[Music]
okay welcome back to part two so this is
our work session of las cruces city
council today is monday august 9th
approximately 1 30 p.m
and so we're going to go ahead and start
off like we normally do with our pet of
the week and i see clint thacker out in
the audience who's going to
introduce
usually at one cat and one dog
so i don't know
change if you mix it up
thank you mr mayor city council clint
backer executive director of the animal
service center mercia valley here today
to present to you the pets of the week
cat of the week here is figaro
male neutered about five months old uh
this cat the more love you give him the
more he's going to show you wants to be
on your lap snuggle and cuddle available
for adoption there at animal service
center
the
next is our dog of the week casper
a neutered male 4 years old and again
he's quiet but the more attention you
give him the more he's going to want to
love you and be with you so
all adoptions are there at our center
please call make an appointment if you'd
like to make an adoption or meet casper
or figaro
also we have an adoption i'm sorry the
vaccine clinic is on the 22nd of august
10 vaccines and 10 microchips that's
gonna be at the field of dreams from
nine a.m until two p.m
thank you mr mayor
so who's figaro is that the cat that's
the cat yeah
okay all right just checking
all right thank you
all right
now we're going to go to jobs of the
week
and looks like dr payadis will be
thank you mr mayor members of the city
council for this week's jobs of the week
just open this real quick
we have a community advocate that is
being hired by the las cruces police
department this position is going to
close on august the 19th
we also have two positions available for
janitor and cleaner f4 sensational
janitorial services this position closes
on september the 30th
cafe plaza de mesa is also hiring a
dishwasher for those individuals that
would like to apply for it this position
closes on august 29th there's a food
specialist um
food safety specialist with rent to kill
north america and this position closes
on the 29th of october and we also have
a position with the vida healthcare
partners this is for a patient care
technician this position closes in
october 27th
and again if you are looking for a job
or if you are wanting to post a job
the hot
job market is available so for a full
list of jobs internships and volunteer
opportunities you can visit
www.employeenm.com
and also www.governmentjobs.com
for slash careers for las cruces
and for the new mexico workforce
connection our partners their contact
information and they're located at 226
south alameda boulevard and their phone
number is 575-524-6250
thank you very much
thank you dr payatis
and with that now we're going to go we
have two items on the agenda first one
being the economic development
partnership updates
and it looks like elizabeth peters
will be discussing in chris faber as
well
here we go
good afternoon mayor and city council my
name is elizabeth teeters with the
economic development department
every year we do an update with our
economic development partners to give
let city council know what they've been
up to in this past year so this is our
annual update we have four partners the
downtown las cruces partnership the
farmers and craft market of las cruces
film las cruces and messiah valley
economic development alliance and with
that i will turn it over to chris to
introduce
good afternoon mayor and city council
chris favor economic development for the
record
um so
with destination downtown part of
economic development we have two
community partners
downtown las cruces partnership and the
farmers market and here to present on
downtown is jennifer kozlowski who's the
executive director so i'll turn it over
to her
good afternoon council mayor um
mayor pro tem i'm i'm jennifer garcia
kozlowski with the downtown las cruces
partnership and i will be giving you
our yearly overview um
i get confused do i get to do that okay
sorry um first of all i'd like to always
go over our mission and for downtown las
cruces partnership and what our mission
is is to create a signature business
destination that celebrates our region's
rich heritage cultural heritage local
arts and culture and contributes to a
thriving sustainable and economically
vibrant downtown everything that we do
at dlcp always bases back to this as our
mission goes forward and it's something
that we always want to bring forward in
anything that we recruit we try to do
with downtown las cruces
this year we are accredited again under
main street america
and we are also accredited once again
under new mexico main street
also what happened this year is we are
the only downtown program that has two
economic development specialists susan
and i both have received our
accreditation through new mexico main
street and main street america
here's a quick at a glance for economic
vitality as you can see on the left side
these are the new businesses that came
in over during a year of covid that we
really didn't think we were going to see
this much movement and this much
positivity in the downtown but we did
and we're very excited
we've had three excuse me eleven new
businesses open we have three pending
projects and it's actually four
um
and most of these will be opening fairly
soon um willow bain i think is september
matteo's is next weekend and mercia
valley pharmacy is in the next couple
months is their hope um we have seen 29
new jobs in the downtown
and about 2.8 million in private private
investment money in downtown with people
fixing up kitchens fixing up their their
areas of their jobs and how they're
employing the people in downtown
um over the last year again through
covet we saw
hours of volunteer time from our board
of directors and other people working to
help us keep downtown active
and with that we see 142 volunteers
as you all know we
go year by year on a strategic plan we
base everything off a strategic plan
that dlcp puts together and then we work
with the city into creating our service
agreement this year these are our
deliverables and our accomplishments the
first despite kovid we actually had our
chili drop
we were able to work with kvia and they
hosted an uh virtual event they gave us
25 minutes on their one of their
channels and i want to thank um mayor
pro tam and mayor for your guys help in
making sure that this happened because
when we reached out to you all you said
yes let's do this let's keep going
forward and i'm very proud that we were
able to keep something going and not
another cancellation
we provided extensive training and
outreach to districts on an individual
basis and we really worked hard to
distribute timely information
in regards to resources for innovative
practices during the pandemic this comes
back to susan and i actually constantly
being on zoom meetings across the
country with main street america as well
as our state and finding out about
grants other types of loans and things
that our small businesses could take
part in um
we shared this information about
financial opportunity opportunities with
both both grants and loans and we also
conducted research for the individual
businesses and we wrote letters of grant
recommendation letters for three of our
downtown businesses
and i believe that um amador actually
got one of them from the james beard so
we're pretty excited about that
we provided the district business with
technical assistance grant resources and
other economic incentive opportunities
through this we really offered our
support and marketing and promotion and
graphic design and logo creation to our
businesses downtown and really helped
encourage them to go online
we have a really resilient group of
businesses in our downtown district and
what i'm saying downtown district i am
meaning from el paseo partially to el
paso it's the tid district in that size
they really worked hard together
they they figured out how to um with us
we figured out how they could do
instagram lives they did facebook lives
and they showed their resiliency and
they showed that they see themselves as
part of the community and they really
worked hard to help each other out which
i
really hold that near and dear for a
year that was
crazy for all of us
um we distributed several surveys
including a national state and local as
well as an in-house created survey to
target and measure the impacts of covid
one of the biggest things that we did
learn is people are sick of surveys
it got to the point where people would
just respond back don't want to respond
anymore but we did receive a lot of
information going forward that we
usually share with chris and economic
development
and we did complete our doing business
downtown guide and this is going to be a
supplement to the city's doing business
guide
we are waiting on a couple more data
points in conjunction with the city and
the state so it is ready to go it just
has not been printed we need two more
data points for it
um we through grants and donations i'm
proud to say that and state of new
mexico federal coveted relief funds new
mexico main street assistance that we
were able to achieve our financial match
with you all this year again and again
it was not an easy year to do that but
fortunately we were able to
with the help of new mexico main street
the lcp conducted a district void
analysis and developed a recruitment
plan
that will be ongoing in our next next
year just we'll probably do a secondary
void analysis and see how where we are
at the moment
um we're fortunate to meet i already
said that sorry through the evaluation
of the local economic development
ecosystem dlcp created programs which
filled gaps without duplicating local
services and or projects and that's
program excuse me and that's something
that we worked really diligently with
chris favor on trying to see where we
can fit
in without overdoing what the city is
already doing and things that we can do
as a non-profit that maybe the city
can't do to really make sure that we are
working in tandem as a partner and not
getting stepping on each other's feet
another part that runs with dlcp and is
our collaborative with the las cruces
arts and cultural district we had a heck
of a year it was really really fast
moving and we had a couple inaugural
events that we put forward the first one
is the creation of the
artist-in-residence program this
promoted six artists who lived and or
worked in the district so it's a play on
the term artist and residents it is not
what we
traditionally think of an artist in
residence program but we also wanted to
come up with something that we knew
could move forward and help
our artists in the district
and we didn't do the in in-person events
as we wanted to but we were able to
pivot into other possibilities and do a
lot of we did three-part series for each
artist and thanks to bob divin to
helping us with this process the program
will be expanded for next year and we
believe that the videos were absolutely
i should say we believe we know the
videos were a lot more successful than
we originally thought they would be
the other thing that we did this year
was the inaugural year of the
generations community writing project
eight writers were selected and paired
with a pool of 28 applicants
there was a virtual reading on zoom and
a few of you thank you
councilman como and were a part of that
and i believe
mayor pro tem gundaro was a part of that
as well
and
it was attended by over 35 people we got
great feedback it was fun
it was touching
the theme for the writers was hope and
they wove in their stories of hope how
they saw it
i can say quite a few of us were crying
because each story just they really
meant something
we had notable participants and
attendees in regards again our actual
one of our winners was the dona ana
county sheriff kim stewart
and cassie mcclure was named they both
were named the outstanding writers
very exciting about that to have them
and senator rubio was also one of our
participants this year
with our las cruces arts and cultural
district continued we i hope you've seen
it we commissioned the go thrive b which
corresponds with our new advertising
component for downtown and it is on the
front of instacopy on main street our
goal is to be able to get a little bit
more money to start creating making it a
little bit larger and maybe having some
scenes there's
many ideas brewing and bubbling in the
background on that one we will continue
our ventanas vivas program that is our
temporary art installation for holiday
art in downtown on the business windows
of the businesses we did have a few less
that were involved in this year
simply because i think doors were closed
businesses were closed so i think we're
going to see a big jump in it next year
and be back to where we were
we also were complete part of our
completion was the arts and cultural
website page and that sits on the dlcp
website and that changes continually
with different things that are going on
our ongoing projects
is going to be the downtown
the downtown recruitment and recovery
projects um our property and business
inventory of the tid and acd
this was something that was given to us
a couple years ago to do we have it it's
a living breathing document we plan on
working a little bit harder and more
closely with realtors and property
developers this year in order to um to
expand on it and to make sure it's clean
because
sometimes we don't hear when a business
closes and so it's a little bit more
difficult for us to to get them off of
our list
we will be working with new mexico main
street in regards to a
business excuse me that's next one i
apologize the business contact and
assistant program we worked with chris
faber on that this year with economic
development reaching out to all the
businesses in the district to make sure
we had proper contact information and to
see if there's any assistance that the
city or dlcp could provide
we will be continuing that project as
well
we are doing one-on-one technical
assistance opportunities for potential
emerging and established downtown
businesses
this kind of correlates with the one
directly um
i lied to you it corresponds with
something else we're doing with our
ideation process and some ideas that we
have where people can come in and we
have open doors and they can pitch to us
ideas and we can talk to them and walk
them through the process of opening a
business what we have available in
downtown and really show them the next
steps everyone starts with a dream we
just want to show them how they can
reach their dreams
we will be doing the how can we help
diagnostic tool
and the downtown business resident and
advisor it's a downtown
business resident and visitor advocacy
tool
we'll be continuing with that we'll be
continuing with our business spotlight
video program we choose a business once
a month we do a video on them it's a
good one minute to two minute piece it
can be used for them to do commercials
afterwards it is high quality and we've
been able to really do some great things
for our businesses downtown
annual community survey to capture and
measure attitudes and opinions about
downtown
this year
we did it we got spammed really crazily
with it this year and i'm not sure what
we can do for next year to not let that
happen again um we are still waiting on
some of our data review but
this is something that i know the city
holds heart holds strongly with us we
are seeing that there's always a
positive um
idea of where downtown is going people
are really enjoying it
as usual we will get complaints um and
we try to follow up on them just to see
you know if they're if it's a valid
complaint we want to follow up with
people and see how we can have give them
a better view of downtown or what we
need to do to improve our downtown
um the last one is the entrance the lcp
interest survey to gauge the community
need for a business
accelerator this was something we were
working on in conjunction prior with the
idea of the city having an incubator
where do we fit in on this how what can
we do can we work on maybe a small
incubator or accelerator aspect that we
can push forward and with our 501c3
status i think it puts us in a driver's
seat for something like that
coming up on our new contract these are
things that we see us moving into in
the big one is expanding our scope of
artist in residence to program to
include established creative economy
businesses
owners
own this sorry creative economy business
owners
mentoring emerging business owners and
we haven't quite a full plan with this
we're setting up an ad hoc committee and
we're going to be working with new
mexico main street so we can help
develop this mentoring component and how
that will work with this with the
standing artist in residence how we meld
them together
we're going to be doing a literary arts
theme event with readings at several
businesses as well
as well as public venues in performance
spaces this will take work for many
stakeholders in order for us to create
the vision that we have it's projected
for april 2000 or sorry 2022.
