also have a question
for you connie tamilpao city assistant
city manager
so um
but i think that
what i gleaned or heard from all of this
is that
the cannabis industry is being
treated
very much like the liquor licensing
the businesses
not licensing not the licensing part but
in terms of the zoning
in terms of the distances from schools
and this that and the other
am i correct in that or am i already
wrong
mr mayor counts the floors i'm going to
allow
catherine
miss rogers
mr mayor councillor flores yes that's
correct we're treating them uh similar
to to alcohol and as we move forward
with the realized las cruces project
we'd like to make that even in more
alignment in terms of
at least eliminating or diminishing some
of the buffering distances that exist
between the single-family residential
zones and other retailers because
currently alcohol does not have those
distancing requirements only from
um the schools that that's the area
where you will find
similar
buffering distances as with the school
distance okay and can you define
consumption for me
consumption
is any
intake of a cannabis product that has
thcs whether it be smoking vaping eating
creams
any other method
so
okay
so is it being regulated in terms of
public consumption the way liquor is
like no drinking in public and that sort
of stuff
and it it seems to me that it does make
sense in a way but in a way it doesn't
make sense
and when you you know there are some
products that are not going to be
visibly
i mean there's just so many uses for
cannabis a lot of medical uses and if
there's if there's going to be a
manufacturing
of say um because i know that a creams
are very medicinal
and very healing and oils and that sort
of stuff so
how would you keep someone from using
that in public what if they're
sunbathing out in the plaza and
to take out their little cannabis
what do you do then councillor flores
members of city council i i'm actually
going to refer to our police department
curie danes is here and that's actually
she has a slide
to talk to speak specifically about
public consumption okay thank you very
very much miss rogers thank you
mayor councilman flores deputy chief
danes
um counselor i don't know if you'd like
me to address that when we get to the
slide or i can do it now whichever you
prefer
we can wait till we get to the slide
deputy chief danes thank you i think
it'll flow better though okay thank you
so for you mr ikani mr tamilpal
um
my question for you is you um indicated
that there's checkpoints and um and the
other
big question my mind is
shortages are anticipated already i mean
we already have that with coffee we have
it with flour we have it with
why
is cannabis going to be how can you
anticipate a shortage since we really
don't have
that market
or did i misunderstand i'm sorry the
that that was so that u.s council are
not surprised when there are shortages
just
uh further expectations that's normally
what happens um in in other states that
have uh seen this um
and from talking to those in the
industry uh that that's what i'm just
reporting back
okay i understand so
they're anticipating shortages so it
means they're gonna it's gonna get
really expensive so if you do that then
the ny sc is going to step in and
they're going to say okay instead of you
know 25 a lid or whatever it sells for
these days i don't know um
so that that just seems kind of odd to
me and it's almost like scaring people
into
hoarding you know let's go out and buy a
bunch anyway that's but you really don't
have an answer for that you're just
reporting okay the other question to uh
mr tamapeo is checkpoints
what are we going to do about
checkpoints or what what's that all
about i mean how are we going to get our
testing up and down the state we have
there's another checkpoint that went up
when i drove out to
roswell the other day that one had never
been up and it's been up probably a
while but there's a checkpoint at
roswell and then the one going to deming
and then the one going to
up north so what are we going to do with
that yeah good council of floris what's
happening right now is
these
when couriers are currently moving to
the two testing facilities up north
they're passing in unmarked cars and if
they're stopped um
they
they identify but right now they're
they're going through as if
and they're not they're not being
stopped if they
if they are stopped and they're caught
then that's when that's when the federal
the federal guards have have the
opportunity to
take
take the samples away so
what the industry says is that they just
go back and get another sample and try
again
oh wow so is there going to be any
coordination between would that be
something that the state would be doing
the state of new mexico to
we have to address that issue we just
can't have people
going i mean
that's a group or why don't we bring
that industry down here
so why don't we just have our own
testing great question there uh the
testing facility is is planned they're
talking right now looking at locations
there was a facility here uh be
before and they left up north and so
they're looking to open open a satellite
facility here by the by late summer so
we should be seeing it in a few months
so
there's something in the behind the
scenes going on oh good okay because
everything's behind the scenes for us up
here always it's all this big mystery so
um
all right oh and then i do have a
question for mister for dr pitts
thank you very much mr ikani
i mean mr tamo
dr pitts um
the uh permits
that are issued um you say there are
state permits and then there are city
permits are they in any way
coordinated so that they there's an
efficiency in the timing of from the
time the
the owner of the business begins and by
the time the the business
is it streamlined
uh mr mayor councillor flores
tim pitts again
no
and and it's not because
the the
the state licensing has changed i would
say every month
since this started they continued
hopefully for the good i'm not
criticizing i'm just saying that that
every month they learn something new and
baby doesn't like what you're saying
either well i i understand maybe you
should get some
i'm sorry i'll take that back uh
uh um
yeah it's just they're they're figuring
themselves out um and they're figuring
out how to get the licenses issued when
we we discussed this with them very very
early on
and they started talking to their
software software vendor they were using
salesforce i immediately called up
salesforce i said what are you doing
what can we do can we work with you and
and they said well we're working on that
we don't have time to talk to you about
it so we just said well we got to do our
own thing we got to be ready the last
thing i want is to be the one holding up
the the business and and we we are not
we are not people who are ready to open
on friday will be open on friday
they will not be held up because of us
but i can't say that that the state will
be that far
but i i told
council legandra
whatever it was six months ago we would
not be the reason they couldn't open
and we vowed not to be the reason they
wouldn't be open if we were to make it
work together with theirs
we wouldn't we'd still be testing
software
so dr piss are you saying that
they're not really cooperating with
coordinating this or streamlining it
is that pretty much the upshot uh mr
mayor councillor
i wouldn't no i wouldn't say that i
would say we are cooperating to the
extent we can
given the
um
changing nature of the of the
of the of the state rules i mean when
when the state passed the ordinance or
has passed the the statute
there there were no rules for this so
the state has been doing rulemaking
for the past year and every time they
get a rule that they think works they
find out it doesn't work and they have
to rewrite it
and then they get that
submitted and they get that adopted and
then the actual implementation of the
rule oh well we can't really do that and
so in some ways i'll just give you a
couple examples of things that i think
have been very very positive
early on when when the state did medical
marijuana
they spent an inordinate amount of time
worried about where these businesses
were located and they would have people
have to go out and get surveys done and
have surveyors measure distances to
things and so on somewhere around
february or so or
i'm sorry january or so they just
decided
hey let's leave that up to the local
jurisdictions and of course my answer is
yes we are better at that than you are
so let us do it and i i've sent that as
as a recommendation to the to the um ccd
early on that let the local
municipalities help you with the things
that we're good at
um and so i i don't know whether they
ever read my thing or not but but in any
event they went they they're doing that
and so i i think that was a very
positive change
had we been waiting
had we waited until the software worked
where
it could get
as i say we'd still be waiting we'd
still be waiting on the software
engineer to write the the code that
allows our inspector to enter something
into their system so i i think that that
we should we should keep that in mind
and i i don't i don't have any ill i
don't see anything wrong with what the
state's done i
i credit them for what they've
the hard work it's hard what they were
asked to do and and i think they did a
good job but i i think we did a really
good job
and i
without a doubt you've done an excellent
job
without a doubt i'm just concerned about
um
a business being held up and just wanted
to know whether there was any
coordination of the state but you've
explained it beautifully and i thank you
very much dr pitts
thank you and thank you mr mayor
thank you councillor
airport
thank you mayor thank you
staff i just want to
remind folks and kudos to council we
have one of the most progressive
ordinances across the state we get lots
of positive remarks um because of it and
i think we're going to be better
suited for it and ready to go on friday
i do want to just say before i start
asking questions welcome baby mcconnell
fox
i haven't seen her in person and she's
beautiful i'm sure her mama's teaching
her all about social justice i love it
thank you for being here
and she shook her head yeah yeah yeah so
slide 14 and 15. sorry i know you were
way ahead of the
i'm really interested in this slide and
this is one of the least i'm not as
familiar with realize but i i know um
in terms of zoning and such when you
talk about the the requirements similar
to alcohol tobacco and then other
business types i'm not super familiar
with it
uh catherine and so
you're asking us to eliminate the
buffers from the sfr zones and between
retailers can you explain a little
further what that what that means
sure i i would love to uh mayor pro tem
members of city council
so what we've seen and some of the
concerns about why the buffers were
created to to begin with was really to
offset any any potential impacts to
either those low density single family
neighborhoods
and also to minimize the potential to
have
a concentrated area where all the
cannabis businesses are located and what
we've seen thus far
is
there are no
impacts in terms of what would be beyond
the normal retail establishment against
these single-family residential zones
and then two we haven't seen that
there's a proliferation of one location
in the city where all of these
businesses have decided to to locate and
because of that uh one of the
recommendations moving forward and mind
you this is something that we can
monitor over time is that perhaps we
either minimize those buffers or
eliminate them because ultimately what
we've seen is
is they're not really needed at least at
this point in time
mind you time will tell so over the next
year we may experience something a
little bit different but right now we're
not seeing any uh significant impacts
because of those
uh retaining the school distancing i do
think is important uh that's consistent
with what we have with alcohol
and of course studies show that that
these types of uses should be uh removed
from from being next door to a
educational facility no i i agree to
that i agree with that
so specific to the variants that were
given
related to new mexico
excuse me to new americas i did hear
some negative connotation to that
specific from the
the
guard there
um via the principal and so
i i get help me explain because
obviously we don't get we don't attend
those planning and zone zoning committee
meetings or board meetings and
just sort of give me in context what
were the thoughts about going ahead and
sort of very specifically it's there are
more adult
i think students if you will but there
are stills i think some
underage individuals and
and then specific to the business that
will be there i don't i don't know what
it is per se if you can give us a little
more detail that would be helpful for me
absolutely so the the business in
particular is located um right along uh
church and maine so
adjacent to
the plaza yes which is also very close
to a lot of the the local breweries and
and other um
similar types of uses
uh they happen to be a hundred and i was
i wanna say it's 192 feet don't quote me
on that but a little shy of 200 feet
away from the boundary
of the school
variances have really strict criteria by
which we we determine whether or not
they are appropriate one can be a
physical hardship on the property
another can be monetary considerations
and in terms of trying to establish
something that would normally be allowed
by code but could be too expensive
otherwise and and the other one is is
economic development
this particular structure had been used
as a church for a very very long time
has not been put into any sort of um
productive tax use if you will i mean
churches are very productive in their
own right but not from a tax base uh
standpoint and
and this um was a a type of facility
that really did have some limited uses
they're compounding doing some some
minor compounding on site um their focus
is health um
mainly primarily
and also job training
and so those were all of the things they
espoused and upon review
planning and zoning commission felt that
it was an appropriate location
especially
just knowing the tenor of of what occurs
in that area
in terms of entertainment
the other types of uses
restaurants bars things of that nature
nearby
and that ultimately the student body
while there are some minors
does have a lot of older students as
well that are adults um and so that's
why they made that decision yeah when
you say health is that medical
some of it was medical yes mental health
wellness things of that yeah okay it's
the meeting we had been in early on yes
yes okay that has very helpful catherine
thank you so much
and let's see
then you had talked about some very
some pending variances for approval now
do they have sort of the same similar
types of things that are going on there
as well that is correct so something to
remember is that special use permits are
uses that that are allowed in a location
that may just need to be mitigated in
terms of impacts
they're much easier
in terms of being able to recommend
approval on and those are specific to
distancing between retailers and then
distancing between single-family
residential zones
the only time you're going to see the
variance related to cannabis is that
distancing between schools the only
other variants so one of the other
variances that's come on board
interestingly enough is a
they're requiring variants because a
very small portion of the property is
leased out for a daycare but it is
um you know a thousand feet actually
away
from
the the operation but when we look at a
property for a school or a daycare we
consider the whole property to be part
of that educational facility uh in terms
of this variance that is coming um fast
approaching us
they were really in an unfortunate
position because the property owner only
leased out this itty-bitty little corner
um the rest of it remains vacant but the
way we've interpreted we look at the
whole the whole property and so that's a
unique situation
that one in particular is on missouri
um and
um don rooser essentially yes okay no
those are that's very helpful thank you
i think those are all my questions for
now mayor i just i just wanted to say
you know really how proud i am being a
part of this council on having such a
progressive
you know look at this i hear often from
many municipalities and folks how
progressive and people are looking and
watching to see what we do next if you
will and i know that couldn't have been
done without our leadership so thank you
connie mr pilly mr hendricks and our
staff thank you cat you've been so so
helpful there have been people who have
called and i've passed them on to you
and you've been fabulous so appreciate
you very much thank you mayor
thank you
so good afternoon mayor and council so
with the legalization of recreational
cannabis uh the state of new mexico
imposed an excise tax so just some notes
on that the tax is only imposed on the
cannabis retailer so that does not apply
to cultivators or manufacturers also
this is not applied to medical cannabis
in accordance with the lynn and aaron
compassionate use act
our distribution at the municipality for
the city of las cruces will be a third
about 33.33 percent and also the state
of new mexico will
assess a three percent administrative
fee for reasonable costs for
distributing these funds
so as you can see um in our table below
starting all the way through 2024 excise
tax will be at 12
and starting in uh 2015
that rate will increase one percent a
year all the way through 2030 which will
be at 18 percent
and just to give you a look
at the progression on this
here is a chart and you can see the blue
portion is the municipal
distribution
at a third and the green portion is the
state so we'll start out at about four
percent and by 2030 we should be about
six percent
so with that i'm going to go ahead and
turn it over to economic development dr
monica torres
thank you mr mayor and members of city
council my name is monica torres and i'm
the city economist with the economic
development department excuse me doctor
told us we're going to need you to speak
up a little bit i know you're trying but
directly in that mic please because
they're not catching kitchenette on the
recording okay
um i'm gonna is that better
maybe raise the podium just a little um
dr torres it's there to the side to your
right a button there raise it or lower
it raise maybe to help her closer in
yeah okay there we go okay
i'm going to be presenting a model on
potential revenue from recreational
cannabis
this like here presents just a little
bit of background information and the
information that dr pizza already
presented on the different type of
licenses and the status
for
our model we use data on medical
licenses um
for the state starting in 2012 for out
of state to start in 2019 and our model
is for starting april 2022
this show presents the evolution of
medical licenses in donna county for the
last nine years the most common
qualifying condition for a medical
license in the state was
on 2021 was ptsd
in 2021 there were an average of 10 000
licenses for tonyana county
and about an average of 650 50
licenses out of state
our model is based on potential demand
since there's not much available data
yet we work with a number of assumptions
we work on assumptions on how our
population that is 21 years and over is
going to be growing over the next years
we only include a population from
a local population las cruces um
out of state we include el paso so coral
