you
[Music]
good afternoon everybody this is
cassandra campbell i'm mayor pro tem for
the city of las cruces
we're at our work session today monday
july 26 2021
we are waiting for quorum do i need corn
yes
we got quorum there we go
okay
very good
so good afternoon i'm i'm presiding over
this meeting today mayor is out of town
we're getting people
moving in and out of the of the chambers
now
please if you would please stand for the
pledge
we're going to do it again
[Music]
one nation under god indivisible with
liberty and justice for all
thank you councillor benkomo
next up is we have pets of the week
clint decker had to leave so our vice
chair of the animal services board
counselor bethesdubi will be
will be on doing her pets of the week
and she might need some help with the
computer
thank you mayor pro tem i am tessa aveda
stevie
for the record and i'll be doing our
pets of the week first up we have may
who is four years old
a beautiful flame point sweetheart my
name is may let me light a fire in your
heart with my cuddles and kisses you
don't have to ask me twice as soon as
i'm able to i'll call right in your lap
to make biscuits and kisses and nibble
on your hands and arms i am a full-on
lover
and she is
available with her animal number uh
thank you
and we're gonna have our doggo of the
week
thank you council repeat this to the may
is up for adoption
i now have more cats than i care to say
so i am banned
counselor seems very interested
okay counselor
thank you
this is rusty he is three years old he
is a medium breed my name is rusty i am
one of the long-term residents i am a
sweet soul who knows when it's time to
stop and smell the roses or grass or
something interesting in the scent zones
i love to have a new foster home where
we take strolls outside and have play
time
we do have off uh site events at the
farmer's market saturdays 9 a.m to 12
p.m and our hours are operation are
monday through friday noon to 6 p.m
saturdays and sundays noon to 5. and it
is located at 3551 bataan memorial west
las cruces new mexico
88012 thank you councillor bethesda
stoovey look at that face
rusty isn't he gorgeous
someone should go and adopt him okay
thank you
okay next up jobs of the week e i see dr
francisco payares
will be speaking to jobs of the week and
don't let me forget counselor sorek has
additional job announcement
thank you major pro tem and thank you
members of council for this week's jobs
of the week
we're going to be having a purchasing
specialist this is going to be hired by
the city of las cruces and the position
is open until filled we also have
production workers available jobs
position available would buy a chili
ltd and there's three positions
available for this specific company and
they will close on
august the 11th we also have positions
available with sapuro cheese factory
particularly with machine operators and
these positions will close in august the
13th we have also positions available
with one sun belt rentals and this is
going to be a road mechanic this
position is going to close until october
the 13th of 2021
and we also have positions available
with lpn
the licensed practical nurse on dialysis
and this is what u.s renal care
incorporated this position will close
until august the 8th and again this is
just a snapshot of all the different
jobs that are available in our city for
a full list of jobs internships and
volunteer opportunities you can visit
our partners website employeenm.com
and also www.governmentjobs.com
forward slash careers forward slash las
cruces this is for both employers and
job seekers who are the employers that
are looking to pose their jobs for free
at the employee m.com website as well as
for the job seekers that are willing to
seeking for a job
the workforce connections new mexico
workforce connections information is
located at 226 south alameda boulevard
very close to here to city hall the
phone number is
zero 575-524-6250 again their webpage is
employeenem.com
and counselor sort
thank you dr payatta's counselor
thank you man uh mayor pro tem we've
switched
um this morning uh i was in a committee
meeting with the um
new mexico workforce development board
the
subcommittee that's working on getting
businesses as a business the business
and engagement committee
um and i learned about a new website
this is the works of our solutions
is uh just
new this year uh it's just been getting
hot here in the last month or two and
it's a simple address it's called ready
r-e-a-d-y dot n-m-dot-gov
ah and i've got the website on my
computer right now this is an awesome
website
it has all the information that both
businesses and job seekers need to know
such as training and education tells you
right where to go and tell us where all
the job shakers are ready to go and then
the business support is there
and also there's a special one right now
because of our coven 19