the other thing we have to restart our
quarterly downtown meetings we did let
those go
we tried to keep going through covid we
weren't getting any people signing on so
we let them go we will be starting those
we're hoping that our first one can be
in october and we can get back on the
move and just so for you guys to know
that may not have known before these
have an educational component they have
a component where the city comes and
speaks the dlcp speaks and then we also
allows for other business businesses of
downtown area to speak to each other and
to maybe look work on
problem solving for issues that have
come up
creation of a focused business
recruitment and retention program that
will align with the city's master plan
that is one of our big big babies for
this next year and i think it's quite
important that we make sure that we
align with your vision of how you see
downtown growing how you see the city
growing and with that we also make sure
that we don't
we don't leave anybody out of the
process and that we make sure that
downtown is a place for all
we have a wider range of available free
technical assistance programs with help
from new mexico main street so that's
going to be part of our educational
process
the introduction of office hours and
this goes back to what i said on the
last slide with the ideation sessions
and a targeted networking of events
we'd like to start going to different
areas downtown maybe some of our
breweries whatever and just having open
events and having people come and
maybe in a more comfortable way they're
willing to talk about things and they
can give us their two cents and we can
help them out in the next steps
expansion of targeted marketing and
promotional program in
collaboration with the city of las
cruces again we want to see our
marketing and promotions and our go
thrive be work with destination downtown
and we want to see them work together
and not separately so it's a big another
part of our collaboration with each
other
and we'll be adding a lot of blog spots
and posts to our social media hopefully
to encourage traffic to our website to
the city's website to visit las cruces
as well as
actual traffic to downtown and people
coming out to visit what we have to
offer
and quickly this is a little bit of what
we did this past year
um as you can see the far i guess far
left on me
is our new poster for downtown las
cruces it has all of your
everything that you want to see with it
with what is within our downtown i
really love it i love our new colors and
how we're moving forward
our dlcp
happy new year from dlcp and our chili
drop
we have our aim fit mills at the bottom
that was one of our business spotlights
um one of our downtown artist resident
spotlights was marcus cormichael that
was one of his slots
there's a look of dex coffee house with
their ventanas vivas window
and then our generations 21 2021 writers
those are their bios in their bio page
that we sent out
i think we were going to try to play the
commercial
okay maybe i can't i will email that to
you all it wasn't it's not linked on
here that's my bad i apologize
um i might be able to link it to you all
as soon as i finish talking
so i apologize for that mistake but with
that i stand for any questions
thank you jennifer
questions
mayor pro tem and councillor vasquez
thank you thank you jennifer
i always appreciate the work that you
all do
to include the acd the downtown is
looking fabulous and really proud of uh
especially proud of the work during
covet i know how difficult it was for
businesses and
um your leadership really showed and i
appreciate it um
so thank you it's more of a comment
thank you thank you mayor
thank you councillor vasquez and
councilman cuomo
thank you mayor thank you jennifer that
was a wonderful presentation and um you
know given the hardships of uh of covet
and the pandemic and the limited ability
we had to obviously gather in
in place and and the impact that it had
on our businesses as well
i'm just really pleased to see the
resiliency of our businesses downtown um
the addition of new businesses that have
stuck through
this entire process and um perhaps
having to wait to actually have
customers in the door
so i just want to say thank you for all
your creativity and helping our
community our downtown community get
through that
and i love the new mural i think
we love that partnership with the
businesses that allow us to to use some
of their blank space
i just have one quick question and it's
around
just the commercial real estate and you
know in the area
how would you maybe
characterize i guess the growth of
the commercial
capabilities for the downtown are you
seeing that spaces are in high demand
are you seeing that folks are
much more interested in starting a
business downtown than the year before
and are prices going up or down as far
as here i can't really speak to the
prices um i need to get that information
the last we checked they were going up
but where we saw the issues is they're
going up on properties that actually
needed more work on the inside and so a
brand new starting business really can't
afford that so we're trying to one of
our goals for this next year is to work
with our
property owners and how we can balance
that out so someone wants to start a new
job or excuse me a new business and they
can work with the property owners and
maybe you know i can't be their realtor
but we can be an intermediary or a
mediator i guess is a sense in that um
we do get quite a few phone calls of
people wanting to move into downtown um
our biggest issue is again size because
some of them are going to be small size
businesses and they can't go into
something or let's say where vintage
mercado was they don't have this they
don't have a need for that much space so
one of the things susan and i've worked
on is some of these new businesses
we're kind of talking to them see how
they could actually work together and
maybe get a space together and you know
carve it out into three separate
sections something to where it can be
affordable for them and it can be a boon
for us in the downtown
you jennifer i appreciate that thank you
man thank you counselor
councilman cuomo thank you mayor thank
you so much jennifer that was a really
great presentation i really appreciate
it
um you meant you briefly mentioned
um
incubator accelerator and being you said
i loved what you said being at the
wheel i think we can be the driver
driver can you say a little bit more
about that i'm curious about what you
all have been thinking
well um
councilman como um council
we have a million ideas over this this
is actually something where we would
actually get our
new mexico assistance from new mexico
main street and really delve into how
the incubators and the
accelerators have worked with other
parts of new mexico all of our little
communities are different and they all
need different things so our first
foray into this is creating working with
sean o'shea new mexico main street is
creating an accelerator program to where
we kind of
sort of fast track you and get you
moving through
and sitting you down and again it's that
sitting down and creating um an
environment for people to have ideas and
to teach them how they can achieve those
ideas um so a balance with that and so i
don't know where we're standing with the
city's incubator aspect i think if that
comes to be where you know if dlcp
starts
and this is probably a couple day a
couple of years down the road because
you can't just start an incubator it's
going to take a little bit of time but
that would end up being almost what we'd
have to do full time and some of the
other things would come down because we
would be spending the full amount of
time training new businesses and helping
them cook you know having a kitchen
helping you know
space that they could do quick retail
and you know fine-tune their skills and
what they're wanting to offer i think
that would be a really full time for
dlcp thank you jennifer for going deeper
into that and then honestly my last
question is just
you know moving forward what do you
think the biggest challenge or
opportunity is for downtown and how can
we support
currently our biggest challenge is
recruitment
and i say this there's the idea i mean
we see things coming in we would like to
work a little closely with more closely
with the city in regards to retail
recruitment um we have talked to
retailers in the past that say they
would like to see a couple more
restaurants open
because they still restaurants
consistently bring people so when they
see that they'll like oh well then i'll
open up my store and i can balance out
one of our greatest partnerships is with
our
farmers and crafts market that actually
keeps people comes brings people
downtown on the weekend and they end up
staying later and they find something
maybe they didn't know so we're very
proud of that partnership with
everything that tiffany and her team has
done
i i would say retail and currently we
talked about this over the weekend
another thing is we have a few
restaurants um downtown that are having
a hard time finding servers
and it's that balance between
how we can help proactively and and stay
within our economic development status
and our 501c3 status but that's i
would like to say one of our biggest
things is how we can work with the city
about finding employees for um some of
our restaurants downtown and i know
we're not the only one that will say
that so interesting and so maybe my
follow-up is for elizabeth for you in
terms of
what is the role of the economic
development department in
in those particular aspects
retail
recruitment supporting with you know
staffing
hi this is elizabeth teters again um
mayor
councillor ben cuomo i would say we
haven't really
worked too much on recruitment of retail
but it's something that we can
definitely start partnering with
and as for the employees
you know everybody is struggling right
now getting employment and so we have
some stuff in the works internally
possibly and so it's just creating those
relationships and figuring out how we
can
best get help businesses get people back
to work i appreciate you both thank you
very much thank you mayor
thank you counselor anyone else
hey
thank you thank you very well and i just
really quickly wanted to say i want to
thank chris faber um he's been a strong
advocate for us and actually it's been
really really refreshing working with
him over this past year so thank you
thanks jennifer and
credit to you and your enthusiasm and
the position that you hold
you know we've seen a lot of people
who've held this and you've done a
fantastic job
and we're really proud to have you
associated with you with us
chris favor economic development if i
could just add two things real quick
before we move on to the farmers market
council vasquez to your point about real
estate downtown we talked about this at
the tid meeting which i don't think you
were at but we do have the renovate main
street program that we do through
economic development
last fiscal year we did seven of those
and it's a 25 000 match this year we're
budgeting for eight so we're hoping to
see a lot more new faces downtown and
help some of these businesses you know
do some work on their property to sort
of deal with some of those cost issues
the second thing is on the incubator
jennifer's right and i've been talking
with our consultants they do function
well with the 501c3 as a component
behind it that's how most of these
incubators are done a dedicated 501c3
that sort of helps carry that project
forward there's better funding
opportunities and things like that from
grants and and things that allow those
programs to work so there could be a
good partnership there so
next up is tiffany thompson with the las
cruces farmers and crafts market
good afternoon mayor city council my
name is tiffany thompson and i am the
manager for the farmers and crafts
market of las cruces
i'd like to just start out giving you a
general info about the market currently
and where we stand
right now we do have 143 permanent
vendors those are the vendors that are
there more consistently and have a
permanent location within the market we
have 91 temporary vendors those are
those that choose not to come as
frequently
and they move about within the market
we currently have 32 registered
musicians eight of which are under the
age of 18
and we did bring back non-profit
organizations
in may
and with that we also brought back our
on-site animal adoptions with the animal
service center messiah valley they began
again at the last weekend of may
just to give you a
little bit of an idea of where we stand
currently
versus what we were doing pre-covered we
would typically have an average of 160
saturday vendors prior to covid and
right now we're averaging at about 110.
