[Music]
good afternoon everybody we'll begin our
work session
today is february 14th happy valentine's
day to everybody
in the audience and in our city
would you please stand for the pledge
i pledge allegiance
and to the republic for which it stands
one nation
under god and indivisible with liberty
and justice for all
thank you
now we have jennifer martinez to talk to
us about pets of the week
hi jennifer hi
happy valentine's day happy valentine's
to you too
i'm in the spirit i'm wearing my heart
sweatshirt everybody looks valentine's
day festive
awesome
except for christy
good after mayor pro tem and council i'm
jennifer martinez with the city's
communications office and today i have
the pleasure of introducing you to our
pets of the week and i will begin with
our cat
quinn
quinn is a one-year-old domestic short
hair who would be the perfect valentine
she is cute and sweet and loves being
pet she's a little bit curious and she's
very patiently waiting for her forever
home she hopes to be someone's adorable
and loving companion
and then we have indigo indigo was a
two-year-old male who had a pretty good
idea for a valentine's day date and that
would be a walk in the park or a hike in
the mountains
he would love to cuddle with his family
after all that walking of course indigo
is a very handsome boy who is hoping to
make someone's life complete
you can meet quinn or indigo by calling
the animal services center of the
messiah valley and asking to make an
appointment to see either of these two
and you can remember that the
valentine's day special which includes
25 pet adoptions goes on until february
20th and you have time this weekend
there's a pet adoption event at petsmart
that's from 11am to 2pm saturday
february 19th thank you thank you so
much jennifer so many opportunities to
adopt our pets as you know and i've said
it before our center is like over full
so please um jennifer i'm thinking that
indigo would be a great part running
partner
how about that
yes she said thumbs up so
okay
hi dr payatis mayor potem how are you
doing good thank you very
members of the city council these are
the jobs of the week that we have for
today today we're going to be presenting
an office assistant senior this is with
the city of las cruces and it's paying
15 with 57 cents an hour and this
position will be closing on the 28th of
february we also have an insurance
customer sales and this is with olgien
insurance agency the salary was not
disclosed on this one and this position
will be closed on march the 20th of 2022
we also have a dialysis registered nurse
and this is with the u.s renal care the
salary again was not disclosed on this
one but this will be open until uh so
it's going to be closing on march the
8th of 2022 we also have an after-school
monitor and this is with its quest
incorporated and they're paying 11.50
cents an hour and this position will be
closing on the 5th of march of 2022 we
also have a virtual call center agent
and this is with healthcare corporation
of america the salary was not disclosed
on this position
but the position will be closing on
march the 5th
of 2022 additionally members of the city
council and and mayor protem i wanted to
mention that the job fair that we had on
the 10th of february was a success
we had 260 job seekers attend this job
fair if you remember from the last one
we had had we had had 144 job seekers so
we think very very deeply the the
partners at new mexico workforce
connections who helped us put together
the job fair as well as yourselves for
spreading the word about the job fair so
thank you very much and for a full list
of jobs internships volunteer
opportunities please visit
employeename.com and
com forward slash careers forward slash
las cruces and again the information for
the new mexico workforce connections
office is at 226 south alameda boulevard
not that far from our downtown and their
phone number is
524-6250 thank you mayor pretend thank
you dr payatis kudos to your staff and
economic development department and the
workforce connection for that very
successful health fair or excuse me work
fair
next up we have mr enriquez
our covet 19 update
good afternoon mayor pro tem council
eric enriquez assistant city manager for
a covet update
and things are looking better in the
community as far as case counts we've
seen
a reduction in the spike
that's a reflection on our hospital data
as uh it's gone down for new cases 38.4
percent we've also seen a decrease in
the admissions and then also in the
total use for cobit 19
and icu beds so things are looking
things are looking better
as far as vaccine progress vaccination
progress it's still uh just a gradual
incline increase
we were at 41 last week now we're 42 or
fully vaccinated and the same goes for
fully vaccinated for use that's just a
slight increase from 41 percent to 43
percent but still continuing to to move
forward with the vaccinations
the female vaccination bus has departed
our area moving over to
west
to silver city area grant county
they'll plan to return as vaccinations
become available for
young children and fda has delayed the
decision on vaccinations for young
children those of ages six months to
five years
as far as testing goes we have been
distributing free at-home test kits in
the area
they can be found at find a test
newmexico.org
it will give all the lists such as
munson center mirshai east mesa
some places in the county like the
community center in donana and places
like that if you go to that website
also testing news at the field of dreams
the fema testing is going there it's
it's it's real slow but it is taking
place and also some other good news
every
a company out of phoenix
is doing some testing right now on
mesquite street and mulberry and so it's
good to see in the community it's good
to see that people are not giving up and
continuing to move forward next week
they'll be at
tortugas
at the guadalupe catholic church set up
there to help
individuals who maybe can't drive there
or still have issues with computers and
and things of that nature they they can
go down to the local area in their
neighborhood and get tested and they
plan to do vaccinations as well
well other items i wanted to bring up
was i i had mentioned earlier
um
that we would do uh updates on asylum
seekers and asylum or afghan
resettlement as dr payatis has said the
job fair was very successful and also
there was 15 to 20 afghan refugees that
attended
transit economic development helping
them out
also giving support to el cavalio and
the peace lutheran mission as far as
asylum seekers there's plenty of room at
the annunciation in el paso
but
we do have the peace luther in
doing the hotel stays off albania
messiah in the state of new mexico
department of homeland and office of
emergency also providing hotel
assistance if needed at this time
thank you
thank you mr rodriguez any questions yes
counselor flores thank you very much
mayor pro tem and thank you mr enriquez
so um in so far as the uh covid uh you
say that the counts are going down
what is the percentage you know
of in comparison to the peak or
what's what's trending
um
what's what's trending i'm not exactly
sure but the numbers have gone down as
far as last week i think the lowest test
count we saw was 76. so as far as the
percentage the only percentage we can
see a decrease is what the hospitals are
receiving but the numbers are just lower
300 was probably the highest number we
saw last week as far as positive cases
in a day we were seeing
700 900 a thousand during the during the
spike we had like two three weeks ago
so it's definitely down yes ma'am and
the asylum seekers are they um i mean
asylum seekers are generally
assigned places to go for their hearings
so are they
are any of them leaving the city or the
area down here or
do you know anything about that
yes uh mayor pro tem and councillor
flores there there's a couple of
projects going on we have the
resettlement which is the afghan
resettlement which they are helping them
to find jobs and and housing and and
training and locations here in las
cruces and el cavalio is helping with
that and so is a peace lutheran church
on the uh asylum refugees that are
coming from from mexico
and most of them coming from central
america those are the ones that are
coming over and yes as you said they
have either a hearing date but it's
really assisting them with shelter
medical and then transportation so that
they can travel to their final
destination
and you know what the numbers are in so
far as the ones who
have
quote final destinations as opposed to
those who will probably settle here or
is there any kind of a breakdown in that
regard do you know no at this time i
don't the number is very small the ones
that are coming from from mexico because
el paso has enough housing
at the annunciation and that's where
they're being mostly transported they
can see maybe 10 here maybe
40 on a on a busy night but
it's the numbers are real small but i i
can get that information for you
and those who are coming from mexico are
they uh crossing the border at mexico
are they from mexico are they from other
parts of the world they're from other
parts of the world do we have a
breakdown on that
i can ask uh and see if they have a
breakdown because i know they were
breaking those numbers down the ones
that were being received here
i i can find that information for you i
think it'd be interesting to see because
i think people are thinking that
it's just mexicans who are crossing and
all that and then they're definitely
they're definitely asylum seekers they
have
their final their destination their
hearing destination papers and all that
yes counselor great thank you so much mr
enriquez thank you madam thank you
madam chair council i have councillor
aveda and then councillor um
thank you mayor pro tem and
for councillor flores we do have a
vaccine task force meeting this
wednesday we'll make sure to get those
updated numbers for you
the doh and office of emergency
management will be able to have those
updated outlooks oh wonderful thank you
so much uh counselor abeda
counselor ben cuomo thank you and this
isn't super important i just wanted to
clarify a couple things on language
because
refugee status is very different than
asylum seeker status and so just when we
talk about like afghanista afghan
refugees who come here with some sort of
document already who are settling here
permanently actually
is very different than an asylum seeker
who arrives at the border
asking for refuge
and has not does not have status yet and
most of them do not stay here in our
community just wanted to clarify
thank you councillor bencomo councillor
flores the point of clarification asylum
seekers do have stat that is their
status asylum seekers
have a right to be in this country and
then they go on to another destination
generally but um
but the others um the refugees uh
they're yeah they're definitely
different categories but they both have
a right to be here so thank you for
clarifying that uh councilor ben coma
thank you councillor flores yes council
thank you mr enriquez for your for your
update
appreciate that next up we have 4.1 el
paso electric update and we have rico
gonzalez and eric montgomery welcome you
too
all right
madame protam
rico gonzalez
good afternoon good afternoon council
uh
i've got one clarifying question real
quick before we start we brought we
brought you all
which is kind of ironic but i figured if
we had one paper copy in your hands of
our sustainability report
that it would be there and you could use
it with constituents or whatnot but we
have others as well but i don't know if
we need to leave them out for the public
or not so
if not at
you know
anyways if if we need to we've got some
extra copies okay
thank you rico
again rico gonzalez with el paso
electric and
we are very excited to be here today
we've seen a lot of changes
in our company over
covet
and
right as it was starting
we
had an acquisition
we are now
no longer traded publicly
we have had a new
organization since uh
mr palily started as well the same exact
day that that epo started our our ceo
kelly tomblin started as well
and um
so we had 2021 to really examine
our company examine where we are going
and
to that end
one of the things that we recognized is
that
we needed
more help in
new mexico
with our economic development and with
our government affairs to make sure that
we're responding quickly and so we uh
recruited over eric montgomery
from from evita and it's just been
a godsend to me
he really has a lot of talent and we're
really lucky to have him and he will be
going over the the brunt of the
of the presentation
like i said uh we've been making some
changes
and our mission statement at el paso
electric for 2022 is that we will be
transforming the energy landscape
and it's not something that we do
on our own
it's something that we do
together as a community
and
you would have to be you know stuck in a
in a in a cave somewhere if you didn't
realize the importance of
climate change
we've recognized it as a company
we have
our own carbon free goals set
by 20 by 2045 to be 80 percent carbon
free as a company
and we also are recognizing the changing
nature and relationship that
electric energy has
in our in our society
and so um to that end again eric will be
going over a lot of those details of
those plans that we are working on in
but i wanted to go over a couple
different things
as you all know i work the legislative
session as well and there's some bills
that are working so i'm going to
intermingle some bills that are going
through that i think may be helpful to
us as as as we move forward um