cases we have here a situation we have
here i should say it's an awesome
website i encourage anybody that needs
employees needs to hire
or any people that needs to
find a job to go to this website you'll
find it extremely friendly
um also the
workforce uh development is is providing
one thousand dollars incentive for all
those who can go back to work now it's
only good to the end of
august
so if you get a job between now and the
end of august you get an extra thousand
dollars from the state
um
i
think that covers about everything they
mentioned uh they are getting the the
state is getting calls for jobs and
calls for anything that they can service
they can provide only about 40 to 50 a
day and i think that's they're handling
them quite well there's no very little
if any waiting on that
and also
last friday
thanks to debbie moore we had a special
uh
luncheon with that uh counselor beta
stevie also attended with me in which
they talked about just this topic and um
i got a copy of what uh the bridge uh
tracy uh brenda's has uh of the bridge
you all know where the bridge is
they have put out these new booklets um
especially for those people that want to
find a pathway to high-paying jobs in
our community here's one on aerospace
commercial space and defense industries
one on the energy industry
one on international trade industries
and uh one on digital media and film
industries and i don't think i got them
all there might be another one too uh
valuable little packets for those people
looking for jobs
new mexico true yes we're calling it new
mexico true
talent
okay
thank you they're doing an excellent job
and i'm working on thank you counseling
counselor
yes thank you
madam pro
okay next up is 3.1 las cruces passenger
air service
ws number 21-031
andy hume good afternoon mr hume
good afternoon
good afternoon mayor pro tem and city
council pleasure to see everybody here
today
my name is andy hume and i have the
privilege of serving as airport
administrator at las cruces
international airport
and uh with us today uh actually let me
let me just touch on what we're gonna go
over today we're gonna give you a little
bit of update on the infrastructure
improvements that we've been making and
ones that we have planned
we're also going to give a little bit of
an update on the recent happenings in
the us on the air industry so some
interesting news for to share with you
all on that uh we'll go over a quick
recap if you recall back in september of
of 2020 we had a presentation on
interstate service and the potential for
that and so we'll give it just a quick
recap so
just to sort of refresh our memories of
where we're at
then we'll get into a little bit of
discussion here on the new mexico dot
air service enhancement
this is a very recent uh uh
occurrence a very recent development uh
that could impact air service here at
las cruces international airport
we'll talk a little bit about
what we're calling the las cruces air
alliance
give you a little bit of background on
what that is and and and how we see it
benefiting um air service and and other
uh future opportunities uh and then
we'll do some q a
so it's my privilege at this time to
introduce with me our consultant team
as prime consultant we have uh dubois
and king and guy rowell we'll be
representing them and be talking a
little bit about
infrastructure and improvements and some
of the opportunities in those realms
also
with working with du bois and king is
airplaners and we have kent myers and
bill thompsich
and they will talk about
an update the update on u.s service
as well as
air service development and its impact
here in las cruces so without any more
ado i'm going to turn it over to mr guy
rowell thank you
thank you andy
good afternoon mr brown nice seeing you
again good afternoon thank you mayor pro
tem and and uh other uh city councilors
yeah today i was gonna you would just um
i will introduce yourself thank you
thank you yeah i am guy ruel i'm with
dubois and king and we're representing
the airport as a a teaming partner as a
consultant for the airport
and
as andy had alluded to we want to talk
about the infrastructure updates at the
airfield and how it relates specifically
to air service
so you know there are many current
studies that are underway at the airport
at this time
each of which are considering air
service
as many of you are aware you know the
airport has been looking at interstate
air service for quite some time and as
andy alluded to and we'll give an update
on the most recent uh air service
enhancement act that was released from
and from santa fe and current
legislation um at the state
where you know the studies that we're uh
currently involved in are looking at the
required air you know the runway lengths
and strengths what's important is the
runway links and strengths are
will support of course the