so we did see a significant decrease in
our
current membership and that just stems
from a year of not being able to bring
in any new vendors to replace those that
were leaving
for various reasons
but we did
begin bringing new vendors in again in
june and so those current numbers do
reflect about
20 new vendors that we brought in just
in the past month and we are currently
scheduling
orientations to bring new vendors in
about every two weeks right now so we're
trying to get those numbers back up and
allow the folks of donana to sell their
wares
as part of our lease we are required to
spend 24 000 annually in advertising for
the downtown however
last year we did not we only spent just
under 2000 and that's because of covid
we wanted to make sure that we were
following public health orders and
preventing unnecessarily mass mass
gathering
so we did drop our advertising dollars
and that was also a way for us to try to
recoup what we lost during covet due to
lower membership numbers
now we were
voted
several
categories as the best in the bulletin's
best messier valley in 2021
we took the best art exhibit best local
event best place to take out of town
guests best outdoor event best
attraction and best mall shopping center
so we are very very proud and thankful
for the community to have voted us
the top
organization in all of those categories
now one thing that we did do is we did
continue with some of our rack card
distribution we still wanted to get out
to the community that we were a local
food source and that we were still open
for
locally grown foods we wanted to make
sure that that was still supported
throughout covid even when
the organization was mostly shut down
and we did not have any of our craft
vendors
we also promoted on social media and we
continue to
update our website
one of the things that we are most proud
of especially this past year
is
how we have supported some of our lower
income families
now we
we do accept
ebt as a payment at our market and we
have several programs that run off of
that the double up food bucks
is a free program to consumers where
we double whatever they want to take off
of their assistance card for free
so if a family comes up and takes ten
dollars off of their card we give them
twenty dollars to spend at the market
and that's something that is through a
grant through the new mexico farmers
marketing association those are state
and federal dollars
and as you can see here we've seen
an increase
in almost every single category
this year
so our snap dollars
almost doubled in what we saw the
previous year
double up was also quite an increase
wix stayed approximately the same but
that's just what was available
through the state
our senior farmers market nutrition
program also increased by almost ten
thousand dollars
and the only one that didn't see an
increase was the enhancement program but
it stayed about the same so compared to
last year
last year we had approximately 135 000
of assistance going through our market
alone and this past year we saw 182 000
and that's all money that is staying
local in our community it is going
directly to our farmers and growers
and we hope to continue with that
increase
so with that i stand for questions
thanks tiffany
counselor sorg and council beta studio
and mayor protem
thank you mr mayor and thank you i
didn't catch your name again tiffany
thompson tiffany
um
yeah i was wondering if you are
considering
having
an evening market like we used to have
for wednesday nights for example
we are not it is not currently within
our budget to provide the entertainment
and
other activities that we used to provide
and typically without those we don't
generally see the customer flow that
it's required for the vendors to
make anything yeah i understand where
you come from um i remember the
entertainment that was provided
a
couple three
wednes evening um
markets and it was quite good yeah it
really uh
brought the people out
um but
can we substitute wednesday mornings for
an evening one you know switch them
so we have asked the vendors
but unfortunately the customer base that
comes out is strictly for the
entertainment and food trucks and so the
vendors have chosen to continue with
wednesday mornings
yeah okay
too bad thank you mayor
thank you counselor bait the stubby and
then airport tim
thank you mayor and thank you miss
thompson i know for so many families
saturday mornings are former market
mornings
and it's great entertainment
i was looking um
at your numbers
for vendors and i think that was on
slide 14.
you said that the new average was the
but you have the 143 permanent vendors
about how many of those vendors do you
think are monthly or specialty vendors
and then how many do you think are
regular
so the only breakdown that we have is
between the permanent and temporary any
vendor can choose to come whenever he or
she decides to we don't
mandate that they have to be here so
many saturdays a year it's just the
pay scale is different versus the two
different types of vendors and the
location
a lot of what we lost
throughout kovid were both permanent and
temporary we'd say that it was
equally the same but the problem was
that we couldn't bring any new temporary
vendors in
to become permanent vendors to replace
those that we lost
okay
thank you and about how many
um
vendors
do you hope to get within the next year
to follow it through i'm not sure you'll
be able to get up to those other numbers
but are you looking for a specific
number kind of to help ease
we are hoping to get back to our
pre-coven average by spring of next year
we have been bringing in new groups
every two weeks we're trying to get
through the year-long stack of
applications that piled up while we
weren't bringing in new vendors
but with that we do expect to steadily
increase and not quite hit the numbers
by the end of the year but we are
hopeful wonderful thank you
and i absolutely love seeing how many
individuals are able to purchase
their produce from the market
i was
wondering about how many vendors do you
think you have now that are actually
selling produce versus the arts and
crafts and if we're seeing any sort of
trends
with any of our local farmers
so we have between 30 and 40
agricultural vendors so that includes
produce vendors baked goods meat honey
all of that
we've stayed
pretty consistent in that number over
the past four ish years
but
about four years ago we did see a pretty
steady decrease and
the majority of that has to do with
water issues
okay thank you
and thank you mayor those are all my
questions
thank you airport
thank you mayor thank you tiffany for
being here and for your presentation
always proud of the farmers market it's
it is a saturday morning ritual for me
that's for sure and for many of our
families in community
i appreciate everybody i know how how
difficult again covet has been
my question is around
the recruitment is there anything that
the city can do to help incentivize
maybe
these
permanent and or
i guess you're calling that temporary
vendors i suppose
because eventually these might be folks
that might
have
come into a bricks and mortar and maybe
tying in
jennifer and chris's work right
with um i don't know the accelerator
programming and such with the incubator
as well
is there anything that you feel
um the city can help in in that
particular function
i do think the incubator is going to be
the best first step several of my
vendors have asked if that's something
that's available here
especially folks who want to do
home-based food products
they typically require a kitchen in
order to be certified and they would
like an incubator before they go through
that long process
we have had a couple of vendors that go
on to became uh downtown merchants like
oregon mountain outfitters and new enco
they both originated with the market
but i think uh the incubator is
absolutely the best first step okay
anything else around incentivizing um
i don't know whatever that might what
that might look like i think that's
something that we could probably get
together and brainstorm
okay cool i'd really like to to see what
that that might look like especially
when you have a stack of applications
and such
again thank you thank you to all your
all your vendors um
it really i'm always very proud and with
your accolades especially it's it's a
national
program and i'm really exciting um what
what's what's to come for sure thank you
thank you thank you
thank you anyone else
okay
thanks quick note this is our 50th
anniversary
so
we will be doing a celebration in
september for that
um just yeah thank you for 50 great
years
wow all right congratulations
all right so there are two uh partners
that work with business development
directly and the first of which is film
las cruces so jonathan sepp is going to
be giving the presentation today and he
is film oscar's film liaison
thank you elizabeth mayor council my
name is jonathan sepp some of you may
know me as jonathan foley but i got
married last year and took my wife's
last name
it is a pleasure to be with you all
today
throughout this presentation i will be
going over our deliverables and metrics
as it relates to our service agreement
with the city of las cruces
like i said my name is jonathan seppet
but it says foley there my apologies um
let's see if you say it really fast it
could sound like johnny depp right my
phone autocorrects to johnny depp all
the time or jonathan deb
uh first i would like to note that i did
jump the gun on two of the board members
listed their involvement with the film
last cruise board of directors will be
voted on this wednesday
i am also excited to announce that we
have a new
employee with film las cruces who is
with us here today julie thompson if you
want to raise your hand
we are very excited to have her
aside from her specialization with
non-profit accounting she will be
handling the behind the scenes of our
office
film las cruces continues to be led by
state senator jeff steinborn and dacc
arts department chair matt burns
we have five main deliverables in which
our metrics stem from
develop execute and implement a
promotional program this primarily
involves promoting and branding the city
of las cruces as a film and media
destination
we handle the film permits process
approve and manage them on behalf of the
city of las cruces and then we develop
partnerships and continue
to coordinate with local
education institutes to create and grow
a fully trained and local film workforce
in addition to that we also have our
film friendly business program
that lists all of the local support
services available for film and
television productions and then finally
site location assistance within the city
and our online locations database
is us is served
is used to serve this function
each of these deliverables and metrics
associated with them
i will dive deeper throughout the rest
of the presentation
so this is a snapshot of our
deliverables and metrics tracking
the pandemic definitely put
the entire film industry
on hold for much of 2021. uh the rebound
of this industry for las cruces did lag
behind albuquerque and santa fe but is
quickly gaining momentum
i will touch on this further in my
conclusion of the presentation
even with the coven 19 hurdles film las
cruces was able to track and achieve the
majority of our metrics
film las cruces has exceeded our targets
in the service agreement for production
spend worker days funding and others
however we did not reach our goals for
film permits and production days
inquiries they are the lifeblood of any
film office these inquiries come from
projects we are trying to land in the
area as well as projects preparing for
production in las cruces the primary way
we lure projects to las cruces is
through location packages
and these packages are customized
directly towards the look and needs of
their production and once a production
becomes interested in filming in the las
cruces area
they will visit for a location scout so
we had 13 of those in fiscal year 21.
and whether we played a role or not in
landings production in las cruces we
offer all the productions active in our
area with the ability to link them with
local crew and local vendors and so we
have worked with
we've sent out crew and vendor
information 35 to 38 times throughout
the year
film las cruces has increased our direct
mailing list from 1300 to 4500 direct
marketing
1300 to more than 4 500 film and media
industry contacts we continue to create
eye-catching marketing and outreach
outreach materials these include
promotional videos that highlight the
beauty and diverse locations throughout
the city of las cruces
as well as pitch decks that explain
the benefits of locating a production
studio in las cruces
like i mentioned uh coven 19 put a
serious stamford on our efforts to
attract productions to the area the
majority of these numbers are credited
to a feature film that
took place at the latter end of fiscal
year 21.