and clean we don't take into account
any population from mexico or other
parts from texas
we also work with assumptions on how our
medical marijuana is going to be
the number of licenses is going to be
changing over the years
and on the consumption part
we had to work with assumptions on the
amount people consume the frequency they
consume prices how this consumption is
going to change over the years
what kind of product they're going to be
buying
we didn't take into account any indirect
revenue from hotels or restaurants for
example
and we didn't take into account any
potential supply shocks
so this short this image here presents
an overview from our model
we have a
local population so we estimated our
population that is 21 years and over
that do not have a medical license
and using data from the national survey
on drug use
and health
which presents data on past month
cannabis users for the state of new
mexico
we use half of this percentage to
estimate a potential population
so we have a potential population that
is 21 years and over do not have
american
cannabis
license
has potentially consumed cannabis
and we took into account two percent of
people that might grow their own product
to a right to a potential consumer
population
those consumers
have different tastes there's a wide
range of products in the market quality
prices
so we estimate we didn't take into
account all the possible products
available we estimated
possible consumption for edibles
topicals and people that will smoke
cannabis
according to some researchers
80 percent of my cannabis consumers will
smoke it
will consume topicals
and about 55 percent will consume metals
for each type of consumer we estimated a
frequency of use
a price
an amount an amount of use
to arrive to a potential recreational
sale
for example
for a consumer that will smoke it we
have a wide range of consumers we have
our light smoker that smokes less than
one day per month
and we have our heavy smoker that will
smoke almost daily
so in this manner we arrive to a
potential recreational sale local
we follow a similar pattern for
out-of-state consumers
as i said before we only use population
el paso socorro and clean no medical
licenses 20 years and over
that has been a half of the percentage
that was has consumed
marijuana in the last month according to
the survey
and we only took into account
10 percent of this potential population
assuming
that the 90 percent will consume from
santa teresa santa park antonio chaparra
we follow the same procedure as for
local population
to right to a potential recreational
sale
from a potential potential recreational
sale we kept one third of the excise tax
plus
one
3.16 percent
from the ert portion to right to a
potential revenue which is presented in
the
in the chart there the numbers are in
millions
and
[Music]
for the first
couple
for fiscal year 2022 we have an average
of 0.19 millions which will be
increasing
these are my references
and
i'm going to pass it to ms irene park
thank you okay thank you very much
good afternoon mayor and city councilors
my name is irene potter i'm the interim
business development administrator with
economic development
and i'm going to be discussing
um some outreach that our department has
been doing as well as some
allocations of revenue by other states
economic development has worked in
collaboration with state county and city
departments and agencies to conduct the
following outreach
first we are collaborating with the
community development department in
weekly pre-application sessions
i can say that we have received very
positive feedback from those seeking
one-on-one assistance with the
application process and identifying the
proper permits and licenses needed for
their individual business
as mr pitts mentioned earlier some of
the questions that we are getting in
particular have to do with funding
because this is still considered a
schedule one substance they are very
limited
new entrepreneurs in accessing funding
to start their businesses
last spring the house passed the safe
banking act which would allow federal
banking institutions to do business with
cannabis industries including providing
loans
however it's been sitting in the senate
and so we're awaiting approval by them
i can say though that in the interim new
mexico has recognized this as a barrier
and last november 30th
the
uh
new mexico finance authority approved a
5 million 5 million dollar program to
offer
cannabis micro business loans
they will be providing loans up to two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars with
interest rates ranging from two to three
percent depending on the loan
the loans are aimed at capital
initiatives including the purchase
rental or creation of buildings and
greenhouses
lighting security and irrigation systems
and payments for utilities and marketing
efforts
the loan will be targeted at rural and
impoverished communities as well as
minority business owners
we also continue to provide one-on-one
business consultation
we do work with our partner agencies and
have resources available for those that
are interested in
learning how to write a business plan
to do business and employment
recruitment and so we do have those
services available that we provide to
them
we also help to maintain the city's
cannabis information
webpage in collaboration with the
community development department and
most recently hosted a two-day cannabis
seminar
on january 5th and 6th the first day
focused on state agencies and updates
and the second focused on city and
county updates and information
the attendance for the event ranged from
90 to 100 virtual participants and 80 to
90 in-person attendees
we will continue to work with businesses
to identify any existing challenges and
changes as a cannabis industry
matures and evolves
in addition to examining projected
revenues economic development has also
been researching how other states are
allocating revenue generated by cannabis
and also to identify possible
programming and support for businesses
as you can see california first issues
revenue that covers regulatory and
research costs
and then 60 goes to anti-drug programs
targeting kids
20 goes to environmental programs and
additional 20 goes to public safety
colorado allocates 10 percent to local
governments and 90 to the state
government and of that 90 percent 16
percent of the state revenue goes to the
general fund
13 goes to state public school fund and
72 goes to the marijuana tax cash fund
in 2014 the colorado state legislature
created the marijuana tax cash fund to
collect sales tax revenue from retail
and medical marijuana
revenue from the marijuana tax cash fund
must be spent the following year on
health care
monitoring marijuana health effects
health education
substance abuse prevention and treatment
programs and law enforcement
illinois allocates 35 percent to the
general fund and 25 percent to the
illinois recovery invest and renew
program
the restore reinvest
and renew program otherwise known as the
r3 grant funds programs in illinois
communities that have been harmed by
violence excessive incarceration and
economic disinvestment
the r3 grant
funds programs in five key areas
civil legal aid
economic development
re-entry
violence prevention and youth
development
the communities that are eligible for r3
funding were identified in part by their
rates of gun injuries
child poverty
unemployment and incarceration
additional allocations include 20 to
mental health and substance abuse 10
percent to pay state bills 8 to local
government and two percent to public
education
oregon allocates forty percent to the
state school fund twenty percent to
mental health alcoholism and drug
services
fifteen percent to the state oregon
state police
five percent to the oregon health
authority for drug treatment and
prevention and 20 percent to cities and
counties
maine allocates six percent to adult use
marijuana public health
six percent to safety fund and 88
percent to the general fund
and finally alaska allocates 25 percent
to their general fund
50 percent to the department of public
safety health social services and
department of corrections and 25 percent
to the marijuana education fund
further research research will focus on
how municipalities are allocating
revenue
and that is all that i have
okay thank you
and i will pass it on to public safety
good afternoon mayor city council deputy
chief danes
before i start i want to say that since
marijuana has been decriminalized you
see dings i'm sorry you're gonna
have to talk right into the mic
i just i feel like i'm turning my back
over here
um
uh since 2018 marijuana has been
decriminalized so for our day-to-day um
stuff has not changed since 2018.
okay so really what i'm going to do here
is especially during those outreach that
we did in january
what we really wanted to do was just
remind the public of what is still
illegal
okay
so um
any possession on school property or
daycare center is a misdemeanor no
matter the age or the offender obviously
we don't want it in schools in our day
care okay possession in public um
or from two to eight ounces is a
misdemeanor now in public okay so we
have to actually see it
um and over eight ounces is a felony
that has not changed okay
uh underage possession between 18 and 20
years old that's a
more of a civil penalty okay
however selling to minors under the age
of 18 is still contributing to the
delinquency of a minor that is still a
felony
the thing that we would be most
concerned about from public safety is
making sure that everybody understands
that driving under the influence of
marijuana is illegal just like alcohol
so
that that's really essentially
has been our concern since 2018 so
nothing has essentially changed just
reminding folks please don't give it to
kids
please don't have it
in areas where there will be children
and please do not drive
under the influence of of any kind of
marijuana
no matter how you ingest it
so that's really where we're at there in
our um
what we did especially we had a lot of
the business owners asking us a lot of
questions um regarding safety and we
tried to do our best to educate them
first thing we did was you need to
follow the state regulations
and
like mr pitts was talking about with
security knock knocks boxes things of
that nature and all our state and local
licensing requirements we did remind the
business owners and we will do that at
any time if they wish to come to us i
know during the um the meetings they
also remind the folks about their
physical security
cameras lighting storage the procedures
they have on how they're going to
distribute their product
we also reminded the business owners
regarding their employees how to
safeguard you know how they're going to
address
theft internal theft embezzlement uh
maybe side sales um
you know
for example like hey we're selling it
for 15 bucks a or whatever
but i'll give it to you for 10. so how
are you gonna
you know making sure you understand your
employees we can't govern that but just
letting the business owners know that to
be aware that those things may occur
just like any other business
okay so that's really where we were
there um counselor float is to address
your initial question um you're talking
about topicals and things of that nature
it has been decriminalized since 2018 so
i would have make an assumption that
if we were to make contact with anybody
who's using
any kind of cannabis more than likely
it's going to be because we got a
complaint of we can smell this in the
air like in a public area but however
that's still against the law because it
follows the clean air act so
we're not going to be walking up to
people saying let me see your cream or
anything like that
okay
that smells great
you know nothing like that counselor so
i don't think you have to worry about it
we've been dealing with edibles
the medical stuff since 2018 and we
haven't had any issues there so i want
to assure you that it's probably not
going to be a problem
i stand for any other questions
it doesn't look like anything thanks
hello robert cabello
i want to talk about the clean indoor
air act both the city version and the
state version
and going some background information of
course under the cleaning door eric the
d johnson clean indoor area of the state
the city is required to make its own
ordinance but it would it will not it's
required to make its own ordinance
inclusive of all the minimum standards
and provisions for smoke-free areas or
also regarding the smoke permitted areas
in this
2019 the new mexico legislature
made some changes and those some of
those changes were of course
including um
the inclusion of different provisions
for adding vaping
into this
clean indoor air act and then 2021 last
year actually on march 31st the
mexico legislature passed the cannabis
regulatory act regulation act
now the city's uh clean indoor act we
originally had a version our own clean
indoor air act in 1995.
again we passed some provisions to prov
prohibit
vaping products
and to be consistent with state law and
again in december
of last year uh ordinance 2989 we
actually made our ordinance the clean
indoor era consistent
with the uh
with the actual provisions for uh the
cannabis regulatory act
now
under 2989 ordinance
it permitted cannabis uses the cannabis
cannabis regulation act and what that
meant really is that of course now
people could use that in their residence
people in the cannabis consumption areas
which is defined by the cannabis
regulation act as areas where cannabis
is served
and consumed and essentially those are
allowed
i'm going to be a little more specific
in the next slide but so bear with me
the city of course prohibits the
recreational cannabis consumption
outdoors
that's consistent with our
the 2986
ordinance which was of course the zoning
regulations that we had passed
now we have a little table here
and this table it just gives you the
sort of
sort of visual form of what the
different sort of places where people
can smoke and consume
so under residence
you can smoke in your residence now
outdoors are sort of a limitations what
that really means is does the outdoor
area have access to the public that's
where because
under section 26 of the cannabis
regulation act
public smoking of cannabis is prohibited
it's a 50 penalty it's not a crime it's
a civil penalty but it is a crime so if
you're in your front yard
it's not an area where you can be
smoking that's still part of your
residence but that's not a place where
you can be smoking now if it's in your
backyard i would suggest an area that's
probably closed off to the public maybe
other people can't see probably best
retail tobacco so under there
cannabis smoking outdoors is prohibited
of course
under the retail tobacco
production where they sell tobacco it
has to be a standalone building
cigar bars again have to be also a
standalone building
outdoor cannabis is prohibited in the
city
uh it's tobacco manufacturing assuming
that the people allowed it i guess the
people could the owner allowed it you
could actually have it there
uh gaming casinos and bingo parlors
designated outdoor areas now it's
important here it doesn't need an
outdoor area it's a place where uh
an employer allows the people to smoke
some cannabis consumption outdoors is
prohibited so you can still have an
outdoor area for smoking tobacco as long
as it's not again
someplace where the public has access to
so if you have a business
you wouldn't have it on your sales floor
you wouldn't have it in a place where
the entrance or egress of the place but
you'd have it a place would be closed
off again that's just tobacco smoke
similar for private clubs
hotel motel rooms so
the ten percent capacity of a room so
basically if a hotel which i'll have 10
of the rooms for smoking now this is in
the residence park of those rooms so the
sort of the common areas you can't be
smoking cannabis
in the common areas where they have you
you go pick up your ice or in the lobby
certainly there's cannabis smoking has
allowed for dative ceremonies theatrical
productions movie theaters sort of movie
productions and theater productions
and consumption areas again you know
only consumption areas are allowed or
indoors so patios outdoor patios you
can't have that
consumption of cannabis outdoors
under um
this will open up with questions now
yes counselor correct i just had a
couple i'm not sure if you're opening it
up for questions for the whole thing and
one of my questions is somewhat germane
to you and someone to mean to the prior
thing so i i think this is the last
section so it could be up to this
section or anybody else um
i had a couple of questions that that
are related to your your thing so if
for instance on the idea of patio use
um
if we were to to relax the in our zoning
conversation that we're going to have if
we were to do something like make it
easier for businesses to have a patio
where people could use this we would
also have to correspondingly address the
the clean air act related to that and
then it would have to be in line with
that
i would assume
mayor councillor quran
that's
it is correct we would have to change
the rules that we made in uh ordinance
29 86 which was the ordinance section
for zoning
we had to make some changes there
because that's where we kind of really
forbade sort of outdoor consumption
for resale retail areas
as far as the cleaner indoor air act we
made ours more strict as far to
wealth comply with the state but we
can't we can do that because
the state allows us to do it doesn't
preempt us from being more strict and
the only reason we went more strict is
because we had already passed that
zoning ordinance
thank you that helps
um
and then i'll i have another follow-up
question but i'll let my colleagues go
first and mayor council koran of course
we can make a change it can it can be
done
no thank you that's what i i just wanted
to think about if we did have a
different conversation about zoning to
make sure that we did all the subsequent
made sure that we followed up in the
subsequent places where we might have
inconsistencies and if we
in that process just make sure that we
think about it really critically so
thank you
thank you mayor
my question is
i'll direct it to mr tomapio first
but as we've heard from the different
departments
about
the time that it's taking for training
and staff
i'm just curious if we've developed what
that overall cost has looked like
for
getting everybody set up for this
process and then what the cost will be
within the city for that staffing and
training and education
in subsequent years because as we're
looking at the economic development
and potential
revenue i want to see i would like to
see how that compares and balances and
to kind of take a full look of what our
actual revenue would be after those
costs
thank you uh councillor abeda just to
clarify are you talking about
the cost that it's taken our staff to
to prepare the the systems that we've
discussed and then i'm assuming there's
probably
training fees and
continuing education fees okay
are are you asking because i think i
know where you're going with this uh
because if the revenue is coming from
the excise tax
is is there then the
then is it for the supporting services
of that industry it takes for our staff
to manage that would that include also
public safety is that where you're going
with that yeah as well yeah the security
increases
as well yeah i think all the departments
great question uh we don't have that
number at this time but that is
definitely something where we we can get
with time
