[Music]
okay good afternoon everyone we're back
to our now las cruces council work
session today is monday october 25th
2021 it's approximately 1 39 p.m
the reason why we're starting here if
you're just tuning in is we had our tid
board meeting it started at 1 pm
so we're going to start off with our
work session with the pet of the week
and jennifer martinez from our
communications office will be
introducing them
jennifer
good afternoon mayor council i am
jennifer martinez with today's pet of
the week i am from the city's
communications office
and today i will begin with our super
cute orange tabby cat toulouse
toulouse has been a shelter cat for
pretty much his whole life and that's
only about five months he wants to know
what it's like to have a forever home
the super sweet and handsome boy needs
someone to rescue him and maybe give him
his own pillow and blanket on your bed
then we have our dog of the week
ladies and gentlemen meet ricky
ricky is also a sweetie who's learned
the command sit and some other commands
he is willing to learn a few more if you
just have patience with him and give him
a chance this three-year-old gets along
with everyone and he might want a spot
on your bed too learn more about
toulouse and ricky by visiting the
animal services center of the messiah
valley that's ascmv ascmv.org
and you can make an appointment to visit
these cuties you'll need to call
382-0018 to make that appointment you
can also meet a few other pets this
weekend at petsmart there's an adoption
event taking place at petsmart this
saturday from 11 a.m to 2 p.m and that
is at 2200 east lowman avenue thank you
mayor thanks jennifer it looks like two
loose has a
beard
he's a very attractive little boy bad
for five
months that's good
okay thank you
so next we're gonna go to jobs of the
week and looks like uh dr payala's
francisco palladas will be
providing that information
thank you mr mayor and for the jobs of
the week let me pull it up real quick
thank you mr mayor members of the city
council for today's jobs of the week we
have a senior business systems analyst
that the city of las cruces is currently
looking for and this position will be
closing on november the third we also
have positions available with home
health care aid or caregiver this is
with ryo de luz home healthcare and
there's stem positions available for
this specific company this will be
closing on november the 14th 2021 we
also have a landscaper position with gna
landscaping so we have actually two
landscaping positions with gna
landscaping this position will be
closing on the 17th of november of 2021
and we also have a patient care
technician this is with the vita
healthcare this will be closing on
17-11 so also the november the 11th and
the maintenance also so we also have a
maintenance aid with messiah valley
public housing there's two positions
available and they will be closing on
november the 12th as a reminder to all
the public and to the members of city
council and the mayor we will be
supporting a las cruces job fair and
this is at the convention center we've
been doing a lot of promotion
we're truly truly trying to push getting
those positions that are available
filled as you know we're looking for job
seekers we currently have 21
businesses that have registered and
they're looking for jobs including the
city of las cruces that will be having
some tables at the job fair as well so
if you know anyone looking for a job or
if you know any company trying to post
any jobs this is completely free to the
public las cruces convention center
november the 4th for the job fair for a
full list of jobs internships and
volunteer opportunities please visit
www.employeenm.com as well as
www.governmentjobs.com for slash career
sports las cruces
and then the offices are friends with
new mexico warfare's connections they're
located at 226 south alameda boulevard
their phone number is 575-524-6250
and again the webpages employing
them.com thank you mr mayor thank you dr
payalas appreciate that
okay so we have two items on the agenda
the first one 3.1 is the legislative
funding priorities
so it looks like amy bastford amy
johnson basford and larry hurran
good afternoon mayor city council my
name is amy johnson-basford i'm the
grants administrator for the city today
we're going to go through the
legislative priorities
i will warn you it is a rather lengthy
list and we're going to have a couple of
sections where we need some direction
from you also but we will walk you
through that i want to first have
introduce larry herron who is the city's
lobbyist he's been with us since
eight wow 2008 he could retire i think
probably from us
but larry's been doing a great job for
us for all those years and so i'm going
to have him
start off and discuss the
upcoming legislative sessions uh the
trends that he's seen for the session
uh thank you mayor members of the
council um it's good to be back in
person in front of you again and we have
some good meetings um to discuss
legislative priorities so i apologize if
some of this sounds redundant that we've
already been over it but things are
still changing considerably as we go
into the this next legislative session
the the 2022 legislative session will be
a 30 day or a short session
and so the significance of that is
the subject matter that the legislature
can consider is limited to budget
matters so revenues
revenue bills appropriations bills
what you call messages from the governor
so the governor can
can allow the legislature to consider
matters that are not revenue or
appropriations matters but it has to be
uh at her direction or with a message
that actually says you can consider
legislation related to
whatever topic and then the the
seldom used but also
available option is previously vetoed
legislation so legislation's been vetoed
in a previous session can be considered
and
of significance before we start the
session on january 19th of this year
the legislature is going to convene in a
special session
i believe the date's going to be
december 9th that could change
somewhat but that's what has been
announced and that's for redistricting
so after every
census every 10 years they'll have a
redistrict districting special session
where they'll set legislative districts
and also congressional districts and
that'll be done in early december and so
we go in and then in the next it'll have
significant impact in the next election
the following november and 2022
because those legislative districts
depending upon population will change
and that can have an impact on
on
every constituency for legislators but
we could have movement where some
legislators who represent pieces of las
cruces
now may lose those precincts or we could
have those legislators who gain um gain
more of las cruces in their districts
and so that's really one of the things
that's on the forefront of legislators
minds
right now
but
the most significant is there's there is
a significant amount of funding
available
for projects and for operations the
state's budget
is in this current fiscal year is 1.4
billion
as of the last
uh revenue estimate above what they
anticipated
and they're they're anticipating at
least another 1.1 billion in the next
fiscal year in new revenues
and that's changing
on an upward trend because when we last
talked and we had our council meetings
the price of oil was about 74 dollars a
barrel it's up to about 84 a barrel
today
so we're seeing an upward trend
so that means they'll have significantly
more money available for capital outlay
funding but the other thing to consider
is
they're going to have general fund
revenues that they don't want to put in
recurring
expenses because they're not sure how
long this bubble is going to last
so they're going to be significant push
to take some of that general fund
revenue and fund projects with it and so
our list this year will look different
than it has in the past because we've
never seen revenue levels
like this and funding and
and that's even without discussing
federal funds that that are coming in or
may come in which would include
that um
that federal money that the legislature
and the governor are fighting over who
gets to decide who's
who can spend it there's still about 1.1
billion available there
and then we're going to have an
infrastructure package that will be
passed hopefully sometime in congress
that'll give us another pot of money and
so
post covered we never thought we'd be at
quite such rosy
levels but
we're seeing funding like we've never
seen before and they're anticipating
that it's going to be there at least two
to three years
i do caution you because i always have
to do that
that's also what they said right before
in the 2020 session we thought we were
on a bubble that was going to be a
five-year bubble we're going to have a
whole bunch of money available and then
covet hit and we had it put a screeching
halt to it but
we're coming the recovery is good and so
there's going to be a lot of
opportunities for us that we should take
advantage of and
while the while the iron is hot we
should strike and so that's why our list
is going to be looking a little bit
different this year
is that the end of my slides amy
participation of council sure
so
one thing we've done and is very
effective in the past is
once we adopt what our legislative
resolution is we usually have a las
cruces
i don't call it's a city of las cruces
lunch a day in santa fe where we
encourage the council and staff to come
up we usually feed the legislature and
have you come up and discuss with our
legislators what their priorities are
and what your priorities are
because it has a significant impact on
them when you take the time to travel to
santa fe to discuss what what is
important to you as a member of council
and as a council as a whole and to the
city so we usually do that
right around this year it'll probably be
the first week of february
just past the midpoint
and so if you haven't had an opportunity
to do that
it has a significant impact with the
legislators and then i help facilitate
any discussions or meetings you want to
have with legislators or staff and then
also kind of give you a briefing of a
snapshot of where we are
in the legislative session at that point
and we usually do that right after the
midpoint so that's probably going to be
around the first week
of february
thank you larry and larry is not going
away um
he will be here throughout our our
presentation
um and so
what um we have to sorry
i got new glasses
i'm going to have to like
look over like you this way for you so
apologize for that
um but one of the things that we have to
do is we submit all our requests through
the legislative council service that has
they have done some changes this year it
is an earlier deadline than normal
normally it's about mid-session which is
about when you all go up to
to meet with our legislators
this year it is pre-session so we have
to have those done early january so
that's one of the reasons why we've
moved up our timeline just a little bit
this year
so i wanted to let you know that
so the way that we go through the
capital projects process and i think i
met with each of you we talked about how
this works
but the grants office myself the city
manager in our city lobbyist larry we
meet with each of you to talk about your
priorities that's legislative and
capital priorities that you have for the
upcoming sessions and in general this
year we included public works and grants
our budget in that meeting so that
some of the information that you
provided will help
guide those their meetings with you
later as we begin to develop the 2023
budget
grants in public works also meets with
every department of the city that has
capital outlay priorities on the icip
we talk about which ones they want to
prioritize we generally limit them to
one to two total prioritized projects so
that everybody gets a fair opportunity
we then compare those items to the icip
and it's a requirement for the city
since we used the icip as our state
planning document that our projects be
on the icip
legislators do look for that we are
required to have an icip number when we
submit that information to the
legislative council service
we double checked the estimated cost
because most of the things that are on
the icip were developed last
october so october of 20 those were
developed and so here we are october of
21. we want to update our costs we also
take a look at where the current status
of activities are
and that helps guide us not only for
whether we need additional funding for
something or if we need to reauthorize
something or if we're having some some
issues with a particular legislative
item so we take a look at the entire
picture
during this process
and then we come to project selection
city manager
office and myself met a couple weeks ago
to take the very large list of 30 plus
priority projects that have been
developed by council and the departments
and brought it down to a list of about
and we like to bring that list down a
little more larry likes 10.