we had about 388 worker days 27
production days and
473 thousand dollars in direct spend
our social media and web presence web
presence continues to reach a very wide
audience
we have over we have reached over 233
000 eyes
we currently have over 290 000 video
views and we posted 220 time 220 times
and our web page has been visited 66
thousand times
oftentimes film and television
productions have obscure needs and
deadlines of yesterday not only is our
social media platform a fantastic
marketing tool we also utilize it uh as
a resource to connect those needs with
the las cruces community one good
example of that is the film i previously
mentioned uh was searching for a very
specific year and look for a travel
trailer we were able to link them up
with that resource in under an hour
utilizing our social media platforms
film las cruces is tasked with
coordinating the filming permits for the
city of las cruces and we did process
three of them last year
we continue to work very closely with
dona ana community college new mexico
state university las cruces public
schools and the bridge
one key takeaway from our involvement
with nmsu and dacc last year would be
the development of a white paper
that outlines opportunities for nmsu and
dacc
to be involved in the digital media and
entertainment industry as well as
training
future workers
to be involved in that
our online crew database has over 200
listings and 128 of them are las cruces
residents
film las cruces hosted the film
technicians training program for the
final time in the 2020 fall semester
unfortunately the
building was sold
and we did have to
end our efforts with film las cruces
studios we were so happy that we were
able to fulfill the need for studio
space in las cruces and look forward to
continuing our search for a
purpose-built studio and studio company
to manage and operate the facility
one new item that
on this list is our acceptance into the
dod skill bridge program this program is
an opportunity for service members to
gain valuables
civilian not
for productions available in our area as
well as assisting our ability to prove
that las cruces has what it takes to
properly serve these film and media
projects
the two pictures i have included
are new businesses that have developed
over the last year one is a gripen
lighting company and the other one is a
transportation company these are very
specific companies that service the film
and television industry
our online location database currently
has over 450 locations listed and
photographed we're able to show the many
looks available las cruces has at a
moment's notice
and before i conclude this presentation
i would like to touch on the bright
future for the film and media industry
in las cruces we kicked off the fiscal
year stronger than ever with a small tv
series multiple documentaries and
docu-series and one feature film that is
currently wrapping up its last week of
production right now
since july 12th there has been a project
in production in las cruces every single
day
even a few days with three filming
concurrently
film las cruces is also assisting one of
the largest productions our area has
seen and i look forward to speaking
about that once i've been given
permission
uh with that i thank you all for your
support and i am open to questions
thank jonathan
councillor beta stewie counselor ben
cuomo thank you mayor and thank you mr
seth
i have a few questions um on how you see
i know in albuquerque we're seeing a lot
of increases with the different
netflix and the different production
companies there
are we seeing um any sort of uh
interests in southern new mexico due to
this are we
still kind of on a different pathway
absolutely albuquerque and santa fe
success is also our success we do
continue to get that trickle-down
interest
i will say unfortunately it has
geared a lot towards film loss cruising
studios which is no longer available but
we have been working with economic
development and other realtors in the
area to identify a warehouse space that
could be made available at a moment's
notice for something like this
and then
one thing i would like to touch on that
which is which is a bad and a good so
the entire state of mexico is booming
with production right now like it has
never been before
i have a friend who is starting a
production next monday and he is having
a very difficult time finding crew a lot
of the people who have tried to plant
their feet in las cruces as film crew
workers and make this their home base
have decide have more decided to move to
albuquerque i've seen a lot more people
than in the past make that immediate
move to albuquerque instead of trying to
make it work in las cruces for a little
while the good side of that is like the
production going on right now they're
willing to take a chance on more green
filmmakers in las cruces so we're seeing
a lot more people
in position in higher positions than
they wouldn't normally be giving them
that extra
push to be able to have a brighter
freezer in the film and television
industry
okay great that was going to touch on my
second portion which i know there's
always a lot of
issue with finding skilled crew
and then if we do have um individuals
that are trying to get um into the union
uh they need to be working on certain
types of productions um have we seen any
sort of changes with that or their
availability to work on those types of
productions that are going to
put them for success within the union or
those individuals also going more up to
albuquerque as well
so i do think that that is one of the
reasons we've lagged behind albuquerque
and santa fe is the additional costs
that are incurred because of the global
pandemic
film intelligence productions are still
operating at a very high risk level
having different pods for different
people where only certain crew members
will be able to go there there's a ton
of testing still mass requirements on
set
so there's a lot of additional costs and
even bringing a union production to las
cruces with the additional five percent
they still have to spend a bit more
money than they would in albuquerque uh
that's one of the reasons why we focus a
lot on our location database and vendor
database um so that we can
we can show the productions that what
they
the more money that they're spending is
going to be made up on screen because of
the visual looks that las cruces can
provide to them that albuquerque and
santa fe cannot so it's this balance
between the visual aesthetic and the
money side of things and so
with the additional spend in
in covid
uh protocols it has been made
made it a little bit more difficult to
sell the last cruise area but not
impossible
okay um
with that in mind uh
what areas are most requested beyond a
studio here in las cruces or
which areas that are
[Music]
you know off the top of my head i don't
know that one thing i can say is that
the old donand county courthouse has
seen an uptick in use and interest
i do know why that is but i can't really
speak publicly about that something that
had happened in a different
prison
location that was normally utilized is
it's not anymore um but yeah so so
that's something that's off top of my
head i'd have to take a look back at my
notes in previous location packages that
i've sent out but i'm happy to kind of
pinpoint you know what are the areas of
interest for these film and television
productions okay and are there anything
that we should consider
like you said beyond the the studio
itself
but what other opportunities should we
be
considering
i think i think we're doing everything
right at the moment i i obviously there
there are probably some areas of
improvement um but at the moment i don't
think i could speak to that okay thank
you thank you mayor
thank you um council bencomo thank you
mayor thank you so much mr sepp um i
just have one question i was very
surprised to hear about the sale of the
studio how has that impacted business
and recruitment
we have lost in productions uh that
there were some that were ready to go if
we had a studio space available as far
as film las cruces mission goes uh it
hasn't really impacted us it does make
las cruces a bit more difficult sell
but the studio space that we opened was
to fill a need and that was kind of our
organization going above and beyond our
regular duties um so now we are just
focusing on the regular stuff that we
um
are contracted to do and i think that
we'll be reaping some of the benefits
with productions that are focused more
so on on location filming as opposed to
in studio okay yeah that's unfortunate
but glad you're you're rebounding from
that and so what's sort of the timeline
for the vision of this new facility
did you not talk about i i i touched on
it
in the fact that we are
increasing our efforts we do have some
exciting things that are brewing with
that but i don't think i'm able to speak
about that at this moment okay thank you
thanks mayor
yeah she likes to try to get secrets out
of you in person
any other comments
okay
all right well thank you and and
continue the great work you guys are
doing thank you
and to touch on um
counselor ben como's question
does the economic development department
and city manager's office as well as
film las cruces has been in discussions
with a
potential production company
up that is in
i'll just say in california looking to
open another location in our area so
hopefully we'll have some good news
about that in the future hopefully
all right so um the last
presentation we have is from movida and
davin lopez the president wanted me to
let you know that he is at a trade show
and
so eric montgomery the vice president of
business development is going to be
stepping in
[Music]
hi good afternoon mayor city council uh
thank you very much for the opportunity
to speak on behalf of mercia valley
economic development alliance and what
we've done for you over the last fiscal
year my name is eric montgomery i'm the
vice president for business development
with the messiah valley economic
development alliance there's branding
for you
i'm going to stand this way i apologize
if i'm cutting anybody off but i want to
make sure i'm addressing everybody on
council
davin does send his apologies but he is
doing uh what he does best and he is
walking the trade show floor out at
outdoor retailers so
we've already had some good
conversations based on his presence just
from today
whenever we talk about the work that we
do it's always good for us to ground the
discussion alongside our mission because
that's really the driving point forward
so movida's mission and i know all of
you are aware of this so this is more of
for the viewing audience is to grow the
wealth
of donand county
through the creation of economic base
job opportunities
for its residents so there's a lot there
to it but to whittle it down into very
basic approach
we focus on
wealth growth and what does that mean we
specifically look at new payroll and new
household spending that the projects
that we work on can bring back to the
communities that we represent
we represent all of dona and county we
are a regional entity by nature
originally birthed through the city of
las cruces but
grown to be more regional through
partnerships with the county with nmsu
and dacc the school systems
and through the years we've had between
90 and 110
private partners that have helped us
achieve our mission on an annual basis
economic base we're very niche in how we
focus and the type of economic
development that we do we focus on those
industries that produce a product or
service and export it outside the region
thereby bringing new dollars into the
community to grow the pie for everyone
job opportunities
every year we are measured by job
creation that is one of the core
requirements both for our board and for
the work that we do with the city of las
cruces and then finally residents there
is a very human nature to the work that
we do and we keep that in mind every
single day that the work that we do
influences the economic opportunities
of our neighbors
madida is a
501c3 economic development organization
we're a full service organization we
provide
marketing and attraction services we
employ asset based marketing we can talk
more about that later if you guys have
questions on what that means we also
provide retention expansion services so
we go out in the community and we meet
with existing economic based companies
to talk about what
they need to grow and expand their
business
throughout the community we also provide
economic development advisory services
and capacity building services where
we're trying to identify what are those
obstacles
or barriers or opportunities
for economic based companies to grow
within our community
through the years we've leveraged the
funding provided by the city with
funding by other public and private
partners
typically
that is about a three to one ratio for
what what is provided we have diverse
leadership which includes members of the
city of las cruces donaina county nmsu
dacc
lcps and of course our private partners
staff
has collectively about 50 years of
experience in economic development work
specifically within donut county
but we're here today to talk about our
accountability in metrics and
specifically what we have done for the
city of las cruces
i'm proud to say that we
excelled in all the categories that the
city put forth
over the last year
so much so that the projects that were
announced in this last fiscal year will
represent over the next five years 80
million dollars in new household
spending
and will provide a tax base roi
to the 200 000 that the city invested in
us
by 386 percent
we uh
it will grow by 386 percent
to the tune of about 971 thousand
dollars over the next uh five years as
well i'm also proud to announce that of
the projects that we announced when we
compare them to last fiscal year we
actually announced 166 more economic
based jobs within the city limits than
we did the same time last year
you can see that we excelled on all of
our metrics jobs created
feed on the grounds payroll generated
and even jobs out in the innovation and
industrial park
we did fall short on capital investment
retention and expansion
but were we did all of this in the
middle of the pandemic when travel
restrictions
were in play and it was hard for
facility managers to allow anybody from
the outside into a facility
that really impacted our ability to get
out and talk one-on-one with these
companies
the capital investment
is a little bit lower than where we
would have liked to have seen it most of
the investment that took place was in
equipment and capital uh
purchases we always like to talk about
our marketing so i talked a little bit
about what we do and and how we focus on
economic base uh job opportunities this
is a really interesting slide dead
center uh leads by source there's two
main components of this chart one is the
the the darker gray component and the
other is the bright bold yellow those
represent the two main lead sources for
economic based projects that look at
dona county and over the last year
almost 92 percent of those came from
those two sources i'm proud to say today
that madida actually was the reason that
we received over 50 percent of these
leads in the last fiscal year because of
the work that we had done in fact that
work led to 78 individual companies
asking for additional information
through a process that we call pros
potential recruitment opportunities best
way to do this is like an rfi um it's a