okay thank you thank you mayor
okay thank you connie so we'll just open
it up if there's any other questions
that you heard from the presenters
i did have one one other follow-up
question i think um related to zoning
specifically and the single family
restriction so i think it might be
related to that the the home restriction
um
you're sort of asking if we might
consider a policy that changes that that
loosens that particular
regulation um or as part of realize i'm
not sure about the timing of all this if
we need to do it sooner than realize
might go into play but
the proposal would be to eliminate the
single family home restriction the 300
foot rule related to that and i wonder
do regular for regular commercial zoning
does that rule apply or was that a
particular cannabis related
um rule that we created
that's a really good question uh members
of city council uh councillor koran
no it doesn't apply to any other
business
um
i think part of the concern was it was
to make sure that if there were any
impacts it wouldn't impact any of those
areas at this point in time
nothing has indicated that that there
are going to be any additional impacts
um other than what you would normally
find in these commercial zones okay
thank you so much that was my only other
question you're welcome
okay is there any members of the public
who has any questions
mayor oh yes yes counselor como
thank you
you need to get a bobble head so that
when you're out of town standing right
here and i can remind myself that you're
i love that i'll be sure to get you one
soon i'm gonna get you one for christmas
that's gonna be great
um catherine i have a couple of
questions for you and um
and then i just have a couple comments
to make
um
i i'm fully supportive of the staff
recommendations you've made in terms of
the buffer zones and
the really the data that's sitting
behind getting
to that
getting to this point i'm curious if you
have a timeline suggestion given you
know what counselor coranja said in
terms of
realize you know won't go to effect
probably until late next year
so
um
are you recommending that we
stay in line with that process or that
we make these changes
sooner
that's a very good question
councilor ben como members of city
council i think at this point in time
i would like to see
that we
we incorporate this into realize las
cruces unless there is some sort of
urgent need to modify it sooner but
that's something that we can monitor and
if we do notice that there is some
urgent need to modify it we could
expedite an ordinance change outside of
realized las cruces
that's helpful yeah perhaps you know we
need moderate monitoring
staff capacity and those special use
permits i know they're not always super
easy right to um
um to go over and to make those
decisions so if it's taking a lot of
time i think this that's when it perhaps
could come to council sooner
than the real life timeline
um and then i you know i would also like
to see us prioritize you know in
economic development that micro business
and small scale business
um
moving forward have you heard of any
recommendations from the industry from
the public as to what that could look
like
that's a really good question and it is
a multifaceted
issue it's not just zoning but it's also
economic development and some of the
other departments
from a zoning perspective i actually do
think that we have a lot of
uh the components in place
to make it easier for folks just in our
existing codes but i may turn it over to
irene or some of the other folks with
economic development to see perhaps if
they've heard from the industry if
there's anything that would help
irene
so as i mentioned i'm sorry mayor
councilman gomez as i mentioned our
presentation we are continuing to
provide one-on-one consultation but we
are in discussions right now also with
our business partners to see about
creating programming specific for the
cannabis business there are some unique
challenges that they are facing with
regard to funding with regard to
marketing and advertising restrictions
and so the the issue though is that some
of these entities because they receive
federal funding
are unable to create prominence
programming specific to cannabis and so
we're looking at how other states have
worked around this perhaps
framing it as value-added ag type of
support and so we're hoping that we can
create some programs specifically to
provide business support to those
businesses i hope i answered that
question
yeah you absolutely did thank you and um
you know for those folks in the audience
who are listening at home
who want to provide that kind of input
please let us know i think as you've
seen here this staff is incredibly well
educated
they're taking this very seriously they
want to see it succeed and i think
they've counseled us as well so
um you know whatever
we can do i know there's obviously
many barriers out of our control at the
municipal level as congress continues to
direct your feet around the more
that could really change so many things
um
doing as much as we can at home i think
we want to do it i certainly do and so
please reach out to us if that's you
know if you're seeing those kinds of
things
and including the access exercise tasks
and maybe this is for ikani as well
um you know connie you know when do you
think we have to make sort of that
official decision
um and i also just want to side note
that i want to thank you connie and
catherine for keeping me up to date on
all of this information and they've been
doing a really great job and i don't
always think of these questions when i'm
right in front of you so thank you
all right thank you counselor
okay i had more questions that was one
oh okay
just around the timeline for
when he would see
that we would need to make that official
designation of the excise tax
mayor counts uh councillor ben cuomo uh
thank you for that question that uh
as soon as council is ready for that
discussion
we can we can bring that one of the
thoughts we we anticipated this question
coming up uh so we anticipate taking
this to
the finance uh select committee so that
we can have this discussion there and
then come to council for that
but as far as the timeline councilor uh
bincomo and and to
mayor and to council
that is something where
you you let us know if this is something
you you want to
to head on right now we can take this
and start the discussions at the finance
select committee so
just give us that heads up counselor ben
come on council
great economy thank you so much
um i think the financial aid committee
is the perfect place for that
conversation and i'm on it so i'm gonna
um obviously endorse that decision but
um yes i mean i don't um i don't think
it's too early to start that
conversation and i think we have a lot
of
areas that we can look to a lot of
cities that have done a great job at
this and so i'm really excited to start
those conversations
and then just lastly you know i really
want to make a couple comments around
the kind of
um
uh service the kind of customer service
that city of las cruces has been
offering and i just really wanted to
thank staff
you know i think for a long time
obviously this industry was
in the shadows and now that it's not i
think for a lot of entrepreneurs
it probably feels really very strange
right having to now learn what it means
to run an official business and so
i just really wanted to thank staff and
every the entire public and for those
entrepreneurs who are making this effort
to to come learn and and those wednesday
meetings i think are really helpful and
um so i just wanted to thank you all and
then just for the sake you know that
i think for us as policymakers that
support legalization
you know that we still have a lot of
work to do to challenge some of our own
internal vices that we may still be
holding against cannabis
whether consciously or not
and they think that that's okay and
honestly it's to be expected given
frankly the propaganda and the
prohibition against cannabis for such a
long time
um but we really do have to normalize it
as much as we've normalized alcohol use
and i recently saw
a post on social media from a local
retailer stop proving and he may even be
in the audience but
he talked about
stuff actually
not comparing alcohol use such cannabis
use anymore given that
alcohol is a literal poison on our
bodies and cannabis
is in fact it can have a medicinal
impact on our bodies and
um so perhaps the better comparison
could even be coffee so i think it's
just important for us to think about
though that approach as we
look at the industry as how it's
functioning in our community i just
think it's incredibly important that
because we want to see it be successful
that we can't have
one foot in the legalize it door and
then another foot in the
idea the cannabis
is still bad somehow and so
you know i think we need to go full
force in supporting this industry and
really listening to the folks who are
experts
and i'm also glad to see that many of
the cities are now experts as well thank
you mayor
all right
thank you councillor
okay
connie that pretty much concludes the
presentation
oh yeah yes ma'am if you want to come
yeah well
how many people would like to speak so i
can get an idea so let's just make it
the two minutes each please so i just
need you to state your name and
my name is nicole fox and i'm one of the
founders of the southwest cannabis trade
association that we have here in
southern new mexico
i'm also a technical writer and
consultant in the cannabis industry
i've authored over 30 licenses
and i just want to echo a couple of
things that have already been mentioned
first and foremost
the city has been extremely supportive
of cannabis businesses in my observation
here in city limits they've been very
helpful
and i feel that the city is invested in
the success of the industry here in
southern new mexico
that being said i hope you take public
comment at some point in regards to how
the excess tax is spent
because i hope it is of benefit to the
children and families sorry
here in southern new mexico so
i do want to say that the association
exists much like the services the city
provides which is to help
those who are entering the cannabis
business have some guidance and also a
collective voice so
thank you very much for all the work
that your departments have done to make
the industry become a reality come april
1st so thank you
thank you nicole
there's someone else
if you all want to make your way down
here to the front that would be great
make things a little bit easier
i just need you to come forward state
your name please
hello mayor and council my name is
nathan silva i'm hoping to join the
industry as a cannabis manufacturer
and likewise i just wanted to add that
the meetings that are occurring every
wednesday are very helpful i've been in
touch with other municipalities in the
onjana county
and by far the city of las cruces has
been the easiest one to work with and
get a hold with
i've waited upwards of up to two months
for
responses and emails from other
municipalities and
with all honesty it's just a little
absurd because with sales starting on
friday it's very difficult to get into a
business whenever you're waiting for a
response for
months at a time
so i just wanted to
kind of give you guys some praise and
the other city officials that have
worked really hard to make it all come
together and i want to say i also agree
that if you would allow public comment
on how the excise tax is spent that also
sounds very important to me as someone
looking to join the industry if we
compare ourselves to other states like
california they have an extremely
difficult time
communicating between stakeholders and
city officials which has led to lots of
detriment i guess you could say within
their industry and the things that they
have going on over there so once again i
just wanted to say thank you for opening
the dialogue and continuing to keep
communication open between stakeholders
and yourselves
all right thank you nathan
this time all right cool um hello thank
you everybody my name is chad lozano um
i'm a long time uh patient um first name
again was what chad chen it sounds like
jack sometimes i don't know why um i'm a
longtime patient a veteran of iraq war
and um i've been active in this new
mexico cannabis industry since 2013
and uh seeing it grow into where you
know it is now it's really great to see
that and to see that there is some
progress on some positive changes as in
the distance between the shops and
allowing outside consumption
would be really positive
changes for the program because
right now there's still a lot of stigma
around cannabis and cannabis use for
recreational medical whatever it be and
that would help kill the stigma you know
las cruces would be very progressive in
that to as a lot of people said you know
make it as normal as tobacco or alcohol
a lot of cannabis users really don't
like that comparison but it's the
easiest comparison we can make with the
general public aspect so um i really
want to thank you guys and everything
and um you know let's hopefully we can
do something you know hopefully these
changes can happen quick i was going to
ask you guys when do you think that
would actually happen you know the
meetings or any of that like to change
the
outside consumption and the distance
between the shops and everything because
that just might be a burden and some
people have actually said that's a
burden on them now and they're not too
sure so i'm just wondering the timeline
on the change for that if anybody knows
chad there's really no timeline we
probably can't even really discuss that
because it's not on the agenda but we're
just here to take your we can probably
now you're welcome to
uh when we have a city council comments
and you know some council members can
maybe bring it forward down the road but
uh yeah can't really engage in a
dialogue isn't we're going to do that
right now i'm sure won't be long though
okay i was just wondering because you
know if it's better than a year from now
i know i'm sure it won't be hey or if i
may yes may protest i believe that
catherine as staff asked for some
guidance is it related to that area and
so i think it feels like we are open and
i'd i i'd asked our attorney to weigh in
on that
it was part of the recommendations and
for us to weigh in and a work session
related to very specifically which she
outlined
jennifer do you have a comment on that
mayor and council i guess i'm not clear
on
weighing in on the clean indoor air act
no i think he's uh he's very specific to
the the um through the buffer
the buffer and outdoor consumption and
that whole zoning component that
catherine brought up
well there are mayor and council there
are two things that are at play the the
zoning which legal had made a
recommendation previous to and then also
the clean indoor air act is something
different because that only pertains to
smoking outdoors and using of vape and
that goes with tobacco or anything so
those are two different very
very different things and i know a
couple of people mention the consumption
of cannabis that can be achieved in many
ways that is that have nothing to do
related to smoking
so it wouldn't affect the clean indoor
air act so we can make some of those
clarifications as well if necessary
if i mean
thank you
jennifer i think it's more about how two
mayors comment about not being able to
have the conversation openly because
it's not something
um
a part of the cannabis discussion
although
so my my
my
argument is that well staff is asking
for counsel to make recommendation
currently
as it relates to the work session
and you know i was actually a part of
the sm105 task force that changed the
medical cannabis laws in the states if
you guys ever need any help i'm more
than willing to help you know i've
outreached with patients and everything
and business owners so you know totally
would love to help with on something
like that
but that's all i have so thank you guys
i really appreciate it mr mayor yes and
chad thanks for your service thank you
if i may chad i just want to thank you
for
thank you mr mayor thank you chad for
you not jack chad yes ma'am
thank you so much for making and thank
you for your service to our country
thank you first and foremost and thank
you so much for
raising that um the distinction between
cannabis and alcohol
because
actually cannabis is
medicinal
and
on so many levels the manner of
administration varies
behaviors vary as a consequence and all
that but
um thank you so much for raising that
there is a distinction and it's really
too bad that
in some ways that it's thrown into the
same category as alcohol so thank you
thank you thank you mr mayor thank you
for realizing that and thank you for
everybody for listening appreciate it
debbie even though we know you we need
to state your name okay
debbie moore president and ceo of the
greater las cruces chamber of commerce a
couple points i want to make mr mayor
and watch my time here
is number one i want to just salute the
economic development department because
we've been helping them with those
various seminars working very closely
with economy and the team as we go
through this and i've been representing
the business world on the statewide
seminars since
before the first of the year and most
recently i was appointed to the citizens
regulatory advisory cannabis committee
so we are working together to research
and help them help the city align some
of the things like funding and things
like that and i'm waiting on some
confirmation of some of the funding that
could be coming down so i just want to
let everybody know that we are working
together a great partnership to get
these businesses up and running thank
you mr mayor
thank you debbie
hello my name is uh josh mccurdy i just
moved here from rio dosa new mexico and
i was just going to suggest i worked
with the city council and the mayor and
rio doso
i've worked with the state on multiple
strategy teams and everything i just
suggest like a working group with people
in the industry and working with the
city council and the mayor and everybody
so because the rules are going to be
changing once a week from here on out
with emergency rules and stuff and i've
been in multiple states in this industry
for the last 10 years thank you for your
time
thanks josh
okay i think that that's pretty much it
all right well thanks for i have a
couple of yes
sorry um
no i'm not sorry i'm not sorry the
courier question i i need some help
understanding how
what what the time frame looks at that
at in terms of getting their business
license or whatever their they need and
is that necessary
for the rest of the businesses in terms
of uh sampling and
and
authenticity and whatnot i'm worried
about that and is there a way that that
that we can expedite that or what are
the issues that are
preventing them to get it sooner
mr mayor
councillor
gandura
a courier under the definition of the of
the
state is someone who who does not
hold any any cannabis they carry it from
place to place right and so um
the state statute has rules on how that
is done and
and they're they're licensed and so on
but i think what you're talking about is
how they get across the
the
um
federal
checkpoints is that what you're not
really i guess i felt like the courier
in your slide dr pitts it talked about
where the courier you know in terms of
that
time frame and in in getting a business
license and such and then my question is
do we need that in order for the sample
you know the businesses here
to get up and running or is that a