i'll just tell you it's larry who guides
us on this so larry likes 10 projects
but we're going to present 15 to you
today for you to consider
we like to look at whether the project
is ready and the reason we do that is
because
it takes about of uh six to eight months
from the time that the legislators meet
until we actually receive the agreements
for that funding and then we have a
deadline within a couple months to take
action to obligate some of that funding
that's a requirement of the
severance tax bond law
and we must comply with that that
severance tax bond law applies
regardless of how the funding is brought
to us whether it's general fund from the
state or if it's severance tax bond
capital outlay funding those laws apply
dfa uses those laws across the board for
any capital outlay so we do have to be
ready we have to be able to move on it
fairly quickly
we look at how much funding is required
for the project and if there is other
funding available we have tried to be
very strategic this year in looking at
what might be available federally with
the new infrastructure acts that may be
passing at con at the congressional
level
and so we've tried to be strategic we
look at whether it can be phased because
we often have legislators come to us and
say okay if i give you two hundred
thousand dollars what can you get done
with that
and those are things that larry and i
try and respond to during the session as
he begins to negotiate with our our
legislators we want to make sure that
it's aligned with the city's strategic
plan and this year we looked at elevate
as well
and then it must be capital improvements
for a lifespan of 10 years so whatever
we select for capital must be something
that goes towards an actual capital
asset for the city that has a lifespan
of a minimum of 10 years so if we're
doing design and plan
that is intended to be part of a
finalized capital project that the city
owns as an asset
in perpetuity and it should have a
lifespan of at least 10 years
some of the equipment for fire and
public safety may not have that kind of
a lifespan but that's sort of the
exception to the rule
so those are our selection criteria
so one of the things that we have this
year that larry alluded to is a lot of
extra money
at the state that we anticipate will be
there in january i always like to be
cautious as well and say you know
gas prices and oil prices go up and down
and as he alluded to in 2020 we thought
we were going to have a huge year based
on oil prices in august by january those
oil prices had fallen by about 50 a
barrel so we had a lot less money but we
will look at that this year we there is
additional revenue that we know is going
to be there um that is they are looking
for one-time investments um and then the
governor has her arpa outlay uh for
capital which is 1.75 billion and they
are have not put out the
guidance yet on what she's looking for
so what we are looking at is
projects that are transformative and
that are in line with the city's
strategic plans these are extremely
large projects
that will
provide economic development
potentially energy efficiency for our
city
we are looking at projects that are
visionary in nature and would lead to
increased quality of life economic
development and regional development and
as i go through these what city
management would like to have is your in
general agreement with the five projects
that we are presenting and allowing them
the opportunity to
present those to the state
as those criteria come out and so in
general we want you to agree that these
are projects that we would like to go
for and empower our city management to
work with our lobbyists to and put those
forward
as we get information on how they want
those
submitted
so our first large improvement so
as i said we're going to do this in a
few phases this first phase is going to
be our large projects
and so the first one is to prepare the
airport for passenger service
this includes doing
a majority a large majority of
construction that is needed at the
airport in order for us to provide
passenger service both interstate and
out of state
which is the ultimate goal is to have
both
we are looking at a price tag of 37.5
million it would include a passenger
terminal expansion of our parking lot
retrofitting the existing building for
ticketing and other
passenger services
extension of the runway 826 and runway
1230 both of which we have design and
environmental assessment funding for
right now
a new maintenance facility with a fuel
farm and the relocation of our fuel farm
and an expansion of it
the fuel farm where it exists needs to
be moved in order to accommodate some
expansions to it
the maintenance facility that we
currently have is basically a
like a garage
needs to be a little more
ramped up than that needs to be able to
contain our equipment for the airport in
a covered facility needs to have some
some space for some work to happen
inside that facility so we need a new
maintenance facility
in addition when we move to passenger
service we will change the class of the
airport and therefore we will need an
airport rescue and firefighting
equipment truck that
meets the class requirements of
providing passenger service we would
also do fiber and enhanced broadband for
the airport so that would be
one of the the large projects we would
like to put forward
just as an aside we will be looking at
applying for the rural air service grant
that is that was approved at last year's
legislative session where they provide
subsidy for an airline to come in for
two years and provide service within the
state of new mexico so that is something
that we are looking at applying for and
therefore passenger service could be
coming much sooner than any of us had
previously hoped
the second large item is involving the
las cruces innovation and industrial
park it is a truck bypass that goes from
the exit on i-10 to the santa teresa
port of entry and this should be 160
million dollars so i apologize that the
correct
powerpoint didn't get put up here but
this is 160 million as opposed to 2
million 200 million
uh it is a to construct a truck bypass
route from the exit as i said on i-10 to
the
to the santa tere supportive entry it
would be a two or four lane truck worthy
road which does have additional uh
requirements to ensure that it can
handle the the heavy semi-truck traffic
this does include the cost of
acquisition of rights of way and or land
acquisition for the road and it would be
require redevelopment of the entrance to
the las cruces industrial park this is a
major economic
development in
initiative that would hopefully drive a
lot of industry to locate at the las
cruces industrial park
then we have another one for the las
cruces innovation and industrial park
the green industrial park project
this would complete a circular road to
the south on the south side of the
industrial park and add a solar farm
thus making it a green solar park we
would construct a new loop
loop road to the south side of the park
i believe it would be one of the the
most southern
roads that we would have there
and basically it would be a loop around
the park and then we would construct a
20 megawatt solar farm on the south side
just off of that road and thus creating
a green industrial park
it is 46.6 million that includes the
road development as well as the full
solar farm
construction
then we determined that we should
potentially put in some utility and
water
sewer projects because that was called
out in arpa and the governor may feel
that doing some of those throughout the
state would be a wise use of the funding
that she has available to her for
capital so this would be a replacement
of water lines and water tanks this
would replace approximately 20 miles of
water lines within the city
that are aging out and need to be
replaced it would also refurbish and
replace three city water tanks to hold
drinking water
finally the last project is a downtown
public safety complex at 30 million this
is construct a new dual fire police
safety complex similar to what we have
on the east mesa and located downtown to
replace the existing two stations one
one for fire one for for police and
combine them into a combined complex
and those are our large projects
and so
now moving into the standard capital
outlay
we have our
sewer and utilities projects that is
always a priority for us we are
increasing the amount that we are asking
for this year in order to complete these
two areas that we've identified for
several years unfortunately we ask for
a million plus every year we get about
500 000 so the project is somewhat slow
one of the priorities that almost every
single one of you brought to mind when
we were meeting with you individually
was let's get some of these projects
that are ongoing completed this is one
of those it's a long long-term project
and so if we could get a significant
amount of funding
we would be able to make some some
serious progress on these two priority
areas and be able to move on to other
priority areas so this would be
completing the remaining britney estates
and estados serranos and hacienda acres
phase three and that is 4.6 million one
of the things you'll notice as i go
through all of these capital outlays is
the dollar amounts we are requesting are
much higher than what we normally
request and that is anticipation of the
increased amount of funding that they
may have available for us
roadway improvements we have three
projects that have been identified by
public works as priorities of course our
continuing east mesa roads and drainage
improvement again we're asking for a
very large amount here 7 million
to continue the improvements of roadways
and drainage on the east mesa make some
significant progress on on those
activities
we have the telstra spruce intersection
this would be 1.5 million for additional
lanes access and traffic signal
configuration and that is based on the
work that was done uh over the last two
years with a capital outlay
that did some traffic studies
we do have sugu lee here today that who
could talk about those things but they
we did some significant traffic studies
in the area to reduce
congestion there and this would be then
implementing those recommendations
the loman walnut intersection also 1.5
million that would be a complete
replacement of the traffic signals and
ada improvements
okay then we have building renovations
every single one of you i think without
exception um called out that the amador
hotel
and the branding cultural center are two
projects that we've had ongoing for many
many years and both need to be completed
the amador hotel renovation is estimated
at five to eight million dollars we put
in the price tag here at eight million
this would be completion of the total
renovation of the building as well as
preparing for public use
to include community input during the
construction phase as to what should the
building should be used for and as a
reminder
it does need to be used for a public
purpose
because as with all of these capital
outlays everything is
intended for the public and must meet
anti-donation
requirements
brennegan cultural center again a
project that we've had for many years we
have been able to recently complete the
replacement of all the electrical system
which is a major accomplishment as well
as the ceiling in the uh branigan
cultural center but we continue to need
things like the exterior and interior
wood elements replaced the exterior
stucco which is the historic element of
the building repaired and
protected
replacement of the original windows or
refurbishment of those windows and the
lintels around those windows and the
doors and then other improvements as
recommended in the report including
stabilization of the portion of the
building that has the mural on the
inside which is one of our
prized pieces of artwork for the commute
for the city
a couple of other building renovations
we have these are a little lower priced
convention center improvements 454 000.
this is for the original section of the
um
of the building it would be replacement
of furnishings and carpet in the
original section also replacements of
audio visual computer and sound system
throughout the building and improving
the parking lot uh there were some
issues with parking lot when they did
the expansion and so to correct some of
those parking lot issues
and then the jcb
sorry let me try that again jcp juvenile
citation program
building envelope renovate the exterior
of this building to improve energy
efficiency of the building in essence to
repair the stucco paint and ensure that
envelope is high energy efficient for
that building
and that one is at 230 000.
for public safety
we have two projects
we combined what is normally two
separate projects for the police
department which is the replacement of
existing data terminals that have met
their useful life approximately 23
terminals and the replacement of
existing body cameras that have also met
their useful life approximately 30 to 35
cameras that would be for 180 000
police station 1 improvement 750 000
this year received a capital outlay
appropriation of a very small amount
they were able to refurbish one office
within the station this would be to
remodel the cis and research offices
as well as resurface the north parking
lot and install security fencing around
that parking lot
that is 750 000
also in public safety we have fire
equipment this is the replacement of i'm
going to try and say this all in one
breath self-contained breathing
apparatuses or scbas
these need to be replaced for all
members of the fire department due to
age as well as new requirements
equipment requirements that have been
put out for this particular piece of
equipment that
every firefighter depends on quite a bit
fire station improvements is another one
for 840 000 this is actually to improve
four
of the stations station one would be
interior improvements to include the
front office area
station six and two those are exterior
refurbishments again to ensure the
envelope is uh as energy efficient as
possible repair cracks and other issues
in the stucco
station five parking lot house fault dry
pad
bay door replacement and generator
the generator would allow the station to
become an emergency location
in times of either extreme heat or
extreme cold for the community
and that's at eight hundred and forty
thousand
and then we have our park improvements
again
the majority of these are projects that
have been ongoing that we need to see
completion on and that have large
community support
the veterans parking lot the veterans
park parking lot
very much in demand by our veterans
community this would be to complete the
design and construction of the parking
area making it ada compliant
and that is something that our veterans
community
is willing to help lobby for
our skate parks we have two
million dollar request here for that
that's the completion of the existing
park which is approximately an
additional million dollars to truly
complete the renovation as
as desired by the community the skating
community
and then design and construction of a
new park for a million dollars as you
know we have approximately eight hundred
and fifty thousand dollars right now for
the renovation we are have gone out to
rfp
um there have been some issues with
those rfps we're hoping to be under
contract sometime in the new fiscal year
but there are many amenities that could
be added to it if additional funding
were provided
designing construction of a new park for
one million dollars we have a hundred
thousand dollars to do some uh work on a
new park uh at this time and
additional funding would be needed to
actually construct a new park
a smaller request from parks that's very
much needed is the east mesa pool
improvements uh they have had some
damage done to the shade structures
there uh due to wind and other uh issues
out there there's also some general
improvements that need to be made at
that pool um as it begins to age that's
150 dollars
finally um we finally so that completes
our capital outlay we're going to talk
about the reauthorization of the
downtown parking garage and i'm going to
have larry speak to you just a bit about
how reauthorization works but i want to
go over the original
appropriation that was given
so originally the purpose was to plan
design and construct a parking garage in
downtown las cruces there was a total
authorization of 2 million dollars the
state withheld one percent for art and
public places that will remain with the
state regardless of our reauthorization
that was twenty thousand dollars it left
us with one point nine eight million
dollars for the project we hired a
consultant
who reviewed a couple of the downtown
lots and then was
contracted for to review all of the lots
that total contract is 314 221 thousand
dollars that is to be completed by
december 31 and that's very important
because as soon as we begin the
reauthorization paperwork for this
project the existing grant will be
closed
so we cannot do any more work on the
existing grant once we process the
reauthorization basically that that
grant closes and a new one is created
upon the reauthorization
so that leaves us with
1.67 million basically 1.7 million
dollars and some change
and i want to have larry kind of go over
how reauthorization works and how we
determine how much money we have
available to reauthorize
thanks amy so for reauthorization
the way it works is the legislative
council service will go back to the
original
legislative sponsors
who allocated the money and
at the time where we got money for the
parking garage
that
information was not publicly available
so they have to go back
they will pull those original funding
and they go back to the legislator to
ask them to reauthorize
as is the case with with this parking
garage money we have at least one
legislator who is no longer
in the legislature so then what they do
is they go to the legislature that
succeeded
that particular legislator in this case
senator papen is no longer in the
legislature so that's senator hamblin
and then each of those legislators have
the ability to reauthorize for whatever
purpose they so desire so we could ask
them
to reauthorize it
for shade structures or if we have
amador hotel that would be our request
but they have the option to authorize
those funds to go anywhere so
really it
the the authority lies with the
legislator but if we do
a good job explaining to them why we're
making the switch and what we're wanting
to do then hopefully they would agree to
reauthorize them
for our project and and with the 2
million because that information was not
publicly available at the time
we know of two legislators of senator
souls and senator payton who who
allocated funding but it's possible
there are others who who allocated a
portion of it so then what they have to
do is if we've already spent money they
have to go back they'll divide what we
have left probably based upon the
percentage that each legislator
allocated and then each individual
legislator has to agree to that
reauthorization and that's all done
once we submit those reauthorization
request forms
thank you larry so based on the
conversations that the mayor has had
with senator hamlin and senator soules
we know that senator hamlin is amenable
to reauthorizing her portion of the
funding that's remaining
for for simplicity purses purposes we
put a million dollars here
for the downtown shade structure
senator soules we don't know that he
authorized the remaining million dollars
but we would
we're going to for simplicity purposes
say that he did
and the air and his desire was either
the airport or the amador hotel
we believe that from council's direction
that the downtown straight stage
structure is something that you would
like to see reauthorized to the amount
that we can with senator hamlin but then
we have the amount that's remaining and
whether you want that to go to the
airport or to the amador hotel which
were the the two projects that were
discussed with him
that is where we need some direction
okay
and again because we don't have exact
amounts
as to how much was authorized by each of
the legislators we are going to have to
kind of play the exact amounts by ear
we are not required to have a resolution
from council on reauthorizations we do
reauthorizations every year for a
variety of reasons some of them are to
change scope some of them are to extend
time period we will be authorizing
reauthorizing a couple of other
appropriations this year to extend the
time on them one of them is cinematic
infrastructure
which we seem to reauthorize
pretty much pretty regularly
until we get a project under our belt
for that one
we believe that those are the two that
will be reauthorized
so that takes us to the beginning of our
discussion period
and if if possible and and
the chair can let us know how they would
like to discuss but the first section
would be the large project list and if
in general the council agrees that these
are projects that city management should
pursue with our lobbyists in requesting
funding
for large projects either from the
governor and her arpa funding that she
has available or from the
legislature
and their excess funding that they have
available for one-time projects again we
don't have a lot of guidance yet on how
those projects will be requested so this
is a general authorization to city
management to pursue
one or more of these projects depending
on what that criteria is
and so i will defer to the chair on
whether you would like us to discuss
each of these sections separately or if
i should go through all of it and then
we can discuss however
however you'd like
thank you amy mayer had to step out so
i'm thinking let's go ahead and do
go through it and okay discuss okay
afterwards thank you great
so then we have our capital outlay
projects unfortunately i couldn't get
this onto one screen all of them on one
screen for you guys to look at
everything and pick and choose again
we'd like to move this list from 15 down
to 10.