one of those bills is house bill 37
which is creating energy efficiency
block grants
for
low-income communities in our state and
there's 15 million dollars in the budget
as of right now for those block grants
those block grants can be administered
by
state government by city government
local government i should i should be
clear on that
and we're really excited about them
we really think they're going to be a
strong opportunity for us to partner
with our local governments with the city
of las cruces
in in in some funding as as we move
forward in block grants in in homes that
maybe there's
a few houses on this block that we
really need to put an envelope on we can
work on those kinds of things
and so
um
knock on wood i never like to count
anything until thursday on on
on this week but
but we'll be working through those with
with you all and mfa also as it can be a
partner
and along those ends
from an energy efficient efficiency
perspective
your staff and our staff have been
working really close together and have
an actual mou signed
on working together on energy efficiency
and and focusing on
our
our brothers and sisters who are in the
most need
and
to that end with the pandemic going
we've been working very closely with
many community partners to
help and assist in in um
in billing and in
times that people are having a hard time
um
some of those are working with uh
promotoras
to get out information as to how someone
can
who is in arrears is able to take care
of their of their bills
we've been working with farm workers
we
we've given out about five thousand
bottles of of
hand sanitizer and masks and then inside
of the little
bag that they that they receive is
information again on how to take care of
arrears payments and how to call us
if there are any issues
one of the things that we've recognized
is that
there is a big difference between
being in las cruces and being in hatch
um in terms of of of communication and
so we've really focused on that piece
um
we've worked with the county and the
state
on ensuring that that customers that
need both rental and utilities are going
to the county if they are in need of
utilities that they're working with the
state as well
because the county is managing monies
for dona ana county but also state funds
can be used that are overall state funds
so
both pots are we're working with we've
also been working with
the city of our
las cruces public schools
and getting out into the community
schools on information on on how to work
on arrears payments and we um
and to that end
we also have our our own programs we
have a bright star program here that we
have where where we have funds that can
match
people's uh payments of arrears and they
don't necessarily have to go through the
bureaucratic process of
of the state funds
we have
we just encourage our customers to come
in and talk to us
we just need to make sure that customers
are coming in if they're in arrears to
come in and set up a plan we are
working as much as we possibly can with
all customers who come in um and and
it's gotten
easier and better since we've been able
to make our
our walk-in
offices
available to to customers coming in so
so that is
is getting a little bit better there
one other bill that we've been working
on that that
links to
both climate and
low income is a clean fuel standard i
know you all have have approved that
bill as something that you're watching a
clean fuel standard creates a credit uh
mechanism
for
the type of fuel that's used in
transportation
with electricity being one that produces
positive credits
if you're using um
diesel or or regular petrol then
you need to
receive credits and it's and it's a it's
a mechanism that has been successful in
california in oregon
and in washington
in terms of creating
credits for
lowering the amount of emissions coming
from transportation
as a utility we recognize that there's
much pla very many places where carbon
can be uh or need to be eliminated from
our society and so that's one place
where we can work we worked with the
administration to ensure that the um
that the revenues that that el paso
electric would would be provided or any
iou to that matter
would would be 100 put back into our
transportation electrification plan
um and inside of the bill it focuses on
rural and low-income areas to get
infrastructure out for that kind of
stuff so
another another item that's out there
that we're working on is community solar
rules
the community solar rules at the prc
should be
completed by april at least that's what
the statute reads
so we don't get in trouble with the law
so we got to get redone by then so we're
we're working diligently with with um
with a host of of entities all the ious
all the uh co-ops
a lot of third
a lot of
uh contractors who who
who do community solar as well the city
of las cruces is very involved in those
in those
pieces as well
i think one other thing to to talk about
is as our community grows
um communication with our customers with
your constituents
is going to be a vital piece
and um i think
uh kovit has given us all some new tools
in order to talk with people over video
and the like but there's nothing like
getting into the community and i think
and i hope again i'm knocking on some
pressed wood here i think but um
nonetheless um
uh
that we're all able to get out into our
community as as our system grows and as
our ams system comes out our
our our smart meters as our
transportation electrification plan
comes
that we are
able to get into the communities and
have more meetings together as as a
community
i really want to give
some kudos to
city manager
and
last year he
asked us to work with delilah and her
team at city of las cruces utilities
and
it's not very often that you find
leaders at his level
that are willing to say you guys work
this out and and and and come to me
usually i find that that leaders kind of
want to stay in the mix because they're
that's who they are that's how they
but um he really has put together a team
that we get to speak with the utilities
and i think it has made a huge
difference in terms of our communication
with the city so thank you city manager
for that i really do appreciate it
like i said um
some other community meetings that we
have is on our transportation
electrification plans
um
and
if i go any further then i'm gonna be
taking away eric's
wind from his sails and he's going to be
left adrift sitting up here so
um we're really excited to have him as
our as as as one of our team members and
to that end i will uh turn it over to
eric montgomery unless there's any
questions for me
counselor flotus i thank you madam chair
and and thank you uh rico mr gonzalez so
much for your presentation um as far as
the walk-in the walk-in offices that are
have been made available recently
is it due to covet or is it is it a
practice that el paso electric will
maintain
uh madame protem and and councilor
flores
it definitely was uh the closing of them
was covet related and having them open
is the practice oh i see of yeah yes
go ahead sorry no no i'm sorry i
interrupted you
um
yeah so we did we uh madame pro tem we
we closed them during the the the high
pieces of the of the of the pandemic and
then reopened them
and um and so that's that's what i was
referring to oh i see so i'm i just
became very educated about the fact that
i was very ignorant about the fact that
you had offices walk-in offices that had
to be closed so how many walk-in offices
do you have here in the city of las
cruces
we have
we have our
one down here on water street
which has
ability to see seven customers at one
time we have lock in and anthony as well
and then
i'm going to show my ignorance here i
don't know exactly how it works but i
know that we have a relationship with
the city up on
in terms of of payments and then we also
have a kiosk that is kind of a beta
kiosk our plans are to have more kiosks
like atm type kiosks throughout our
communities
moving moving forward but we always did
have our drive-in open which again you
know going to carbon it's not the you
know but
it was great during cobit you know great
and then uh thank you for that uh
rico and
as far as the farm the workers
what area
do you
reach out to what where is the location
of the farm workers
you know
madame
pro tem and and council of flores
i have always dreamed of having an
original idea
and it never has come to pass so i
definitely have to give kudos to again
tierra del sol
and their
their infrastructure they called us and
asked us to be part of it when we called
them to ask them if they could help us
get the word out for customers in
arrears that there was coveted money for
for the payment of those uh
bills that were in arrears and and they
were our partner in it
but as far as i understand again they
they were all the way into hatch and
throughout
the valley
i think they have different farmers that
they work with they have they have a
good relationship with different farmers
and um that's that's how they
uh get get that out there but exactly
how they do that process is is not
something i have knowledge on but i can
get that information and we can and i
can bring it to you all uh madame pro
tem uh that that would be great because
you also mentioned that
has a good relationship with farmers but
you the services are being provided for
the farm workers right
yeah so so i
again i'm i'm kind of out of my
wheelhouse there but but as to get onto
the properties and work with the farm
workers that relationship is is one that
i think that is a win-win for for both
entities and then is that what you meant
when you said that there was a
difference between in the context of
speaking about the services or yeah the
services that you're providing for farm
workers he said there was a difference
between hatch and las cruces and that's
why i asked exactly what areas you
service or have reached out to not
service but reached out to and you said
there was a difference between hatch and
las cruces in the in this context what
did you mean
well it's what i meant by that um mayor
pro tem and and uh councilor ganda is is
that
i've learned a lot about
cultural differences between if you're
working in this portion of dona ana
county or if you're working up in
northern
dona ana county and and i can get into
those
details
later but but yeah it was it's uh it's
been an eye-opening experience for me
wow and are you
i imagine it would be are you keeping
data on that just to find out exactly
where
you know how different communities
function how people
uh respond to services you know that
sort of stuff i mean that kind of
behavior those behaviors would be
interesting to perhaps help in other
areas of providing services
um mayor pro tem that's a that's that's
a fascinating question and you actually
helped me remember something that i
forgot to mention
we have uh put together a citizens
advisory uh program with el paso
electric we call it the cap
and
we have brought together
folks from
a lot of different areas of of of our
service territory in new mexico to talk
about that and and one person i'll
all
single out there is is uh
john cootnack at the department of
health who john kootenak he's their
director for public information at the
department of health he's part of our
group
and
he and i have had a lot of talks about
that kind of data keeping that kind of
of of data to understand a little bit
more
our customers moving forward because
what
what and i don't mean to put words in
his mouth that's all i'll own them
our
understanding of electricity as
customers and as people
and our understanding of our own health
care is very much becoming a a
piece of data and information and how do
you become
data are
able to read that data
and and
and
it seems to us me
that there are some places with like the
department of health where we have
customers that are exactly the same
customers and and that we can not
necessarily share each other's data but
be able to share information so that
those customers can become data literate
and and that literacy is something that
that uh is going to be important as you
as you all know with your with your own
meters that you've put into your utility
ahead of us
you know knowing how to use that data
and how to use that information on water
use and gas use and electricity use and
and
is is going to be a very important piece
moving forward and it goes to health as
well and how you use that data that you
get from your watch when you're sleeping
at night you know
so
and for the public i pointed at my watch
that i wear when i sleep and get my
sleeping data so
um
so yes we're having those conversations
but we're not to a point where i could
brag about exactly knowing how that data
works for us right now great well thank
you so much mr gonzalez and i hope that
next time you'll be able to brag about
it
thank you so much seriously thank you
okay thank you very much any other
questions see none
oh i'm sorry counselor ben como thank
you
thank you rico and eric um for the
presentation i just have one quick
question and i appreciate this report
and of course the
carbon free goals in here i'm just
curious about
um the 2030
timeline that um the eta has set forth
right a standard of 50 by 2030 i'm
curious where el paso electric is in
terms of meeting that particular
standard
oh thank you that's a that's a that's a
great question uh mayor pro tem and and
uh councillor ben cuomo we are
moving forward with rfps that we have
set out in new mexico
we have an rfp out right now for new
mexico only
solar
we plan to meet and as far as and and
i'm couching it for a reason okay
um
our plans in a vacuum are to be exactly
right there by 2030.