request for information from a company
wanting a deeper dive into workforce
facility types how do the incentives
work
a cadre of information
this actually represented almost a 42
percent increase
over the same uh same time last year
our marketing didn't stop in just
discussions with companies we also make
an active pipeline approach every year
but we had to shift in the pandemic our
marketing efforts are very relational
and so we like to have face-to-face
conversations
in this type of work a lot of things can
get lost in translation if you only work
in excel spreadsheets and you're filling
out uh forms on pdf
so
in lieu of not being able to have that
in person conversation we employed a
digital marketing campaign
we maintained some of the general
billboard marketing within the trade
magazines it's always pre it's always
important to maintain a presence in
trade magazines because
it gets the exposure for the geography
out to that specific targeted audience
however this year we sent over 225 000
targeted emails to a variety of specific
industries including outdoor recreation
manufacturers
aerospace specifically within the uav
components
and a number of other industries very
beneficial to the city of las cruces
these emails included information on
available real estate quality of life
components tailored to that specific
industry
and we even talked about risk mitigation
by geography talking about our great
climate and how we are essentially
disaster averse when looking at numbers
and other locations across the country
we also did over 90 000 individual
impressions
to c-level executives decision-makers
within targeted industries using the
linkedin in mail campaigns
but in addition to doing that external
marketing it's important for us to focus
on the companies that are in our
backyard so this year mavida met with 23
individual companies
within the city limits
that represents roughly about two-thirds
of all of the visits that mavida did
throughout dona ana county
and i should also note that this was the
second highest number of visits for city
of las cruces companies that we've done
in the last five fiscal years
11 of those companies actually sat down
with us and said well if things pick up
and change or continue on the path prior
to
to the pandemic and some of the
shutdowns
we actually expect that we're going to
need to expand
they reported to us collectively about
550 new economic based job opportunities
and about 85 million dollars in new
capital investment that would need to
happen as a result of their growth in
the community however to get there they
had some identified needs that they
would need to go through
earlier today you received packets with
more specific information so if you have
further questions i'll refer you to
refer you to the packet of course i'm
happy to entertain the deeper dive into
into what these identified needs are but
we did want to break it down to show you
what the big ticket items were
but why am i really here today and it's
this page in front of you it's to talk
about mavita's results
if you look at the top right
we have a chart for jobs created if we
were to address fy 19 really quickly
that year was stampede meet so if we
were to take the 300 jobs that stampede
me brought to dona ana county out of the
equation and off of the table fiscal
year 21 actually represents our best
year in the last six fiscal years as an
organization and that is definitely
curtis courtesy of the investment that
the city of las cruces put into movida
while our square footage
absorption is not as high as it has been
in years past we have had our second
best year of capital investment
throughout dona ana county than we've
had in the last six years again this is
due to principally investments within uh
equipment
but the point that i think that we are
most proud of and i go back to our
mission statement which is to grow the
wealth of dona ana county we'll look at
the top right and the average wages in
this last fiscal year
the gap between the lines that represent
the new mexico minimum wage and the dona
ana county per capita income and the top
of those bars
is the work that mavi that has done for
the residents of dona ana county
in attracting and retaining high wage
positions
[Music]
for their economic opportunities in fact
if you take all of the projects over the
last fis six fiscal years and you were
to weight the average wages of each of
those jobs you come at about
14.41 cents per hour
that alone represents and again that's
over the last six fiscal years but if we
were to take today's donating county per
capita income
of 10.60 cents an hour that's a 35
increase
over what exists today
and so
in short
is has movida achieved its mission has
movido worked for the city of las cruces
in helping to grow the wages and the
answer is yes i stand for questions
very good eric
great job
questions from council
councillor ben cuomo thank you mayor and
thank you so much eric um i was very
happy to be at the reception last week
um where devin went through a lot of
these things and i got to ask him a
couple of questions so i appreciated you
all hosting us
there as well
yeah i just have a couple of questions
um
you mentioned that there were 78
requests for information about how many
of those do you think
return to you for
more information and deeper
conversations
so that's a very good question counselor
ben coma mr mayor thank you for that uh
our timeline in our process on
responding back with companies it's
typically about 18 months
so when we're talking about
we had 17 requests for information we're
only just now going to start seeing some
of those back if i were to look at
averages off the top of my head i would
say
probably between 25 to 50 percent of
those will have some type of follow-up
communication based on the information
that we provide them
i am so sorry eric did i say 78 and you
said 17. i apologize if i said 17 i
meant 78. okay
wow i heard that really wrong no no uh
of the 78 companies in which we
responded to rfis
we would probably expect between 25 and
50 of them to respond back with some
additional follow-up okay great and then
i love this
packet on here
that you're welcoming these different
companies to the borderplex do you have
data on
these companies
how many
new mexican workers are hiring versus
west texas workers so of the companies
that have announced
i believe mass markets has really been
the one that has done the quickest ramp
up right now
um
at our last report mass markets was
sitting over a hundred individuals
employed all of them within las cruces
um so of of those i would say the
majority are are new mexico
at this point but we would have to do a
follow-up at a later point once they get
to full employment i would definitely be
interested in looking at some of those
numbers and then
um
you said mass markets is that who
correct
um when did they announce and then
what's been the process like for them
hiring those 100 workers
believe mass markets began hiring in
september of this last year
they were obviously affected by by the
public health orders
with their operations
they
before they came into the market
there was a discussion about competition
with with other operations both locally
and in el paso
and when they came in they actually
raised their wages for
this particular geography so that they
would be more attractive
to to employees so at this point i have
not heard
a tremendous difficulty and them getting
i think they're ramping up as as
appropriate and as expected but we'll
have to follow up with them as well and
do you know their what their
wages are
i believe that they sit at around 13 an
hour okay interesting yeah i mean i'd be
interesting to look at all that data um
eric and
certainly you know i think we're hearing
a lot of um
folks in town a lot of restaurants and
places like that struggling to hire and
be curious what their experience is out
there so thank you so much for your
presentation thank you for your
questions
anyone else
castle sword just briefly mr mayor thank
you um
i'd just like to comment on all four of
these organizations that we're in
partnership with i think you're all
doing a very good job and i'm really
glad that uh we have you thank you mayor
okay so
eric as usual it's a very impressive
presentation
and
knowing
daven like i do
if he didn't have the confidence in you
uh he wouldn't let you be doing that you
know so um thank you you do in fact you
remind me of probably when
coach jens was the assistant coach at
wichita state
the head coach was thinking you know
this guy could probably do his own thing
too so in fact where did you get an
award um
earlier this year so i think something
40 under 40 even though you look 30 what
was this award that you got thank you
all around for those comments mr mayor
my children
will disagree with you heavily on the on
the age component
the
uh i was recognized by
dci it's an international organization
that
every year recognizes economic
developers and excellence
throughout throughout the world
and receive their top 40 under 40. so
congratulations on that and i just want
to tell you it's an incredible job to do
but to do it during covid and to have
one of your best years
it's just fantastic
you know we're very fortunate to have
you and daven as a great team and
we hope to see many more years
maybe we
and i'm glad to see donate county
eventually equal the city which is good
you know they've been in the past but
thanks probably to the commission
and fernando but nonetheless a great job
great return on our investment
i think a lot of people regardless of
where they
work
is you know live
in las cruces
because of they just do i know a lot of
them that have that have
set up shop in santa tracea but they'll
live here and they'll provide us the
the much-needed revenue as well so again
congratulations on your award and and
great presentation and and continued
success in movida you know i i remember
when mayor smith started it in
i think 9394 and fernando was the first
director
and just throughout all the years and i
think
which you've been around about 10 years
with movida and
davin maybe a few years after that i
think it's that consistency that
continuity that has led to the successes
that you all are having so again i'm
glad to see that and congratulations and
i'm glad we're able to and i appreciate
my colleagues
on the council for their support because
you know it's you know a lot of times
they you know when businesses go to
santa teresa and you think well wait a
minute i thought you know but then a lot
of times there's some years that they
all come here i remember there was we
were on a roll we had three or four here
and then of course the county was
grumbling a little bit so you know it
all works out in the wash so again
congratulations uh mayor if i could take
an opportunity really quick to just
thank the city
for their continued investment in the
vida for the great partnership that
we've had uh elizabeth has truly been
a great representative to to the city
and a great partner for us in the work
that we do thank you
councillor oh i'm just going to say mr
mayor that uh eric was trained in the
city as an a city employee some time ago
so we we could do something was that the
case i guess
mr mayor councillor sorg is correct he's
got an amazing memory uh
i i had a two-year stint with the
economic development department or
section at that time
right before mevita and was actually
actually part of the 40th anniversary of
the
farmers and crafts market downtown so
very good all right good good job
thank you i think that's it oh cal
stavaskas thank you mayor thank you eric
i apologize for missing part of that
presentation there but uh i've been
talking with you and david um over the
last couple of weeks over
some of the potentials for the community
solar projects and the interest and
investment in that area and so i know
that you guys are hustling in all these
different sectors and i
have been just incredibly impressed with
the growth of the organization the
professionalization
of the organization over the years and
so
as far as i know you know this is
a tremendous value value add for the
city's investment
our return on investment i think is
terrific and so thank you and to the
mayor's point the stability of having
you and daven kind of
tag teaming this is
really important in the fact that davin
is an outdoor retailer when we're trying
to grow our outdoor recreation economy
shows me that that you guys are looking
in every little corner to bring industry
to las cruces so thank you thank you
mayor
thanks counselor
okay i think that's it i think you got
enough accolades for the day
thank you very much sure
um
vince we don't normally take public
comment but
i'll let you say a couple minutes okay
just need to state your name please
my name is vince jeffers and
i want them to be very successful
definitely
but i also want accountability on it and
i don't think we see that very much
it's nice that they're coming here and
giving you a review this is what we did
but there are some things that could be
done better and i just want to address a
couple of them um
first off with film las cruces that's
very important to me to see that be
successful
that building didn't have to be sold
there are people who didn't keep up
their end of an agreement and that's
it's not right
dwayne green when you look at the entire
scheme of things when i say there's
fraud and you guys just are dismissive
that doesn't matter
there was fraud with that building it's
one of the many buildings and you guys
used a non-profit like film las cruces
to to get what you want out of it and
it's not fair to me i don't think it's
fair
as far as you could have a
post-production facility it's cleaner
they could work with the game
development company
having jeff scheister or jeff steinborn
being one of the members
it it's an insult when you really know
the damage this is evidence if you
wanted to ever look at evidence i came
here and i said bill mccain did the
wrong thing
this right here is evidence if you want
to look at it
my address someone else's name
these guys had a program you could apply
for this
i applied for it well it will reimburse
you but you go ahead and pay your
tuition
i did that they didn't reimburse and
then they came around
you can get a student loan i don't want
a student loan they did that to me in
2008 they did that to me in 91
forced to pay back loans that i didn't
get
they did
and the fraud comes right here each time
when you change someone's name without
their consent without their knowledge
you force acquisitions of property
it's not right
there has to be some sort of
accountability
anytime you want to really look at each
and every one of those transactions in
depth you can i've got enough info you
can look at it if you want it
okay so i want to make sure that a
screws this reporter mike mcdivitt
has your contact information since
you've been coming here for three years
and they have yet to produce anything so
let's just see okay okay well i you know
i i um
no just we're good i'll let i'll let
mike do it he's the he's the government
watchdog
okay
okay elizabeth
anything else no mayor city council
thank you so much and thanks to our
partners absolutely thank you
okay so next we're gonna go to the arpa
funding and natalie green's gonna kick
that off
okay looks like amy johnson bathsheba is
your
sidekick
just get myself organized
all right good afternoon mr mayor
members of council natalie green with
economic development
sorry