we are asking for additional large
funding um much larger funding than we
do on an annual basis based on what we
anticipate is the available
funding for the
for capital outlay this year and so
we do want to try and bring this list
down to 10 so this first side has
utilities
the three public works projects that are
primarily road projects the amador hotel
renovation branigan cultural center
renovation
the convention center improvements and
the jcp
energy efficient exterior
and then we have additionally the the
four different public safety projects
police equipment
which includes the body cameras and
mobile data terminals
the police station improvements to
station number one
public safety for fire equipment is the
breathing apparatus for 750 000
also for the fire station is improvement
to four different fire stations
and then we have the veterans park the
parking lot for that at two million
the skate parks a renovation of the
current one and a new one
for two million and then the east mesa
pool improvement so that is the total of
the capital outlay projects
as i mentioned the
reauthorization does not require a
resolution but if you give general
direction i suppose if there's not a
disagreement on the on the direction you
give we would not need a resolution but
if there is i would we can bring forward
a resolution for that if we need to
so our next step is for you all to let
us know what you would like to see done
we will then bring a resolution on
november 15th
to move forward with the legislative
request and then we would prepare the
legislative request form descent by
december 31st
this
time frame gives larry at least a good
month prior to legislators going to the
holidays and then to session to begin to
work with them gives pio enough time to
develop our
informational
packets that we want to distribute to
our legislators in advance of the
session and then have available during
the session as i said the legislative
request forms are due
by january 13th of 2022 which is a week
prior to the session starting
and we will
open that up for discussion at this
point
thank you amy councillor beta stevie and
councillor flores from airport town
thank you mayor uh thank you amy and
larry um for this presentation
as we
look towards the session and hopefully a
lot of great opportunities um and i
think we have a very robust list that
hopefully will be fulfilled um
breaking it down into the two sections
for our large asks um i do have a
technical question
we have
on the list as our number five the
downtown public safety complex
which is a great ass but we also on our
shorter list have some items for
the same buildings for
building improvements and so how are we
looking about addressing those when
asked why we have them on both lists or
how we'd like to adjust
i think that's a great question and i
would defer to larry on how we would
manage that once we submit them it's
possible that if it looks like we would
be funded for the downtown parking or
downtown public safety complex that we
would remove the other two requests but
let me defer to larry on that
uh thank you mayor and counselor beta
stewart that's what i would recommend in
is
is if we see we're getting traction on
the larger ask and we're getting some of
that statewide money where we're gonna
or we're gonna have that project
um be able to be fully funded we could
then pivot before the actual allocations
are made because the legislators will
still get their list right around the
time you'll all be coming up for las
cruces
uh city of las cruces stay in santa fe
to make their allocations and so we will
be able to address that issue with them
but the other thing i would consider is
that list of those five big projects
and you you of course have the ability
to
to change what those priorities would be
but i would look at that more as a
longer term list because if we're going
to have this kind of funding available
for two or three years those are
projects we may want to keep on the
burner that we're trying to get funding
in successive legislative sessions and
so then the technical question would be
and it would be to public safety into
public works
do we need some of those interim
improvements made before we can get the
full funding for that public safety
complex
but that i would view them as probably
we're going to see those for the next
few years versus just a one-time ask
okay thank you um and with that
i know there's going to be a few
different items on the governor's call
and if some of these projects align with
those types of calls it might be a nice
way to work them together
and then for our short capital outlay
i've already ranked my 10. i don't know
if you
awesome you need
that that would be great
so uh in my mind uh looking at things
items such as septic of course that um
deals with my district as well
um
is on my top of the list the convention
center branigan jcp roadway improvements
the public safety equipment i think
needs to be a priority
for both fire and police
the veterans parking lot and the
pw mesa roads and drainage
okay so let me clarify um you had put
road improvements was that the east mesa
roads or is that a separate one you know
what that is for uh the telstra
intersection okay tell shore spruce yes
please all right great i do have folks
in the park in the audience taking down
very copious notes of what each of you
ask
um but i'm i'm just making notes on
general um what you might be uh ranking
here
do you have other questions uh counselor
yeah i tried to streamline that pretty
well thank you thank you appreciate that
thanks and thank you mayor
thank you councilor flores and then
mayor for tim
thank you mayor and thank you amy thank
you larry
so if we have so much money why do we
have to pare it down to 10 from a list
of 15. all of them are essential and if
there's money going to be sitting there
for another two or three years why not
ask for the money now use it and then we
can ask for more money for other things
as they come up because they're
constantly coming up
so and a lot of these things have been
on the list for years
so
what gives thank you
thank you mayor and council flores there
is a lot of money but as what as will
always happen about 10 percent
of the capital outlay requests get
funded
so even in years where there's less
money
everybody knows that there's there's all
of these pots and money available so so
every other entity
is doing the same thing
and so the number of the the asks will
go up in proportion how much money is
available
and so we just want to have
a reasonable expectation and reasonable
ask of our legislators so they can fully
fund as much as is appropriate but every
other entity is doing the same thing
we're doing which is
trying to find those big
transformational projects and so it's
still very competitive
competitive as uh how betwe the
legislators are forced to opt for
whatever their specific districts or
areas are concerned and so it's a
but if there's that much money larry i
mean why why would that be that grab
mayor and council force that's exactly
right so so i'll just give you an
example so let's say our last year our
requests were a total of 10 million
dollars and and donated counties were
similar
new mexico state et cetera
we all of these entities are getting the
same advice we have a one-time
opportunity for a lot of funding and so
we've
are have exponentially increased and so
now if we're asking for 100 million
dollars or actually
closer to 300 million dollars the same
thing is happening at every level so
everybody else is competing for those
same pots of money
and so we still need to be reasonable in
the the number of funding requests we
have from our legislators because they
just won't be able to they won't have
enough
money allocated to hit too many projects
and if we come with too many the
feedback i get from legislators is
always
come on you guys should be reasonable in
what you're asking for so there's still
that tension for us
well if it almost sounds like well isn't
it like maybe on a pro rata basis or you
know in terms of the population of a
given area or there's no rationale
except that
legislators are what overwhelmed by
having to look at numbers and allocate
money so but
i don't understand that part at all no
mayor and and council flores
no but what legislators like is that we
keep our our expectations and requests
to be what they consider reasonable and
it's not necessarily
based on a pro rata or or population but
it's just the amount of of
infrastructure or the the amount of of
entities who are going to come to the
mass for funding
it's pretty significant so if they're
only going to be able to fund
10 percent
if we're not asking for too much
there's a fine line between asking for
the
the right amount and the right projects
that they like and we like and and
overreach
and essentially we don't want to
overreach because
then that can impact us this year next
year with the legislators in the future
so we just try to be sensitive to what
they can reasonably
help us fund
okay so i'm still back at square one i
don't get it if we have that kind of
money
why is there such a problem with the
allocation of monies i mean
i mean you know the numbers as far as
i'm concerned and relatively speaking
maybe they're not but in terms of what i
see
they're astronomical i mean the numbers
the money available
so um
and then some of these things that we've
been asking for again you know it's been
maybe decades as far as i could see
where things haven't gotten done
so then
of those say we narrow it down to 10
you would have to take a poll here of
those present today is that what you're
looking at it would have been nice to
have had this list beforehand maybe it
was i didn't see it
but um
so from that your we pair it down to 10
and of those 10 is there a guarantee
that they will be funded or is it just
possible that they will and then we'll
be back here again next year or maybe i
might not be but
council will be back again next year
looking at this situation again and as
you said there's going to be money
for the next two or three you say yeah
two two legislative sessions after this
one
and then we're back at the same game
mayor and councilor flores there is no
guarantee ever with getting funding
allocated through the legislative
process
they're anticipating they're going to
have funding
available like this for the next two or
three years
but they've
i always take that with a grain of salt
because that's exactly what they said in
and then covet hit and then oil went to
negative thirty dollars a barrel and we
were looking at a two billion dollar
shortfall and that happened within a
very short period of time and you
that also occurred at the same time you
got a price war between the saudis and
the russians
on oil and it and oil tanked and so then
our economy was in shambles and so
i'm optimistic but i'm always cautiously
optimistic and
it's just it's difficult if you ask the
legislators for too much money
at some point they're going to think
that our requests are unreasonable and
so i always try to find the sweet spot
with
what's achievable
important and also reasonable to ask the
legislators for
because that puts a different kind of
pressure on them and i try to be
sensitive
to that so that they have reasonable
requests from every entity
um that come and ask them for money
because they'll probably have 30 or 40
different entities to each legislator
coming and asking for funding
and pieces of their money
as will the governor
as will the state agencies as we get
this federal funding in
well if that money is there larry
does it work this way does it work um
there's a there's this money i mean at
the beginning of the presentation by amy
she put
big numbers up there
that money isn't expected to be
allocated
this year no
i don't know if i'd see if i can
mayor councillor flores remember i said
there are three different sections there
is the large ask that we are looking for
for the one-time allocations from either
the legislature
or
the governor's uh arpa money and so
those are separate from what we normally
ask for for capital outlay for capital
outlay each legislator is allocated a
certain amount of money usually uh two
million or four million dollars
so that one legislator has two million
dollars to spread among the 30 entities
who have come to them asking for money
so we try and find a number of projects
and an amount of projects that vary so
that we can get the maximum amount of
funding so for capital outlay that
section of it
we do look to kind of be a little more
restrictive in how many we do
because the years that we've gone
forward with many projects so i think
1919 or 1918 we went with 23 projects of
those projects we were funded for less
than 30 percent of our ask
normally we're at about a 75 percent
funding for our ask
so it was clear that having many
projects above and beyond our normal 10
to 12
was not setting well with our
legislators so that was a lesson that
larry and i both learned that year that
putting a bunch of projects in front of
them does not guarantee us better
funding
i does i hope that helps a little bit
well it it sounds to me that it's a
tactical move on your on your part right
i mean you have to look at who the
players are and you have to see how
they're going to play
but i just thought that
i think
this might be a quote i don't know there
is a significant amount of revenues for
capital funding 1.4 billion plus
infrastructure money
more money from congress
that's sort of
that sort of a quote
uh mayor and council force that's
correct that's the 1.4 billion is in
revenue above the projections for this
year so that also includes that's not
just capital that's general fund
revenues that the state will use
for operations and so
you know they're looking at things like
statewide broadband they're looking at
increased funding for early childhood
education putting more money more money
into k-12 so everybody
including state agencies are competing
for those funds so it is a lot of money
but when when you consider the needs and
the infrastructure needs throughout the
state
it's it's significant but it's not going
to be enough to fund all of those
requests
thank you very much larry and thank you
amy thank you ms mir
and and after you hear the large ask
that i'll ask later then it'll take all
that take all your worries away
so mayor pro tem
thanks mary thank you larry and amy
could you to help out put the list
together
and maybe while we're talking could
staff maybe make copies of it kind of
side by side so we can i'm very visual
you know where we can
look at that but we certainly can
um as far as
um i just have some more technical i
guess
pieces or questions to ask related to
the
to the list if you will um
and they are
they are things like
um on slide seven
the relocate the relocation of the fuel
farm
so um
are we responsible in when you say fuel
farm i'm thinking where they put fuel in
and so would we have to clean that up in
addition to
um
you mean as far as the environmental
impact the environmental impact yes and
would that be a part of the amount that
we're asking for yes so in any time that
we
as a city or an entity
contaminate the ground in any way shape
or form by having fuel farms or oil
tanks or that kind of thing we are
responsible for that cleanup and so this
would include the cleanup of that area
so that it can be repurposed for
something else
but i do have andy here who can probably
provide you much more technical
information than i can
good afternoon mr mayor and counselor
gondara um actually i can't add much
more to what amy said she gave a very
good answer on that yes we do need to
take care of remediation
thank you andy and then
um as far as the
um they enhance the fiber and the
enhanced broadband
um
amy you mentioned specific to the
airport well but will that be included
in the west mesa and does i'm going to
get it all wrong the right
word and name of our park now
will that include capacity for
around that area as well as it relates
to fiber and broadband
mr mayor counselor gandra
it will primarily focus on the north the
portion that's north of i-10
the portion south of i-10 already has
some of that infrastructure in place
but certainly north of i-10 and the
uh airport so it will include that okay
for others okay good
and then um
slide 10. thank you thank you so much
thank you i'm completely supportive of
those larger product projects by the way
thank you
and
as far as
the public safety complex i think it's