supply chain issues
are
a huge hindrance right now for everyone
um
and we are uh not any different on that
on that end
but um as we move forward our that our
our goal is to be there in 2030 and and
reaching our eta goals moving forward
and and i think you know to that end the
transportation electrification plan uh
um
to that end community solar
all of these are going to play a piece
in in us in us getting to that to that
point
absolutely thanks rico thanks
thank you councillor benkovo any other
questions see none okay thank you rico
yes erica erica
the meat of it sorry eric i think i took
something
all right
thank you mayor pro tem thank you city
council my name is eric montgomery for
the record i'm the
regional director for governmental
affairs i think i got the title right
i am the newbie to the el paso electric
team so
if i can't answer your question i'm
going to volley it lightly over to my
buddy rico
thank you for the time and opportunity
we do not want this to be the last time
that we come and talk to you over the
course of a year we will come back this
presentation is designed to give you a
high level introduction of some
investments and some new opportunities
on the horizon
that
we see as a company that will be
advantageous for our customers for the
city of las cruces for a community as a
whole and certainly if there's anything
in this presentation that you would like
us to talk more about we'd like to
schedule some time with the city
manager's office the mayor's office to
come back and talk bring our teams our
engineers and really get down to the
science
the whys the house
so that we can do a better job as rico
was discussing about communicating and
relaying the value of everything that
we're talking about so
we as rico already mentioned 2021 for el
paso electric was about transforming the
energy landscape
we have several new city councillors
with us so for some of you this may be
review but to give a pulse of who we are
as an electric company
we just celebrated 120 years
el paso electric started actually as the
el paso electric railway company and
it's a little bit funny because while
that was our name the first year of our
birth
we were actually a rail company that was
pulled by mules it wasn't until 1902
that we actually energized those cars
and created a system but by 1925
we realized we needed to be a little bit
more and the uh the term for covid19 was
we pivoted
before it was cool to pivot
and
we realized that we had to get more into
the power generation
and provision of electricity and that
was when we became el paso electric
company
since that time we've grown quite a bit
we have nearly 445 000 customers that we
provide power to on a daily basis over a
10 000 square mile service territory
we are responsible for generating 2.5
gigawatts of power
to give you some
understanding and capacity of what
gigawatts is or size if we were to look
at the las cruces industrial and
innovation park we have a substation out
there i believe that substation has a
capacity of about 10 megawatts
so
it would take roughly 250 of those
to match
the power generation capacity that we're
responsible for
we have a transmission line
we have over 1700 miles of transmission
lines that extend all the way up close
to
spaceport america out to artesia the
arizona state line and about van horn
texas it's a massive transmission line
territory within our service territory
which is roughly the las cruces msa the
el paso msas we have eight thousand
miles of distribution line that we
maintain of course we have eleven
hundred bright smiling faces that greet
you or provide power are there at two
a.m
when valentine's heart balloon has hit a
transmission line
taking care and making sure that we have
we have power
as rico mentioned our mission this last
year and carrying us forward into the
years of the future
is that we are transforming the energy
landscape
rico used an acronym earlier
mayor pro tem
iou
it doesn't mean iou
it means investor owned utility
el paso electric is an investor owned
utility and we aim to be the premier
investor-owned utility
in the u.s
and as as rico said we do that together
in partnership with our community and
that is how over the next hundred years
we envision
we will have growth innovation and
economic vibrancy it's through
partnership so we designed a strategic
plan with five pillars of which are on
your screens um are presented are part
of the powerpoint for
for the public i won't go over those
other than just highlight just a few key
components
we will be taking a more active role
within our community because we
recognize in order to grow we have to
help steer what is happening we will
provide empowerment
of
individuals within our community who
have not had that empowerment we are
certainly focused on our low-income
partners we'll talk a little bit more of
some of those components of what we're
doing
to those audiences
we will be a leader as we have been in
environmental sustainability
we
were out of coal three years prior to
the energy transition act
being passed within new mexico
we will be a leader in environmental
sustainability
i'll talk more about some of those
investments that have happened recently
as well and we'll leverage new
technology to get there
and certainly
growth economic development within the
region was the whole reason that i was
brought on board it will be in
partnership with entities like mavida
like the new mexico new mexico
partnership
new mexico economic development and of
course the city of las cruces
but today i want to talk to you about a
couple key items these will be things
again that we can come back and present
on more in detail if there's something
just put a check mark next to it after
the presentation say hey eric that's
exactly what we want to hear or we don't
want to hear anything more from you on
that topic
the first will be our advanced metering
system which is a component of grid
modernization i'll define both of those
here in a bit
economic development what are we doing
what are we focusing on
and then our transportation
electrification plan
certainly these aren't the only topics
that we can talk about within a year but
we just wanted to give you again a
highlight
so advanced metering systems ams you did
here that acronym but it stands for
advanced metering systems to talk about
ams we have to talk about grid
modernization and what it is on a very
basic level grid modernization
are all the little intricacies and
components sensors computers
communication devices that we can put on
a grid that will provide us greater data
about what is happening with the grid
and with the power moving through the
grid
now the grid
has two different components in how we
examine it
most customers
are not aware or care about what we call
the bulk electric system bes
that's everything that deals with power
generation and transmission and
delivering that power to substations
where we do some special conditioning
and make it ready so they can go to the
end user our homes and our businesses
the other side is where our homes and
businesses exist it's on the
distribution side and so
when we talk about grid modernization
there are technologies that we have to
deploy on both sides of the grid in
order to
create efficiencies
to
create better data and we'll talk more
about how we use that
so
for a while now el paso electric has
been making investments
on
the bulk electric system on the uh
transmission side on the power
generation side
including just monitoring
transient wave systems um
i'm going to break this down into a very
crude
and rudimentary understanding of
electricity again i've been with el paso
electric for two months and we have
experts who are going to dive much
deeper into this
but we have to be aware of when there
are power surges or blips on the system
that may occur at the point of power
generation or along a transmission line
the reason that we have to watch that is
because it can ultimately
overload the system it can fry the
electronics the components the equipment
and lower the life expectancy so you all
have discussions about
street lights on a regular basis
and uh you talk about purchasing
vehicles and life expectancy of those
vehicles and you capitalize those out
over a certain number of years if things
happen to those vehicles or to those
street lights
that burn through that life expectancy
you have to replace them faster so for
us it's the same thing as
if there is too much power on the system
if if the wiring or components are
getting used up too fast then we have to
monitor and assess and solve
why
so we implement new technologies because
a lot of times these things happen in
milliseconds just a few milliseconds if
i were to have a baseball in my pocket
and throw it at you the average human
brain takes 150 to 300 milliseconds to
process that you have to register what
it is that i'm holding what am i doing
what's the size what's the speed what's
the direction how do i respond with my
body do i dodge do i catch and then your
body has to your brain has to send that
signal to respond so
if we were to have a human deal with
power surges or
things that are a few milliseconds it
would take much too long we have to
implement new technologies that can
track
all of these things that can happen to
the system and then we have to automate
processes so that we can again very
quickly respond this all comes back to
our goals of safety and reliability
for our customers making sure that we
constantly have the lights on
we're also implementing
new standards we've had this on board
for a while now we have
uav uav trained personnel that can fly
uavs along our transmission lines but
saving both time and energy
and and actually helping us to achieve
some of carbon emission standards
because we don't have to drive a truck
along
along those uh transmission lines to see
are they producing too much energy or
giving off too much energy or is
anything down is there an obstruction
that could cause a future problem that
we have to address we can now send a a
uav to fly a course down those
transmission lines or distribution lines
to do that assessment
so we've got some great information
that we have built on the bulk electric
system but we got to talk about the
distribution system and and the
distribution system and and and the
amount of data that is coming available
because of
um
advancements in technology and we're
talking about simple things that we're
talking about every day like
electrification of vehicles
there are now technologies that are
coming available to where you can plug
your car into your home
and actually
run power
through your home from your car
why is that important so we talk a lot
about
peak load demands and having to be
prepared for a couple weeks in june when
everybody is consuming a lot of power
when everybody's coming home at the
hottest point of the day and turning on
those air conditioners at the same time
that we have all normal operations still
running throughout the day
if we can give consumers a chance to
wear our choice to where they can come
home and instead of
turning on all of those components
computers uh
lights
[Music]
powering the ac
if that could be run off of a car or
battery storage that's either located
within the neighborhood or
within the home
then we're reducing that peak demand
that we have to prepare for and then we
can reverse it at the end of the day to
where
the cars or the batteries that were
powering us in the middle of the day can
then be charged during off-peak hours
but to do that and to have that
intelligence we have to implement some
new technologies that provide two-way
feedback both for us
to help community-wide systems
like a neighborhood battery storage or
for the consumer to be able to choose
how they want to power their home
so we have to make some investments
coming up uh on and and some of this has
already been deployed and and we will
talk more about how how we are making
these investments and and technologies
new switches new capacitors new
regulators and what all of those are
going to do on the distribution side
phase two
we'll talk about implementation of those
new technologies even solar panels on
ohms
need to be tracked for data purposes
especially from an electric utility side
remember i talked about we have to
monitor capacity of lines
and so if we are having to flood our
lines with one direction
with power that is required
and then we're expected to also move
power from solar panels to the other
direction we have to know how much power
is running through uh through these
lines think of like um think of telshore
and loehmann okay at at
rush hour okay if we aren't able to
monitor the traffic that's flowing
through there we could have a huge
gridlock of traffic it's the same thing
we have to be able to see what's
happening with electricity during peak
times all of this provides benefits to
our customers and to us as a company and
to you as a city
[Music]
so in order to get to stage two we have
to make investments in stage one but
stage two is where the data comes from
so
as part of stage two
some of the investments will be advanced
meter systems and again these are these
are
new meters just
are very akin or similar to what the
city has deployed
with some of its own meters to where you
are providing better data both to your
customers and to
your utility operators
that gives a a better picture of what is
happening
at the end at the consumers on the
consumers and the end user of of that
utility in our case it's electricity
what this does is exactly what i talked
about earlier it provides better
information so that people can make
choices about how they're consuming
electricity in their house
is it something that they want to do a
conversion of
of a
do they want to look at bringing in a an
electro electric stove or
over a gas stove
um they can make some of those
assessments as to as to how that's going
to impact because that is key look we
live in a world where you can
walk down main street and you can access
wi-fi but to do that you have to have
power that's coming through
we are consumers of data on a daily
basis and power is kind of that critical
key component to get us there
these these metering systems that we
have
partnered on that we are distributing
and working through and working with
have been accepted by 90 percent there
they have 90 percent of the market um
across the us as it exists now so we're
not using some old technology or testing
out some untried technology with our
customer base these are tried and two
tried and true
investments
and we look forward to talking to you
more about that as these start to come
online in new mexico
economic development so
part of investing in new technology is
that it also
brings new interest to the area part of
having a sustainability plan is that we
need to have
companies that
are aligned with our goals as a
community and so
it
behooves us as an electric utility to
really become a more active partner in
economic development
we've always been active in economic
development we've invested in economic
development agencies across the region
for many many years now
that won't stop we'll continue to make
those investments in fact one of the big
things that we did as part of our merger
has established a new mexico economic
development closing fund this closing
fund has directly benefited the city of
las cruces
in the fact that it was part of the
solution that helped companies like
electronic caregiver and most recently
the announcement of article called
management which is the newest tenant to
the las cruces innovation and industrial
park
land in las cruces
this investment
of 20 million over the next 20 years
will help has helped us to land over 180
new jobs new economic base jobs to the
area and specifically 30 million dollars
investment to our to our industrial park
the other investments that have been
made are regional rural investments that
will definitely benefit the city of las
cruces when those companies are looking
for
employment bases to fill wtec energy is
right down the road in chamberino they
just like santa teresa will be looking
for employees from las cruces to help
them
fill those positions we're very happy
we're very proud of our partners who
have been managing this fund kudos to
the community foundation of southern new
mexico and the messiah valley economic
development alliance for for their
involvement but also to the city of las
cruces
certainly your investments your
marketing your team
has been a critical component of
economic development
for el paso electric we are building
upon three standard pillars of economic
development i know you've seen this
before because i personally have
presented on these before wearing a
different hat
and so it's not necessarily new but it
is a
addition to
the efforts of what we are having we
recognize that number one to grow a
community you have to plug holes in the
community and so we need to retain our
existing economic base we'd like to see
it grow
sometimes you can't
grow the base and we don't have a lot in
the economic development toolbox when it
comes to just simply retaining the base
but el paso electric does have some
tools that we can bring to the table
through our energy efficiency programs
energy audits that we have done and a
partner in some of the biggest expenses
when it comes to
operating business
and so what we are doing is actually
creating a quick one-pager that we will
deliver to our partners at the city city
staff
to movida to other entities to pass out
as they go out and visit with companies
and their existing base to talk about
programs that el paso electric already
has
and new programs that we will bring
online in the future to help them lower
their electric costs to create more
energy efficient programs and operations
within house the idea being that
hopefully we can get to a point where we
can grow their business and we're not
about to lose their business it's an
important economic development tool
because it has typically not been used
in such fashion
but again what that does is it helps
illustrate the next piece and that
partnership in recruitment
we don't want to reinvent the wheel we
don't want to step on our economic
development partners toes because
look we're investing in economic
development that'd be duplication of our
own funds so it makes more sense for us
to
find and discover where the gaps exist
in our investments and how they are
already happening
and then market to those avenues that
our partners are not able to market to
so we will be
working in tandem with mavida with the
new mexico partnership with the economic
development department both at the state
and city level and have regular
conversations about their marketing
goals their attraction goals and we will
help push those forward we will also
help and develop new markets and new
opportunities because the other thing is
as an electric utility
our mission isn't just economic based
certainly that focus focuses
what mavida does and and some of the
outreach
but we'd love to see
all businesses in our region grow and do
more
could that mean that we put more focus
into hospitality and partner with visit
las cruces something that i don't think
has really
been done much from el paso electric
stance and and there are other
opportunities for us to dive into
a broader base of recruitment and so we
want to be a leader we want to help
guide and focus more of the economic
development efforts and
and you'll see more out of that in the
coming months as we start to put more of
that formal plan together
then finally capacity so we've always
been a partner in organizations that are
developing both our ability to grow
existing
industry but also to receive industry to
our region
there are two components to that so when
we talk to site selectors the trend has
been
uh you know we'll over the last i would
say five if you go back five years site
selectors were a lot had a lot more
patience in their projects and they'd
give us two weeks to respond and so we'd
be able to send uh assemble a lot more
information
and so that gave us as a company a lot
more time to be able to provide
information on electric capacities at
certain
areas of land or or
specific facilities we don't have that
luxury anymore
site selectors are asking for a four day
and so that they can get their companies
the information that they need we have
to speed up the process and the
information relay we don't want to be
a bog down in that process so uh one
thing that we did with the city uh and
and uh the contractor that you have for
the industrial park