again natalie greene with economic
development for the record so the
discussion before you today is on the
american rescue plan act arpa funding
specifically we'll be discussing the
10.4 million that was set aside for
community and economic development
initiatives
the other items as you remember have
already been discussed as part of the
july 12th work session
um
in terms of the community and economic
development well all arpa funding has to
meet one of these or all of these
objectives
but community and economic development
initiatives should specifically support
the immediate economic stabilization of
households or businesses or address
systematic issues that contribute to the
unequal impact
as a result of the pandemic
staff did go out for public comment on
the potential uses for the 10.4 million
we received approximately 50 emails we
held two public meetings which were
attended
by the
at least nine community members those
meetings were held
on the 28th and 29th of july and that
public comment period ran from july 19th
to july 30th
we
advertised that through a press release
the paper on our city website and
through our various email list serves
again the themes around the public
comment was
for
we had a lot of positive feedback on the
gbi or the ubi so that's the the
universal basic income
support for affordable housing and
rental assistance
food insecurity and food insecurity
infrastructure
some child programming around poverty
community schools again substance abuse
and mental health and equity in decision
making and we also had some input about
the time to make decisions around arpa
so a call for
not only additional input but additional
time to allocate those funds
staff is asking for either direction or
confirmation on some specific items
and i'll cover cover them more in detail
further on in the presentation but
specifically
we've we're asking for some feedback on
the applicant so the way the rfp
currently stands we're allowing all 501c
organizations
so that's not specific to 501c3s like we
normally do
we'll allow things like 501c6s
to do
that's like the chambers of commerce to
do some business programming will also
allow public institutions that provide
direct service so things like arrowhead
or the third district court or or other
quasi-governmental organizations we're
also asking for some feedback on the
number of submissions from a single
applicant
the minimum and maximums
staff is proposing around 250 as a
minimum and 2 million as a maximum and
the reason for that is really just staff
capacity so when you're talking about 10
million dollars at 250 000 each that's
that's 40 contracts versus
you know four contracts for the two two
million or five contracts for the two
million
we'll also cover the community
evaluation process uh the scoring matrix
and i have a question on match and
leverage uh we'll cover council's
tolerance for risk so
and again i have another slide and then
timeline
as a reminder arpa is federal
pass-through funding so it does have all
the requirements
that we are required to comply with so
when we submitted our certifications to
receive the funding we
committed to the federal government that
we are going to comply and in turn make
all our sub-recipients who receive this
funding also comply with those federal
regulations so when staff develop the
rfp
we developed them with these things in
mind so it is a notice of funding
availability we've included sort of a
merit review process a risk-based and
mitigation process we also haven't have
to ensure that anyone we give funding to
can meet the performance and financial
monitoring the internal controls the
auto requirements and the insurance
requirements
so in
let me just make sure sorry i took extra
notes this time
so there's a whole host of significant
regulations the most specific one is two
cfr 200 so that's the uniform
administrative requirements i won't bore
you with those regulations but i've had
a lot of fun reading the book the
evaluation process staff is proposing a
competitive proposal process so the
intent is to have a very objective
transparent process that allows us to
review again those performance measures
and those risk factors as outlined by
the regulation
we are proposing a staff review
committee that's made up about from
about eight to ten individuals
we will have some voting and non-voting
members the non-voting members are
specifically myself and amy basford who
will be responsible for federal
compliance and ensuring compliance with
arpa
the committee will score those proposals
individually so they won't come
together as a group until it's in a
public setting and that specific process
is outlined in page 8 of the application
that christine handed out to you guys
so at a public setting will allow the
applicants to give a presentation and
it's it's really to tell us or tell the
committee
what doesn't translate about the
proposal on paper there's there's always
those outstanding
issues i call it the pathos argument
right so ethos logos pathos so your
pathos argument
the committee can answer any clarifying
or ask any clarifying questions that
didn't again translate on paper
we'll connect collect final scores
at a separate meeting those scores and
those rankings will be shown to the
selection committee and at that time
they can make final recommendations
one of the items we're asking for
direction on is if council would like
those projects to go back out for public
comment just so we can get some opinions
from our community members on those
specific recommended projects and then
it'll come to you for council approval
if you turn to page six and seven of
your application
we can review the scoring matrix
so the scoring matrix ranges from eight
to eighty
it
as a total score and then each
individual item is between 1 and 10
points
we ask
when we collect all the scores from the
committee we remove the high and low and
the idea is that no one committee member
can influence the entire scoring process
so the highest score and the lowest
score are removed and then we take the
the total of the rest
so under the project justification we're
asking for very clear objective title
targets clear rationale on how it
responds to the pandemic and the other
available uses of arpa
under
compliance or meeting
city goals
the city and the council has invested a
substantial amount of time in different
planning documents so we want to ensure
that
sorry
first day of school
we want to ensure that
whatever projects we're funding are in
alignment with that
and
we can implement some of those already
identified needs and goals
is there a measurable impact so once in
a lifetime money should have a
significant community impact it is a
requirement of the arpa guidelines and
of the two cfr part 200 that we have
performance goals and indicators and
milestones and that we are measuring
projects in a way that we can have
shared lessons
and adopt best practices
the budget
is it
justified again
staff
and the council i'm sure sees themselves
as stewards of taxpayer dollars
we have to ensure that there's
appropriate cost allocations
the one question i do have for council
is around match
and leverage
i've
we have weighted
in-kind match
or cash match for different projects
i don't know again that speaks to the
tolerance for council is that something
you want to see weighted higher or lower
it's a lot
it's easier to spend someone else's
money
when than than your own so do we want uh
non-profits to have any
or potential partners to have what i
call skin in the game right so
um
duplication we do have to screen for
duplication of effort the arpa
guidelines do say that we should
increase there needs to be either
if it's an established program we should
see an increase of services or
expanded programming
uh the timeline and feasibility
so
there are deadlines for arpa we need to
have all the funding obligated by 2024
and all expended by 2026.
we have asked the question if the
project is contingent on other funding
again if we
get two years down the road and they
haven't expended any funds is that a
concern for the committee or for council
organizational capacity and history
so that is based off the risk assessment
in the guidelines so as part of the risk
assessment staff needs to look at
financial stability qualified staff the
history of performance
we did include the ability for new
programming or new projects to
apply
however they they do have to expand on
their experience and performance or
previous experience
and again the thought behind that is
can they
respond to cost increases can they
demonstrate compliance with federal
funding because of the amount of funding
we're talking about any organization
that expends more than 750 000 within
a federal fiscal year will be subject to
a single audit so can
organizations incur that expense it's
not
it's not a cheap expense it can run
anywhere from 10 to 30 thousand dollars
so we want to make sure that
all our partners are financially
feasible
the timeline
so we've completed the public comment
period today's uh
is the work session depending on the
direction from council whether that's to
move forward with this rfp process or
not uh we'll we could potentially bring
a resolution forward in september and
then that'll sort of dictate the
timeline
from there
again there's more additional
opportunities for public comment both
uh and a public process so
again it's intended to be a very open
transparent
objective process
the committee will only meet in public
in public settings
the rfp is subject to council adoption
and then the recommendations are again
subject to council adoption and comment
so i will stand for questions
thanks natalie just clarify a couple
things and then see if the council has
any comments
you did you say
any applicant who receives
more than 750 000 will
undergo an audit
so any applicant who expends
750 000 in federal fundings in a single
fiscal year is subject to a single audit
and then they pay for that audit and it
can range anywhere from ten to thirty
thousand dollars correct okay
and so they can't use
arpa funding for that
they have to cost allocate
again mr mayor natalie green for the
record they have to cost allocate those
administrative expenses
just like the city does so
for example
my staff works on multiple grants so i
can't bill all their paid time to a
single grant i have to spread it across
their different grants okay so the
single audit should should not all be
billed to the city
can you go back to the screen where it
had a match leverage
budget match leverage yeah you know i i
would like to see it doesn't have to be
a huge amount but i like to think i i
would think that i mean like let's take
for example a house almost no bank
will lend money 100 on a house
they usually want three four or five
percent maybe ten percent i you know
something to that effect and so
you know like you said they want a
little bit of skin in the game and i
think that that
i'm not saying that they have to but i
think if there are some that are willing
to i believe that they should probably
be scored a little bit higher it's my
opinion so
okay with that i'll turn it over to my
colleagues
councilman cuomo
i i took it that you wanted to speak but
you know
yes i'm just processing here i may have
a second round of questions but here's
my first first of all
natalie i don't know who
i don't know who the dream team was on
this but this is really well thought out
so thank you very much
um i just want to say that a couple of
questions um or
is there
any like
projects that may come through a fiscal
sponsor
is that
allowable
mr mayor councillor ben cuomo yes we
will allow projects to um have a fiscal
sponsor especially if it's a new
organization that lacks that capacity
and then you said 750 000 in federal
funding not it does just federal funding
it's not a non-profit that makes right
because
the new mexico guideline is if you make
more than 500
you bring in more than 500 000 you have
to do an audit every year you're saying
federal funding specifically
mr mayor councilman como so most
non-profits should get an audit every
year however the regulation specifically
for federal funding which includes arpa
is that if they expend more than 750
they're subject to a single audit which
is a more intense level of an audit it
reviews all their policies and
procedures their internal controls
it's even down to how they handle their
mail
wow interesting okay
for the staff review committee
have you thought about who those members
are yet and if not how you think you'll
select them
mr mayor councillor cuomo i have
proposed a potential committee it is
made up of various
departments
and then different levels across that
department so right now i have nine of
the 10 potential members the chair of
that is proposed to be mr
ikani tamo pio
we also have the performance manager out
of the city manager's office i've asked
one member of quality of life
a member of finance i have two housing
development coordinators
an analyst out of the budget department
and then i have two potential
individuals out of community development
and again uh
grants myself and legal uh maybe on
advisement but they'd be all non-voting
on the bottom part did you present this
and i totally missed it no oh thank god
i thought i'm losing my mind today okay
thank you natalie
um
this looks like
a great list actually i think those are
really good departments to have selected
to move forward
so will each of these members of this
committee review applications
individually and then you will come
together to review them
uh yes mr mayor council ben como how we
have uh and if you go to the actual
scoring matrix we ask the committee to
score each
application first
before they come to the presentation day
so they'll they'll have an initial score
and then the presentations again we ask
those non-profits you know stuff gets
lost in translation so it's really the
opportunity for those
applicants to to tell us what's missing
or what didn't exactly get across and
then the committee can ask any
clarifying questions
that didn't exactly again translate
through paper because that doesn't
always happen so they can adjust their
score but at the end of presentations
they need to submit all their scores
to the staff liaison and then we'll come
back
likely a week later and then we'll
review those scores as a group but the
committee will only meet in a
open public process probably here in
council chambers
okay and just help me understand this um
you're inviting every single applicant
to come give a presentation or only like
finalists oh
i
we haven't limited to just finalists
just because that makes sense but it
really is dependent um you know i may
have to come back counsel come back to
council if we get like a thousand
applications then i may have to
reevaluate the process but
my hope is that you know we have a
reasonable number of applications that
we can hear presentations from all the
applicants
yeah that makes sense okay um
i will just say a couple comments i
think that um
i'm excited about the public input that
came through especially from non-profit
leaders in our community who i think
have been at the forefront of combating
poverty for many years
support a guaranteed basic income
and i will actually
agree with the mayor around the skin in
the game
uh question you pose natalie um i don't
necessarily think people need to be
docked off points right but potentially
higher scoring for people who are
bringing in
um some investment already and i
agree with the staff's recommendation on