an excellent idea i'm very supportive of
that often we hear
sort of the folks that land there or
stay there that it has not been updated
and
the complex has not where the building
hasn't been updated in 18 years so i'm
very very um cognizant of that and and
complete support of that but at one time
we talked about a lab
is that included in that or somewhere in
the in in the east mesa complex we have
um removed the forensic lab from our
request list primarily because of the
cost of operating that and that the
state will not provide operational costs
for it
it is extremely expensive to operate and
i believe i have eric here who might
talk about that or miguel who could both
talk to that
point but we have removed that as one of
our priorities because of the cost of
operations and the fact the state would
not support us in operating a southern
forensic lab down here
and i will let um chief miguel dominguez
speak to that
amy i appreciate that and i'm always
been very concerned about the lag that
we have in regards to
processing those rape kits and i thought
that would be some of the more helpful
thing to have something in the southern
part
so hi
good afternoon everybody police chief
miguel living is for the record uh mayor
mayor pro tim i'm going to do what andy
just said she she covered it pretty well
the the price for uh for a lab would be
a lot more than 30 million dollars if
we're going to go uh go that in that
route but the costs do rise and uh lack
of support from the state for crime lab
is is a hindrance for us can you give me
a round about price in terms of what
that might look like i thought we had
i don't remember it's been a while with
with the prices in in uh
in materials and things of that nature i
i couldn't i couldn't get give you a
guess right now thank you chief i
appreciate that but again i'm 100
um supportive of our public safety and
everything that you need to to um
protect the citizenry and so i'm i'm
most definitely in support of that thank
you thank you thank you that's very much
appreciated
let's see uh oh
and i wanted to ask because i've sort of
driven around at night regarding
that area that general area
lighting is pretty poor would lighting
be a part of that as we move forward in
terms of the complex
i i just feel when you have more
lighting
yes i think
um mayor councillor
gandra i think the ideas that were
brought forward because this is fairly
new was that it would be fairly
transformational to downtown in that
there might be a walkway coming over
over spruce picacho there would be
additional lighting it might be kind of
a multi-um building complex so
he'll take those to christine
and we do have your copies for you that
christine will will distribute if she
can
and
so yes and the other thing i wanted to
mention councilor gandra is we did
receive a grant last year through the
department of public safety to bring all
of the rape kits up to date and i
believe that those have all been
completed for our area so we are current
on that we are working with the
department of public safety on some of
those kind of
backlog issues when funding is available
to them
that's excellent to hear and asked in
quite a quite a long time so i'm happy
to hear that we've been able to
to make a dent in that to zero
yeah um
and then i have slide 21 what is
thank you miguel
oh it's just those yeah okay yeah i i'm
um again supportive of the of the larger
funding projects with the airport public
safety the equipment the sewer
improvements that we
definitely need to make um the telstra
spruce intersection
the amador hotel the branigan library
of course the jcp i do want our skate
park
an additional skate park
and and so i think that is
for me um most important
okay
and did i say the brannigan
and the brannigan and then and then
lastly as we had the conversations amy
we talked about the area um as a
transformational
project uh um
maine and you know going to highway 70
sort of that right that um yes
i don't remember and i know that through
public works
and uh new mexico dot that they wouldn't
consider that until we brought forth or
put forth some money where where is that
exactly let me defer to uh
the director of public works david
cedillo we did look into that that was
not moved forward as a priority when we
met with city management
primarily because some of the issues
with the dot's design i believe but i
will let david speak to that he was in
that meeting as well
thank you amy
mayor mayor pro tem gandera david sadio
public works director and yes amy did
mention
we do have some estimated costs for that
as we move forward
those have been projected with the covid
cost of a 30 percent we have that in
place but
we're still
talking with nmdot
to be able to have those discussions on
moving forward with the project at this
point in time they have designed the
project they haven't let the project for
construction
so it doesn't get it doesn't get placed
in this list if you will
currently
currently at the moment that is correct
okay all right yeah so
what will what will entice them and you
to put it on the list
i've been advocating for this for a few
years now so i'm just going to go all
out and say it's one of those
transformational
projects and i'm going to keep asking so
what is it going to take david yes mayor
pro tem those discussions still need to
occur with nmdot in the city of las
cruces that way we can come to terms to
see if there's anything moving forward
on what that portion
of funding will be needed from the city
of las cruces to have that incorporated
into the project okay thank you david
yes ma'am
i guess i have to talk to nmdot i will
do that
and anybody that's listening in the area
because i get a lot of complaints about
it so please
get your advocacy hat on
thank you amy
i think i gave 10 didn't i
is someone counting out there
leanne's supposed to be counting our
chief financial officer is counting for
us
okay why don't you go ahead and just
list the tenants i did this them already
thank you and if i'm not get with me
later thank you thank you so counselor
bitcoin thanks mayor
thank you so much everyone for your
presentation
um
yes i'm also trying to sort of navigate
the
reasonable versus transformational
projects that i keep hearing i feel like
those are sort of conflicting
messages but i also get that there's two
lists right and so i'm gonna just
approach it that way
um
can you say more about the because i
think i feel like i don't have enough
information about the downtown public
safety complex
yes so the downtown public safety
complex is really driven by the need
that each year we are coming forward
with
requests to improve those buildings and
they're minor small improvements that do
not really meet the needs of the two
departments that we have located there i
believe those buildings are in excess of
30 years old i'm sure jason or miguel
will correct me back there if they're if
they're newer than that but i think
they're both in excess of 30 years old
which is about the lifespan of a normal
building a city building
certainly they they do need
you know updated space and equipment and
fiber probably internet and all of those
kinds of great things that after 30
years out all buildings need updates on
and so the idea was let's look at if we
could get the funding to bring forward
that here
we could have something similar to what
we have on the east mesa that is serving
that area well into the future so that
was the visionary idea behind it
again it's a it's an idea at this point
that doesn't have design started
and where where exactly it would be
located downtown whether we would remove
those two buildings
and build something else or if we would
put it in a different location near city
hall so
it's really quite a vision at this point
um eric
if eric was the one who kind of brought
this forward to us for the fire and
police department i don't know if you
want to have anything else to share
leanne if he said i mean uh amy if he
says you explained at all you're three
for three
okay go for that
good afternoon mayor and council uh eric
hendricks assistant city manager and
councilor ben coleman just one minor
correction uh station one is 57 years
old
so it is it is uh
an aged building that just to give you
an example the hvac system whenever we
have problems with those which we do
every year
it'll take over a million dollars to to
replace that we we bring in staff or an
expert from the outside to work on it
and they all
gawk over it of how ancient the system
is but always tell us to get rid of it
sold that's helpful that was it thank
you thank you
um
eric
um amy so
since we're in pitching mode
i know you don't want additional things
added to the list however as we're
talking about transformational projects
which is what i keep hearing from
legislators at least
because of this downfall
i and then public works
i feel like tony's already like which i
know what she's going to say
i
i understand that we have about 80 miles
of road that need to be completely
redone
when i think about
and i say this every time when i think
about the call that i consistently get
from constituents that i think would be
transformational that people would see
local government at work
is repaving
streets that are
the worst on the index what would happen
if we pitched this huge
street
repavement project for the streets that
need it the most in las cruces i don't
know 10 streets
that need it the most i have the lowest
number on the index i'm just curious
about if that those conversations were
had if we're open to those conversations
because i feel like
this money is a huge opportunity to do
something like that right
so
tony can correct me if i'm wrong but i
think it's about a million dollars a
quarter mile per mile per mile
is it per mile or a quarter mile
it's a quarter mile okay so a million
dollars a quarter mile so we need four
million dollars for every form for every
mile of road we have
this was one of the strategic
conversations we did have because if the
infrastructure bill that is before
congress comes out
there will be funding for
major infrastructure projects within our
community
and this is one of those that we would
then look to put forward because of the
quantity of money that the federal
government has as opposed to the state
so we could go and ask for four million
dollars and get a mile of road replace
from the state legislature
we could go to the state to the federal
government and ask for 50 or 60 million
dollars and get double that you know and
get so many more miles done
um tony if you'd like to speak to that
but that was one of the strategic
conversations we had with city
management thank you amy i i really
appreciate that insight
thank you amy uh good afternoon mayor
councilman cuomo um the reason why it's
a quarter uh million dollars per quarter
mile is the replacement of utilities
there have to be some massive
coordination with utilities and the
replacement of the
um out of date utility there so it's not
just a straightforward but
um yeah we can definitely look at that
but it's just gonna be a consideration
or just a full replacement of utilities
and payment
for these projects got it no thank you i
appreciate that uh breakdown actually i
i
yes i i remember it being
per mile but i appreciate the further
context and it is something i will
continue to
bring up especially absolutely as we see
congress hopefully act soon on behalf of
the american people on this very
important bill and for me this would be
a top top priority
when that happens so i appreciate that
thank you
um and then
in terms of the other pro oh no one more
question
uh both amy and larry you keep talking
about the entities that we'll be asking
for money from legislators i was in the
impression that projects can only be
asked through municipality
that is correct i will let larry speak
to that a little further but remember
they can be quasi-governmental too so
nmsu the spaceport is its own entity
the county
us and then of course any
individual within the state any you know
resident can go forward and ask for
money
and a legislator may choose to give it
to them
through a municipality that's how we've
gotten some of our more unusual
appropriations is that community members
go forward and just ask hey i want this
for this place and suddenly the city
gets some money that we have to do
something with okay interesting speak a
little more to that
uh thank you mayor and councillor bin
como that's
that's pretty much that pretty much sums
it up but any political subdivision can
receive
funding directly
non-profits typically or the other that
will request legislative funding
they can receive it but it has to go
through a fiscal agent which has to be a
public entity and so the way that works
is because of the anti-donation clause
unless it fits one of those
exceptions essentially the way it will
work and i'll use a real life example
because it's the one that's easiest for
me there was a dance studio in
albuquerque that served
special needs children they wanted a
dance floor
so that dance floor goes to a public
entity
and then what the dance company had to
do was provide educational services or
tickets as an in-kind
to pay back the dance floor
and at the end they were able to get it
back so it's a complicated process but
other entities can get it as well okay
thank you that's helpful
i as i look at this breakdown i think a
lot of them are
city driven not necessarily right the
veterans park the skate parks those are
very much
um constituent driven i think um but
that might be it and so
you know i do want to ask about what our
process has been like to
give in the downfall in the moment we
are in at the state that no one expected
certainly not after last year what has
been the public engagement process we've
done with nonprofits because i've i've
no i've been approached at least by one
um talking about the children's museum
and what a huge opportunity it could be
now right to potentially fund fully fund
that project so
thank you mayor uh council ben como a
couple years ago
an executive order was put out by the
then governor regarding fiscal agent
status and requesting money for
non-profits
the requirement is that number one they
be on the icip of a municipality that is
willing to be their fiscal agent and
number two that they have an active
agreement
with that fiscal agent before the
legislative session
and so i have been had outreach from
that individual as well
they are not currently on our icip
and that is because
we have legislative funding for that
organization that has yet to be spent
that has yet to be contracted for or
engaged in which would provide the study
and the
design work that's necessary to go
forward for construction money so at
this time it's not reasonable for that
organization to go forward
however we have done outreach to all the
other fiscal agent
organizations that we do have active
agreements with
we've sent them the icip and said here
is
what last year you all came to us in
october and said this is what you were
planning to want to do
if you're on that list you can submit to
us and we will take that to council for
a resolution so probably in early
december
sorry i can't breathe with this on
that's okay so they have a deadline of
november 12th to get that information to
my office
we will then review their um
their information in comparison to the
icip much like we do all of these
projects and on december 1st you guys
will be presented with a resolution for
those organizations that are wishing to
go forward for
funding that are on the icip and have an
active fiscal agent agreement and that
is primarily the messiah valley
community of hope agencies
so this year november 12th this year
november 12th so in two weeks they
they're due to me that they want to go
forward for funding in 2022. so what's
the timeline to get on the icap so that
is beginning
now with public works department sarah
cundiff is our cip coordinator and she
has done outreach to the all of the
community groups that we have fiscal
agent agreements with we have about 10
of them
and they will come forward and start to
go through the process of putting their
projects with their project descriptions
and all of the information regarding
their project into the icip
that'll be brought to you in may when
you get the budget you approve the cip
which is in part how we develop the icip
and then that will be submitted in
september and available for submit for
um
funding in 2023.