is that we provided information parcel
by parcel on the electric capacities
that exist
and and certainly with a broad statement
of how we can receive more or put more
capacity into those um into those plots
of land
we're going to mirror that same approach
with commercial brokers within the area
we're going to sit down and we're going
to give them upfront marketability on
their sales sheets their flyers of their
facilities and say this is the existing
capacity
that exists for this facility certainly
we can grow it depending on needs but
we want we don't want to be a slowdown
in the process
typically the way utilities have worked
is
the mavitas the cities of las cruces the
new mexico partnerships
have to ask us for that information
we're going to be more proactive in this
process we're going to get that
information up front so that we're not
slowing things down
another aspect is
site selectors are getting much more
aggressive we can't just look at what is
the existing workforce what is the
existing industry what is the enrollment
at the community college by by program
and uh
what is the unemployment rate
they're asking for what is our turnover
and our attrition
that information doesn't exist at a
local level
and so
we want to have more conversations of
how we are ready as a community and how
we are talking about the workforce of
our community we already sit on a number
of workforce boards we want to help to
drive some of those conversations to be
more aggressive because at the end of
the day this is about how we grow the
opportunities economic development is
about the people within our community it
is our neighbors it is our friends it is
our family one of the reasons i got into
economic development was i want to see
my kids stay
and that is a shared conversation i hear
all the time that there just weren't
enough jobs available or the type of
jobs for our kids so
that's why i do economic development
that is what i want to see happen and to
get there we have to do it through
stronger partnerships
you know another thing of of
economic development is a is a quality
of life component and and certainly the
city of las cruces had foresight in
developing a quality of life department
and focus as as part of its its general
missions and strategic plans
and a component of quality of life is
choice
and
el paso electric has embarked upon
one of those choices that exists
now that we're starting to see a general
trend for
case in point
the
ford motor company
put out their f-150 lightning pickup
truck it was the it's the first
fully electric truck and they had
pre-orders that were out there and
within a very short amount of time the
ceo had to cut off pre-orders because
they were subscribed to overcapacity
these are people that had put money down
to buy the truck and they were over
capacity he was quoted as saying we we
built our facility to do 70 000 of these
trucks and i believe their subscription
was up to
upwards of 160 000 trucks that they need
to produce
so the general trend within the u.s
public right now is moving toward
electric vehicles we have a lot of
discussions
with fleets if you look at what's
happening out of the ports of la and
long beach they have um electrification
plans that are coinciding with their
climate change plans and emission
standards and so they're on both the
commercial side and certainly on on the
residential side electric vehicles are a
trend that we should all be prepared for
we would be doing a bad job as a
electric utility if we were not
preparing for this
so
as part of the public utility act that
was passed
there are some
components of putting together a
transportation electrification plan
and so we've gone through a couple
iterations of this city staff has been
a very great partner in helping to form
some of the advertising and marketing
components what you should be aware of
is that the transportation
electrification plan is both an
investment
and
an actual implementation of a program we
will be marketing
to
educate the public about what are
electric vehicles one of the biggest
obstacles to electric vehicles is people
need to understand that they can get
from point a to point b
on a
proverbial tank
um
and so part of that is an education of
technology into uh
battery
storage and use and how those vehicles
are getting from point a to point b also
corridor development and highlighting
where these charging stations can be
there's the actual deployment of the
vehicles as well and so we've
established a 1.2 million dollar fund in
new mexico that will allow for
us to both market and educate the public
as well as provide tax incentives and
credits
to residents and businesses
that are interested in implementing
charging stations
and making these types of investments
we've actually set up a website for this
and we also have set up
tax credit programs for low-income uh
households and and residents as well
all of the details of those tax credits
and programs are available on the
website that you see on this slide
i don't personally have a detail to tell
you this tax credit qualifies for this
much that's why i put that up there but
we do
have a team that is managing the
marketing component how we are doing the
outreach the partnerships that we have
with programs like casa de peregrinos
and others within the community to help
do the outreach specifically to low on
income individuals
and we'd be happy to come back and talk
more in detail about what is contained
within the transportation
electrification plan
tep
so i've talked far too much
but we've given you kind of a high level
component of of where we're going what's
on the horizon at least for the next
several months
and i would
entertain any questions with my
compadring crime rico gonzalez thank you
very much for your time
thank you eric i apologize for not being
here at the beginning i did have a
chance to kind of glance at this earlier
and it looks very impressive
so thank you for your
information and i'll see if any of my
colleagues have any questions and then i
have just a couple for you
counselor flores councilman cuomo
thank you mr mayor and thank you so much
mr montgomery for your presentation it
sounds as if you're doing um
you're being very proactive in
recruiting companies that will
uh be electrified or
you're
is that
it sounds it sounds like you're doing
some of that am i correct and
we are having active conversations with
companies on a daily basis
those are both in partnership
with the economic development agencies
that have brought the opportunities in
the community like mavida like the city
of las cruces
but certainly we're also doing our own
proactive outreach
conversations with networks that i've
had over the last decade
we're also
talking with other electric utilities
that have been in economic development
for decades now to talk about what are
they doing how are they positioning
what what do they see on the horizon as
well as far as the focus on companies
it's a broad mix we would love to see
some data centers come to the region
certainly i know that's been a focus for
las cruces or at least discussed in las
cruces for quite some time i think there
we don't have to rewrite
economic development um there are
already some good plans that are asset
based within the region uh food
processing for example um and certainly
artico is an example of of that kind of
easy success for our region so and
speaking of article how exactly did that
come to our city i'm very happy to hear
that and what kind of a
business is it
um so article is a cold storage uh
facility or management program
it actually came through
an r e visit with some existing industry
in the
mid-south part of the county who had
some connections and had expressed some
some want to expand within the region
but
needed to understand what it was like to
operate within the region because they
could have gone to
i think they were looking
and davin will have a better
conversation on this but i think they
were looking at arizona as well
and certainly texas
but um
sorry devin lopez of mevita
i gotta get away from doing that um
and so the uh
the the location happened because of the
partnership that the city of las cruces
brought to the table
and some of the uh some of the deals
with the uh
uh new mexico economic development
department and then of course the the
closing fund uh that the community
foundation now manages so
great thank you and so
uh the companies that you see coming to
and working in conjunction with the city
with mavida et cetera
you're looking at having these companies
being electrified and you do that
assessment as well
when they're looking at a certain
location so typically what happens when
a company expressed interest in the area
they know their power demand because of
the equipment that they have to install
or the
style of the facility they have done
this in another location our role as an
electric company is typically to come
into the table and say okay yes
the the the distribution lines to that
facility or to that parcel of land can
handle that type of load otherwise we
have to talk about how do we do upgrades
to our system to be able to do that
after a company and and certainly
alongside the planning if the company
would like that but typically at the
planning stage they have the expertise
to be able to design the floor layout
and they've already invested in energy
efficient equipment but
for a company that has existed for a
while that is examining upgrades to its
facility we can do assessments and talk
about how how they can better
access power whether it's a power
conditioning conversation because
their equipment is is
no longer
providing a sorry rico's giving me the
the signal their equipment is no longer
able to to handle some of the upgrades
that we've done to our electrical system
and so they have to they have to
condition the power in a different way
before it goes to the equipment
but are you encouraging companies to
become electrified and to get
maybe solar powered or whatever are you
doing that
mr mayor and city councilor flores
that is a very complicated question um
as you could see by his answer excuse me
rico i just need you to state your name
i know we know who you are but i'm rico
gonzalez with el paso electric thank you
mr mayor mr mayor and city councilor
flores
but
that is where we would like to get if
you look at the at
any of the policy that's coming from dc
if you look at any of the policy that's
coming from santa fe if you look at any
of the policy that's coming out of this
council if you look at anything that's
coming out of the worldwide scientific
science
we've got to get to a point in our
society where we're moving to
an electrified of everything
correct so are there any incentives that
are offered either federal money state
monies
i don't know do we have any local monies
probably not so but um
i'm talking about just
i think that we're
i
would like to see um i mean since you
seems like you're very proactive in all
of this and you're working with mavida
and the city and our economic
development department and all that
but um
i would just like to to know
to see that uh everything is because it
does look like you're being proactive in
bringing businesses i mean you brought
that art article
and thank you um so
um so i would like to
are you doing any of that any sort of
incentives or or
accessing your own funds you know paso
electric's pretty big
so mr mayor and councillor flores that's
what ams is all about that's what that
that
increased
technology in our system will help us to
do in order to bring in more renewable
energy into our territory to flow the
energy out to the rest of the united
states to be part of that
larger piece
we do need to have our system become
more uh
technologically advanced and so what
we're doing with ams i know that it it
at the at the end of the day it goes to
our customer at home and their air
conditioner and how they're using it but
it also goes to our transmission system
and how we get that transmission system
flowing to bring in that kind of energy
so yes we would love to and we are
moving that way in in technologies the
binding administration has has passed
the bipartisan infrastructure act and
we're very active in looking at
partnerships there we've we've had uh
communication with los alamos national
labs they have a partnership with
the universities in the rio grande corn
corridor utep nmsu unm and new mexico
tech we're all we're working with them
to look at technologies as well we
signed an mou with
with mitsubishi
to
work on green hydrogen
in some of their projects
so
we are we are moving as
as fast as we can on those pieces but at
this at the end of the day we still have
today that we're that we're wanting to
recruit in companies
and we will help the city
uh do that as as much as we can
moving forward but yes we're moving very
actively and and very aggressively to to
be part of
this uh
carbon free world that we're moving
towards great thank you mr um gonzalez
and then you uh started
mr gonzalez by saying that epe is no
longer
alpaca electric is no longer a public uh
trading
so what exactly you're not on the nyse
or whatever or how
the index are you
what is it now it's a no longer publicly
trading so what
so we're we are um we are owned by a
a pension fund
that that is that that we that they have
investors and those investors invest in
us
essentially we you you can't buy our
stock on on the new york stock exchanges
is the point i was making okay so who
are those investors do you know you say
it's uh
it's a pension fund
and
that owners uh mr mayor uh uh councillor
flores that's some information i'd have
to get a little okay great thank you mr
gonzalez and thank you very much uh mr
montgomery thank you madam chair or
excuse me mr mayor
mr chair
you're welcome hi councilman cuomo
thanks me
excuse me thanks mayor and thank you
eric how how long have you been at el
paso electric now
uh a month i think i yeah i think about
six weeks mr mayor council well that was
very impressive presentation eric i just
have to say thank you
um
i just have one question the
um winter storm yuri really affected our
gas utility and consequently our
customers i'm curious if there is any
impact on el paso electric and if
customers will see any of that
um
so the the there was an impact to
el paso electric um and and some of the
power generation but we actually
the impact was was minimized because we
have we have technology that uses both
natural gas and then we had some stored
fuel oil
that we were actually able to convert
over during the natural gas crisis so
that actually helped us
keep costs low and save save a lot for
our customers so
not quite the impact that
that was felt
certainly by other parts of the country
you know and i i neglected to mention
this earlier and i apologize but
we just broke ground this last week on a
new power generation station called
newman six and it is designed to replace
some
sixty-year-old technology that is also
named newman um
out in the same same geography
this new engine which we have from our
partnership with mitsubishi power
is actually
designed to eventually transition away
from natural gas into hydrogen
the technology already has that
capability unfortunately we as a country
just haven't built the infrastructure
for transportation and and getting the
hydrogen in a more regular basis to to
where we need to be but we are ready for
it and it will certainly help us achieve
some of our renewable energy goals as
well
so so thank you we were prepared and
then we are growing technology to to do
more thank you i appreciate that eric
thanks mayor
okay anybody else
so eric thank you again for the
presentation i do have a quick question
and i think you alluded to it earlier
about the president's plan the
bipartis bipartisan infrastructure
law i believe it's 1.2 trillion
anyways and they excuse me and they
focus they're going to focus a lot on ev
chargers
which is interesting and then i i think
i saw an article where the president
just basically even said that you know
and and i was told this as well
do you have a general idea of
of how uh
how those work i mean i i mean i
understand the concept you you have a
stationary and you plug it in but i mean
do you have and maybe your
brochure
may have some pictures of it but
obviously we're going to need some
technical expertise if we're going to
put that together is it
available there at el paso electric that
we can call on you or rico or whoever or
somebody within the organization
because i think one of the
ideas that was sent or that i picked up
from
from some of my colleagues when i was at
a meeting a few weeks ago was that if
you have it basically ready to go and a
good plan the most likely will fund it
and so
what i'm envisioning is obviously having
as many as we can have here
and the more the better because if we
can get
the funding for it that's great but
do you do you have an idea of how we can
work with someone to help us design
these
uh
mr mayor that's a great question i i
personally within the company again six
weeks on on the job
um
i don't have the expertise but we do
have we do have groups um uh that do you
have that guy sitting behind you back
there and we would be happy we would be
happy to to pull them in um and and do a
presentation on some of that
some of that investment and and what
needs to happen with that
i was just messing around rico i told
your ceo that your nickname is rico
suave so she started kind of laughing at
that but
he
mr mayor rico gonzalez el paso electric
he has much better hair than i do um
mr mayor i think to the tep discussion
we are having community meetings right
now around our tech our transportation
electrification plan
we had meetings last week with d.o.t in
santa fe on what they are planning
and there seem to be at least from my
perspective at the beginning process of
this as well i saw that there's about 35
million dollars over five years coming
to the state
um on on transportation electrification
um
it is it is definitely going to be an
all hands on deck uh a way of of one
getting those funds from that bipartisan
uh infrastructure plan like you had
mentioned uh and and and two
how we work with
everyone along the interstates and the
in the state uh the u.s highway systems
the state roads it's going to be
important that we all are working
together on that on that end and that's
one place where we are recognizing that
we we as a as an organization need to
step up on a community level to ensure
that we're all we're all working towards
towards that but
i hope that answers your question sure
sir so
help me here who's the chair of the tsi
prc
counselor quran
so
would it be possible to extend the
invitation to the counselor to join you
in some of those meetings i think it'd
be imperative so we have a
kind of a jump on on what things should
look like
and i think it's fair to say
seeing that las cruces is at the
intersection of i-10 and i-25 i mean
we're going to be key to
both you know north traffic south and
east and west
and i guess i'm just trying to envision
it
how they would like to see them
obviously i would think that they're
going to want it off of
the freeway i would think i don't know
because but i
from a little bit that i saw off the
plan
they want to i think it's every 6 50 or
60 miles they want to make sure they
have the chargers so that you know
because in the past
i know teslas they would go
200 and
200 miles or 240 miles and so that was
just a little bit
you know if you wanted to go from here
to albuquerque i mean that
that's on a perfect slope you know you
start climbing the mountain or climbing
the an overpass or or there in socorro
that drains the power so you know and so
i think of course then they start to put
them in socorro and such so is do you
think that'd be possible to allow the
counselor to attend those meetings
mr mayor
most definitely okay great
she'll buy lunch for everybody so that'd
be good
that that's uh that's all i got so i
appreciate that
the staff have have any questions uh to
ask about paso electric
yeah
are you are you a new staff person
yeah okay
okay if there's no other questions from
staff then we'll go ahead and go on to
the next item that's the youth
development and diversion
thank you very much we have mr robert
nunez from parks and rec who's going to
good afternoon everyone council
staff
robert nunes youth services
administrator
i will speak today in regards to our
youth development and diversion program
i have been with the city for 23 years
and this program has been with parks and
recreation since 2016.