deterrent and to include the lab
i understand thank you mr mayor
councillor
gandra i appreciate your uh
saying that uh yeah
no it's not it's not an issue we do know
there are other courier businesses out
there okay uh and we're we're aware of
them
um
they since we don't really have
um
the business isn't really quite fully
operational the industry isn't quite
fully operational we're expecting that
to be handled through the uh to the
normal course of events uh we just we
have one guy that has kind of been
proactive and got himself ready and so
he might have a lot of work uh in in the
next week or two uh uh but we do are
aware of other businesses that have
talked to us about it uh the easy thing
about the courier is since they don't
actually
they don't actually keep
cannabis in their in their business
uh they don't have to worry about
warehouses they don't have to worry
about and so they haven't had to go
through the things that the other people
were worried about which is the the you
know getting a business a place of of
business ready uh getting a permit to to
do a building
to the building uh
all those sorts of things they're not
that hasn't been their worry so i expect
we'll get as as that as this
as retail
um
begins on friday and as
i think i think we will have them
handled i can get a i can get a courier
registered and
about if they have a state license i can
get them registered in
about 35 minutes probably okay all right
that's good to know so and as i said
we've been discussing this with
businesses there are people who have
come talk to us so there they should be
prepared for it
thank you thank you dr pitts so in terms
of of um
what are next steps and what
when we will you come back to council
do we have that
um
and and if we're not prepared to talk
about excise tax to date like where we
get the the revenue and what to do with
it today when do we expect to come back
to council i would assume we would need
to do that fairly quickly because sales
begin on friday and i i'd like to talk
about it today frankly that would be my
recommendation
thank you mayor potem gandra
mayor
we will come to the finance select
committee where we can have those start
those discussions uh we can vet it there
and use that as the prc and then come
here to council that was the thought
if you would prefer a different
direction uh please let us know but as
as far as the timing we could uh put
this on at the next finance select
committee where there's in april
yeah
if that's possible we definitely can can
do that
yeah no i'm i'm okay with it going to
finance committee we have um councillor
mayor
councillor flores and i believe
councillors
yeah
and council bengal sitting in that i
think that's a perfect way i don't know
i don't i don't see phil katnac in the
audience i see sonia though i wasn't
sure if it's in our as
in our health policy review committee i
wasn't sure if that was
a
item that we'd like to discuss um and
maybe we do that so that we're
from a different perspective and then
share that information obviously staff
can share that with you and then bring
it to council i'm not saying do it
absolutely health policy review but i am
saying
yeah i like the idea of hearing sooner
rather than later in bringing it back
later in
um to council in april i'm thinking
okay duly noted all right thank you so
much ikani and then lastly i i i think
um i like the the task force idea was
brought to my attention um earlier and i
i think that is is a
excellent idea and it compromise and a
consists of folks that are our user you
know from the medical um
cannabis right and then growers maybe
manufacture i you know retail a number
of folks that represent the the system
because i do think we're up against a
lot in terms of the stigma and what it's
what it looks like and and i'm not the
expert but i know
i've seen some posts about the
unfortunate comparison between alcohol
and
cannabis and the medicinal medicinal
practices something that i don't know a
lot about and so
to have that and have it in a way that i
think
we can
share with the public i think is is
important and and so with that mirror
i'll turn that back i'll turn it back
over to you thank you
okay thanks so i think that pretty much
concludes our questions from council and
the public so uh
yes connie mayor can i just share one
more thought
as as there was discussion on the timing
when i reached out and talked on the
timing of the zoning question that came
up and we were talking about
uh when would that come in with realized
las cruces um that timing uh according
to our conversation with catherine she
says about late summer fall where that
would come to city council so that
zoning question addressing cannabis and
restructuring of the buffer
that's that timing and whether it gets
approved months after
but one thing i wanted to share in the
meantime until that is approved
when i had asked catherine in community
development
any businesses currently right now who
are working with them that have issues
that pertain to the buffer
if they have
if they were prevented from moving
forward they said typically there has
been
if they've had issues they've been able
to get
variances on so anyone in the meantime
if they're having issues right now
they're they've been able to be granted
successful variances
so that was one of the mindset as well
is why have these buffers when they're
already receiving variances
take away that take away that that that
barrier as well so i just wanted to
share that for timing of any businesses
listening community development and
variances have been friendly until we
are able to meet up with realized las
cruces in that zone change or if council
decides to come sooner than that so just
wanted to share that thank you mayor
all right thank you connie all right
thank you robert so that concludes that
uh adult use cannabis update now we're
going to go to the arms quarterly update
and i know um
richard deyew and his team are here so
i just need you to just state your name
and you're good good afternoon
mayor mayor pro tem members of council
city manager and peely richard dayub i
am the
one of
four members three of us are here of the
executive committee
for the alliance for regional military
support on my left is john bailey who is
our vice chairman and on my right our
secretary lance lear our chairman gus
rodriguez is actually in dc
as we speak and working on initiatives
related to what we're doing
and so we apologize for his uh inability
to join us today
these guys also serve as my bodyguards
in case
there's some aggression i used to play
in the nfl i need all the protection i
can get
we have a relatively brief presentation
to make to you so i'll try to get
through it as quickly as possible and
enable us
to then allow you all to ask us
questions again forgive my back
representative avecha
do we have the presentation to put up on
the screen for the audience i was going
to ask you if you have a powerpoint did
did you give it to annette yes they've
had it for
over a week i think okay then it's
probably in the in the system there so
i'll pause for a second yeah it looks
like i just go ahead no she's coming
down here christine's going to try to
find it in there
christine
just push that button okay thank you
very much
okay so we are ready to get started and
i thank you for helping with that
by the way i should say we're thrilled
to be back up here in person
presenting to you versus in the past i
guess year or so we've had to just do
this virtually i think it makes it a lot
easier for everyone to communicate with
one another so we thank you for that
opportunity
and for your continued support
of our initiatives
so project convergence 2021 whoops
thank you
the first bullet point up there this
past october
the army futures command hosted their
first ever
project convergence which brought
together
more than 4
defense contractors in the las cruces
and el paso mostly las cruces area for
the better part of four to six weeks
it went extremely well
so well in fact that the
the army has decided that the project 22
project convergence 2022 which will also
be held in october waiting for the final
dates to be sent to us
is critically important to the region
and it's going to be the largest
state we'll have ever done
we are already in the process of
communicating
with
excuse me i just presented to
mr macias
in donate county about this and he made
some excellent recommendations
we're going to be working with the
state's economic development department
the city of las cruces economic
development department as well as your
convention and tourism folks
in alignment with the el paso's
convention and tourism office as well
and our city council as well as with you
as we go through the next month or two
you'll be getting emails from us
to try and engage at a higher level
communications between our communities
meaning
our city communities and our in our
installation folks so that we can ensure
that everyone who comes in for project
convergence in 2022 will have every bit
of information they need well in advance
of coming to communicate with you
to know what's available to them in the
community
so that it's not just a matter of going
out to the installation at white sands
and spending all your days there and
then coming back and eating and going to
bed we want to engage them with the
community we want to engage them with
our civic and elected leaders as well so
more
stay tuned for on this
we hosted a briefing by colonel venable
with the commander beaumont with our
medical center for all regional partners
which went extremely well and i'll touch
on something about that towards the end
of the presentation again as well and
then general jody daniels
you can't tell by the name but jody in
this case is a woman she's a three-star
general in the army
and oversees all of armory reserves and
we hosted a guided tour for her in fact
i think lance and john were very
actively involved in that
at white sands missile range
and then we had
an opportunity to present
i apologize for using acronyms we try to
avoid that when possible we overlooked
this one but this is special operations
forces
at white sands facilities that's the sof
that's in there and then they worked
on issues of tax credits for hiring
reservists which is an important
opportunity for businesses in the local
local area and we also briefed senator
ben ray lujan and congresswoman harrell
the recent accomplishment excuse me
continue i
got you he drove all the way up from el
paso just so he could push that button
for us so and i thank you for it i thank
you
uh general funk
who is the training and doctor in
command commander four star general uh
we briefed him up here and also
recognized
new mexico state university their cadet
cadets
and their professor of military sciences
not
just recently and we're working with las
cruces school districts to involve them
in army scholarship opportunities with
cadet command
and we've also briefed with medical
command
recruiting meeting with las cruces area
high school students which is a great
connector for getting these students
to pursue post-secondary education and
finding out what opportunities are
available to them in in the medical
command
excuse me
the same we can we can say with medcom
and the university of new mexico campus
and we participated in a new mexico land
commission meeting uh regarding
encroachment and for those of you are
not sure what
encroachment means in this particular
regard
it's protecting white sands missile
range
from encroachment so that we don't do
anything to impede their ability to grow
and to continue doing testing
and training up there and we've been
through this process numerous occasions
i see mayor pro tim gundam nodding so
she's aware of just how important
this is
you got it okay
preparing for project convergence 2022
i've already mentioned this to you all
so i won't go into that in detail again
and then strategizing with local
excuse me
regional economic development entities
to support defense industry and military
leaders and the comments i made a few
moments ago really tie to this and i
really want to
build that relationship that we have at
arms with your economic development
folks and with movida we've been working
with similarly with the el paso
community as well because it's
it's critically important
that the
economic development folks understand
how valuable
this connection is with wismer and with
the defense contractors for us to help
help them grow uh those efforts
potential partners i mentioned already
with with the folks on the slide you
don't need me to read that to you
uh preparing for the host industry day
with raytheon technologies and las
cruces high schools we're actually
looking at dates in the next month or
two
to have them come up and get together
with them to see the opportunities to
work in the technology arena and and the
job opportunities high-paying job
opportunities that that exist
and again preparing the military and
defense economic impact briefing for
regional leaders
because you need those talking points as
you go forward working with the defense
contractors working within the community
as well
and
tied into that
of course our upcoming
ausa national meeting in washington i
know you all were invited to go up with
us this past year and for obvious
reasons many of you didn't feel
comfortable making that journey this
past year things have really improved
like they have here and so we just want
you to mark your calendars 9th 12th of
october of this year
plan for it please and as we get closer
to the date and we have more details we
want to bring you
in with us and take you with us in dc
and have these critical meetings with
the top executives within the defense
industry and to introduce you to top
leaders in the green suits
that you need to meet and they are
anxious to meet you
as well
excuse me uh hosting a vice president vp
for dell technologies he is
a top executive and focuses on stem
initiatives and we're bringing him in to
las cruces as well in the next 60 days
coming up from austin
and then the army g9 which is partner
you know everything's coded in the
military but the g9 is he's in charge of
partnerships
and so we want to bring him in to meet
with you in las cruces
uh and to discuss intergovernmental
support agreements the ix says i've
talked about in the past
so this will give us an opportunity to
look for
contracting opportunities with las
cruces and particularly with andy hume
with the airport out here we've talked
to andy about this and he actually
participated in a virtual conference we
had recently
i'm getting better at this so now the
way forward uh so proactively pursuing
continuous improvement
in the regional military medical com
compatibility and capabilities and
towards the end i'll touch on on that in
greater length
staying engaged with army futures
command
who is headquartered in austin and air
force works
which is the the compatible role with
the air force as it relates to army
futures
continuing to advocate for white sands
and their capabilities
that is paying off we're seeing
small segments of growth coming to white
sands and and of course the
big army really recognizes the
importance of white sands as it relates
to army futures command and all of its
army testing and training so this is all
valuable to us as a community and will
help us to continue to grow
both inside the fence line
and outside the fence line as well
sustain and improve the defense
workforce by building a pipeline of
veterans in the region this is
critically important and i can tell you
the two gentlemen standing next to me
can answer any questions that you have
related to veterans opportunities and
the work that they're doing in the
region
as well
and of course off post housing
this is something we could spend
a lot of time talking about and we spent
we're getting ready to go up to
alamogordo talked to them as well and
we've tried to get this message across
in el paso as well for a period of time
this goes back to the brac 0-5
process
we were encouraging builders both
single-family multi-family to ramp up
and
now today what we're dealing with and
you're dealing with the same thing here
we're dealing with it across the region
and across the country and that is
housing and particularly affordable
housing as housing has gone
through the roof
and now
interest rates are going up as well and
so this all presents
a similar challenge for us whether we're
civilians or whether we're military
how do we afford to buy that house
especially for first-time buyer so we
want to put on the agenda for you that
we're speaking to you today that we
stand at the ready to help you and help
your local developers discuss these
issues and how we can help them
in growing that particular market
segment so that when as growth comes in
and people need housing
that they in fact can make it affordable
as much as possible and still be
competitive in the marketplace
so
and we talked about encroachment earlier
that this is a continuing issue so we we
maintain that effort and it's one that
we can't just put aside and say okay
that's done it's just an ongoing issue
that we have to deal with and same thing
with we're dealing with defense
contractors we're actually develop
developing a little
link that we're going to hopefully have
in the next month or so that we can
share among our partners in the three
communities so that as we get closer we
can post everything
that you need to know about the city of
las cruces or messiah city of el paso as
well
if you're coming here
for project convergence everything you
need to know is right there at your
fingertips because we really want them
to not just come in and out we want them
to come here and say you know i was just
in las cruces
and this community is pretty cool and
we'd like to go back and visit more and
oh by the way
let's talk to the
economic development folks to see what
we can do with them
to possibly open an office here which
brings jobs
i'm losing my voice as we go i apologize
for that but we're almost at the very
end
again the talking points are critical
for you all and so we continue to
develop them and to update them and then
share them with you as we go
along and then we've already reached out
to gabe camarillo who is the under
secretary of the army and a native el
pason
and yesterday i was at a fundraiser i'm
not supposed to say that am i for
congresswoman escobar and she and i
talked privately about this they've
become fast friends we met him when he
was working for a defense contractor a
couple of years ago and we were in dc
with him
and so he's already made a commitment to
come down spend some time with us in las
cruces so as soon as we have those dates
we'll get those to you
that's an important partnership that we
want to continue to to build upon and
strengthen and that gets us to questions
uh and we the three of us are here to
answer any questions that you may have
uh for us
all right well thank you very much
richard so let me just see if any
questions
okay so i have a few
so are you
um
liberty to talk about the special
operation forces they're white sands are
they
are they looking to come here
permanently
yes and i'll actually hand that off to
john
mayor thank you very much my name is
john bailey um they they are permanent
they're taking over a uh um battalion
headquarters out there so
they are out here permanently that's
great
so about how many more soldiers is that
approximately
mr barrier lanceler um thank you um
really i don't think we should go into
how many i can tell you that that it's
between zero and 200.