it's a long process
when i can see why absolutely so yes and
then i'm just trying to get clear too on
my timeline so for this year's ica for
2022 we voted on that in may yes you
voted on that in may and in september
sarah submitted
to the state um the official icip
submissions for 2022
so just a month ago she submitted what
we had approved back in may
what you all had approved as the cip
those items that are classified as icip
grant uh projects the way those are
classified is that when
they put forward their project they have
to indicate that they are anticipating
state grant funding
okay and if they end if they indicate
that then they will be put on the icip
okay if they indicate they're going for
some other kind of funding or they
expect the city to pay for it all it may
not end up on the icip so that that huge
list of cip projects that you all
approve
not all of those get to be put on the
icip
okay amy thank you so much that is very
very helpful on my end great just quick
follow-up on the children's museum how
what's been the holdup on spending that
money on getting that money out so a lot
of it has been the development of the
rfp
it did take over a year and a half to
get the fiscal agreement with the
organization
worked out with their them and our
attorney's office and their attorneys
that was a very long process um it was
over a year a minimum of a year
before we actually were able to bring
that fiscal agreement to you so that was
a year after we had received that
funding so they went forward and asked
for the funding without having any kind
of agreement with us that's one of the
reasons that executive order was put in
place
was because that was happening when
there were years like this one when
there was a ton of money and everybody
in the world was going to their
legislator and saying hey i need money
we got a couple that we actually refused
that were actually for businesses brand
new legislators that didn't understand
that they could not put capital money
into a business
that we actually ended up having to
refuse so it's a very long process it's
very complicated and fortunately those
non-profits that we do have agreements
with fully understand the process okay
and and are are willing to
you know kind of go through the lengthy
ordeal that it takes to get funding
because it does benefit them in the long
run okay no i am i actually really
appreciate that process so thank you amy
and then um
i
on the top ten
um
i hate when you all to ask us to do
stuff like that
we could have just brought you but then
you wouldn't have had any choices that's
true that's true so i like your choices
is there any way to couch the four
public safety
into sort of one
item
what do you think larry
we already have combined their equipment
all together in one and their state you
know their capital into one i'm not sure
that we can divide
even more you know fire one
police one
mayor and counselor have been come
if you do that what will happen is
if we combine them and i don't see the i
don't know which way that list is
so if we combine them
and then we have roughly 950 000 or 930
and then
1.6 what the legislators are going to
immediately ask me for is
can you break that down
into smaller chunks and then i'm going
to break them down into
the mdts and the cameras and so we're
going to end up in the same place okay
because that's what they typically do
and there's been a significant push even
for any of any of these they're going to
ask me for smaller breakdown so that
they can they can fund chunks of these
already okay
thank you and amy the utilities septic
system replacement are
that is still
an amount left over even after our own
arpa allocations towards that uh yes
ma'am so the utility septic system and i
believe i have delilah here
there she is back in the back she may be
able to come forward but the septic
system replacement project is actually a
22 million dollar project that was
started yes
what six years seven well it's been at
least six years
maybe
maybe 10
um years that we started that so that
was a 22 million dollar project at that
time which would translate today into
dollars of around 40 million and we're
chipping away at it five hundred
thousand dollars a year at a time so
even with our arpa um commitment that
does not necessarily do a whole lot for
us and our arpa money went towards
actually um
the replacement of two streets the
utilities on two streets as opposed to
actual septic system but um delilah has
worked her way down here and so i will
defer to the director of utilities
delaila walsh yeah i thought it was both
i definitely know the two streets and
then i also thought it was septic
well i'll delilah walsh for the record
utilities director i'll do what
everybody else did and amy pretty much
covered it
um but these projects as amy mentioned
would be uh phases so what we'd like to
do is finish that britney estates area
completely close that out and then hook
up as many as we can
on projects that have already been
completed okay thank you delilah
so then um amy
on this page then for me it's utilities
the three public works projects
the jcp and on the other page the four
public safety
projects in the skate park okay
great and just as a a
mayor councillor ben cuomo the arpa
funding for the septic systems was to
provide it rebates to support for people
for residents so it doesn't actually go
to this portion of the project is which
is where we're putting in the sewers
that's right on so much money i keep
trying boy that was that was a mind test
there yes all right thank you mayor
that's it for me thank you counselor can
you repeat what you your 10 i guess
i guess i don't want to i don't want to
repeat them because i feel bad okay
utilities
the three public works projects
the jcp
the four public safety projects and the
state parks
that's ten years i'm sorry and what was
the last one you just said skateboard
parks state parks okay so on the large
project list did you have one are you in
generally in favor of all of those oh
yes the largest
the what i need on the large projects
mayor councillor ben como is the general
agreement that our city manager
can move forward with our lobbyists on
which ones would be most appropriate to
go forward depending on the guidance
that's put out by the legislature or the
governor's office which we have not
received yet so we kind of want to
an okay for them to pivot on a dime and
go okay this is what they're looking for
this is the one of the projects the
council was in agreement with we can go
forward with that
okay so
most likely one of the five most likely
one of the five will be
submitted city manager and his team yes
oh okay i'm sorry yeah so most likely
it'll be one uh we'd be really
awesome if we got two of them
but most likely it would be one of those
that they will kind of have to make a
decision on the fly as
guidance comes out from from the santa
fe so what you're asking council was was
for 10 of the others 10 of the normal
capital outlay
and mayor can i just i'm sorry one
follow-up question on the five projects
do some do you expect some of these to
also fall in line with the federal
funds yes actually we do um um
as we look at the ones for the las
cruces innovation and industrial park
for the roadway and the solar farm that
is potentially something we could go to
eda for
because it does create jobs long-term
jobs
the bypass is something that we might
partner with nmdot depending on what
kind of funding they get
but we don't know that they are in
huge support of this they've done some
preliminary
work on a potential bypass road
to the san antonio support of entry
and we have yet to be able to have sit
down discussions with d.o.t on on
whether that could be potentially funded
through something they get federally the
airport of course i think we'll see
some faa competitive money coming out
and with the rural
interstate
air service
grant from the state
if we can get that that may encourage
faa to provide us with more uh funding
for some of those improvements i don't
know that we would get all of those
improvements it's a big ask out there
um
utilities i'm
that one i'm not too sure about then the
downtown safety complex i think is a
little difficult
what we heard today from some folks from
from washington
was that the public safety money that's
coming out is going to be focused on
something you all are very interested in
which is mobile intervention crisis
teams
as opposed to potentially capital
projects so um
you know that's that's one of the
reasons why we kind of strategically
said okay let's put it here and if it
goes forward
based on management's
wise decisions then then they can pick
and choose which ones they want to bring
forward to the governor and the
legislature okay thank you amy thanks
mayor
cancer flores thank you mayor and thank
you amy
you just said uh that uh
the uh faa would uh
probably be a grand faa grant would go
to interstate travel did you mean
interesting intra state yeah you said
interpretation i'm sorry i meant
interest yeah i thought yeah yeah
something okay great yeah they um but we
don't know how much competitive money
will be for the faa in that um
uh infrastructure bill that's coming
before congress right now there is a lot
of
money towards roads
bridges development
there's also going to be a lot of money
going towards transit
which is why you're not seeing a lot of
transit projects here because we do have
see a lot of opportunities for transit
for particularly for electric buses
and so they haven't come out with
everything that they've negotiated we
know some things are getting cut on a
daily basis as they negotiate in
washington so we don't know for sure
what what is coming out but we're pretty
confident that some of the more basic
infrastructure like roadways and
um
some of those kind of things will be
will remain in the bill
thank you amy do you want my list now
i'd love to have your list now
first and foremost utilities septic
system replacement
second would be east mesa roads and
drainage
and and then the
others are not necessarily
in the list they're all i wish i could
throw all of them in there because
they're all
very entirely needed
um amador hotel renovation
brannigan cultural center renovation
the four public safety police equipment
police station improvements fire
equipment fire station improvements
number nine
actually this is my number one
airport improvements for air service i'm
so tired of paying my taxes to another
state
and then the lc
iip roadway and solar farm
so those are the large projects that are
separate oh
so in those we are just asking for your
general consensus that you agree with
those projects as priorities for the
city for city management too so
a few more yes you can pick a few more
from the
list on page 21 and 22.