it has been in existence in las cruces i
was just recently speaking with mr
rory rank who was one of the original
individuals to to start the program
he believed it's been 15 years since
it's been here within las cruces and
we've been providing these services
for the youth of of las cruces it is a
grant agreement our juvenile citation
program is a grant agreement
and we as a city is are the fiscal agent
it is through the cyfd
uh state of new mexico department
and this year we're in year two
of four and the amount that we do
receive is three hundred and eight
thousand
seven hundred ninety nine dollars
we are part of the dona ana county
juvenile justice continuum
which has a wide
array of memberships including
councillor beta stevie
who represents the mayor's office as
well as third judicial court
law enforcement both local and county
las cruces public schools
gadsden independent school district
the city of anthony law enforcement as
well as santa teresa
and very very fyi
let's get it right i was going to say
fyie but it's families and youth
innovations
plus staff that are also involved
and of course
with that fyi is our subcontractor that
also offers
assessments
case management as well as follow-ups
with with various youth within las
cruces
the juvenile citation program as
mentioned was operated is operated by
the city of las cruces we have a
supervisor as well as two intake
specialists
we have
six community educators
and in
as recent as 2016 we were a best
practice program through the office of
juvenile justice and delinquency
prevention
we will be revisiting
that department in regards to being
reviewed once again to again gain that
status for this program
it includes choice classes choices
classes social life skills
parenting support and community service
and we do have three levels of service
level ones two and three and with that
level ones are
mostly truancy and runaways and then as
two and three it increases to battery
and other class three citations that we
receive
through the juvenile probation office
here in las cruces
as mentioned the jarc
el puente is a supplements with
assessments and case management to
include follow-ups
for our our youth in las cruces as well
as dona ana counties so we are as far
north as hatch i was going to say hatch
america but hatch new mexico as well as
as far south as santa teresa
to include chaparral and this and all
the way coming up through the valley
this this picture here is our facility
uh it is on 890 north tornillo
i believe some of you all have have
joined us and visited our facility and
i'll certainly
send an invitation to all new counselors
as well as the existing
council members mayor to come join us at
our our facility here at uh on tornil
road we are right next door to the a
fielder memorial safe haven
we didn't seed program
a little diversion here and development
for our 12 to 17 year olds and right
next door we have our our kinder through
fifth grade prevention programs uh with
our safe haven and weed and seed program
the juvenile citation program consists
of an
initial intake assessment and processing
we receive those formal referrals
through
jpo
the intake specialists will review that
uh bring in the parents and the child
and they will go over their
[Music]
citation with them and then best fit
them with with what classes they will be
taking over a period of time level one
is a one month
duration two classes as well as
community service our level two is a
six six week program which includes
classes community service and a parent
youth component and then our level three
is a three-month program which includes
all of that just as a longer duration
and additional community service hours
that they're
required to
complete
staff
community educators as well as intakes
as well as a supervisor do case
management communicate with the family
in turn also speak with jpo
regarding any situations that may arise
our
supervisor is also our continuum
coordinator and works closely with our
subcontractor uh
the jark and el puente in regards to
their case management and their
follow-ups with their with the clients
that they receive which now as of
recently speaking with their uh one of
their management is they are seeing a
lot more informal referrals with
families looking for specific services
um and and also uh public schools uh
counselors and administrators looking
for them uh prior to them being cited uh
to receive some type of service or
seeing how they can help out so we're
gonna be talking further with uh fyi in
regards to some of those programs that
they have to offer
we also have within the juvenile
citation program a mentoring life skills
sessions
as as
also to include tracking and monitoring
level one we will track and monitor our
youth for three months after they
finish the classes in community service
six months for our level two and a
complete year for our level three uh
participants and then at that point
after they fulfill all that they will be
completing the program
and it's during pre-adjudication so they
will we will provide that information to
jpo and at that time they'll close their
case
prior to moving forward with it
what you see here is a table of
these are successful i'm sorry they are
not successful completions these are our
intakes and assessments over a five-year
period
as you can see
uh when when kova did hit
we we had to kind of put in our thinking
caps and look outside the box in which
staff did an amazing job
of providing services virtually
everything
as of march
2020 turned virtual for us
and then for fy21 we did return
to in-person classes
but just recently
[Music]
with cyfd's approval and jpo's
recommendation was to provide additional
virtual
classes for our
participants mostly in the south what
we're running into
is the transportation so currently we're
we are staffed at about 50 percent
and so
previously as of fy 18 we were able to
take our program down south and we were
in anthony community center with the
assistance of dona ana county and
provided all of our services to youth
and families down south
with our reduction of staff
we have been unable to go down south
so
we were we're requiring them to to come
north to las cruces to receive the
classes on saturdays
but with covet and with the pandemic and
everything that is happening
we weren't seeing
the participation that we expected and
we didn't want to
disqualify families and so we worked
with uh jpo and cyfd and our will be
starting back up at the end of this
month our virtual component for our for
our families uh in the south and then
those locally will be receiving it in
person and have that opportunity to
receive it also virtually
so we'll have our our camera set up
our staff providing the class for those
locally and then we'll have it set up so
that
the southern families would be able to
see that virtually for them and be able
to complete the
the program uh as if they were here
physically so that's something that's
really positive
with the approval of cyfd with our staff
looking outside that box
and and jpo
also realizing that them seeing some of
the referrals that they were sending to
us
uh and the inability for them to to be
here locally
so so that was something that we were
able to do
just recently
so as you can see we had 296 in fy17
and just in fy 21 we're at 207
we certainly dropped an fy20 to 182 as a
whole
but still a decent number but but i
think with um
the state of new mexico
jpo going virtual
um
they everything was not face to face and
so they were unable to reach some of
those families
to be able to get them either within our
programs or
to get it completed
as we move forward
and as of
december of 21 we're at 114
um
intakes and assessments so uh formal
referrals we're receiving from jpo uh so
we're and we just recently speaking with
the supervisor uh just this last month
we saw an abundance of referrals from
the south
uh from
from the
i was gonna say public schools apologies
uh gatson independent school district as
well as through uh the sheriff's office
uh just recently so the 114 as of
december
our spending currently is about 46
percent so we anticipate with these
additional referrals and as we move into
warmer months that we'll be seeing
more referrals and be able to to expend
all funds that we have available
for fy22
successful completions
from fy17 through
fy21
we are at about a 92 percent over those
five years and 92 percent success rate
uh recidivism as well as
disqualifications
if a youth receives another citation
within
while they are within our programs they
they are disqualified um
at times jpo will work with the families
and communicate with with us on whether
or not we would be able to offer them
the next level of a program uh to be
able to
uh continue and be successful successful
to come to complete the uh
the program that we provide them
as you see we have three levels that we
give our youth three chances to go
through
as pre-adjudicated youth
so we we certainly try to
best fit them within our levels but it
also
is in consideration as to what the
offense is
that the youth are are receiving their
citation for
and then this this here
again we we are local as well as county
and this is a breakdown of the number of
youth that we received over the last
five years and as a recent this fiscal
year
that we are seeing
enter our programs
locally
has been majority
fy fy18 we did have an abundance of of
county youth and then it kind of veered
back to
more local
as throughout the next three fiscal
years and we are seeing actually
more county youth this fiscal year
than local
and so
as you can see here this is our entryway
to our facility the this is a youth
project that that our participants did
in fy
i think it was uh
2019 2018.