um
[Music]
the budget the 250 000 to the 2 million
i think
um from our last conversation i remember
us talking about
you know visionary and bold ideas that
could really make a really big impact
right now as we're in this
you know facing this pandemic still and
the majority of people who've been you
know disproportionately impacted have
been families that were already
vulnerable so um i think this this to me
feels right as well
thank you so much natalie i may have
more questions later this was a lot of
really great info
thanks mayor thank you very pro-tem and
then counselor beta-stubby
thanks mayor thank you so much natalie
and your staff for putting this together
i know you had
you really
took a lot of time
to do this
i'm concerned about the time frame i
think it's too fast
[Music]
and i'd like to see it
go into to next year i think
stu i'm i'm i'm sure for you and for the
non-profits given what's you know
happening currently we're we're still
not at a covert i think so many of them
are transitioning there's um
issues with um recruiting and reten you
know retaining
their employees and whatnot
i guess my motto is go big or go home
i think we have to be very specific and
i'd like to see more um
data in terms of
the areas that i think we need to we
need to focus on in terms of the deliver
the
you know distributing that kind of money
and i'm thinking about poverty um
substance abuse and addiction programs
programs that we have i'm sorry i don't
think you can hear me very well sorry
mayor
um
gaps and barriers in the service
and
so those and housing for me
whatever we do whatever programming that
we
that we give funding to housing needs to
be at the forefront of that because if
it isn't all this other you know all
these other programs and services that
we're doing are going to be in vain
and so those for me are big big issues
um
the other thing is
let's see i wrote some
i have a copy that has highlighted stuff
does everybody yes okay the algebra 501c
organizations i'm sorry and i stepped
out to
stepped out you may have said that
already can you talk to me when you say
eligible 501c organizations what
specifically are you meaning uh mr mayor
mayor potemkandara so we did not limit
the application to 501c3s we are
allowing the other 501s
the example i used was the chamber
they're 501 c6s so we wanted to ensure
there was an opportunity for
for other
types of organizations to apply
especially if it was around economic
development i love it yes yes yes yes
this would be a great opportunity to
help some of those
programs that provide yeah workforce
reintegration
you know those things that we have great
difficulty giving funding already
i i'd really love to see
as part of my one two three fourth
category is around economic development
workforce reintegration i think that's
um really important
um
let's see i made some notes as you were
talking about give me a moment
and in the meantime mr mayor i did put
the items that are highlighted they
match this general screen that you can
give direction on
okay
yeah you need console direction on that
yeah yeah yeah or confirmation that
we're on the right track got it okay
yeah um
i just think we need to use data for
sure to determine
where we're going to provide the funding
to and these for me housing poverty
economic
you know building individual wealth
i think is is really important and
housing natalie
um
and so
i rather start with okay what are we
we doing poorly on
where could we really meet the make the
best
um address the the biggest needs and for
me it's more about gaps
looking at our gaps and barriers and
filling that need with this funding um
that's all the questions for now mayor
that oh
i knew i forgot something i i'm
concerned about um
the the people that are sitting on this
sac committee or this committee
um i also feel
that maybe i'd like to see a
representative from the telstra
committee the health and human services
committee those are folks that have
a lot of experience in non-profit work
in social determinants of health i mean
i'm not suggesting that the people that
you've selected do not
i just i i just
feel like you need to have at least a
representative
from
from that committee um on your sac
committee i don't think you're calling
it that though are you calling it the
sac committee or not
the committee okay it works okay okay
all right thank you natalie those those
are all my comments mayor thank you
yeah mayor potem
you know i think
i could support you as far as you think
it might be moving too quick or you want
to extend a little bit further i don't
know if i'd extend it too long maybe an
extra month or so you know give or take
a
month and a half
but you know i because i think that
it forces and it tells the others hey we
need work on this get this plan done you
know keep things moving and yeah so
that's my comment on that everything
else i agree with you on
thank you mayor i appreciate that i just
i just know
what it's like to write grants
especially around they're all they know
they're in this they they do this all
the time but these dates feel
a bit
um i mean november december that those
are holidays
um i i just think
we need to be very mindful of the time
frame and i like i agree we can't extend
it you know several months but i i'm not
sure that these dates are the most
appropriate moving forward
okay
councilor beta stewie
thank you mayor and thank you natalie
kind of
piggy backing off some questions about
our staff review committee
we do have an
oversight committee as well
and it might be appropriate to have
maybe a non-voting member
beyond that or
i just know that there's going to be a
lot of public scrutiny on even how we're
choosing and so i really appreciate
the transparent process that you're
trying to lay out and if there's any
ways that we can add
any individuals that can help with that
process i think that would be good
and for the other items
i do think it's
i do actually really like a lot of the
the metrics that you've laid out here
one of the biggest items that i've said
is i really would like to see how these
projects integrate with systems that we
already have are they closing gaps in
any services um are they helping out and
i think that really helps
decide how they're useful for the
community and so you have a few metrics
in here with the community impact and i
think
even duplication that help with that
process
i'm not sure how that's going to be
presented but i think that's really
great for us to see
how that really fits in
line with the types of systems we have
and i think that is all for now like i
said i really appreciate all the work
that you've done
i'm in agreement with councillor benkoma
as well with the other metrics
thank you mayor
thank you counselor so regarding excuse
me the oversight committee when you were
saying that you weren't necessarily
thinking a council member that sits on
the oversight but rather like and we're
ex officios as council but one of the
individuals that sits on it as a voting
member or um you know we have staff
representation
um that attends so it might be um
important if we even if we couldn't get
somebody on the sac committee perhaps
getting report outs
to that committee the oversight on how
the process is going might also be
useful as well
no i i like your idea i just wanted to
make sure because i was going to say if
you put a council member on there then
they might have to recuse themselves
yeah yeah you don't want to do that so
okay you know you're thinking maybe like
viola or someone like that possibly um
i'm not sure if biola can but oh oh oh
from the outside i got you
thank you
yeah
jack eckman would be good
so
counselor sorghum and councillor vasquez
uh thank you miss mayor and thank you
natalie
um i can see this is
while it's different
unusual and a lot of work i'm sure
the comments i've heard from the council
so far i can agree with
um
[Music]
and i the list that you have here
potential
um places where this funding could go to
is is good for me
um that's the ones on
slide number just so we have it all
together here counselor can i have you
i'm sorry
i gotta look here and
hold on closer um
[Music]
yeah on slide four i i agree
i'm okay with i should say
um a couple questions i have here
just so i understand what's how this is
gonna work
will the council be the final decision
maker on each rfp
mr mayor councillor sorg so the
committee will vote on recommendations
to council that council packet will come
to you for final approval and it will
include the scores in ranking the
recommendation the minutes from all all
the meetings and if you want to see each
individual rfp i can also include those
in the packet but
more to come i suppose
so it'll be just in one resolution then
for everything for all 10 million plus
[Music]
my staff recommendation uh depending on
the number of uh projects we we will
probably bring those back
individually especially if some of them
are
more controversial based on the public
comment we receive okay
yeah
i can't would tend to go that way but
i'm not
um not making that
for sure but anyway
um
so in the budgeting of the proposals um
you were talking about
some income
some
matching funding i would assume that
would include some in-kind type of
matching true is that correct
mr mayor councillor sorg we did include
in-kind services as a potential source
of match so a lot of nonprofits can
match that with staff that's already um
hired with mou's with other non-profits
we didn't want to limit it to in-cash
match
right okay
so that if an organization has staff
instead of taking funding out of this
pot of money
to pay staff to do to to do the project
they could do the project on their own
money yeah okay
um now i have uh
some concerns about certain types of
projects here or at least one anyway
that's the gbi ub i possible
i i would like to see certain things in
that
project so how would we handle that
mr mayor councillor story today's
discussion is really on the rfp process
so as part of the rfp process
assuming a non-profit applies for the
gbi
the
they would have to fill out the
application like any other organization
applying for funding so it would go
through that risk evaluation
component by the committee and then the
committee would have to recommend that
to council for funding i will say that
any contract over 75 000
has to come back for council approval so
you'll also see those particular
projects and they'll have
they're actually mandated by regulation
to have performance measures and
objectives and then criteria to monitor
well
yeah yeah in fact that's pretty much
what i'm looking forward to
say a project like this i would like to
see it have a report after it's finished
after money is spent
um and that report showing things like
their introduction and their
i'll go scientific on you here uh
hypothesis to begin with
um
and the methods in which they're going
to use the money how they're going to
use it in other words uh report the
results of what happened and any
conclusion they can come to after it's
done
so that's what i would like to see in in
this particular one
and as far as the rest of it
part of the project goes i have some
details
but i'll be looking for something like
that i think it's going to be in line
with what probably people will
want to add put in their project too
so i just wanted to know where that
would
what part of the process that would be
in
so mr mayor councillor sorg all projects
have to go through a review of risk and
that's one of the reasons i ask council
for their tolerance of risk so we have
to or the committee has to have a place
uh or a framework for evaluating the
risk before
reward i mean award um
so we'll we'll that's how the rfp was
designed so we can evaluate those
different risks and then we're also
required to mitigate some of those risks
as part of the contract development
again i won't speak to any specific
projects because
i'm not on the review committee but
again every everyone we anticipate them
filling out the application and
answering um the questions and i didn't
cover the questions but if you
go through the applications uh the the
question
tied to those scoring matrix question
the scoring
criteria
and number one is the project
justification
and we do ask
for significant detailed information
we're asking again for that best
practice research data driven
and then that strong rationale and
significance that it clearly responds to
to covet or its negative economic
impacts
okay
that sounds good to me
so far but we'll see what comes out in
the end
okay
thank you very much and thank you mayor
thank you councillor i think
your comments about um
[Music]
i think it's fair to say that the city
the information we get from the
committee will be a recommendation
and they're going to have a the numbers
on that but i also believe that
that we should have those that qualify
even a simple
three or four sentence paragraph of what
each one
was wanting to do
so that theoretically
if council wanted to pull one of those
that maybe
didn't make the committee's
recommendation but met the council's
wish uh then we can do that
okay so this is a different type of yeah
that's actually what i was asking for
and i didn't say it too oh okay no
problem and then and then um
but what i don't want to see are those
that don't make the that they're not a
501c3 there could be someone who just
you know say i want to apply and and and
they don't have the credential
we don't really need to be with that but
i think anyone that meets the minimum
minimum
qualifications that theoretically could
be funded but maybe didn't
score as well
should still even if it's just a few
sentences like you know acme food
company wanted a hundred thousand
dollars to provide low income meals to
schools and in
certain areas of the city some you know
just something so you have a see it and
and and the amount and okay well
that is that possible
uh yes mr mayor we will include the uh
so we actually asked
on the first second page of the
application
for a quick project summary
that's used to describe your project in
official documents so that's what we'll
include that in the work session
i will remind uh the council and staff
that
this will be an official procurement
process once it's adopted so once that
rfp is out on the street so to speak
we'll all kind of be in
and and uh mom mom's the word
so
okay great
was her um
oh i'm sorry councillor vazquez
and then council bingo
thank you mayor
uh thank you natalie this is a really
well put together
scoring matrix and evaluation system for
some really important investments in our
community
[Music]
the first question i have is around
uh the
the capacity um
organizational capacity category
um i know that we are giving lower
scores in this matrix to
an applicant that demonstrates
lower capacity or ability to implement
and oversee the proposal
i think we just should be a little
careful about that one because it's kind
of a chicken in the egg thing
for an organization that might be really
great at providing a service but doesn't
have the existing capacity to expand
if in their budget you know they're
budgeting for that additional capacity i
would hate to knock that applicant
down on their score
since it would be these funds that they
would need to increase capacity if they
have a proven record of delivering a
particular service
um and the reason i say that is that
it may
it may score our larger organizations
with bigger budgets to the top
inadvertently when there may be you know