uh but uh um the good thing about this
is it's not just those that are going to
be here they're doing training they're
training others which means that there
will be multiple iterations somewhere in
the neighborhood of 10 a year of large
units coming in and being trained there
so you have you have the base set
and then you have 10 rotations of
different types of training going on so
then they might be using hotels here in
the city then yes
yes yeah good
uh also um thank you for that i noticed
that you met with senator ben ray and
congresswoman harrell but i noticed
heinrich was missing is he on the armed
services committee
yes sir
so did he just not want to meet with you
guys it wasn't that he didn't want to
meet with us it was a scheduling issue
to be candid uh and we've been trying to
get back on his calendar and as you know
right now particularly over the last
month with what's happened in ukraine
uh
virtually almost every member of
of congress has been otherwise disposed
and so we're still trying to get back on
this calendar okay but a great question
thank you sir
if i may bear lanceler again we have
talked with his staff so they do get the
point they do we have talked with them
numerous times
uh and so they're they're very aware of
what we want to talk about we just
haven't been able to talk he
came and visited iphone myself
and they were talking about
even though el paso international was a
busy airport and it's large
they still could use more service
and so this was a great opportunity and
i didn't know and i know andy is sitting
out there i didn't know if you've you
said you spoke to andy did you did that
conversation even come up or can that
conversation come up about colonel brady
and wanting to know because they're
they're bringing a lot of soldiers in
for training yes sir and
even with the schedule that they have
with these various
airlines that they use they could still
use more and so that would be we could
provide the perfect opportunity for them
to once we get that air service here to
also let these whether it's
southwest airlines american airlines
excuse me know that
that
we could handle that service and then
be able to transport somehow or they
could come pick them up here in las
cruces
another great question
we actually just spoke about this last
week with colonel brady because he made
a commitment
i don't know if he spoke directly with
andy
no
but he spoke
extensively about this
and so we just gave him a gentle
reminder that that should be at the very
top of his uh checklist that he needs to
get back here with us with a response so
that we can convey something to andy
directly or have him meet with andy
directly to see how we uh implement this
program but uh it's it's literally last
week we had a conference call about it
yes sir oh great so we'll keep you all
posted okay well i appreciate that yes
sir
that's all i had councilor flotus thank
you mr mayor and thank you gentlemen for
being here today
um
mr dayub you indicated that
there would be a need for housing
affordable housing
how many
people
persons military people whatever are you
expecting and
and what is the median what is the
median
income that you're looking at for those
people who will be
stationed there another great question
and we're going to team answer this one
but uh to your first question we don't
have a number on the personnel yet and
that's why that was his answer 0-2
well
only as it pertains to that one
particular special operations forces
growth
but in general
we don't yet have
a defined response from department of
defense and department of army
so that we can communicate that message
to say well we think there's going to be
x number
of individuals who will be needing to
live in the community and and because of
their income range some of them will
want
single-family homes some will want to
rent some will can only afford uh to
rent
and then the median issue i'll just let
john take that
thank you very much john bailey um ma'am
so the the um the army as you probably
may know is in the process of redefining
some of the brigade or uh divisions and
what they are
and those are gonna have to do some
testing and training and various things
like that so there's gonna be some
growth out at white sands potential on
that in terms of median
one of the things we look at is what
their basic allowance for housing is
and where that plays into that type of
role so as we get more information we'll
actually be able to put together kind of
here's what the the basic allowance for
housing the amount is here's what the
average soldier at this level is making
and this is what they're looking for in
housing and we can provide that type of
information to
the the builders and in uh council here
on those type of opportunities
okay
the best part about what that about
saying whatever it was that you said
about housing is that help
so are you talking about financial help
are you just helping with more bodies
being here
in the city of las cruces which of
course they're welcome but i hope you're
talking about money uh regarding housing
so when the when the housing in the
military they do a basic housing
allowance yes for
um all of our service members so they
get a certain amount of money every
month to help offset cost of housing so
that's already given and that plays into
if they live off post um so they're not
living on white sands or living in las
cruces that money is part of what goes
to their rent or purchase their mortgage
whatever happens to be with that so that
money comes with those those soldiers
and their families okay
but i'm just looking at our housing
situation especially they'd probably be
looking at the east side because that's
closer to highway 70 closer to white
sands
missile range so
god bless you
and so
i'm just wondering
how soon this would happen how much we
should be
ready for this because there there is an
explosion of development or growth out
there
um
but the homes are not really affordable
they're just not
and um and that's that's the concern we
we hear as a city have about
our residents who um
you know there's someone making 50 or 60
thousand dollars
which you know
decades ago would have been a lot of
money
today
it doesn't uh and we don't have homes
that are you know
at 150 thousand dollars though just
don't exist
so
um
so those are the concerns i have in um
being ready
and um
being able to provide homes for for the
military people who will be here
um they they might opt to maybe live in
el paso or you know they just go up 54
or maybe
out to alamogordo
but i anyway i just i just i'd love to
have them here
so i just want to put that out there and
the help you're talking about no is that
top secret too
so
so there really isn't i mean the
military doesn't uh dod doesn't have
financial help oh i see you were just
talking about how the individual yes how
they get their housing allowance on yeah
yes so but but to your concern um
you know you get into the el paso market
the alamogordo market they have even
more concerns because their their
housing is becoming even even pushed
higher so what we're seeing is a lot
more growth into the las cruces area
even for soldiers now getting stationed
at fort bliss or looking at the las
cruces area as a very uh reasonable
place to come and and live so we're
seeing more of the housing coming this
way
than um
that we're seeing going north or into
the el paso market you know there's no
more growth on the west side of el paso
it's it's pretty stuck out there and and
you know you can grow east but that's
continuing to get farther and farther
away with traffic it's it's actually
easier some cases to live here in las
cruces and come in that way to el pat to
fort bliss now you're at white sands um
you know las cruces is the ideal place
and as we get more information you asked
about a time frame we don't know
we just know what the army is looking at
and and how that's going to be playing
out here you know the next couple two
three years on it but it's something
that we're very aware of and are putting
together information that we can help
present to builders and in
the council about you know here's the
type of of housing that's needed whether
it's multi-family housing
single-family housing what type of
opportunities there are with that
thank you thank you very much thank you
mr mayor
yes and councillor beta
thank you mayor um i have a follow-up
question actually from councillor flores
are do we know the number of um i guess
retired service members that are staying
in the area
you want to take advantage of you got it
lance
go ahead for that go ahead
thank you uh
we we really don't we we
we can tell you exactly what the census
bureau says
we can tell you what
other odd websites and so forth tell us
but the only real way to get that
information is to have that as part of
the municipal
capability
so
some have actually done that very few
none of the largest
have done it
el paso city
is starting to do that now they're
trying to figure out how to get that
because tax base because
of all that so i can give you a great
estimation
which gets right now is probably almost
spot on but
will get less and less and less spot on
as the time between census data moves
does that answer your question yes
so my second question probably is going
to have a similar answer then but that
was
what types of trades or professions are
most
service members coming out with
and i'm just thinking of this if we are
able to kind of tie in
with our departments and making sure we
can build
you know
build those little connections
afterwards for service members
absolutely
all of them
mean uh so there's 193 occupational
specialty codes which break down into
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
different jobs um i think that you can
help bring in the right people
through advertising those the jobs
where we try to get each of the
municipalities to tie
a job title to a military occupational
specialty code
and i can we can work with you through
that we can work through uh the city
with that and we can get you those codes
and it's actually a free service done by
google
it just requires that whatever hr
software if it's proprietary or not
proprietary that they actually
place that on there
but but
it's definitely doable
all the skills that you'd see in a
normal city would be covered
so for the city itself
generally every skill that the city uses
there is a an mos qualification for that
from engineering to truck driving to
sciences to stem so forth great thank
you so much thank you mayor
ma'am if i could i'd like to jump in and
just add a little bit more to that um
one of the things that we're really
pushing is to work with community
colleges
to develop some technical training
a lot of our younger soldiers are
getting out we get about
five thousand get out a month a thousand
get out a month
about twelve thousand years about a
thousand soldiers
exit out of white sands and fort bliss
together because um there they process
out of uh out of fort fort bliss out
there and we're really focused on trying
to get
the
technical schools to to work with our
soldier for life on our transition
assistance uh program to get these
soldiers to be able to find jobs here in
the las cruces area uh that that'll work
so we're working closely with we've
worked with don anna community college
we're working with
el paso community college and really
trying to build that two things that
we're trying to do is one be able to
employ our soldiers as they get out but
also to start building a technical trade
here so that our large defense industry
can start looking at
coming here for their manufacturing for
their trade schools as opposed to
someplace else they might as well have
it here when they're at white sands so
that's one of the things that we're
working with the community colleges on
thank you
thank you mr pro-tem thank you thank you
all three of you for being here i
appreciate your work on this
um of course this is near and dear to me
having been a mom to a veteran
i wanted to ask i just see a lot of
connections i'm not sure internally how
those
are occurring currently with like
natalie green who's our um
our housing guru here
um and and i would recommend that you
have a conversation with them there's
several
with her there's several
projects in the queue
and and
we need to think about that in terms of
what you know
what you have currently looking for
homes be it single-family dwelling
multi multi-family and or those that are
leaving and you said a thousand or
something that are looking for you know
place
to live and um school some kind of
technical trade if you will so i i see
some real connections with natalie green
our hr
director joe joe richards
especially with the vacancies that we're
wanting to fill
i know
when dr bayatas comes in there
and does the jobs of the week he has
these lists of jobs and so many of them
them are identifying you know we're
we're holding these for so many days for
our veterans or you know our military
folks families as well so i see some
real connections and i'm hoping that mr
pealey and your staff can help make
those connections with a very specific
meeting and conversation relating to
that and then
i see debbie moore in the um in the
audience and they have a special group
committee that works with military and
she sends folks you know to washington
so gosh wouldn't it be cool to
coordinate and collaborate efforts and
send a big contingency out there to have
those conversations to have the las
cruces chamber participate with us we've
actually spoken to them in the past
and we just haven't been able to connect
up catch up well she's right here look
she's up in the beautiful yellow and she
can wave her
her her hand to you but i think the more
we coordinate and collaborate i think
rather than sending two separate groups
i think the better um that would be
helpful and then lastly i always have to
put a plug into mental health um
especially with what you all are facing
with and what i'm hearing i appreciate
the connections we've made to our
suicide prevention task force and those
folks that um
come from
yeah yeah yeah so um you know i i'm
hoping that there's um special
um
um consideration and time to address you
know training and capacity building
related to
suicide prevention and mental health and
i actually attended a
mental health
mental health veterans conference last
week and it was excellent we saw some
people from um from white sands come
over and the base and and
you know we had some great conversation
about how they link and refer
the military and their family their
spouses right to to services and such
and guys are doing some phenomenal work
but i know it could be very heavy so
anything that we can do here as it
relates to improving behavioral health
in that area please don't hesitate to to
call on us absolutely and we we
appreciate the offer
we are a small band of brothers and we
have a very focused area
uh we don't now i like to participate
with your group but we don't even
pretend to be experts in any way shape
or form in that field but we work with
colonel venable at
william beaumont and other experts who
are dealing with these issues
as you know because you're so integrally
involved
this is a very heavy issue that has
been a burden to everyone the families
that are directly affected and of course
the military leaders are trying to
grapple with how do they deal with this
and frankly i think everyone expected
since we left afghanistan that things
would begin to improve that has not been
the case yeah and so this is this is
going to be an ongoing issue for us it's
going to be an ongoing issue and a
paradigm shift for the military i would
say
in the way they they they re examine how
they're looking at that and working with
our military folks right on duty and
active duties and such i i know it's
going to be
difficult but it definitely is is is
worth our time to sit and have those
conversations openly for sure we agree
yeah i have a follow-up question back to
all of you
you mentioned natalie green
is she a city employee or she outside
your house she's a city employee and
works specifically in our economic
development department under housing
great well then i'll just i'll reach
back and she's in the back like she's
going to wave to you right now
no that's the good news the bad news i
mean you have to deal with it
i will get with her so we can coordinate
and begin conversations that hopefully
will
bring some fruit yes thank you thank you
mayor
if i may unless there are other
questions i have a closing
um
if council ben cuomo
had any questions
no i'm okay mayor thank you
yeah i have you here on my phone a
picture so he said mayor thank you and
council
thank you for this opportunity to speak
to you uh and to present to you we look
forward to the next opportunity i have
one closing uh comment for you all the
mayor's aware of this so is uh the city
manager mr peeley and and eric enriquez
because we've sent them an email about
this we have chosen a date april the
26th
for a brief get to know one another
little reception that we haven't settled
on the venue just yet
uh but we'll look i just was meeting
with a couple of of the managers i was
up at the hotel in kanto before i came
over here today as well
and the sonoma ranch
for colonel venable who is the commander
of the william beaumont army medical
center and we recognize that you have an
issue with
public meetings and
having a quorum so i don't know how
you're going to decide this but as soon
as we settle on the venue we'll send you
the invitation
and then those of you who decide you
want to come if you'll let us know so we
know whether we're dealing with a quorum
or not but we want to have this little
get-together just an hour and a half in
form we'll get to know each other no
host
bar kind of a thing with some light
appetizers but where we really need your
help
is once we send you this informed
information if you could please send us
the names of individuals
in the business community that you think
ought to be
coming to these kinds of things to send
us their contact information and we'll
invite them directly ourselves
and with that we will close with a thank
you again for this opportunity and i was
going to say if you leave that
information with christine if you think
that a possible quorum is going to be
present it's going to be need to be open
to the public and you need to also open
up your checkbook because they're going
to want to eat and all that stuff
i'm just kidding but it's got to be open
to them
we'll check them at the door if
if you if they don't have any money in
their pocket we won't let them in
mr mayor
if you get in touch with debbie about
that april 26 she's in touch with the
business community every day
so
that'll be our last stop before we walk
out of the building thank you all very
very much appreciate your time okay
thank you
okay the last item is going to be the
budget review and i'm going to
take off for a little bit the university
is having another press conference here
so amer pro tem's going to run this
portion so
thank you very much
i just want to say thank you very much
for putting the budget together i know
that's always a challenging task
but you all are tops in the state and
congratulations again on your award and
look forward to many great things and
we'll see you in a little bit
oops
so
so good afternoon uh mayor pro tem and
council again
matthew signs interim chief budget
officer also with i have uh david
cedillo public works director with me
today also srijana bassnet performance
manager
sarah cundiff management analyst and
also carla walton community engagement
coordinator
so the purpose for today's work session
is basically to update council on our
fy23 budget progress so this is the
first of two work sessions for us
at this point it's just a check-in to
let you know where we are at in the
process
so i will be providing a snapshot of our
financials at this point in time and
just please keep in mind that we're
still in the prelim
working on these
budget numbers and this is very
preliminary at this point and these are
subject to change
as part of that we did provide counsel
with a proposed budget binder
in that it's basically a living document
so as we go through our process and make
updates we will update your books with
different colors to let you know what
has been updated
i will also be providing a review of the
council priorities that were brought
forward during the budget retreat i'll
then hand it off to miss carla walton to
provide some information um for a new
initiative for las cruces and we'll wrap
up the com the conversation with a
presentation for the capital improvement
program
so taking a look at our budget timeline
this all began back in october with our
grants team meeting with legislators and
counselors to identify potential funding
opportunities for the
2022 legislative session
in november
the budget team along with public works
met with individual counselors and in
this meeting we were counselors were
able to express some of their priorities
for the upcoming year
we held our annual budget retreat on
january 27th and 28th at the las cruces
convention center
we discussed several topics from the
budget-making environment strategic
planning
initiatives and considerations for
fiscal year 2023
economic development
utilities and we also had guest speakers
from senator heinrich's office who spoke
about the infrastructure bill and eric
harrigan from rbc capital who provided
an overview for debt
counselors also participated in an
exercise to vote for priorities to give
us a better idea of where to focus our
energies
in february we began our budget meetings
with departments and city management
this is an opportunity for
departments to request additional
funding to help them meet their
strategic results
and here we are today on march 28th at
the first of our council work sessions
again this is the first of two budget
work sessions our next session is in
april 25th so we are required by our
city charter to have at least one budget
work session and one public hearing our
public hearing is on may 4th
and we will bring forward the
budget for adoption on may 16th
and just an important date to throw out
there is june 1st we are required to
submit our budget to the new mexico
department of finance
so budget considerations for fiscal year
we did provide for a 3.5 percent merit
increase for unrepresented positions we
also budgeted for negotiated contracts
for police fire and blue collar
and back in 2020
the public employment retirement
association increased
the contribution for employees and
employers two percent that two percent
was broken into four
years of increments of half of a percent
so we're currently in our third year so
we're accounting for that half a percent
half of a percent
open positions are budgeted at six
months this will give us a more
realistic number to work with on our
vacancies
and health care and dental is budgeted
at 80 20. if you'll remember this
the employer contribution increased from
60 40 to 80 20 so we are accounting for
that as well as a four percent increase
for health care provider
agreements
as far as our revenue forecast
considerations we are taking into
account the cannabis excise tax as well
as the internet sales tax
changes from health bill 2 from
destination based sourcing
so this is a look at our revenue
comparison for years 2021 through our
proposed budget of 2023.