so
well i don't know 20
too many choices
i know
but if i hadn't given you choices you'd
be complaining about that too well oh
you
i'm not
i'm a complainer
[Music]
sorry city manager i apologize no no
it's crying right i mean amy we're among
friends it's been a long day um so um
two more
definitely veterans park
okay and definitely mesa pool
improvements okay thank you larry thank
you amy thank you
i'm here from tim mayor okay now that i
get this okay now i'm going to i know
i'm sorry that it's confusing but i i
incorporated the larger projects into
the others so now that i
know what i'm doing
um
mine is the septic telstra loman amador
branigan jcp
six
of course the public safety
and the skate park i added
let's
see sorry telstra
then the skate part okay
and we are fairly confident that the
skate community will be advocating for
that we also know that the veterans
community will be advocating for the
veterans park parking lot so we we have
heard from them um we have heard from a
couple other small groups regarding park
improvements
advocating for the
veterans park
did you say you just
we have a gentleman in the audience if
you'd like to hear from him oh no it's
uh karen
hello
karen oh wonderful
great thank you karen
thank you karen thank you karen thank
you amy
yes okay
counselor beta stevie did you have
anything you'd like to say
um no i gave the list i have a few uh
probably
strategic questions that i'll like to
follow up with larry on
okay
great he is available this afternoon
so i'll share if i may ask david cedillo
to
to come on down and i was asking him
something about the the um
the roads that we're trying to
move forward and i think either he or
eric if eric's available
i was talking about the mesa grande
extension into lowmen
and i know that's not on here but if if
that was to come to fruition
you're going to that's why these public
works
projects are going to be really
instrumental
especially that loman walnut
intersection
because it's just as as time goes on it
just gets worn down and so eric i
understand you all have been working
with some a different development group
that's looking to extend mr grande all
the way to loman
which for those of you which one of you
are on the npo
okay so
if you for those members of the public
the mpo is a is a basically a
partnership between the city the county
and the town of macia
and they really set out projects roads 5
10 15 20 years in advance
and so i believe this was also on the
npo's wish list and if this money is
available not this money but if the
ghost moves forward which dave eric's
going to talk about
you're going to see why
lowman is going to really turn into a
really important road so
eric yes thank you mayor eric henricus
assistant city manager so mayor and
council yes we have already had premila
preliminary discussions with a local
developer group or development group
that is looking to put in for federal
funding
that we can create a private and public
partnership and developing that road
from highway 70 to lowman on mesa grande
of course it would it would benefit
their future developments and then also
work in conjunction with the city of las
cruces and tying in from highway 70 to
loman and also the east mesa public
safety complex it would tie into that uh
complex facility so we're all for it uh
it's just preliminary discussions at
this point trying to come up with an
agreement on what part would be the
private which would be primarily the
funding and when it comes to design and
inspections and those things would fall
on the city and we're currently working
on that
very good that sounds good so so really
mine would be the
four public works projects the four
public safety projects veterans parkins
and the skate park
all right
that sounds good so before we
my folks over here are from the budget
and finance office are giving me a
calculation let's talk uh just for a
brief moment about the reauthorization
let me go back to that page
and so the reauthorization as i
mentioned um
started out at 2 million twenty thousand
dollars was removed from it took us to
one point nine eight million
we have a a contract for three hundred
and fourteen thousand in some odd
dollars
leaving us with approximately one point
six million
um as larry indicated what we will do is
go back to legislative council service
and they will identify how much each
legislature put legislator put forward
we believe there's the two we're not
positive there may be a couple others
that put in smaller amounts that we
would need to take into consideration
but basically what they'll do is take
what we've spent and you know take that
right off the top and
divide it up equally between the
legislators that are appropriated so at
this point we have
a general consensus on the downtown
shade structure is that
can i get that general consensus from
everybody
and then the other two options which
were presented by senator soules was the
airport or the amador
we could split those in half
300 and some thousand to each
approximately potentially a little more
or we could put that all towards one of
the projects or the other project and
that is where i need a little bit of
guidance from you all on what your
desire might be and i can bring this
forward as a resolution if you would
like
you know amy when i spoke with senator
he said it seemed like he wanted the
majority go to amador and whatever was
left over to the airport
so i guess it all depends on what what
comes out with your discussion okay when
e-phone both of those projects may or
could use all 600 plus thousand dollars
either one of them can use that amount
of money without any hesitation so it is
much easier if when we are reauthorizing
that that goes to only to one or two
projects because it makes it much easier
to track down those legislators and get
them to sign off on them
we could give larry a lot of work and
divide it between the three but it would
be better to just divide it between two
projects
what would be the third
so if we went with the airport or the
amador and the amador
or if we go with one or the other
so the downtown shade the airport
if we go with the the amador as well
that's three if we choose the amador or
the airport that would be too proud the
senator
mentioned anything about putting money
into the shade no he the shade is with
uh senator hamlin so that's one portion
of the reauthorization the other portion
of the reauthorization is what senator
soules was interested in and he said
either the airport or the amador and so
i need some direction on which one you
want that to go to
and and so why is it
665 and 778. well we just broke it up
because when you had mentioned it
senator hamlin had you had talked about
a million dollars so we just put that in
there as a placeholder it may go down a
bit from a million depending on how
legislative council service uh
identifies that larry if you want to
speak to that a little more
sure
mayor the way it'll work
is they'll take that original
authorization and
for discussion purposes let's assume
senator solz gave a million and senator
papen gave a million
so that each their share will then be
reduced
proportionally based on what's already
been spent
so each of them would have
the ability to reauthorize whatever
amount is left and then if there are
other legislators in the mix
it works similarly so if you only have
one legislator who wants to spend
on the shade structure they would only
be able to authorize the amount
equivalent to what they originally
authorized for the parking garage
okay i didn't know they'd spent some
money but i thought there was already a
million intact okay i'm sorry about that
okay now it makes sense thank you i
thought you're playing the funny math
okay
no we've spent 314 thousand dollars
okay so was there any thoughts on that
comment oh i
i think
i i don't know i'm gonna just
maybe we'll look for resolution
and we'll have
a blank on there and maybe we'll invite
the senator here and let him decide
larry has reached out to both senators
to uh to
clarify what their their
desire is
and we can bring back a resolution if
you would like based on that
conversation he has with him that would
be great okay
when would that be
that would most likely be by the first
meeting of december
great thank you
okay let me
let me call up my
our very capable finance director
to list off the 10 that she's calculated
here and see if everybody agrees in
general
that we can move forward with these top
10 items
mayor councillor for the record land
dumush finance director
so the winning numbers are
for positive are septic tanks for
utilities
and actually i mean if i can move up the
let's see am i going the right direction
yes okay
i am okay sorry
okay
for sure the
septic tank replacement i think all of
you had voted for that one
right now it looks as if three of the
counselors have voted for jcp
the energy efficient
exterior envelope
that would be our second one um
most if not all of the counselors voted
on all four
of the public safety for police and fire
so
keep my number for me so that's six
right there
um
and right now for it would be the public
works east mesa
so that would give us seven right there
those are the
ones that have at least three to four
votes of the counselors because right
now i only have voting mayor you'll have
to break the tie
i only have um councillor stevie bencomo
flores and gandalas list so
there are
those left
with two votes
would be the veterans parking lot
branigan
unless i miscounted on one of them i
apologize
amador the skatepark
you need him anymore i need three more
sir okay so out of the three more there
is so let's just take veterans and then
escape veterans park skate park and it
was the other one there was amador and
then the
uh the other two public works which
would be the public works telshore and
the public works loehmann yeah and
telstra and loman so
yeah the loman walnut and the telstra
spruce and the east main well the east
mesa rose i've already counted so need
one more which would be
the public works telstra sir
yes that's one of them
that would give us a total of 10 right
there
okay we're good i'll turn it back over
to amy
thank you for bearing with that kind of
complicated process i appreciate it as i
do every year your input and guidance on
these
it is a bit challenging to get through
from the big big list down to the
smaller list and then to the final list
so we will move forward with bringing a
resolution on the november 15th for
these 10 projects identified as our
capital outlay priorities
we will provide direction to city
manager's office on the five large
projects that they can
work on as guidance is provided from
santa fe
and then we will bring forward a
resolution on december 1st regarding the
reauthorization of the parking lot
garage
is that does that fairly well cover what
everybody feels is appropriate
all right well i thank you very much for
your time and attention today
i know it has been a long uh process and
i appreciate um i appreciate it very
much
we appreciate you very much that i know
it's a really tedious task and there's a
lot of
moving parts so thank you you two and
your team for putting this together
thank you
thank you amy thank you larry
okay so looks next up is mike
bartholomew
the roadrunner transit five-year short
range transit plan
so is this a consultant or a new city
employee to your right
um
mayor and council my name again is mike
bartholomew i'm the transit
administrator for the city of las cruces
and what we're going to
have presented before you today is that
is the update to our short range transit
plan the transit plan that we're
currently under was adopted back in 2016
and we've accomplished a lot in that
plan
and we had to start looking at our next
five years
i would like to uh
well last november we contracted with
alliance transportation group or atg for
short and we've been working with that
group since last november
and i'm going to introduce tim simon
he's the project manager from atg for
this particular project and he will be
doing the presentation on our updated
plan
thank you
there we go
all right
thank you mayor thank you city council
as said i'm tim simon i'm the project
manager has been working with the
road runner transit and the mpo
to conduct the
update to the short range transit plan
um i just want to start off by saying i
want this to be much more of a
discussion than a presentation so if at
any point you see something on slide you
have a question about please interrupt
me and i'd be happy to discuss it with
you
or we can save questions to the end
either way
so we started out with our project
vision was to bring
see how we can make the transit system
more efficient reliable and connect
people in las cruces
our whole study area is
pretty much the city of las cruces but
we also understand the relationship it
plays in the regional area so we
coordinated with scrtd as well
and the town of messiah and the college
campus
our process involved the fault the
following main
core components
public engagement is always paramount in
these types of effort but
we also wanted to be a public
educational process to
inform the public about
what makes transit work and and how we
can build upon that in the community
we also did a robust technical analysis
looking at both
the operations and existence but also
looking at the underlying markets
they're serving
and then we created alternatives based
on the combination of both that public
engagement and technical process
and then presented those to the public
again got feedback and did some final
resist revisions to get our locally
preferred alternative
this was the project timeline it's been
about a year now and we're at the very
end and i'm here to present the final
plan to you today
so i'll talk a little bit about the
process and some of those core steps so
looking at fixed route operations we we
dug down into the numbers
looking at ridership where it's
happening along the route how the route
functions and performs as a whole how it
how it contributes to the overall
transit network
we worked with the mpo to look at
auto traffic as well because we want to
make right make make transit more
attractive to the entire community so we
looked at where
the most
trips are happening in cars both now and
in the future so that we can kind of
shape our recommendations to mimic those
behavior and make transit more
attractive to everyone
so with anything looking at the
underlying markets is paramount
we
dug down into the market analysis and
and looked at what i like to call those
micro transit markets that really drive
transit
where the population employment so where
are the people in jobs
we looked at all the people that really
depend upon transit
populate poverty populations minority
populations everyone and so really it
was a
looking at everyone in the community to
make sure that we created a transit plan
that was representative of the community
as i said we did a robust public
engagement process
unfortunately it was during covid but i
think we overcame that through really
engaging with our stakeholders and
challenging them to really participate
and understand that they're the voice of
their community
and we were able to get
a great response on our first survey
that helped shaped our recommendations
and we learned a lot about
travel time really it all comes down to
time time is money so people don't want
to be spent spend
on the bus too long they want to get to
where they're going they don't want to
be waiting for the bus and so we looked
and thought about that when we shaped
our recommendations how can we make it
more efficient and and be better for
people
we also looked at where people are going
and why they're using transit so we can
make sure that
we are aligning our recommendations to
the way people are using transit and are
going to continue to use transit in las
cruces