smaller organizations that may be able
to deliver a specific service
but may have smaller staff or not as big
of a budget
um i'm not sure how that might be fixed
or how that might be worked on but i
just wanted to point that out
mr mayor councillor vasquez so it does
the highest rated score is
high compliance or it could be a new
organization with extensive experience
and service provision so we're not
limiting to established
non-profits they could be a new
non-profit that has again extensive
experience although
again the federal regulation as noted in
this slide does
ask us to look at these particular
issues when evaluating capacity and
that's going to be the financial
stability of the organization
the quality of their management system
so do they have internal controls
policies and procedures
do they have a history of performance
again i've accounted for
someone who may not have that history of
performance but they have extensive
experience in
in service provision
it does ask us to look at any reports or
findings from their audits and then
their ability to implement statutory
requirements
i wish i could be more flexible
unfortunately again it is federal
pass-through funding so
not only do we have to comply with these
regulations we have to ensure that our
nonprofits comply with those
and anytime we accept federal funding it
comes with a whole host of requirements
and
down to
wearing your seatbelts
one of the new regulations says that we
have to ensure our sub recipients and
contractors are telling their
subcontractors to wear their seat belts
and not text while driving so that means
we need to have a policy in place for
for how we do that with our nonprofits
so it's it's an interesting
dilemma
thank you natalie well
that explanation
oddly enough puts me at ease a little
bit
just because
there's no flexibility it's pretty rigid
in what we can and can't do and so um i
appreciate the explanation there and
um
completely understood in terms of how
we're going to define capacity
the the other question is around the
goals uh the city's goals and priorities
as established by our three
big plans of strategic plan elevate las
cruces and the
and or the consolidated plan
um you know i'm just wondering if there
uh there happens to be a project
justification for a need in our
community
that doesn't align with those plans
because perhaps we didn't complete those
plans thinking about how a pandemic
might factor into any one of those
strategic goals
and so
i'm not
suggesting that we change that category
but perhaps
in an explanation to the judging
committee or judging panel
you know it may be important to note
that there may be extraneous needs that
are not identified in those strategic
plans but have arisen as a response that
the city must have to do to mitigate the
impacts of covet
so just wanted to flag that although i
think
i'm sure housing and
food insecurity and
child care and any number of things can
fit within the city plans
i just wanted to point that out because
it is kind of we're all responding to an
emergency rather than trying to fit
something into our our existing plans
[Music]
other than that i look forward to seeing
the project proposals i think this is a
terrific matrix
and i'm really hoping that this can make
it out to our service providers and our
nonprofit community
and
because it's expanded to 501c
different categories of 501 c's i'm
assuming churches and chambers of
commerce and other organizations that
are not 501 c 3s will be able to apply
as well
they will be although they do have to
meet the again the organizational
capacity capacity compliance with
federal regulations
part of the certifications
and just to note i'll read a couple of
them
there's stuff around civil rights and
fair housing anti-discrimination
lobbying hatch act
again that seat belt and text driving
so there's or texting while driving and
then of course the the biggest one is
going to be the financial regulations so
so yes so they can apply but they also
have to be compliant with federal
regulations absolutely thank you
so much thank you mayor
thank you council before we get to
council bencomo so kind of along the
lines of what council vasquez was asking
so earlier
natalie we talked about match funding
and how we maybe put a little little
bump in that
is there anything let's say
organization wants to do community solar
and says hey listen i'm going to provide
25 reduction in
the
households
utility costs so it's actually saving
the consumer some money
is there some type of uh
of a matrix do you have for that there
may be something that that saves the
consumer money
and if so is that something council
wants to increase or put in to help you
know because because if
if there's an organization or an item or
something that that
someone can have and it saves the
household two three hundred dollars a
month
i mean i think that's good mr mayor i
would argue that the community impact
again it demonstrates a clear and
significant impact and has a specific
measurable evaluation plan
proposed impact on the community is
quantifiable and substantial
so
i think it would fall
we can consider the
right now i have the match and leverage
weighted between one and 25 percent
we can lower that to a smaller dollar
amount if that's the council's desire
but
um i think that
i think as long as you incorporate you
know i.e
saves consumer money i think that lets
the committee know that hey this is
something here that might the consumer
you know benefits i mean it's it's uh
if it saves them two or three hundred
dollars a month it's like giving them
two or three hundred dollars a month
we're good
okay so next would be counselor ben
cuomo thank you mayor and thank you to
my colleagues for the great questions
and comments natalie back on the risk
assessment i'm sorry i forget what you
keep calling it risk something
risk or capacity
that's on page eight right
is that what i'm looking at
oh
good question let me see
so it's risk again can be a number of
things so it's covered in a number of
comments
we do
ask if you're talking about the
acknowledgement of required assurances
is that the page
we are as part of the rfp process
notifying our
our potential partners what's going to
be required upfront
the last thing we would want is for them
to apply get to contract time and
realize they can't meet some of those
guidelines and performance measures
so i have noted
the
at least two cfr part 200 that's again
the biggest
compliance measure that we have to meet
but the risk mitigation is is going to
be made up of multiple questions
specifically question 9 applicant
qualification so we're asking them to
summarize the organization's experience
who's going to be working on their
projects what's
what
is their experience
the other thing is uh
the the organization's operating budget
as part of the attachments
if council wants to give direction on
that as part of the applications we are
asking non-profits to submit their most
recent audit or financial statements
we're also asking them to submit
one page or less than one
page resumes of their executive
directors their financial directors
anyone who will be paid by the funding
and that should be the last page of your
application
packet
okay
yeah
you had asked for our
feedback on the risk assurances i just
wasn't sure what that looked like like
what you were looking for but i will say
i mean as somebody who also runs a
nonprofit these are pretty standard i
think people will be used to
having to provide these kind this kind
of information especially for the larger
grants
um so i'm not sure if you've received
the information that you're looking for
from us on there but please let me know
and then just on the i wanted to comment
on mayor protem's
concern about the timeline
i
i guess i'm more of
in the belief that
to me there feels like there's urgency
in getting this economic relief money
out
given that
um
we're in an emergency and
i think
our partners especially service
providers absolutely no
like there's qualitative and
quantitative data
that is telling us the gaps in our
community and the gaps that were made
even larger by the pandemic and who were
impacted i think our community members
know that i think we know that mayor per
time you run an incredible
resiliency leaders right that i think
are are just keenly aware about what the
issues are in our community and so for
me you know i had something i really
appreciated counselor vasquez did last
year actually was when he really was
like look this al paseo solano
uh committee i want to get it done
quickly and it's something i've learned
in my short time here that sometimes
local government can move a little bit
slow
and i love local government okay don't
get me wrong but it can move a little
bit slow and i just feel like
the level of urgency that the pandemic
has created for people who are already
vulnerable
and this incredible
this is good government i work american
rescue plan act is good government at
work and i want to make sure that we
keep
that rolling
and
you know i like the clean january 1st 22
project start date perhaps between
maybe the
playing within the dates between now and
then
could work in terms of allowing people
more time to think about projects but i
like that clean start date especially
because it's the holidays especially
because
um people continue to struggle
so perhaps it's you know between now and
and that december date that you can play
around with but i'm i like this january
first start time
and you know i will say that the other
thing is that we've been talking about
arpa funds for
i don't know since april may i can't
totally remember right and i know that
the last time we had a work session
perhaps there was some confusion in the
community about how we would you know be
distributing this money but i think
members of our community have been
thinking have absolutely been thinking
about
um how do we apply for
these funds and what do we put forth
that is visionary and um has a big
impact so i would i would hate to see
that january that january 1st
be pushed back even more
um but like i said perhaps it's be the
in-between dates that can be played with
thank you
and mr mayor councillor bencomo again
the strategic plan elevate and the
consolidated plan
were all adopted by council they all
have robust work plans the consolidated
plan specifically focuses on those gaps
that we have in services to our low to
moderate income populations elevate was
again a city-wide project that
was at a 21-month development so i just
want to make sure that we respect
the investment that you all have made in
outlining
some of those community-wide goals
your city's council strategic plan the
community prosperity section has really
robust information around attainable
housing wealth development
economic development so again that's the
thought in having projects have at least
some alignment with those already
established plans
[Music]
excuse me i just want to comment one
thing um
so all of us here
including counselor flotus who's absent
she's out of town by the way i'm sure
you know
have have dealt and have worked
extremely difficult
through difficult times and have
really learned and
learned a lot in in this covert era
i really think
as you all know we know councillor soar
and council vasquez have chosen not to
run for re-election and
and and we have another councillor who's
up for election and so it's possible we
know we're gonna have at least two
possibly three but
council members so
i think
in all fairness because all of you have
worked and you know the community i'm
not saying that the new people who come
on board won't but they won't have that
that connection that you all have have
had these last 16 17 months especially
during the coleman era i think at the
very minimum regardless of where we move
that
that the council vote needs to come
before
these two gentlemen leave office
so that that's at the very minimum
okay it's not too far from there and
then if it's if the start date is
january one okay but at least
that is the case because if you recall
there was a situation
when they when when it could have been
voted on on a zoning and they hunted and
gave it to you and counselor counselor
ben cuomo counselor beta stevie and then
you had
your first meeting and you had a fast
track and you had to learn and we had to
do a hold a couple more uh me so you
could understand that and it wasn't fair
to you
and this is a big deal here so
that's my my thought
so that no matter what happens you all
at least get a chance to vote on on this
issue we're good on that support okay
okay anything else
nope yeah i too have to say i'm very
impressed with this it's a very thorough
very thought out
concise plan and looking forward to
seeing all the applicants
so mr mayor just next steps so you guys
have an update is at your next uh couple
council meetings you'll see a formal
adoption of this rfp process and then
you'll also see
a budget resolution to again formalize
the the previous uh items and this item
so
we'll we'll see you in the next couple
meetings
so amy you don't have anything to say
you just sit there
shockingly enough no okay
unless you have questions for me okay
anything else oh counselor beta stewie
yes mayor um actually this question is
for mr peely
in the event that we do get
a large amount of applicants and this is
becoming a little bit more of a tedious
project
are we ready and prepared to handle that
to work within the timeline and how does
that look for you
thank you counselor
you know i'd probably just refer right
back to
to natalie on on how we're going to
handle that but
mr mayor councillor stevie depending on
the number of applications i'm going to
ask for a little off the top so to speak
to to hire potentially contract
employees to help us manage the
contracts
part of this process will require some
intensive monitoring so
if we're really busy with arpa and again
my staff's grant funded so they they are
paid to work on the grants they're hired
for so we will need someone to to work
on this one
unless you want to cover all my staff
out of general fund
uh but uh so we'll we'll ask for likely
a contract employee and then a
compliance person
and i'll also defer to amy because she
doesn't know i'm asking for money
actually i did know she was asking for
money so at the next
when we bring the budget resolution
there is going to be
the 10 percent de minimis rate for this
particular category
to be able to provide
natalie's department with some extra
support we don't know that we'll need
that on the other recommendations so
that it will not be a part of the
initial budget adjustment but we know
that natalie will need at least one
contract employee and potentially more
than that to just to
get these off the ground and to get them
monitored as they are very intensive
monitoring requirements on them
and that was amy johnson bassworth
speaking sorry about that no problem
thank you
thank you that's good
okay i believe that's it anything else
cfo on work session you're done correct
thank you i think we're done okay then
entertain motion to adjourn so moved
motion made by council bitcomo second by
councillor beta stevie
christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor beta stevie yes
concer vasquez yes
councillor bancomo yes councillor
yes
councillor flores is absent councilor
gandera yes mayor yes yes okay so it's
um 3 51 so we're adjourned and then um a
few minutes to switch over for the
agenda setting meeting which you're
welcome to
sit through
you