the last column here on your right
is the difference between fiscal year
excuse me 2022 and 2023
so gross receipts tax increased seven
percent as part of our assumption we're
taking into account for the change in
the internet sales tax from house bill
2. what that means is we are no longer
receiving a fixed amount for internet
sales tax but receiving this amount as
part of our regular grt
as you can see we have 97 million
estimated on that
property taxes i saw a two percent
increase we're at 13.4 million
excise taxes where we will be accounting
for the
cannabis sales tax
we're at this point we're currently
being really fiscally conservative with
our budget since we don't have any prior
history on this
however we will be working closely with
economic development on their
assumptions
franchise fees we had no change on that
we're still at 3.9 million
and internet sales tax is currently
budgeted at zero and that's because we
did receive fixed amounts here in the
past as you can see
in fiscal year 22 at 2.1 million
so the amounts for
internet sales tax as i mentioned are
part of our regular gross receipts tax
here in the 97.1 million
investment income is down
43 we're budgeting that at a hundred
thousand
with current market conditions we're
just not seeing strong returns on those
if you'll remember during our mid-year
adjustment we brought forward an
adjustment to decrease our investment
income across the board and looking at
the general fund it looks like we'll
probably have to come back again with
another adjustment because that's still
a little bit too high
other revenues are down 22 percent and
this is because initially in fiscal year
2022 we had hoped to implement our
administrative fees and and do a cost
allocation out to several
units without the cit throughout the
city
however we will be taking a phased
approach into fiscal year 2023
so our proposed revenues are budgeted at
123.2 million which is a two percent
increase
from fiscal year 2022.
so this is a look at
where your where our money comes from as
you can see the majority of our income
comes from gross receipts tax at about
79 percent property tax is close to 11
we have excise tax for the cannabis at
point 41
franchise fees at
3.22 percent
and if you squint hard enough you can
see the investment income of 0.08
and other
other revenues which include
licensing and fees police record fees
and parks and recreation fees just to
name a few are at six and a half percent
so this is a snapshot of our expenditure
comparison for fiscal years 21 through
fiscal year 22 excuse me 23 proposed
and again the difference column is the
difference between uh it's a comparison
from fiscal year 22 to 23.
so personnel increase 6 percent this
accounts for the 3.5 percent merit
increase negotiated positions
increase contributions from the 60
percent to 80 percent for employers
the employer portion
for um for health care and dental and
also the four percent increase for
health care provider cost
and lastly to mention the half a percent
increase for the public employee
retirement association also known as
pera
operating increased nine percent mainly
contributed to the increase in fuel also
with coveted restrictions we did see an
increase in requests from departments
for travel
and also we are closing out the funds
employee health to the general fund so
since we are switching to the state
insurance and no longer
self-insured
those expenditures now have a new home
in the general fund
capital saw a decrease of 37 percent
this is mainly due to progress with
current capital projects in the general
fund as well as an overall decrease in
requests from major equipment from
departments
so our proposed for
fiscal year 2023 is 123 million
which is a four percent increase from
2022.
so this is a snapshot of where our
excuse me this is a look at where our
money goes
as you can see personnel is this big
pac-man shape that is chomping away at
our budget at close to 70 percent
operating is at 28 percent and we have
capital at three percent for those items
over 5k
so moving on to
fy23 council priorities
so these priorities were derived from
individual meetings with counselors we
presented these two council at the
budget retreat in january and counselors
had the opportunity to vote on specific
themes tied to our strategic plan or
projects that fell within that theme
so for today i'm not going to present
the results from that exercise but a
list
of those items that received at least
one vote and estimated amounts that are
currently budgeted for fiscal year 2023
so this entire slide represents the
strategic theme for community prosperity
under the category for business
development we have cp5 which is the
elevate goal cp3 for entrepreneurship
and cannabis business zoning and
training currently estimated at five
thousand under the category for
community services we have continuation
of community events estimated at three
hundred and twenty one thousand events
for that include national night out bike
packing summit christmas tree lighting
event and quality of life has several
events scheduled throughout the fiscal
year
our next category is equity for
guaranteed basic income this is still to
be determined this originally came
forward to council as part of the arpa
request and i believe this will be
coming back soon
the next category is housing diversity
for cp2 elevate goal cp 11 for
attainable housing
affordable and obtainable housing and
housing for seniors and disabled we're
currently estimating about 1.2 million
budgeted for this as part of the home
funds and as well as the affordable
housing trust fund
the next category is redevelopment
for cp8 elevate goal to prioritize
development of attractive energy
efficient mixed income housing in fill
areas along the alpasel corridor
and for the solano
metropolitan redevelopment
act
for currently for the beach project they
have 150 000 budgeted so for
the total is 300k
for the total theme
the next category is transportation for
free public transportation this amount
is still to be determined
next category is parks maintenance and
upgrades specific projects were named
for this so for the burn lake franger
park tony gomez and vmware dam
currently estimated at 891 thousand the
majority are for the vmware dam and for
burn lake which we receive state
appropriations on that so our total
community prosperity is estimated at 2.7
million
the next theme is education and
community services
community service is the category we had
funding requests for the trap neuter and
return program as well as animal service
center messiah valley community
education and low-cost bay and neuter
this amount is still to be determined
next category is senior service
senior services
and this is to plan for an aging
population of two million dollars
currently we have amounts included for
the munson center renovation sage cafe
expansion senior assessments and various
events for senior programs
the next category is youth programs to
address education alienation bullying
and to disperse youth services
to impoverished area
areas
estimated amount is 507 000
programs include parks and rec youth
development and diversion program team
connection and the las cruces police
department youth leadership program
the total for education and community
services is 2.1 million
our next theme is environmental
sustainability for the category of
business development and the project is
for state funding to assist low and
moderate income households for
residential solar and we are still
looking for funding opportunities for
this at this time
the next theme and category is capital
infrastructure and infrastructure
improvements specific projects named for
this were the active transportation plan
the bridge on elks we recently brought
forward a resolution on this
a few weeks ago to apply for usdot
funding for a flyover on elks
and
also lowmen and roadrunner
medians i believe will be completed this
year i'll have to ask for some support
from parks and rec on this
and then metropol metro verde to
complete angular
also the payment condition index is
still receiving the additional two
million dollars from the hold harmless
funding that we provided back in 2022.
an underpass was requested at angler and
an underpass at madrid and also unpaved
roads i believe we have 250 000
allocated to that
our total for capital infrastructure
improvements is 17.8 million
and our last theme and category is
public safety for health related
services
the health complex we're currently
looking to add some money to this to at
least
get the ball rolling for plan and design
maybe
some studies on this also for mental
health issues and mobile crisis program
support
of 1.2 million so our total here for
public safety is 1.4 million
so this is a look at the funding
priorities in terms of dollars so as you
can see the capital improvement and
infrastructure is 74 percent of course
those are larger scale projects and
typically funded through debt
instruments
also on our public safety we have five
percent community prosperity eleven
percent
community services at ten percent and
we're still looking for that uh
opportunity for solar under our
environmental sustainability
so as part of our
2023 budget
we currently identified several projects
that fit within the scope
and language of the telstra fund that
will improve the lives of the sick the
indigent and low-income people of the
city of las cruces
so we are making a recommendation to
fund these projects out of the telstra
fund
so under health related services mobile
integrated health at 618 000
crisis intervention team at 558 000
and the health complex at 200 000.
under transportation we have a request
to fund
a grant match for electric buses at 871
and would also make a recommendation to
fund the new program called lift up las
cruces at two hundred and twenty
thousand
here to tell you more about lift up las
cruces is carla walton
thank you so much matt
good afternoon carla
hello mayor protein gandra members of
city council my name is carla walton
with the community engagement office and
i'm here to give you a little refresh
about this new initiative lift up las
cruces
and if you remember little las cruces is
a new program that we're in the process
of implementing it's a
multi-departmental
effort of the city las cruces to combine
resources to improve neighborhoods one
at a time
the program would allow us to identify
needs or concerns within the
neighborhood and allows the city to
focus the limited resources in one place
to make a larger impact
and the goals the program has three main
goals number one is break the poverty
cycle
to address public safety concerns
and to create a positive impact on the
social determinants of health
also known as seo is sdohs
and the social determinants of health is
a topic that has been extensively
researched by public health specialists
scholars
non-profits and different groups and the
us department of health and human
services defines it as the conditions in
the environment where people are born
live learn work play worship and age
that have an impact in their health
and their quality of life outcomes and
the risk so pretty much this goes to the
premise that you seek has an impact in
your health
and then when you go to eleven las
cruces a level las cruces talks about
principles principles of sustainable
growth
and they talk about
the world health organization domains of
livability and they talk about the
importance of having housing community
and health services outdoor spaces and
buildings those are the domains
so based on this criteria
a staff selected the first neighborhood
and this is a map that you can see to
the right side of the slide
and it's located in district 1
and
just to show this is uh this red icon is
apodaca park
so you can see that the neighborhood
that the area that was selected it goes
to isma street
solano spruce goes back again by kilmer
juniper elder
and surrounds all the aria
and the main reason why this area was
selected was because we have a high
percentage of residents
that are
low income to moderate income
and then this is a map that was created
by our
cgis section of community development
and i want to bring to attention to this
what they did is they imputed all the
crime data between october 2020 to
september 2021.
if you see the blue dots the blue
circles over here they represent the
violent crime
the red
represent the property chime
and the green are the incidents that
represent domestic violence
thank you carlos so just the next steps
in
in our budget process next we hope to
finalize our budget our proposed budget
for our work session on april 25th so we
will be back with some more information
for you also our public hearing is on
may 4th
and then we will have our
city council budget adoption on may 16th
so with that i'm going to turn it over
to mystery genre
best net
good afternoon mayor pertam city
councillors uh srijana bassnet
performance manager i will be partnering
with our public works
staff today
to provide you with a brief overview of
our capital improvement
planning process
and propose new projects for fy23
so not only does the city charter
require us
to um
to have a capital improvement plan for
the city in particular uh it also works
as a
as the most direct implementation tool
for council approved initiatives
the the main one being our comprehensive
plan elevate las cruces which the city
charter requires
a relation to be established between it
and the capital improvement plan
additionally any policy plan or master
plan that has an impact or provides some
direction
in terms of growth or maintenance for
infrastructure also has
the ability to be implemented directly
through the cip
so this is just a typical milestones
chart for the cap process we followed
this this current for this current cycle
so it began in october of 2021
it seems like a long time ago
so that was the initial submission
process for all of the the project
requests that departments submitted
as matt mentioned earlier we also have
work sessions and we
we partner with the budget
team to have a public hearing as well
for the capital improvement plan
may is when city council will see all
the changes incorporated and a final cip
that comes before you for approval
in
september the city submits
or enters the projects identified as
future needs into the state's icip
database which becomes the list of
eligible projects for the following
legislative session
in early 2023
so for this particular round
we had
339 requests submitted and that was
after
departments went through an evaluation
and re-scoping and discussion of their
projects so of these 339
requests
they submitted individually as
departments or organizational units
their own ranking based on the cip
ranking criteria or prioritization
criteria
so as the cip transitions this year to
the performance management office the
city manager has directed us to start
the process of realigning the cip to the
comprehensive plan
a major part of that is to make the
location of proposed projects aligned
with the future development program in
elevate las cruces
so here's
a couple of questions that were
introduced this round to kind of nudge
that thought process
and so specifically you're looking at
the question of does the proposed
project fall within one of the
identified areas
one or more
on any of the maps in elevate las cruces
or the active transportation plan
it also provided the departments with
the opportunity to cite any goal or
policy or action in elevate
specifically in its work program that
could support the project and this is
all leading to the idea that we have a
more deliberate and strategic investment
of our
capital infrastructure
so we did modify the process this year
just in terms of the
facilities maintenance fund
actually a portion of that
which
totals about 235 thousand dollars this
is what all the departments are really
competing for every year
and currently
this round what we did was rather than
go through a broader
process of involving 40 plus staff
members
we had the expert staff
rank based on those expert fields so for
example planning staff reviewed the
top-ranked projects
already ranked by the departments who
were submitting
and they based that ranking on planning
and sustainability criteria we had our
facilities maintenance
our facilities management and public
works staff review and rank projects
based on funding scheduling an existing
capital criteria in the prioritization
matrix
that was followed by an intensive short
kind of working meeting between all of
these groups or all these staff people
to come together to
make a recommendation of three final
projects which our director of public
works uh mr davis studio will describe
in detail a little bit later in the
presentation
so before we do talk about those
projects i did want to highlight a
couple of small changes
again in this process of re-evaluation
and assessment of the cip process
we are not making extensive changes
right now
but i'm just going to walk you through a
couple of things that were quick enough
and hopefully useful
to have made this round
so currently public works projects come
first in the list of cap projects
but for fy 23
what we're doing is alphabetically
reordering all the projects
to go
by their department organizational unit
name
also in the future we are proposing that
projects requested by non-profits for
which the city acts as fiscal agent
be separated out and as such not lumped
together under any particular department
the other small change
is the
the bolding of the funding source to
distinguish the current funding source
as opposed to just listing all of the
current and potential funding sources in
that last column that you see
on the cip document
so with that i have the pleasure of
introducing ms sarah cundiff our
management analyst for public works who
will go over in further detail the
actual cip document
its financials and also some of the
projects that are proposed as newly
funded this year
thank you shushanna
welcome sarah good afternoon good
afternoon mayor pro-tem
and members of council my name is sarah
kundiff i'm the management analyst for
public works
and i want to walk you through some of
the visual dynamics of the capital
improvement plan in front of you
i am going to pick on andy hume at the
airport i'm using his page as an example
because it's clear concise and it fits
on one slide so thank you andy hume for
providing an excellent example
we're going to go from left to right
here we start off in our left column our
left section with our projects please
note that they are now listed in
alphabetical order by organizational
unit
within each one of those you may find
them within a potential of four
categories
either newly funded
carryover
annual or future newly funded simply
indicates that this will be the first
fiscal year this project is proposed to
receive funding
carryover indicates that it is carrying
budget over from prior fiscal year into
coming fiscal year
annual indicates this project is
budgeted for on an annual basis and
while the amount may fluctuate based on
availability and revenues generally
speaking it is budgeted in the same
relative amount year to year and future
are those projects which have no funding
at all and only have financial needs
and the next column the green column
green like money this is everything that
is funded under the proposed fy 23
budget
the future needs are in what we call the
outer years some people also call it the
icip
but those columns which do not have that
green
green background behind them
are clearly the future needs we try to
use that as the the term future needs we
don't want to have any misconceptions
that this is
an indicator that it will be funded in
that fiscal year it's an indicator that
it has a financial need for that fiscal
year so the term their future need is
very specific
the last column we're going to go
through is our funding source as srijana
mentioned we are now including a bold
text to help delineate between what is a
potential funding source versus the
current funding source so we will pick
on andy hume for his runway 1230
extension you can see grants is not
bolded however taxes and other are bold
that indicates the taxes are and other
are the current funding sources for the
434 000 that you see in the green column
and grants is the potential funding
source for the future need of 13.5
million
there is a notation within the cip for
our pending legislative appropriations
we cannot move into the green column
until we actually receive the agreement
and the funding from the state so while
we may have the list of what was
appropriated during the session we don't
actually have the money yet
so we don't move it into the money
column until we get that so there's a
clear indicator for every pending
legislative appropriation
when we do
amend the budget and accept the grant
agreement the cip will be amended
respectively and that notation will go
away and the increase in the funding
column will appear
now of the cip
there is a hundred and sixty million
dollars of proposed funding this year
now that is not just in the general fund
that is across all funds in the city and
i would like to give you the breakdown
fees and services
is ours are one of our small categories
here of small of 13.5 million
other is three million and that
typically includes um leases
and donations or gifts those are those
oddball funding sources that don't
really have a home in these large
categories
taxes is going to be 34 million
grants we have nearly 42
and the big pot that usually funds all
of our infrastructure projects would be
our bonds and loans you can see there we
have 67 million over 67 million of
budget for bonds and loans and note that
none of these are new bonds or loans
these are strictly carryovers of bonds
or loans that are pre-existing to date
now city charter 5.6 says a lot of
things
but the clear and concise information
here is to note that city charter
section 5.06 specifies that any of the
changes made to the proposed budget and
the respective infrastructure projects
within it cannot cause a cash deficit
that's the takeaway from
a large amount of jargon there
now before we go on to