and then
as mike said a big component of this was
looking at demand response type service
and a new way to deliver transit service
to better align
the service delivery mechanism with the
underlying markets so
we know we can't put fixed route transit
a 40-foot bus
running a traditional transit route
everywhere so there's
the advent of what's called micro
transit which is basically would be a
taxi-like service uber lyft if you will
that would be run by the city of las
cruces and that's a big component and
you'll see it in our final
recommendation
and so this is also what i said about
public education
it's important that we start to
engage and inform the public about this
type of service it's it's different than
taking a bus
not necessarily worse or better but just
different and so that was a part of the
process was to really introduce and
educate this concept
and so we have a few slides here to go
over that and i'd be once again happy to
answer any questions you have about this
but really micro transit vehicles are
smaller vehicles still ada accessible
or at least have a mixed fleet where if
they require
an ada or you have a mobility device
that the right vehicle would come to
pick you up
and it's basically going to a virtual
bus stop picking you up and taking you
and dropping you off somewhere else in a
designated zone
you'll see here it covers a large area
that we're proposing
and it expands the reach and coverage of
what las cruces or road runner transit
is currently offering
so how's it work you get on your phone
or if you're not a smart post smartphone
person you can still just call
just like you would book a demand
response trip today
and you you plan your trip it can be
done same day it doesn't require the
same you know advanced warning can be
done on the fly
and it's dynamic routing so it looks say
that there's two people blocked from
each other both request a trip
it's efficient because it'll pick up
both those people
and basically create an on-the-fly bus
route
now this isn't the silver bullet it's
not replacing transit or fixed route
transit
it's more um to complement that type of
service
here's a little short video so you pick
up your cell phone you see that it's
actually quicker eight minutes to take a
ride as opposed to taking the bus you
hop on there might be some other people
on your vehicle and you get to where
you're going
now say i'll just break real quick say
you're close to a fixed route bus stop
it would say no you're close to a bus
stop we're investing in transit there
you walk to your bus stop
so it it's
very the technology is there to where it
knows what the best service to put you
on
um okay so getting to our alternatives
we
took our public engagement feedback all
the technical analysis and
did a lot of work sessions
with road runners staff who know the
system in and out and created our three
draft alternatives
and then we developed a prioritization
tool to look at those so back when we
were looking at those underlying markets
those then in turn
turned into scoring mechanisms or
performance measures and now
roadrunner transit has those to continue
to monitor performance and use those
to evaluate service because as we know
transit is not static and it will
continue to change so looking at
population
and employment densities looking at
transit
dependence
riders and looking at growth in the
future and then frequency as well
this is an example of that
prioritization tool kind of a look under
the hood and you had our existing
service and then each of the
alternatives
what's important to know though is that
you'll see we did it by route as well in
that second column so not just
alternatives so the process was
purposely done that way to where we are
not
asking you to pick
a or b and what's the best alternative
rather we asked the community
you know what do you like or don't like
about a what do you like or don't like
about alternative b and that way we're
able to
isolate the weaknesses and identify the
strengths of each alternative and then
that's what helped us arrive at our
preferred alternative
they were presented to the public
both
set up on static boards in the
intermodal facility and available online
you can see here is an example of
alternative a it shows you how it
compares to the existing service and
what the changes were
alternative b and c and we did that as
well
so
we had a survey second round of surveys
where we got input about you know what
they did or did not like and you'll see
in our plan we identified what we
learned from this process
and it really shaped our ultimate
recommendation it wasn't just checking
the box of the public engagement process
we
had some initial ideas one i can speak
personally that i really liked but it
didn't end up on the final
recommendation because of valuable
feedback we heard from that process so
once again we asked those true false
questions that informed our
locally preferred alternative we ended
up with
i'll go over the main points here the
micro transit zone
with what we're calling
micro hubs throughout the city so you
see those little blue dots
those are various senior centers and
then one at the intermodal facility so
people can use the micro transit service
just like a taxi service anywhere in
that zone
in and out of that zone including those
little
islands or micro transit hubs
we made some strategic changes to route
one and three that coincide with this
route one
we have a new direct connection this was
kind of the highest performing segments
of the existing route one but connecting
it into the community college
and then we also made a change to route
three
providing some new coverage but still
maintaining some existing coverage of
the existing route 3
and it's connecting down to the mall
both these
routes like i said work in combination
with the micro transit zone
as well
so that brings us to our locally
preferred alternative
really there's no one left behind i'd
say because either if you don't have
what traditionally was served by fixed
route it would now be available via
micro transit
or you have new better service as well
because we broke this up in phases to be
sustainably and
implemented by the transit agency it's
tough to do it all in one year
but once both phase one and two are
complete you'll have another more
frequent route than was there before and
you'll have a new type of service
that will be
a lot more
appropriate for the market it's serving
here's the
draft time frame but once again this can
be accelerated or decelerated as needed
you know we're coming out of a the
coveted pandemic i'm sure that mike and
his team want to
see kind of the dust settle ridership
returns so this can be done
as they see fit
we included a phase three which is
really kind of some of the other
potential
solutions that we identified but that
might not be ready yet and that's kind
of beyond the five-year
outlook
and then i'll go through costs here and
these are all detailed in the plan
and there's a lot of ways to look at
this because it includes both capital
and operational
i would be
paying mostly attention to the
operationals the capital is more of the
one-time vehicle purchases
but i also note that the
this plan doesn't call for any increase
capital large capital purchases of the
large buses
that are used to run your fixed route
system these are for micro transit
vehicles
but through our study we identified in
what we think could be some efficiencies
with the existing
paratransit and demand response services
and so there is a potential where some
of these capital costs might not happen
if
a roadrunner is able to work with their
vendors and make those efficiencies
happen
but the operational it does go up
and so
by each phase and so
if you're at the end of phase two i'd
categorize it as about a 30
increase in annual operational expenses
and those are the numbers you see up
there now
and i'll gladly i have my cheat sheet up
here if you have any more specific
questions i can kind of dig into those
numbers if you want
so
that brings us to our conclusion
we have our preferred alternative we
have our implementation plan
and our path forward to implement this
plan so i'll gladly go back to any
slides or answer any questions you have
and i really appreciate the time
thank you for that uh tim can can you go
back to that
or the slide you just moved from
uh no the other one the map can you
expand that by any chance let's see
i might not be able to
sorry is there a specific question i can
i just wanted to
to ask if
we're
if it's let's say for example
i'm on the blue route and i need to get
to the
um
i guess the brown or the pink area so
there there are certain areas where the
they seem to overlap that would be the
bus stop that i would get off on and
then catch the other
bus route so if are you referring to the
micro transit zone
i have no idea i'm so referr just trying
to get to the other side and i don't
know how you do that and it kind of
reminds me of metro
in washington dc
and
when you need to get on a different
color line you have there are certain
only certain areas that you can do
today most of the transfers happen at
the intermodal facility or
at the mall
there are some other
places where you can transfer
one of the good things is our
recommendation for route 1
which would be kind of the dark maroon
route you see there
after phase 2 would be running at a 30
minute frequency so a bus comes by the
stop every 30 minutes as opposed to
every hour as it is today and it
crisscrosses some routes to where you
could make those
connections and that kind of just
expands
the opportunities for a passenger if
that's what you're talking about um but
like that light blue route
that's how it is today
route five you come in
you get to the intermodal facility and
you make a timed transfer they pulse in
and out of there as well
and then you could go from there now
being how that's one of our micro
transit hubs at the intermodal facility
you could technically get that in there
have a trip scheduled and get anywhere
in that
micro transit zone you see okay and
you may already have this
at the various stops but
i haven't seen it again it might be
there but is there any way to have
what you have right here
on each so that residents can read it
and say oh okay well this i'm on the map
at the stop right i'm on the blue side
here so i'm not going to be able to get
to where i need to go
so i'm going to channel
richard right now who helps run this
operation and mike and
think about the cost of maintenance and
facilities because i used to work for a
transit agency and with anything like
that comes expenses of you know putting
in a poster sign that and then comes
graffiti and it comes maintenance and
all that there is a move towards having
a qrc code to where then you you're at
that stop and you you click on it with
your phone and that would open up a
whole world and i think when they're
working with vendors on this micro
transit zone
and
sorry i'm jumping all over the place
they would be able to include that
into that that type of request and we
also prepared an appendix which is a
technology report that speaks to that so
in a way yes you could do that
especially
we also created a bus stop amenities
plan that
talks about how you guys allocate
finite resources using performance
measures where should a shelter go where
should maybe if it's a high traffic area
an actual printed out map or something
like that so yes to answer your question
but it needs to be done strategically
okay do you want to add anything to that
i know the city has a good on the
website it's very nice and each each
section is broken down i was just
thinking i i just seemed to recall some
of the bigger cities that i've been at
that i'll have it behind the plexiglas
and like you said it is a map but
i yeah and i'm sure there is some
graffiti done but um at least that just
they're able to just see it both whether
they have a because not everyone will
have us you know uh yeah but i i would
say yes especially the areas where we're
recommending shelters because we we've
given them a bus stop amenities plan to
where these are high areas or it's an
area where you're going to make a
transfer um
you know we have a bunch of standards
and you can dig into that plan and that
would be somewhere where yes you'd want
probably a printed out map
of the system
like i live in austin texas and there
most of the stops so i have the qrc code
you either call the say i'm here or you
scan it if you have a smartphone and
then you're having that for some of the
lower traffic areas gotcha
yeah councilor flotus thank you mr mayor
and thank you for your presentation
so um
this uh
microtransit uh map that we have in
front of us does that cover all of the
routes in the city
no
just where you see the
the dark
area okay the pinkish
that would be the microtransom now
that's a phase one recommendation
it can be expanded or contracted from
there you haven't had microtransit in
the city before so we'd want to start
small and manageable
it seems very large but that's because a
lot of those areas are not very dense
and so the demand is lower and thus a
better tool of serving them as opposed
to a bus route that's going to come
every hour that way
if someone needs to take a trip in that
area they call you make the strategic
trip you're not running an empty bus up
there so do we have any buses going out
to
hacienda acres
currently you have any bus i mean
maybe that's a question for michael
because this is just a design for micro
transit zone where people switch on and
off routes or something but it's not
available so do we have bus lines that
go out to hacienda acres
mayor councillor flores uh yeah uh
well we currently have a bus route that
goes out highway 70 to as far as porter
road with this particular design
hacienda acres
would be kind of in the upper
right-hand area of that
zone so anybody living in that area
would have access to the microtransit
service so they would schedule a ride on
microtransit it could bring them
anywhere within that microtransit zone
and including the little islands
or
where they can either go to where they
need to go or
perhaps transfer to a fixed route that
will take them to other parts of town so
our bus lines go
on highway 70 they don't go on batan uh
memorial east
they go on bataan they go along but time
so are there are there bus stops along
that way currently there are there are
so um people who work or attend oregon
high school
um
can take a bus in to that area or out of
that area yes there's a there's a bus
stop on baton right by the high school
and then they also would be
um they could call like that uber type
service
or how and how much does that cost same
as the bus it would be the same as the
bus fare oh
so with with this you don't see a route
going out there because we would be
replacing the route that goes out there
with a microtransit service
that everybody would have access to
and you did that study and it showed who
were the respondents
to that study that you the stats that
you showed
in terms of the public input you mean
it was an anonymous survey
and it was stakeholders i mean it was
stakeholders throughout the community we
have a list of the stakeholders that we
could provide to you so was it um
it sounds what i
you know i was able to
glean is that
their writers the people who
participated were writers or
the survey was designed so where anyone
could take it you could take it i anyone
could take it and answer the questions
um and so that way we're trying to get
at current writers but also people who
might take it in the future
okay so
the other
well my main area of concern is
having
a public transportation that everyone
can take
and and this has come up from time to
time and so far as environmental issues
go
and as far as uh you know pollution and
all that because oscis generates 73