they they did the garden um
and we had that part of their community
service so
not only are we out there picking up
trash and we're utilizing our keep las
cruces beautiful programs
our clean up to
team up to clean up programs
but we also do graffiti abatement
we
rehab some of our our murals that are
throughout the city
and and offer
this component as well as our classes
which are girl circle
boys counsel we do life skills
decision
decision making programs
regarding drugs alcohol tobacco
relationships
bullying leadership
body image
we also
have as guest speakers and we would
certainly like to invite our our city
council um
to come and and present uh to to our
youth and we did that in the past and
then of course the pandemic hit
as we're moving back into our in-person
programming we would be able to to host
council members
to speak with our youth and also hear
from our youth of what they are seeing
out there in the community
and so it's been very positive in the
past so we we hope to reach out to you
possibly later this spring uh before
summer time to
to invite you all to sit on a panel
we also do professional um
walmart has come in and speak to us
their loss prevention department
we've had public schools come in
higher education
trade schools
various other components that would
we believe would benefit our youth
in in
finding the path some of it is is
certainly uh being bored and things
happen and then we have other one other
youth that that's the path that they've
chosen and so we need to
certainly try to provide them as many
opportunities and choices
uh and understand and educate them of
uh the choices that they're making and
try to redirect them also here's some
photos of some of the
community programs that we go out to
our litter pickups
uh graffiti abatement
some of the other murals that we've
touched on throughout the community we
really believe in
certainly the diversion of the program
but in developing
better choices for our youth
and and really helping them understand
what is available out there and just
recently
we started our team connection
approximately two years ago and what
we're doing it was a great idea from
staff
our educators is
getting our youth to go our diversion
our development diversion jcp youth to
go and visit our team connection
facility to help them see what what is
being offered what has been offered for
middle school and high schoolers
the the ability for transportation from
getting them from the school to this
location the tutoring component
the partnerships that we have friends of
the oregon mountains nmsu donaiana
community college
las cruces public schools everybody
that's involved with already our teens
and how this may help them
make other decisions instead of some of
the choices that they have currently
made so we're doing that as well as
providing mentorship but also giving
them an opportunity to be mentors for
our fourth and fifth graders that are
next door at our on our a field or
memorial safe haven
and them interacting with one another
and and being able to be around
uh some of the youth and and maybe
explain to them
uh why they're they're doing what
they're doing but also to to just get it
get a chance for them to interact after
they complete their educational
component and all the requirements that
we have for our programs we do some
great things
within this program within our out of
school time programs
just recently speaking with
mateo ortega through fyi was you know
his biggest thing that you know they
just started the la vida project but is
how do we create more of those
prevention
programs um yes diversion is certainly
important but how do we we
reach them at an early age i know within
the within our parks and recs department
our out of school time programs that we
have
seven uh school sites for our youngers
our afielder memorial safe haven wheaton
seed program our teen connection program
uh we we partner with community schools
throughout throughout the city uh and
and trying to find more and more ways
that we can make an impact
not only to those that have been sighted
or almost sighted but also those those
youth that need
need us in their
in their lives for a safe environment
for a positive environment um
and and just one aspect of it is for a
meal
we run into that every single day and we
it's it's great that we've been able to
partner up with fyi for years and years
prior to that the city was running the
the summer food program and other other
programs that assisted
but we partnered up now since the
pandemic with fyi and they've been a
blessing not only to our youth in our
communi in our programs youth in other
programs but also to our community as a
whole and to make sure
that meals are being
sent out to those families to those
homes so those you most certainly those
youth but to also those in need
are receiving those meals and it's it's
something that's very positive and i
think
putting putting food in a child's
stomach at four or five o'clock even
right after school
um
helps them refocus a little bit and
sometimes i think that's what that's
what all of our youth need is just to
refocus take a step back sometimes they
don't have that that opportunity when
they're with their peers or with others
in situations
and and this program certainly sheds the
light of
the choices that we make are also have
consequences there's awards also um
benefits to it but there's also
consequences
to what we we
what we decide to do
whenever we leave school at three
o'clock or over the weekends or whenever
we're not in school so those are big big
things that we are doing currently in
our develop and diversion program
and within juvenile citation program one
thing that we are doing
with our juvenile citation program is
trying to rebrand it
to the development and diversion program
we want families to understand that you
don't have to be you don't have to have
a citation
to be able to come to our program and
receive these services
and we have been seen
through through las cruces police
department through the las cruces public
schools informal referrals when families
do realize that their child are making
those choices or they're about to
and they need them to receive some of
these services
and so that that's that's a benefit i
think that we're seeing
for our community as
as a parent as a community member that
that families are realizing that and
they are are reaching out to la vida
project or to our development diversion
program uh to to get their youth those
that assistance
because they they know that they need
something in their lives to to steer
them in the right direction and so we
hope that that's one thing that we are
doing and and by the end of this fiscal
year we hope to have it rebranded on all
of our paperwork um with cyfd and and
that way we can move forward with
not only diverting our youth but also
developing our youth and being a
positive
um
program within everything that we have
to offer and and as an extension for our
organization that we are involved with
our youth um thank you all very much for
everything that you all do because we
see that impact every single day in all
of our programs that uh youth need
adults in their lives and need those
mentors
and and that's what we are looking
forward to
in years to come as well
and so with that that was a short
presentation with quite a bit
information but i will certainly uh try
to answer any questions
um or take in any recommendations that
you all may have
thanks robert
i have a counselor florida's counselor
been called oh i'm sorry may i pretend
no it's not working
it's because we all yeah
oh really okay well then we'll just
start down the line then yeah mary
proton
okay
because i heard some clicking well i
don't know what i don't know what okay
so may protem and then we'll
thank you go ahead
we'll just go down all right
i'm happy to
yield to my fellow people
um
robert thank you so much
i've heard this presentation it just
gets better and better every year so
thank you so much for all that you all
do you and sonia and staff there
i i want to be clear about the jail
diversion program this program is you're
changing the name right a rebranding to
the development and diversion program
yes
mayor
pro
yes ma'am okay and
robert what's your budget specifically
for that and where do you get the
funding
mayor pro tem gandra so the budget that
we do have currently is three
through through the grant that
supplements our program through the
state of new mexico cyfd we have three
hundred and eight thousand seven hundred
and seventy nine dollars
and then the general fund uh it is a 60
40 uh
match that we we do as along with our
subcontractors so the subcontractor
receives a hundred and eleven thousand
and they're responsible for their forty
percent match
the remaining
approximately
a hundred and sixty six thousand
is
goes to our fee for service
and then we match that with our
uh supervisor with all of our employees
and then we do have some operating
budget as well so we paid through the
general fund ftes through
for um
for your actual ft's yes okay so robert
when as you're moving into this
rebranding and you're wanting to you
spoke to
getting informal
receiving informal referrals right from
the public now maybe pd
from other sources
what is your capacity and where would
you like to be
mayor pro-tem gandra
great question that that is something
that we just recently had a round table
with our staff talking about this and
again we're currently about 50
um
i filled with our with our staff and we
just went through some processes and
hope to have everybody on board in the
very near future
but that was something that being able
to get into
community schools las cruces um sorry
not las cruces lynn middle school
community school with middle schoolers
and being able to go into their their
detention class
maybe their their advisory class that
they have and being able to offer some
of those programs currently the way we
are staffed our staff report at nine in
the morning our programs for our
diversion do not start until four
o'clock
so that gives us an opportunity with our
six staff members to be in the in the
public schools
and or on the weekends and offering that
saturday component
to to not only the county but also
locally
and offer some of that development
aspect of it some of that mentoring um
for for young men and young women um so
i think currently we're the way we were
talking is we are we would be our
capacity is set where we would be able
to offer some development
but i think as we we progress and and
look to expand certainly that would that
would also include some of the resources
of staffing that we would need to do
currently within the general fund we
also receive funds for some internships
and so we've had nmsu
students
come to us interested in providing that
either on a paid basis and or on the
hours that they're required to
complete to fulfill their their uh
their degree plan
so we we've seen that we currently have
two
with us doing that
currently so we that is a big plus for
us to have those students um involved
with our program and that's just one
extra set of staff that we do have so
how many kids do you or youth do you um
provide service to in the citation
program currently
so currently um and then it fluctuates
per session i understand um i i believe
this session recently so we have our our
tuesday through friday sessions which
are majority locals because it starts at
at 4 30 and it goes till 6 30.
and right now this session i believe we
just are wrapping up a session i believe
there are 12 youth
um in the in the weekday session
and then on the weekend is a six hour
session which goes from eight a.m i'm
sorry it's a five hour session from five
um
nine a.m to two p.m
and we had uh the parent youth we had
two weeks ago we had 16 youth and those
are majority of our county families
because of course they're not going to
be able to get here at 4 30 during the
week and and then we have those local
families that have difficulty of making
that 4 30 during the week so it's a
little combination of those
recently just before the pandemic our
numbers were much certainly much higher
but then we also had that
component locally where staff were
working on saturdays as well as going
down south and we're reaching uh 25 20
to 25 families uh during those saturdays
so do you have a waiting list a and b
do you receive money from the county
uh mayor uh
mayor pro tem gandera
a waiting list um no ma'am okay um
usually what we do with the
through jpo when they're formal
referrals
is
sophia receives those
and works with the intake specialist to
get those done in a timely manner of
course we want them
to get that completed in
as quickly as possible
and majority of the time we're able to
place them into those sessions as we're
starting one every four weeks of course
we're level one
those take place on fridays and then
b
funding
we do not receive any
monetary funds from
um
from the county but we are able to
utilize
uh anthony community center
uh
free of charge of course with a with an
agreement with them on the saturdays
sure and i understand that that's the
cyfd
funding source that you're receiving
that is a county right through the
continuum a county continuum if you will
i just i think
if we're using city staff mr pealey i
would i feel like we need to have a
conversation with mr macias
about funding
because you know for me
i i think this is a very important i've
always felt it's an important program
diversion right for kids right who get
in trouble maybe lower level
crimes if you will
important to do it timely but i don't
think there's just 16 kids or 25 kids i
mean i think there's
a lot more kids that are getting in
trouble just hearing pd talk about some
of these
issues that we're seeing
are related to our youth so
i think that part is
important but i also think of prevention
we have very few prevention programs out
there and i think this is where you're
trying to to move into and i've always
have said
that
we need to fund these programs at the
highest level we need to go for grants
um and i'm looking at amy i think i see
her over there a blurry because i'm not
wearing my glasses but
i feel
in my heart of hearts prevention is the
way to go
mentoring ensuring that these kids have
an adult mentor when you hear a hundred
and forty plus youth still in need of a
mentor in our community from big
brothers big sisters and you mention it
yourself the importance of mentoring so
i think we're doing some phenomenal work
i want to make sure that from the
general fund
that we are giving that this is a
priority
i feel it's a it's dire and and i again
i i think we do some excellent work but
i also think there's funding
opportunities a way by which to have a
solid conversation with the county to
provide funding because then we're able
to service
more kids that really need the kind this
kind of help
and so with that i appreciate your
answers and thank you for the work that
you all do please extend my gratitude to
your staff i think you do excellent work
and you have my support i i was hoping
that you'd come with a plan
yes council gander i need this this this
and this and i know you're you're having
those conversations at a different level
but i i feel that we as council need to
hear it and the public needs to hear it
as well so thank you so much thank you
mayor
thank you mayor pro tem caster flores
thank you mr mayor and thank you so much
mr nunes i have to
your your passion and your commitment is
commendable and i know the conversations
we had when i would drop in on quality
of life uh meetings
uh were exhilarating so thank you so
much for that
um
i you know i feel i i see that um
that there is a lot going on which is
again wonderful and and
and commendable and
um
but do we do any tracking
and i think there's privacy probably
privacy issues
with our youth
is there any do we have any data that
shows the outcomes of children who are
in this diversion program and the other
is that i really
believe that the earlier
the earliest intervention is going to be
the best form of prevention
and
you know working with jarvin de los
ninos which you know it really
is so focused on preschoolers and
and uh and then i i believe that there
are
or should be i'm not
not you know a shame on me i don't know
but preschool programs you know from
where
um
where where children are really being
caught before they
um you know go off that cliff
and
so do you ha is there any data mr nunez
that
we can look at to see the what the
efficacy is of
of the diversion program i mean i
and i really don't know how the
diversion
program works in so far as monitoring
behaviors
thank you
mayor councillor flores
so with the data that we collect
um we keep
we keep track of our
participants within our program for one
year at max
after that
i know i've i've worked with uh