the individual projects you see here we
have our newly funded appendix i want to
give you a breakdown to bring some
perspective to the budget versus our
financial needs
this is appendix a of your cip
it has
1.16 million dollars of newly funded pot
projects proposed in the fy 23 budget
that stems from
339 projects submitted
266 of them had financial needs
identified in the outer years
those financial needs amounted to 648
million dollars
only 160 million is funded and of that
160 only 1.16
are for newly funded projects
235 000 of the 1.16 in front of you
is for the project srijana mentioned
that went through a review process with
community development public works
facilities management and performance
management
so you can see the financial need is
always greater as we always know
and i hope that brings some perspective
to
the process we have to go through to
ensure that we make our decisions as
best we can
and the 235 thousand dollars worth of
projects that we came to are inclusive
on this page you see here
they are going to be the three under the
parks and rec newly funded projects
and the rest are funded through other
funding sources
so to start with some of the projects
and the individual
the information on the individual
projects i'd like to talk about the
downtown gaia sita shade structure
and i would like to apologize on behalf
of all latinas everywhere for
misspelling cayecitas on the cip
i put it with an s instead of a c my
mother would be so sad so you see here
it is spelled correctly we will make
that correction on your actual cip
document
i'm learning spanish cam um i promise
i'm trying
no worries sir
yes
so for the cayocity structure this is
being funded by tid and it's four
hundred thousand dollars and the big
distinction here is that these shade
structures are for the cayocitus the
little alleyways that access in and out
of the downtown main strip this is not
the same shade structure as the big
stage structure over the plaza so these
are separate standalone project of that
the next project funded by tid newly
proposed project
newly funded project proposed in the fy
23 budget is going to be the downtown
parking lot renovations this again is
being proposed by tid
by the tid fund
it does have a financial need of 500 000
and we did approve or we are proposing
i'm so sorry six hundred thousand uh as
an indicator that coveted costs are
increasing uh and have been increasing
uh so this is a plan for that uh these
are specifically parking lots within the
downtown district these do not include
other parking lots
our next proposed newly funded project
does accommodate those other parking
lots these would be our facilities park
facilities parking lot program these can
be at parks at buildings or any
city-owned infrastructure with a parking
lot in it
this has a
funding need of 200 000 and this will
become an annual project moving forward
so we bring it before you as a newly
funded project but do note that this
time next year it will drop down into
that annual category as facilities
management does anticipate budgeting
this from year to year to accommodate
all of our parking lot needs
the first parking lot they will be
attempting to address the budget should
be sufficient so
barring any issues with covet costs the
first parking lot to be addressed will
be at the henry benavidez community
center
our next proposed newly funded project
is going to be a maintenance program for
all the pavement at the airport and i do
want to make a very clear distinction
that the pavement at the airport is very
different in its infrastructure type so
it is being funded by the airport fund
now this will also become an annual
project and
the airport
has a financial need that will be
ongoing and at this point we are behind
in addressing our horizontal
infrastructure at the airport this will
become an annual project this time next
year you will see it drop into that
category and it will maintain its budget
until further notice to address all of
the horizontal needs at the airport
and to pass it off to discuss the three
newly funded projects proposed from the
facilities management fund is david
sivio the director of public works
thank you david
good afternoon mayor pro tem council
david cevillo public works director and
i will be going over the last few
proposed newly funded projects
as we move along as mr jeanne had stated
these are all coming from the facilities
maintenance fund and as sarah pointed
out that amount available was only two
hundred and thirty five thousand dollars
so we have those three projects that
were described earlier
the first one we have here is for the
juvenile citation program learning
center and the exterior
repairs the amount needed is seventy
five thousand we're proposing
to
have that money in that same amount of
seventy five thousand
this is coming again from that
maintenance fund and will help do
is it'll help improve the envelope of
that building so the the walls the
stucco some painting
the upgrades are basically being done so
no further damage can be done to the
facility itself as many of you are aware
a lot of our community youth use the
facility and the impacts that it has to
them is is very great
the next project that we have is the las
cruces regional aquatic center the hvac
and dehumidifier
again this amount needed is 75 000 we're
proposing the same
out of that maintenance fund for
facilities
this will help with different items in
the building
some with connections mechanical
supports
some
fasteners that are needed as part of
that maintenance that goes on for these
items
it may or may not
include multiple units but again this is
to keep up that system and provide
funding for any upgrades as they need
moving forward
lastly we have mirsheite recreation
center
the need that was asked for was 85 000
what we're proposing is 195 000 however
this will go to improve quite a few
areas within
the building itself mainly the bathroom
facilities that are there in the main
building we have repairs to those fixed
the bathroom fixtures doors hardware as
well as some improvements to the
exterior with the fascia up near the
roof
some replacement and upgrades of window
frames gutters and downspout renovations
that will help
with the maintenance of the building
itself
and with that
the panelists here for the presentation
are available for any questions
by council
thank you david you guys all did an
excellent job thank you
any questions
counselor flores
thank you madam chair counselor quran
and and thank you david i do have a
silly question
um
mirshai does it have showers there
mayor pro tem councillor flores yes
ma'am they do okay i i thought they did
but i
you know anyway and so that's that's
included in
the bathroom so it's where it says
bathrooms is that literally bathroom
as opposed to the toilet rooms
counselor flores the improvements that
are being done to the building those
were for fixtures yeah they could
include the showers
the lavatories the the urinal all those
types of items that are in need of
repair at that creation thank you so
much mr c thank you madam chair
thank you councillor flores councillor
karen
yes i just and this is i'm gathering on
all of them so so actually my question
is related to
um
slide nine
at my pet project not to use my
a bad a bad pun
um
it relates to the city did pass the tnr
ordinance last year
assured the community that we were
committed to addressing that and it was
completely unfunded and hasn't been
on a continuing basis and so i just want
to point out that
continuing to not fund
tnr
means that we should probably think
about what
we're really saying to the community
about that particular issue and
community cats and i think it's a pretty
low budget
request
but i don't know if it's represented
somewhere else perhaps but i just want
to speak to that and
and really articulate that that's
something that this the council
committed to last year and i i would
like for us to see
us to actually follow through
on
on tnr so
um
thank you for
that and then the last thing that i just
wanted to mention was related to slide
under public safety the priorities for
the things
i know that we previously talked about
the cannabis related funding but i do
want to
highlight that i think that if we look
to that section of our
of our budget priorities request that
slide 10 public safety health
related things has a lot of great
priorities of things that we've already
established those priorities that might
be good for the discussion that the
cannabis that the the finance select
committee might be having so i hope that
we can look to that and use that as a as
part of the basis for that conversation
please thank you
thank you for the comments
counselor betha
thank you mayor pro tem um and thank you
for the presentation i'm not sure if
this is one of the first times that a
lot of the public is getting to hear
about the lift up las cruces
initiative but i'd like to turn it over
to mr pealey to kind of describe that
process of how it came to be
mr paley
yeah thank you
may protest and counselors
yeah you know this has been um you know
when i first came to the city i mean and
was interviewed by i had my one-on-one
with each one of you i mean the first
the first and foremost thing that
i was told as my direction from the
council was
was to move this poverty dial and so
it's uh it's been quite the task to to
come up with
programs and um
and so
over time
over this past year and meeting with
each one of you
um this has kind of been uh
from all of your feedback really
and several of you have talked about
different
different uh components of this program
identifying uh certain areas
including the crime map including the
the poverty index
and i think this has been a team effort
i really appreciate everybody
[Music]
particularly the council coming up with
this and then coming back to staff with
with sort of the direction from the
council it's just sort of evolved
and we've got a committee together and
our committee on staff has gotten this
program together but i i do i mean
that's how it really
came to be and again it's feedback from
several of our counselors that have that
have
contributed to uh
to this and and so
i really
like the way it's coming up and then we
came back to our team and
carla's come up with a name for lift up
las cruces and it's evolved as we've met
with all the department heads as well
and so it's really taking shape now and
i really appreciate the where it's
heading
and so now it's even
it's gone beyond me facilitating and i'm
just watching it now i'm sitting back
and watching it take shape and take form
as our staff is carrying this on um and
implementing
um as we've identified the area that you
know we've mentioned that um
that came from the crime map and
the
the index the poverty index and so
indexing
distressing
for sure
and so i don't know if that answers the
question or if you want me to elaborate
a little bit more
counselor thank you uh mr feely i just
want to say thank you to all the staff
for working on this as we address
you know social determinants health
crime safety quality of life and in a
way that can become very proactive by
using all this mapping so thank you so
much for all your hard work and thank
you mr bailey
thank you councillor beta
any other questions on council okay i
have a few i just need some clarifying
some clarification on one of the um
slides i'm sorry i didn't i didn't you
guys always do a great job of numbering
slides but
it's hard to facilitate and take notes
so
um the slides specific to the investment
income mat
and and not showing strong returns
what
what does that mean and um
specifically
so just with current market conditions
we're just not uh receiving can't hear
you man if you okay sorry can you hear
me yes so just with the current market
conditions we're just not seeing
the return on our investments for
investment income
so we have received
lower than estimated amounts
on that
does that help you out it does and i i
guess can you tell us in what
investments specifically um i know we
had spoke there at our retreat about
having um
um
the gentleman come and really speak to
that
so that we're a little more informed
about where we invest our money and
given i know for me the ukraine issue i
i hope that we're not investing in
you know
those areas that
would
not reflect on in my value set anyway
and so how quickly can you get the
that together so that we could really
have a robust conversation and i see
leanne oh leanne
injuries or i don't know knee ailments
and such
you didn't have to rush down here i
would hate it if you foul
leanne
mayor pro tem council
every quarter we have an uh our new
treasure you met uh miss hawkis we will
be putting together we put together
every quarter in investment our
investment portfolio we have an
investment policy we are working on that
investment policy
currently
with
as
ms hawkins came into our the position
as you know we are
mostly our investments are about making
sure that we have very low risk
and those items right now that are very
low risk such as treasury bonds
and any kind of
treasury notes are not returning a
very large gain at all actually
um we're trying to
if we can get it one percent then
we go wahoo but um it's very bad right
now as you know the telstra fund is
invested with the state investment
council as well
and that's not doing really terrific
right now either even though they invest
in small cap medium cap and large cap
which is a little bit more diversified
than what we do as a city
but
we we do shop we shop around we have
about five financial institutions that
we work with we tell them what we're
looking for we're telling them how long
we can invest this money for that's
another issue you know long term you can
usually get a little bit higher
investment but because we need to make
sure that our funds are liquid
so that way we can convert them into
cash then we have to take all of those
into consideration so we do shop around
i want you to know we try to get the
best investment that we possibly
possibly can and we do at our finance
select committee meeting we do have an
investment report now that we
we started so they are receiving those
as well and then mr pealey gets our
quarterly reports as well so we are we
are making strides right now um the
reason you see a negative is we've
talked about fair market value
you know as we invest we have you know
the book value and then we have the
market value and sometimes our fair
market value is uh is just not as high
as we would like it to be and so we you
know hopefully we're trying to not lose
money absolutely thank you
thank you lan for the reminder i really
appreciate it now could we get
um the report um from sending it to
christine to send it out to the rest of
council or is that an issue receiving
that
the entire council the
uh the quarterly reports for the
investments no we can send that to the
council we we can put it up on our
sharepoint and send that that that uh
link thank you so much leanne and then
i wanted to ask about the health care
provider costs um
i think at four percent if i'm
remembering correctly what what what
does that entail
you want me to go ahead okay so uh mayor
pro tem the four percent we worked with
hr uh as you know they take care of our
benefits and work with the state this is
a new uh adventure for us because we've
been self-insured for a couple of years
now and so one of the things the state
has not gone up on their premiums in
several several years like about five or
six years so we were being a little bit
proactive and saying well what if
they go up we have been working with
them to see if there is going to be a
big jump
because sometimes they do that do that
and right now
working with them we felt that four
percent increase on the uh premium would
be very
advantageous for us to do that right now
and it could be that we have no
adjustment whatsoever and also too on
that four percent it is only budgeted
for six months of the year because right
now our premiums are set and they're set
uh through december so when we start our
new fiscal year that premium will not
come into adjustment until january
because they they're on a calendar basis
but what we're doing is is we're hoping
that our premiums do not go up with the
state but just in case they do we're
budgeting a four percent little buffer
so it's not a for a sure thing it is not
it's just as a cushion just in case yes
so i have to say i do i do have
retirement um
from the state of of new mexico
specifically the insurance and they went
up last year
so i i'm very familiar with that being a
state government
employee so i i appreciate that i i just
want the staff and others to know that
efo has been
excellent at forecasting and visioning
especially in regards to
insurance premiums and we're very
sensitive to that that's why you're
seeing some of the health fairs that
we've put together and working with
burrell college and i know there's a
discussion specific to a clinic and
that's all to keep those premiums down
um
and and so
and
improvement in health in our in in our
internally in our with our staff so um
thank you thank you for that i i took a
bunch of
of notes and i um
wanted to ask a few more questions
i really like the the pie chart and with
the identified categories and whatnot
but i'm wondering if you can
look through your budget and do because
that doesn't does that's just with the
what you're asking for currently right
like where the money is
going to specific but not in the general
fund so like i'm thinking of a lot of
people don't know we pay for our um
the the
for the schools um the safety guards if
you will
or a portion of it at least
and so i'm wondering if we could find a
way to
capture
that in a pie chart where our money is
going to as it reflects all those
different areas does that make sense to
me to you and maybe
what districts things the money is
flowing to because i i think it's
important for us to visually see
where our money is going to which areas
of of the city
for for the purposes of equity right
being equitable about what our how our
budget how our budget is really looking
so if you could do that i would be
forever forever grateful and it makes it
easier for council to speak to their
constituents right related to this is
just where this all this money is going
to and i'm thinking pavement management
as well
um it's really gotten me to think about
lyft las cruces and the infusion of
services that will be happening related
to streets and stuff even though i love
our our street management program
i can tell you an efo can say because i
i made him tour not he i didn't make him
tour with me but he toured my district
and saw right the conditions of the
streets and
and and kind of then where is it in that
pavement management program and how
sometimes it doesn't make sense
because the conditions look pretty
poorly which is a reflection of what our
our city constituents are feeling and i
hear this over and over again i'm
related to where that is so
matt as it relates to payment management
how much money is going into i know that
was a priority um can you remind me
again maybe i missed it um and in
addition to what we put in last fiscal
year what what is that amount so the
current amount is 6 million but then we
provided an additional 2 million
for that
from the hold harmless grt so they
receive about 6 million annually
and
of course with that two million dollar
bump on that uh would you david do you
have anything on this you want this
sir so is that eight million
total
approximately yes
let's see
right
great question uh the payment condition
index project is oh yeah please we can't
hear you i got short girl problems
no
okay the um
the payment condition index project is
budgeted for 9.6 million
3 million of that is coming from flood
funds
4 million of that is coming from road
funds
and 2 million of that is coming from
your supplement from hhgrt
does that answer the breakdown you were
looking for it does and how does it look
differently than last year so last year
we had the same breakdown of a
supplement of 2 million well
i guess that's technically the current
fiscal year so the current fiscal year
we have sorry the same breakdown of
roughly 6 million coming from streets
funding
roughly three to four million coming
from flood and a supplement of 2 million
coming from hhgrt and fiscal year 22 is
the first time you introduced that man
so i'm recommending that we put more
funding into that to i always think of
the gold silver bronze standard like to
still itching up inching up
to the gold standard i think it's
important and again if we can see that
that pie chart where the money is going
to in the particular districts and what
yet we have
to to to
improve would be helpful to me
um okay
how many how much money
are we do have new fts are you where
where is that uh i will defer to matt
that's nice
so currently for new ftes we are looking
at department requests and we will be
meeting with city management soon can't
hear you matt
sorry can you hear me now yep can you
hear me better all right
so we're currently looking at the
request from departments to fill some of
the full-time equivalent positions and
we will be discussing this with
management um for our work session when
we come back on april 25th
yay okay good i just want to make sure
that i'm not forgetting anything
and then i know one of the priorities
that i know you you didn't go over them
but we talked about a newly formed
health
department
where are we at with that and is it
still because i felt like it raised very
high on that list so just i just want to
make sure that it doesn't get lost
no thank you very much mayor pro tem so
in discussions with management we
decided to
allocate about 200 000 for that just to
get that started and
as you saw we are proposing that from
the telstra fund we're hoping that that
fits in within the scope of that that's
in that stop okay perfect i'm glad i
asked it just depending on council's
recommendation as well and your approval
if you allow us to fund that out of
there that will help us free up some
funds in the general fund to help with
our operations thank you matt on slide
um
[Music]
30.