of the pollution generated or the ghg
emissions that are generated here in las
cruces come from
cars automobiles buses whatever trucks
so um
i
yeah it sounds like uh the uber type
system would reduce some of the
need for a huge bus going out there to
collect maybe one or two passengers and
vice versa going back going forth yes
so do you have any study that's related
to the reduction in any ghg emissions or
anything like that with this kind of you
know with uh that was not included in
this study but i can say
has it been done in austin or wherever
else you have there's been lots of
studies about yes the reduced carbon
impact
it would be good to have that
information to disperse or to
um to have that information
to see um
how this is also
affecting or a benefit excuse me the
quality of the environment and i'll also
say that we gave
in the
big plan the cost if you want to
purchase both electric micro transit
vehicles or traditional diesel so they
richard and his team have the cost of
both oh so those new vehicles could be
purchased could
could be electrical if if they wanted
so you have there it's a higher cost
point but you have that in the plan and
the option yeah but you know you get
what you pay for i mean yeah yeah it's
being
that i think more importantly is the
note you hit on is it's it's a low
ridership area but it doesn't mean
there's not any demand there so this is
matching the service delivery tool it's
expanding your toolbox for how you can
provide transit and matching it with the
underlying market so putting more
frequent fixed route bus like on route 1
going to community college where that
higher demand is
but then providing a new alternative
that i think would actually work out
better for them and and we had a lot of
these conversations with the community
because if you put yourself in the um
i'm a transit user it if you miss a bus
that comes every hour that's a long way
to the
place out there that they probably don't
have a shelter because it's so low
uh demand whereas with this service i
can look on my app i know the bus is
coming
i've scheduled it because it worked with
my schedule and it's getting me
in the same area where the bus would
today yeah well the bus every half hour
isn't great either no it's it's but it's
it's a step in the right direction
i mean i've lived in metropolitan areas
and um
and the bus service was you know so
wonderful you could you know just pretty
much walk out of your house and walk a
couple of blocks and there'd be a bus
coming if it didn't come you know you
could see it leaving but then a few
minutes later there's another one coming
so i hope las closes gets to that point
mr bartholomew mr
ipho pili
uh where we do have bus service
available
and um
so i yeah i know that those are just
it's not you know what i what i brought
up isn't germaine specific to your
to your presentation but um but i
thought i'd bring that up because i
think i brought it up before and then
some of the routes i think we've had
that conversation too
i don't understand why there isn't a
route connecting
sonoma ranch boulevard and
road runner parkway at mission i mean
that would be a perfect way to pick up a
bunch of people who would rather ride
buses and
then have a car to go everywhere anyway
that's just my two cents
would you want to reply to that mr
bartholomew all right
i just uh missed america councillor
florence so just clarifying we do have
routes on proportions of sonoma ranch
but not on mission
not on mission we have it yeah and we
have them on road runner but a system
like this would actually make that
connections a lot better within the area
because people basically schedule the
rides when they need it on the micro
transit
in those areas
to either
travel within the microtransit zone or
to the islands or or to get to where
they can transfer to a bus to other
parts of town and what would the cost
difference be or you know have you done
the apples to apples type of thing where
or maybe it's an apple oranges thing if
you use
a micro
transit
hubs as opposed to what we have now
is it really going to be for the
passenger
uh it costs to to
to us the the yeah the passenger the
taxpayer the the city the fare will be
the same whether using fixed route or
micro transit but in turn okay so then
it goes then to the other
what would be the expense of the city
it's a cheaper hourly rate than fixed
route
to use micro transit and that includes
car insurance and liability and
technology as well technologies
basically technology yes oh great well
thank you very much gentlemen thank you
mr mayor
thank you mayor prutim
thank you mayor thank you both for your
presentation um
so
with the micro transit you're
advocating for a app if you will someone
would utilize that now would that extend
into
the regular fix routes
or how would that work because we've
been talking about wanting to
move into not only purchasing of tickets
but also um
using that route so i can respond if you
want to but you would solicit um
to get a
some kind of technology to run this type
of service and you could curate your
risk your rfp however you want and say
we want to you know a full turnkey
solution we want um you know a redo of
our
how we pay for fixed route fare but as i
said in that example
it would show you if there's someone in
that zone next to a fixed route bus stop
it's going to say take the bus
and then you could have have that into
your solution as well to where you could
pay by your mobile app and everything
because
you wouldn't want someone using the
micro transit zone
that lives or is right standing next to
a bus stop and fixed route because
you've invested in the fixed route
that's how
it
it makes the efficient solution for you
okay got you so does this replace dollar
ride or in addition to it
um not system wide
in in the zone though
you can run it you can set it up how you
want and have it as a all-in-one
solution now we did look at a further
long-term solution to where you could do
a zone for the whole city
um but you would want to you know start
out like this get the data and that's
the other thing we should mention you're
going to get a wealth of data and learn
about how transit users are using the
system that you don't have now which is
really powerful for
mike and his team
and mr mayor councillor gander i was
going to add to with your question about
dial right too is he you know talk about
in integrating things uh through and out
it can be integrated into the service as
well in fact we were even discussing
today how in the transit industry
commingling microtransit with the ada
paratransit is becoming more and more of
a topic that's being discussed
okay thank you so
let me get this
let me get this right
i'm
i need the bus or some micro transit and
i go into this app and i put forth
whatever questions will
are they asking me right
and i will get the most efficient
form of transit yep to me
you'll say where you are and where you
want to go and it'll say the quickest
way is for you to either get on this
micro transit trip or walk
200 feet to the left to grab the bus
stop unless and and you'll have a
profile and so if you are say you're in
a mobility device and you're qualified
for ada paratransit
it'll just know that automatically and
say microtransit's on its way you're not
it's not going to tell you to walk to a
bus stop and so you phase one when are
you anticipating we have to do an rfp
right what is the timeline what are your
thank you i think
we said like the one to two year
probably two year time frame
but it's scalable
mr man counselor uh gandra yes so we
would we would go out for an rfp now
this micro transit technology is is
really blossoming in the transit
industry so even as staff we're
learning all the options out there so we
i would see
a lot of like this coming 12 months
once this
is adopted is that we would we're
already getting contacted by numerous
companies that provide microtransit
softwares in various forms so we'll be
looking at that data
trying to come up with the best solution
you know that's out there and then we
would go out with for rfp for for a
particular product
okay so we would look to having this
micro transit in 18 months two years is
that what i'm hearing you say
i'm sorry i didn't hear the question
so as far as the timeline we're looking
to have the micro transit in like two
years
yes it's in the 22 to 20
2022 to 2024 range would be the first
range of information implementation
i would say that again that
probably going into our city's fiscal
year 23 we're
we'll be getting more and more of the
data but we'll be prepared to you know
do the the request budget budgetary
requests necessary for moving forward
okay cool all right thank you so much
thank you mayor
can i survey this suvi
yes thank you um
both i had a couple follow-up questions
based on some of the questions counselor
flores asked around
the micro transit around school
districts i also see that centennial
also is in the zone for a microtransit
zone
looking at the technology even the app
are there going to be requirements or
age limits on those types of
technology and how do you see that
working with
youth that may not have access to phones
all the time uh mr
mr mayor and counselor beta stevie it
would be public transit it's available
to anybody regardless of disability or
age
okay
and um to follow up on that you can call
in and their dispatch could put all the
information in for you so
it would be
if you want there's a smart app way to
do it or you can do it traditionally by
calling and then do we ever see the need
i personally see a need for making sure
that there's interconnectability
between schools and and the community
and a lot of students even go down to
the university
um and if there was even a small section
where it would go from centennial
straight to the university and connect
somewhere along there that way they
would have access to that greater
community
all right so you're saying would the
zone be inclusive of the university
um adding
adding a route from centennial to
the easiest pathway that i see here is
to connect it
straight down on university so adding
if we're looking long-term it may not be
needed this second but if we're looking
long-term and the growth even in those
areas how we see that
well with centennial high school the
problem with going out there is right
now is that that's all there is out
there so that it would be very um
probably inefficient with a large bus so
that's why microtransit
would work very well for for centennial
high school because of where it's
located
right now uh student
we could consider adding the university
as a
microtransit zone or a location in the
university as a micro transit zone so
that would be that connection or
certainly
at the very least with the way the
proposal is you see before you it's easy
to get the uh
students over to telstra where there is
our buses that go either to the acc or
nmsu from from there so they wouldn't
have to walk from the school to where
the bus stops are
okay
and actually in this particular scenario
dacc is in the micro transit zone so
they could be delivered directly there
okay and um
once we got this
micro transit zone up and running would
we be doing any sort of trainings
with the schools to make sure that
students and faculty
kind of knew about the program had
access could even practice with this
type of
yeah
yes we uh added in a line item and we
estimated it best on best practices and
our sub consult via that does this a lot
of a marketing campaign of about forty
thousand dollars necessary to promote it
citywide um that's going to be key to
having a successful micro transit zone
continuing that public education process
okay thank you and thank you mayor
okay so i just want to take a moment to
congratulate
mike i think we started around the same
time i think he came on about a year
after after me and you've you've handled
the challenges of our system you know
and i know that many residents were
always wanting to know why we couldn't
use a smaller vehicle and i know there's
certain regulations that the federal
government wouldn't fund us for those
and
and throughout the time i've just seen
and and i like how you've you know you
you've been able to
really put in a way that's as as
understandable
as possible and i know it's a challenge
and to see this eventually come through
is is really a neat thing to see i mean
i haven't
i
you know i haven't
taken the bus for the
i almost did the other day just to try
it out you know because i
but i i ran out of time i had to get
back i had to do some stuff but i'm
looking forward to it and i think this
is just slowly growing into
a really neat system and and and i don't
know if the council knows how much the
city actually subsidizes at least we
used to and i'm sure we still do because
we only get probably 10 of what it takes
to run from from
passengers and the city's general fund
used to subsidize you at least 80 or 90
percent is that still in the ballpark
uh
mr mayor yeah that's that's actually
probably less than ten percent on fixed
route and it's probably closer to one to
two percent on the dollar rate service
that we get back
back from ferris so that's why we just
can't just put bus bus stops all over
because it costs a lot of money but uh
you know hopefully uh this is something
here that i think
has a lot of uh grab to it and uh we
appreciate you and what you've been
doing all these years
one thing i'll add too is the one of the
great things about this zone is the the
data you'll get so you ask well can
there be a traditional fixed bus route
to here to here once you start seeing
how people are using this zone that
informs you to let you know where you
should expand fixed route and so this is
why it is in short term and while
they're going to get a wealth of
information that they don't have now
because people are just using a bus
passing you can't track them but you
know with
having having those phones they'll have
you know an anonymous
data
pool to know how people are using that
system and it will help you all make
much more strategic decisions about
transit in the future
very good mr
yes counselor thank you mayor so i have
one um ask is it possible
uh for you i don't know if it's outside
of the call of your deliverables in your
contract but
would it be possible to uh have a
projection as to
how this kind of transportation
would uh
help
eliminate some of that ghg emission
is or is that information
yeah it should you should have that
because you this is what you do around
the country right so you probably do
have like per mile type reduction
let me follow up with that that would be
great
because then that could be incorporated
with some of our green stuff and you
know some of and then that's also our
climate action stuff so absolutely yeah
great thank you very much thank you
thank you mr mayor
okay great is there anything more to the
presentation
no sir include okay
all right well thank you again very much
thank you so much
looking forward to it
so if you think that's it huh nothing
else
okay if there's nothing else then
entertain a motion to adjourn so moved
up motion made by counselor florida
second by mayor potemkandana do we
adjourn christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor beta stevie yes
cancer vasquez is absent councilor
vancomo yes
counselor sork is absent cancer flores
yes
cancer candida yes mayor yes
okay we're adjourned it's 403 pm
and uh have a good rest of the evening
and we'll be doing our
agenda setting meeting here in just a
moment
okay this is the agenda study meeting
for our november 1st
2021 city council meeting number one
consent one consent two consent two
consent three consent three consent for
consent for consent five non-consent
five non-consensus six non-consent six
non-consensus seven non-consent seven
non-consent eight non-concerned eight
non-consensus
you