lieutenant little
with las cruces police department and
there's
very limited
youth
data that is available for the general
public
and through jpo
once they once they complete
their requirements within our program
unless they return to jpo
there's again limited data that they
retain
being that they're juveniles
uh and so
i know what some of the information that
we try to keep is of course uh offenses
by zip code
um
we provided that to council a few years
back
where the household uh where that youth
is within within the city of las cruces
but some of that data is also skewed
because
that offense might not have taken place
um near that specific zip code um so mr
nunez so we really don't have any um
any outcomes and any stats any
statistics on or data
on on outcomes and and i in no way want
to say that since we don't have that we
shouldn't have this i think that it's
how do you measure then since we don't
have that how do you measure
the success of a particular
youth
mayor councillor flores i think the the
measurement that we're really looking at
is is
whether they they return to our program
or not
um
that that's one big aspect of it and
then we we certainly
have been trying to offer our youth um
that opportunity to return to us and and
some do
some realize the
after they turn 18 uh even prior to that
even prior to that that they they
enjoy that camaraderie that they're
having
with with youth
in a very positive environment
that that's something that we have seen
return and then of course
as they turn 18 we we had others that
have come back to us and thank thank the
staff and and supervisors for for
providing that
a measurement that we do have with with
some of our older youth is what we like
to do through through peak was looking
at that graduation rate for those that
have that opportunity to graduate and
they stay within our program graduate
from high school graduate graduating
from high school yes ma'am and and so we
were keeping track of that information
and those rates were very high um
locally
and so that was something very positive
on so excuse me for interrupting but do
you otherwise i'll forget i'm sorry but
so do you keep that information in so
far as grants because i think that i
mean i'm not privy to the same he's the
expert but
um i would imagine that that would be a
big factor in acquiring grant money or
any kind of a source of
funding
insofar as showing that uh we have those
17 year olds who have um
you know who are now 18 and have
graduated from high school
and that wouldn't be violating any kind
of
of their
personal identification mayor councillor
fordus i know when we do apply for for
any type of grant we are putting that
information
in the applications okay so do we have a
high rate of high school graduation from
our the recidivism program
mayor council for us yes um
the last
i believe it was fy20 data that we had i
want to say that they were there was a
close those that were the participants
within our program
were um
close to 85
uh graduation rate those that we're
participating with and then and then
within that time frame of of course that
we were still tracking them oh
and so
so you do track them post uh 18
after they turn 18. to an extent mayor
council photos no we do not uh we will
only track them as mentioned for the
three months six months or one year
or until if they turn 18 years of age
and once they turn 18 that that's it
yes do any of them come back after
they're 18 just to
help mentor the children or just to
because i i would surmise that they have
grown close to
everybody in the program because it
looks like they're there for a few years
do they come back mayor councillor
flores a really
positive story that we do have is a a
recent hire
went through the program years and years
ago
and so we have had um again as i
mentioned
not even 18 years of age but those older
that have come through
um
i know in speaking with some of the
youth they have older siblings that may
have gone through the program and now
we're seeing the sib the younger sibling
so
that's that's where it kind of goes back
to is how do we reach these families
to break that cycle right so that you
don't see the younger siblings and
that's i guess that's my concern but
thank you so much again mr nunes and
thank you mr mayor
thanks
counselor quran
thank you i think a number of my
questions are already addressed so thank
you for the acknowledgement but mr nunes
i just really wanted to thank you i
teach
at the community college a class that is
really kind of how to get your life
together and make good personal health
choices and often the students say to me
darn i wish i had had this at an earlier
time in my life and so i appreciate you
sort of thinking about that and really
thinking about it on a prevention level
and
and really sort of helping people figure
out their pathway so please count me in
for any any kind of support that you all
need or visits or
or connections to the community college
because i love to to
meet those students so um thank you
again
thank you counselor counselor ben cuomo
thank you
boy that class should be taught
to all of us for the rest of our lives
um thank you so much mr nunez i always
really appreciate when you come and for
the work that you and your staff do um
are arguably i think you have one of the
toughest jobs in the city and so thank
you very much
um i was really thankful for mayor pro
tem and her questions on budget because
that's literally one of the things i
noted you know hindsight i would have i
wish i would have asked for you to be
president or at our budget retreat a
couple of weeks ago especially because
youth programming and services is a
council priority um so maybe looking at
barbara maybe for next year have you
present like many others did right
animal services metro narcotics i would
have loved to hear from you at our
budget retreat so maybe i'll ask you now
if you had been with us
what would you have asked for to help
programming
and your department feel more successful
mayor
councillor ben cuomo
very challenging job but a very
rewarding job most certainly i think i
think parks and recreation is is an
amazing department
my entire career has been
with this department and and
i feel i get paid
by
just the interaction of
of those human beings that want some
type of service or the service that
we're able to provide
i believe budgetarily
looking at at our programs certainly
expansion of this program and looking at
additional resources
even as our subcontractor that's with us
has always shown interest for more money
fyi any other service provider that may
be able to do um a component of what
we're we're requesting within our
community i think the more the better
um and and that would be very positive
our out of school time programs
that's that's something that i've always
been involved in even before i was hired
with the city uh working as a summer job
was was those summer programs and and i
think
we are
are budgeted well for for what we're
doing
um we're always looking for other
opportunities to be
and i always say four corners of the
city in any corner that isn't for being
provided any type of service how can we
be there
and so we would certainly need
some funding for that
um
our our summer programs
23 years ago
we were at 16 school sites
and and city sites um last i won't say
last summer i'm going to say prior to
the pandemic we were at five school
sites and city facilities but that's
also the dynamics of
how it's evolving within the public
schools as well they're they're doing a
lot of construction during the summer
they don't have their their their
students then within city facilities
we're expanding other programs so that
so we're limited to space i i always ask
for
certainly we could use money for for
staffing but bricks and mortar
whether we partner with public schools
any any non-profit or
for-profit uh program business that has
space for us to be able to house some of
our our participants um that's that's a
big part of what we're looking for thank
you for that answer i really appreciate
it and
my follow-up was going to be around
staffing are you fully staffed if not
or even if you are
what would be ideal
staffing for you mayor councillor ben
cuomo we are not fully staffed this
pandemic has really
giving us a right hook
as of probably the last
this program specifically for the last
seven months we have not been fully
staffed
uh thank you mr pealey and and and
counsel for
uh adjusting our hourly rates for the
for all city employees and
just recently we we were able to hire
some additional staff
um with our out of school time programs
we're not fully staffed it's kind of a
revolving door with college students and
retirees
but now that our hourly rate has
certainly gone up we've seen a lot more
applications so that's something that's
very positive so
we're not out of it just yet but i think
over the next six months
as rico was knocking on um
is that i hope
we are are going to be fully staffed
because currently with the with the
limited staff that we do have
we're still being able to to provide
those services um sometimes at a limited
basis but we're still
either knocking on doors or opening our
doors and and being able to provide
those services for youth as young as
kinder all the way up to a 17 year old
that's incredible thank you for that and
thank you for that feedback i hope that
more departments are providing that
feedback to mr pealey on
the increase right the hourly increase
because i love that you said
i
i get paid and the rewards that i get
working for this but at the end of the
day that doesn't pay the bills right and
we want to make sure that we have staff
who stay a long time um that there isn't
dropout all the time burnout i imagine
in your department there's significant
burnout and so whatever i think i really
appreciate hearing that kind of feedback
so perhaps in future presentations
include some of those things
um because i think it's really important
for us to know
so thank you for that and
i wanted to ask about
if you can report on what you're seeing
in relation to mental health and the
youth that are coming through
and if there's anything we can do to
support any mental health
specific programming
mayor
councillor ben como
i think our youth are
are in a very difficult situation right
now
we we have seen an increase
with
um
so
usually
our runaways and truancy are at our
lowest level and we we place them
when we provide them that assessment and
we
work with our intake specialists and the
families and majority of them in in
years past have been at that level one
um but we just recently um sitting down
with staff is that we are seeing um our
youth coming in as a level two level
threes
and and the dynamics of their mental
health
um as they
they
communicate with with the with the group
that they're in
with some of the situations that they're
going through
the family dynamics that are happening
now here over the last uh i i don't want
to just blame the pandemic i think
there's a lot of pieces that play into
it um for our community here but but
this pandemic has certainly um
caused a lot more situations and
speaking with mateo from from fyi is
that's that's what they're seeing as
well is more and more families are are
seeking
that assistance and those services and
that's wonderful because they're
realizing uh whether for themselves as
parents guardians um or for their their
children is that they need some
assistance they're they're not able to
to to resolve or or solve that issue
that is happening so that's something
that's i believe is good but but i think
also on the same end of it is is there's
a higher rate as well yeah that's right
um
do you have any
peer-to-peer programming i know that you
know we talked about adult mentorship
and how critical that is and
evidence shows that peer-to-peer
mentoring is very effective at any age
with any type of diversion programming
i'm wondering if you consider if you
have that or if you've considered it and
in a way to expanding that prevention
and diversion programming mayor council
ben cuomo we we did not in the past our
our mentors were were our our staff but
just recently again fyi with that new la
vida project that they've created there
which i think is an awesome title of a
position is their youth influencers yes
and and that's one last week
that we are connecting with
with our life skill programs that we
offer is to bring in these youth
influencers who a lot have been involved
with the system in their in their
prior
uh prior years um so they also
understand just recently on our
continuum board we were able to
to vote on two youth members
that that are influencers with fyi that
we're we've already invited to our
programs to work with our youth i think
i think it's just that much
sometimes you see that in youth when
they're when their peers
their near peers are are speaking to
them of their situations versus a a
young adult or an older adult
is is it
it certainly soaks in much better and
and hopefully makes a difference for him
it really really does you know i i feel
like
often not that it's not good right
like i said adult mentorship is
excellent but sometimes it could feel
patronizing or like you're getting a
lecture there's nothing like getting
that sort of advice and feedback from a
peer who's been through it who's
been through the thick of it is maybe on
the other side right that i think feels
really critical so if there's ever a
request for some sort of peer-to-peer
programming where even we're paying
young folks i think
i would be very supportive of that so
um and then my last
just two more questions do you have any
do you get any federal grants and i
honestly i ask because i wonder if
there's any barriers to serving
undocumented youth
i i may ask
miss amy before bastard johnson
i felt all that wisdom walk in when she
did and i don't imagine you ask for
things like social security numbers i
just i
there's been some conversation in their
housing prc around
barriers to housing because of status
and i'm curious if that exists for you
um thank you
mayor councillor ben cuomo amy johnson
basford grants manager for the city um i
appreciate the opportunity to come up
and visit with you about the grants
previously there was federal funding
that was attached to the money that we
received from the state that
as you know with cops money and other
money coming out of department of
justice did have an ice component to it
so for a period of time we were not able
to accept that that component has now
been removed by our current
administration
and we should be and we are able to
accept federal funding the funding for
this program flows from the federal
government to the state and then comes
down to us
so we're hoping that we see some
increased funding
over the next couple of years given the
current
administration and their efforts to try
and address some of the issues that are
around
youth diversion and things like that i
don't know how much of that will
actually come down to the local level
certainly we can apply for more federal
funding now
for various aspects of robert's program
that are aside from what is provided by
cyfd
i just want to take the opportunity to
real quick talk about cyfd monday it is
a program that is fee for service paid
which means that they have a set price
for each of the activities that the
program does and the only way for us to
increase that funding is to serve more
people which is why robert and i have
been talking for a couple years about
the rebranding that he's personally
going or pro
going through right now in order to
attract individuals that are not
necessarily
in that diversion
mode
but that are families that are wanting
to
have risk risk at youth uh or at risk
you sorry um that want them to get into
a program that can help them make better
life choices and so if we change the
title of it and kind of take away the
stigma of your in the court system or
you're in the juvenile detention system
then maybe we would get more folks in
that would help us then apply for more
money from the state we are considered
within the state one of the primary
programs in the state and robert's team
does
provide
guidance to other programs throughout
the state on how to set up the program
how to administer it how to develop the
various aspects of it so it is a great
program and the more people we get in
the more money we can apply for
the other thing is that you did ask
about the budget we do have a 60 40
requirement so 40 percent has to be
provided in match
but robert's budget is actually more of
a 50 50 split
so the city does provide more funding
for the program than what we actually
get reimbursed you know so instead of it
being a 60 40 we're actually doing more
of a 50 50 split
i hope that answers all the many
questions that have come on funding