let's see if it sparks
did i miss where which lot that was
trying to rattle my brain to remember if
you you probably said it and i just
didn't catch it
mayor pretend the first parking lot that
will be addressed under this new program
will be the henry benavidez community
okay you did say it thank you thank you
and then will you identify the lots
across the city you're going to have it
it'll be on the icip
for later which would would be the next
the following lots if you will mayor
pertemp if you refer to page two of the
cip the newly funded projects for
facilities parking lot program is the
first project and there are three
sub-projects under it the first one
listed with the number one is the henry
r benavidez community center number two
is munson and three is the train depot
we will address them in that category as
plausible based on funding
and how did you come up with those areas
if need or you did an assessment
mayor pro tem david cevillo public works
director again a great question there
was an assessment done a couple of years
ago based on the current conditions of
all city-owned parking lots based on
that assessment that's how these
projects if you will are coming up in
order
thank you david thank you and then i i
wanted to talk a little about a capital
outlay i love the idea thank you
alphabetical order so so helpful i love
the color codes i think those are
helpful separating out the non-profits
and such but then our process as it
relates to capital outlay now not
everybody knows what that process is
specific to our non-profits obviously
that do and we'll i know that through
maybe the finance select committee
you've developed a process with forms
and such and i i'm i'm concerned about
some of our
say for example our neighborhood
associations that are working and i'm
thinking very specifically to our
alameda um
um
[Music]
historic
associate the neighborhood association
and the
what they're working on currently which
is the gazebo
and in
sort of
some steps that they miss to get on the
cip and then the dialogue that happened
up at the legislative session with at
least three
legislators wanting to fund them but
they weren't on the list if
per se so i know there was some
miscommunication
um i i i feel like we need to to
i don't know what the answer is yet but
come up with a process that we have
identified and let every non-profit and
association know
if they're interested in going for this
because i feel there's all this dialogue
that happens with the legislature
separate from council i know we all sat
a counselor flores and i sat at their
legislative update friday with the
greater chamber and and the legislators
are concerned about it and don't feel
it says
and it's not a
overall statewide it's it's a difficult
area and they know that some of our
smaller nonprofits get lost in that
don't understand that so i'm wondering
if we could come up with a process where
maybe if you're a non-profit of your
association a letter goes to them at the
end of the year we're gonna st or
whenever september we're going to have
budget discussion cip is coming up
please be aware this is our process i i
don't know what the answers are but i i
know i was deeply concerned that a few
of our nonprofits got um
not only just cip it could be other
programming and i i'm thinking of one
that had a um had come to me
specifically had a sponsor for a bill
for um
substance
abuse treatment so it doesn't quite fit
the cip process and didn't fit that
process per se so i'm bringing it up
because what we're talking about cip um
i know we i know we always improve
and and and i appreciate the work but i
i'm i know that we're missing some of
those folks that sometimes don't
understand that process
so with that
thank you for the comments mayor pro
thank you i believe we may have
some other comments that next work
session maybe some discussion before
then and maybe have something there but
i believe uh people may have wanted to
say something i'm not sure thank you
david
no no no mr b lee so no maybe srijanda
would like to share okay
got you please mayor pertam um thank you
for that question so part of the review
of the cip
is to establish the the process um in
better partnership with the icip process
so
currently we have almost a 15 month lag
right now between the time
of initial submittals for the cip and
the time that
legislation happens
in january
so
that is definitely something we will be
looking at i don't have a perfect
solution for you today but we will be
working closely with
the finance department grants team
particularly uh to look at ways to to do
this better i appreciate that i really
do i didn't expect a solution but if i
was gonna complain i would i'd come up
with a strategy i don't know
anyway so um thank you thank you so much
for that um counselor flores uh thank
you madam chair and thank you
um all of you who
did a wonderful job in presenting
um
and uh i you know you you brought up the
rhodes uh fund
and
um
where do the monies come from for that
fund
david
or sarah
or srijana
you'll defer it
counselor forest we
we have multiple funding sources that
generate into what we consider our road
in flood funds
those are going to be your property
taxes that are collected by dona ana
county and then distributed to the
municipalities of course us
as well as the hopefully i get this
fraction right one
fourth of one percent grt
which used to be restricted strictly for
roads and flood and is now a general
fund and so the roadway projects that
are funded by the funding source are
lumped in the general fund at this time
okay
so um
you know when we were in our budget
retreat the mayor brought up
he was all he was really jazzed up and
just got up and he was like a balloon
and just went up all over and then when
he was done he just disappeared
but um
he was talking about all this
infrastructure money that was coming
from the government
dams bridges
and
we need
we need dams and we need bridges around
here because when it rains
you don't want to travel those streets
because the holes are so big and so deep
you can you know throw your car off but
um
[Music]
so
what happened to all that money the
mayor was talking about is it's are we
still working on i know that it was just
recent so it's not all part of this but
is that money we can tap into and the
other is doesn't the dot give us
anything the feds don't they give us
anything i mean they regulate our
highways they should at least
be able to provide some money to keep
some tar and gravel on there
mayor pro tem councillor flores david
sadio public works director and i see if
i can answer a part of that if not then
i'll
let matt answer some of those question
on
you know those infrastructure dollars
are we going after them yes we are going
after them as an example you were given
a project there on elks
and main street
which
we came forward last week with that
resolution that is part of some of those
infrastructure dollars that we're going
after
so those are things that we're going to
be going after
does the state give us funding through
this yes we do have other
programs that we participate in with
nmdot
to get some of those fundings some of
those being the the tap grant and
local government road funding okay so
that comes from the state is there any
federal money that comes in at all that
can be tapped
there typically is yes federal dollars
some of the raise grant that we're going
after like with the flyover there is
federal monies
okay and then um
so is there ever do you ever see a day
coming
when
maybe not you're not visionaries you're
just
you know engineers and
accountants and stuff like that but
do you ever see a day coming when you we
have a perfect picture
of our all our roads like i think all of
us on city council when we first hired
uh efo i think we all took them on tours
of how terrible our roads are and um and
i'm you know
being re-elected
people are telling me okay four years
have gone by
what are you going to do about our roads
and i said same thing i did in the last
four years nothing
i mean you know i'm not a liar
and i didn't campaign on
i'm gonna give you roads because i i
know better
but it's really i think a horrible shame
and in some places it's just downright
dangerous
um and and i'm talking about like the
majestic ridge area sundown roadrunner
circle
or is it road yeah roadrunner circle
where
i mean some of those
i mean they're the crevices i mean i
think efo's foot could fit in one of
them i know my foot fits in them
so i think about kids and bikes people
in wheelchairs people with walkers
etc or walking in the dark
so will there ever be a day when we have
or maybe we already have
a graph or a chart of
all the streets that need improvement
like that i mean and i'm talking about
not just cap and seal or cape and seal
or whatever it's called but
real improvements and
we hopefully do have that but
is there some way is there a solution in
the near or
sometime in the future
uh is there a solution is there a plan
for that and is there i mean where would
the money come from i mean or i don't
know i just when you mention roads i
just think of all the roads in my
district and i and i've been on
um district one i travel that a lot
um
and i think yeah throughout the city i
travel i i cruise the entire city i i
just i just cruise it and i tell i told
you anna one day she said what you
district six doesn't happen i said
i said counselor you have to learn what
the city is all about because we have to
work together to make sure that our
entire city is taken care of
so david do you have an answer or did
you understand my question or did i have
a question or am i just ranting okay
thank you
mayor pro tem counselor flores
yes
do i envision that yes
i can let you know that staff
they're having the same questions
they're working towards that and saying
how can we improve this how can we make
more of an improvement for our community
based on the dollars that we have
council has made a commitment uh and
it's shown today it's shown last year
that this is a priority for for council
so do i see that ever coming to fruition
yes with the continued help
of council uh direction on some of the
areas that like lift las cruces uh
that's gonna get us there you know a lot
of people say you know we have you know
roads are horrible we we have these uh i
think what's not
you know talked about is the amount of
good roads that the city has you know i
want to say about 75 80 percent of our
roadway network is in good to excellent
shape
you know we do have those aging
infrastructure areas that we do focus on
that we want to improve and again that
support and commitment from council to
keep supporting that i think we
eventually can't get there yes
and um and how do you envision that mr
cedillo do you see um i mean you you do
do you do you have a
a map of all the bad the 25 of the city
bad roads i'm so glad you gave us that
stat it just makes it sound so much
better but when your foot gets caught in
that crevice it ain't going to sound so
good but
um seriously do you do you have a map of
that 25 of the truly awful bad roads
counselor florida's yes we do and that's
part of that pavement management system
that we have and that we do and we
evaluate periodically on anywhere
between a three to a five year
time frame we'll come back and reassess
and survey
those areas again that way we make sure
that what we're doing
and that what we need to do in the
future is up to date
okay well let me just say this
i was going for a walk one day walking
my little lady
and
she just happened to pull me you know in
one direction on golf club road so i
just followed her and i'm glad i did
because the road was being resurfaced
there and it's that almost like that
private road that the really really rich
people live on the ones that are selling
their houses for almost a million
dollars right now
you know the ones that have the
beautiful view of the oregon mountains
right next to the golf club a golf
course
anyway
so that street was being resurfaced
and
so
um
it was being resurfaced the very same
morning that utilities was out there
fixing something and i think i contacted
you and i contacted utility delilah and
walsh and
and what's going on i mean they're
digging up a hole to fix utilities but
they're going to and and the
people who were working the road said
we've got to do this this is what we
were assigned to do today the utilities
people said we have to do this so it was
like really crazy
well that part was crazy the thing that
was craziest is that that road really
didn't need resurfacing
with all due respect to the people
at city hall with all due respect to the
residents to all with all due respect to
my constituents
that road was
okay
because hardly anybody travels it it's
just those few road you know homeowners
you know that's where one of the biggest
developers built his house
and so we unders i understand or i can
surmise
why they have that private little nice
little road that shelters them from you
know the regular traffic on golf club
road so um
so yeah so does that happen often where
a street that i mean those houses went
up in maybe 2000
so
what gives i mean how how was that
determined and i i'm not
i'm not you know
upset at you personally i'm just
wondering
why
counselor flotus great question
as a system as a whole we have to look
at everything that we have and the
available funds that we have
so as part of that program we look to
see what improvements can be made that
will ultimately
affect
the rating
of the entire system so
for example you know you say well that
road looks like it's in great shape
you know and there's other needs that we
really need to reconstruct that whole
road well a reconstruction of a roadway
can cost anywhere between two to three
million dollars for one road
now
based on that and that amount of money
do we go and do preventative treatments
that'll help
extend the life of those other roads and
our infrastructure as a whole so as you
can see it's a little bit of a balancing
act to see what we can do with what
treatment at which time
for instance kind of like the
maintenance of a vehicle if you will
right
so you want to make sure that you take
care of those maintenance items as you
go through that way you don't have large
investment you know repairs later on
down the road
okay very good answer and that's pretty
much what i thought but um it's just
that uh it's it's amazing i i get those
emails well you know because i forward
them to you
so i just
for
people who are listening i want them to
understand
that it isn't that we're not trying as
city councilors to
meet their needs or meet the needs of
the city but it's just always it comes
down to the bottom line and in your
explanations a very good one mr cedillo
and i appreciate that
um
and so
is there any funding that uh that does
come in from the federal
or amy isn't here but um maybe oh or
maybe matt knows okay
i'll turn it over to matt i think he was
just handing you a
page to read from
so
thank you mayor protam counselor flores
so just part of our our one of the
requests for fiscal year 2023 that we
need to take into consideration is some
of that infrastructure billing
and uh with the grant match that is
required for it because it does take
money to get money in some time so it
depends on what we want to
focus our energy on do we want to go
after some of these bigger bills
to maybe improve some of our roads
we're looking for direction at this
point so we will
open up for discussion and you're
looking for direction a little get the
money man
one direction up hi
no thank you
you're waiting for mr ifo to tell you
we're telling you tell them tell them no
you're going to have to arm thank
thank you very much mayor pro tem and
thank you matt and thank you david
councillor ben cuomo
give me your protein i actually have no
questions and i look forward to our next
graduate discussion thank you
thank you councillor ben cuomo
okay
any other questions
any
from the audience
seeing none
i will need a
motion to adjourn so moved
beta
second gram motion made by abate on
consorabeta second by counselor graham
christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor abeda yes
councillor graham yes
councilor bencomo
councillor quran yes
councillor flores
yes mayor pro tem yes and the mayor is
absent
thank you
thanks
okay
yes
okay
that was exactly where they got
is
okay
oh there it goes
we are now at the agenda setting april 4
2022 item one consent one consent item
two non-consent two non-consent item
three non-consent three non-consent
item for non-consent and four
non-consent that concludes our agenda
study thank you
you