thank you amy and we are trying to get
uh funding from the state to make us
a designated program as best practices
that would be nationally recognized
that's incredible thank you for that
robert do you have anything to add to
that in terms of just serving
undocumented youth and those if there's
any barriers there
mayor council ben como
we will service
any youth that come our way
and i think jpo on the same end of it
i think they do what they can
to make sure that you receive some type
of service either documented or
undocumented love to hear that thank you
robert and then i am very sorry if i
missed this but the rebrand brand is for
juvenile citation program is changing to
youth development and diversion correct
yes ma'am okay just wanted to make sure
thank you so much robert and yes same as
mayor pretend please pass along our
gratitude to your staff
thanks counselor counselor graham
yes thank you mayor
i add my
thanks for everything you've shared with
us this afternoon and also
my offer to participate in any way that
i can if you're looking to form a panel
or
you know have someone for a sit down i
would love to do that
generally speaking what kind of
what are the nature of the referrals
that are bringing youth into these
programs what kind of situations lead to
youth being referred or receiving a
citation or
american thank you excuse me mayor
councillor graham um
over the last two years
runaway
and battery on a household member
we we've seen a large increase
in those areas um truancy is is another
that we've seen
possession
of illegal substance
batteries within the schools
uh but but just recently we're we're
looking at our data and and those two
really popped out here since march of of
2020 are our runaways and
battery of a household member
right thank you for that and i
you know i appreciate the the emphasis
on choices and accountability but of
course i'm also looking at this
from the perspective of what situations
are we putting our youth in that are
leading to
leading to their
movement into these kind of programs so
i appreciate that that gives me
personally food for thought
my other question you mentioned
some partnerships you have
you said dacc and msu
what about
other city programs or particularly
youth focused city programs
who are you working with or what's the
flow of the youth you're serving with
other
youth-oriented programs
mayor council graham uh we we've also
partnered with within the city of course
the museums
the library as well
we've in years past through lcpd they'd
come in and give a presentation
las cruces fire department would as well
so we certainly
are are
never hesitant to partner with anybody
within our uh within the city as well
something that we've also been talking
about and this has actually been going
on for a couple years
but is is being able to offer some of
these youth as they go through this
program
possible internships in various
departments
within the city
but also
within our community
and and that would help them you know
through employment
the basics there's those life skills
again of uh how to fill out an
application how to how to dress for an
interview um how to communicate
um with an employer
so so we're looking to try to evolve
this program a little bit in regards to
those life skills and being able to
create that employment opportunity
for our youth as well
yeah you you read my mind um i was
thinking specifically
toward for the for the older
participants toward those employment
thoughts um and also adding to
what we're teaching when we're thinking
about employment life skills
employment employee empowerment and
workers rights you know i think at our
last session councilor karan mentioned
you know there was an issue going on
with wage theft in las cruces that had
been reported on lately and i think
that's so vital not only to teach
people how to get a job but what their
rights are when they're a worker so
they're not
continually taken advantage of so i i
appreciate your forward thinking on
those aspects
those are all the questions i have thank
you thank you mayor
thank you councillor beta
thank you mayor and thank you robert uh
for everything um with this presentation
and answering all the questions today
i did want to bring up a few of the
items that we saw
during our last meeting we did get to
visit the lavida project
and talk
about the programming that they have
there and it was
a very insightful
item and it brought in a few of those
questions that we kind of touched base
about today
which is that programming
is very important especially as we're
looking at the summer time
and any of those times where youth is
out of school and i think it's been
brought up multiple times today that
having strong programs
and accessibility
for these individuals to to get to these
programs is helpful for diversion and so
thinking about it and thinking what we
can do i think for the summer time is
making sure that we're communicating out
as much as possible
about these
resources and even i'm not sure if we
have like a resource guide at all
one of the items i was talking to brian
cavanaugh
after our meeting
was that about a guide
and kind of reaching out directly with
schools and parents
before the the summer session is
before summer starts
making sure that we
are able to give out those resources
beforehand
most summer programs
come with the cost and that is a barrier
to a lot of individuals especially those
that might be
having other challenges and so then
youth tend to make their own choices and
sometimes that can be good and sometimes
that can lead to to other choices that
are are not
conducive to successful outcomes and so
this would be very good for us i think
to develop a resource guide
and even if we need to do
specific outreach whether it's with an
event
to encourage individuals to come
and learn about
this program and other programs so they
can piece together i think programming
that works for their family over the
summer
and looking at that and then later on
hopefully for us as a council to look
how do we strengthen those programs
so that we have more sites more
accessibility and
perhaps even looking at
the ability to have more brick and
mortar if that's something that needs to
be discussed for go bonds
you know i think our teenage group the
13 to 18 it's it's a very hard time
there's usually a lot of smaller
programs for the younger children but
that those teen years
it's very different and how they want to
hang out with people is very different
too and so um i think that's a
conversation perhaps to deep dive a
little deeper into and for us to to look
at what sort of resources we could do in
the future for something like that
and you've also made my reporting on
this a lot easier for monday so thank
you
and thank you mayor
all right thank you
councillor
another question mayor for them i do i
just i just want to
just to a few of the questions just
because i'm in
some groups that have had these
conversations
i think we have we should be very
concerned about mental health for our
youth i've had
a few conversations with amy hemline
counselor and head of programs there for
teachers in hr and for kids and mental
health and
i think last week or two weeks ago
unfortunately we had a
youth commit suicide
or i should say i shouldn't say it that
way complete suicide
complete suicide
out at the mayfield high school and and
and
she's indicating there's just an
enormous amount of pressures and stress
that our kids are
are
have is especially because of covet but
but mr nunez you mentioned
um we're all i think a lot of the
entities and non-profits you're
experiencing
shortages workforce shortages is
specific to to this area
and so
i i think
along along those lines um peer-to-peer
you know our suicide prevention task
force has talked a lot about these
peer-to-peer programs and talking to the
high schools about how to
how to how to do that sort of what steps
to take
it's a really difficult
thing because they're inundated and it's
one more thing that they have to oversee
um and so i i i think it's an excellent
idea to have these sort of um peer or
youth influencers i love
the the young woman that came and spoke
um so vulnerable so courageous about her
experiences and it just sits differently
right when a youth can do that and
probably a youth to a youth so i i wanna
i i want to say that that's one of my
priorities i think it should be of
counsel and it sounds like it is
if there's telstra funding or other
funding that we can do very specifically
to address that and help our
our community and schools or our schools
develop that programming and have it not
be a focus and attention responsibility
of the school but maybe another
partnership with a non-profit i think
that would be a a great help and then
lastly counselor abate them i'm so glad
that you made mention a resource guide
there's several out there i just don't
think that our parents and our community
is aware
of the of of the resource guides that
are electronic maybe in a in a uh
you know paper form if you will if you
go into share new mexico sure new mexico
has a very robust
resource guide the city has done a
resource guide but very limited because
it would be very lengthy the dona ana
county resilience leaders and most
agencies have a resource guide that
they're looking at we just need to get
the word out that they exist
and and especially and i hear you around
the summer programs like what's
available i know the bulletin was
working towards my mike
cook had a a nice little um
i felt like a good
story about it and and was developing a
sort of list related to that but if the
city could help right and and
provide that information to the public
on our website that would probably be a
very helpful thing
um and then lastly i just i in terms of
brick and mortar
i think that there's specif like places
already buildings that are for lease
like the kmart and other big buildings
that could really afford
these sorts of programming that i feel
the city should really look into
if our if there is such a large need
to provide
more services for for our kids for our
youth i i hear often
that we forget our youth our youth but
the the program that we have
is not sometimes for every youth and so
how do we work
on ensuring that we have a variety of
programs for for our youth is and i know
you're working on that there's no easy
answer robert i know you've been working
on that since i got here
and you're trying every which way to
provide a lot of different services but
i think you're limited because of just
funding and ftes and and those kinds of
things so it's not a criticism it's just
i think if we sort of
look at some of these other available
buildings and such maybe there's
opportunity there so thank you mayor
mr mayor
yes um councilman cuomo and counselor
flotus
thank you mayor i just had one more
thing because um councilor beta made me
think of it robert but
i had requested a while ago that one of
the public engagement
um
conversations with the go bonds be
specifically for youth and i don't know
if that's going to happen or not but i
would really encourage you and your
staff to to plan and organize a way to
get the youth through the program to one
of those conversations because i think
um hearing directly from youth on what
kind of goalbomb projects should be on
the list is honestly
not ju it's critical it's really
important and so i think it it'd be
great if you all um found a way to
organize and and and i think they're on
our calendar so um check in with staff
and and and hopefully get
the participants to one of those we will
get the word out
thank you councillor flotus
thank you mr mayor and again um thank
you
mr nunes
in terms of
peer
communication
there's nothing like a peer or someone
close to your age or someone who can
identify remember about i think it was
about four years ago when uh we signed
off on the jpa with the lascaux
community schools i don't know if you
were present it was you know room full
of people the press were here everything
like that and
and we had an actor who had been in
breaking bad remember that
and he had a um
some kind of a disability
and
and he
was asked to speak at one of our local
high schools
and
[Music]
and all of the students showed up i
can't remember the high school it might
have been las cruces it may have been
sin it was
but now oregon yeah yeah it was that's a
yeah it was organ mountain and it was
sro i mean it was and then um
and and the students uh the youth were
were so motivated and he shared his
story
and
and i agree that
anyone who's
anyone who's in college for a high
school student sometimes is just too too
much of a reach
but this particular person gosh i can't
remember her name his name but he
was absolutely delightful and just a
really down to earth person
and um
and and one thing we we can we can do
now i believe is we have our high
schools we have the big uh of course we
have covid
good old covid
but we still have places we do have that
brick and mortar and sometimes
it just takes that one person you heard
that you could identify with that really
makes you
see that there's life beyond
you know your your dismal environment or
experiences and
we i wonder if we could
have uh motivational speakers and not a
motivational speaker like someone who's
like in their 50s or 60s
but um
huh
what
oh rj middy was his name because yeah i
should have remembered because i thought
of walter mitty the secret life whatever
but um but maybe something like that uh
mr nunes or ms delgado or miss uh
whoever mr city manager who's not here
assistant city manager who's still in
the back of the room
um where we can
maybe because you do work with lcps
lccs
and um
and and have uh speakers come out
youth and and he was probably in his
late 20s or early 30s but
he he has the heart and the soul of a 16
or 17 year old it may have been that
breaking bad role that he had
but to have
peop
people who still relate to youth or
youth relate to them identify with them
or
look up to them
talk about
you know their hard knocks in life or
have a youth who
survived
suicide
uh speak to them and um and we could do
something like that i think that we
really have to be
i think all of us up here have said the
same thing we have to
really
take care of our youth i mean that's our
future john kennedy said that was our
most resourceful that was our our
biggest resource our youth and i think
that we could all agree with that
that if we don't care if we're not
taking care of our youth you know what
are we doing what are we here for
so um that's the only recommendation uh
i can make insofar as
uh it wouldn't require i think all we
had to pay for uh midi to rj to be here
was his airfare
and i think his hotel stay i mean it
wasn't like he asked for
you know ten thousand dollars so i can
be heard
uh it really came from his heart and i
think that there's maybe a foundation
in the country that probably provides
that kind of
service i don't know but
it's just i'm just putting it out there
in the universe and maybe it'll fall on
somebody's ears so
thank you so much again mr nunez thank
you thank you
thank you mr mayor
anyone else
well i think everyone's covered
everything
you have done really it is a fantastic
job and it's really needed here in the
community and i appreciate all that you
do and i know that
and i always have to circle back to the
county because
you know they still collect that
one-eighth of one percent
that is comes from all gross receipts
tax that's used for
health services that i would think that
you know if this is something here that
we could tap in just a small amount to
help with some of the funding because
obviously
like i said half of it comes from city
residents that that i know that they use
they utilize it for ambulance service
and other non-profits but this is one
that i think
could also
be eligible in my opinion so
okay if there's nothing further i think
this pretty much concludes our the
presentations so if that's the case then
just entertain a motion to adjourn
so moved second by flores
motion made by councillor abeta second
by counselor flotus
christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor beta yes
counselor graham yes
counselor ben como yes
counselor quran yes councillor flores
yes council candidate yes mayor yes
okay we're adjourned it's
3 42 p.m
[Applause]
oh yes thanks
what was the applause for
you ready
okay this is the agenda setting meeting
for our february 22nd
2022 city council meeting
number one non-consent one non-consent
two non-consent two non-consent three
non-consent three non-consent for
non-consent for non-consent
i'm going to guess the five is
non-consent also
worry about that five non-consent five
non-consent six consent six consent
seven non-consent seven non-consent
eight non-consent eight non-concerned
nine non-concerned nine non-consent
thank you
oh
so
you