current and ongoing general aviation
uh flights that are utilizing the
airfield but we need to when the fa
would like the airport to always plan it
for the 20-year planning period
and
you know the the current uh planning
period of course with air service on the
near horizon could uh include and will
include you know aircraft that the
airport will currently support but in
the 20-year horizon there's also going
to be some development and potential for
a slightly larger aircraft and we want
to ensure that the planning studies
include the runway lengths and the
strength of the runway to support these
larger aircraft
we're looking of course in all of our
planning studies taxiway wits
apron as well the spatial needs
meaning in front of the current terminal
building
will the
aircraft that are currently using the
airfield be able to if you will mix with
general aviation and other commercial
aircraft and those spatial needs for the
aprons we want to look at that for the
current and future commercial aircraft
in addition
to the terminal areas and the
the runway lengths and taxiways we also
want to look at the short medium and
long-term
spatial needs for the terminal building
by way of example we'll uh we'll talk
soon about intra-state meaning within
the state of new mexico but and and so
short-term needs could include uh and
we'll we'll talk about that in a minute
the the spatial needs but then as larger
aircraft come in and start utilizing the
airfield and the uh the development of
of uh more frequent um uh aircraft
you know terminal needs are going to
have to be considered and they are being
considered in all of our studies
the support for short medium and long
term of course are going to have to also
include
the continued growth of the general
aviation populace at the airfield it's a
very robust
in my opinion uh general aviation
community
but what's important is and i've worked
on a lot of larger airports where
general aviation sometimes gets pushed
to the side when you bring in commercial
aircraft and that's not going that can't
be the case at the airfield it's a it's
an airfield that's
very robust as it relates to general
aviation but we want to make sure as
commercial aircraft come in that that's
not
hampered or or dissuaded
non-sterile
we consider that non-sterile you go to
airports to fly within the united states
sterile is when you have to pass through
tsa and initially with the interest
state development which we'll talk more
at length in a bit
there's that potential where there could
just be non-sterile meaning flying
directly from las cruces
all the way to albuquerque and not
having to have tsa on the airfield and
that's a short-term
discussion that in consideration that we
are
we are considering
sterile of course could include
intrastate uh it's possible that you
could go from
las cruces to albuquerque and in that
go to albuquerque and go from a sterile
area at las cruces to a sterile area at
albuquerque and then go on an uh flight
across the united states without having
to pass through tsa once again so these
are considerations that we're looking at
as we develop the airfield
we're going to have to make sure that
the instrument approach procedures for
the airfield are considered meaning that
right now the airfield has a lot of
instrumentation that the faa is funded
and is maintaining the airport as they
develop and lengthen runways we'll need
to consider
improved instrument approach procedures
so that when aircraft do utilize the
airfield they're able to utilize it in a
way that frankly they're not hampered
meaning if approach procedures for
another runway
when it's extended are not considered
then the the extension really is just
hampered by the fact that it's not can't
be utilized during bad weather
conditions or
meteorological conditions
we we of course i know it's near and
dear to the city and to andy as well at
the airport is constructing innovative
and sustainable infrastructure we you
know we want to work closely with the
airport utilizing all of our best
management practices as it relates to
innovation and sustainable
infrastructure
whether that's the way that they use
water
solar
or how aircraft and airport equipment
are fueled so we'll consider that in all
of our planning studies
a few last bullets i just wanted to take
a minute and i did allude to short-term
long-term or immediate well-medium term
and long term developments at the
airport and the studies that are going
on so i wanted to kind of quantify that
so short term for me as an aviation
planner is a one to year one to three
year time period in which
temporary a temporary terminal building
the needs for
intra or even inter-state temporarily so
that so that aircraft can come in
they can operate meaning a commercial
airline and operate as soon as
the airport needs that we are
considering that and it is quite
doable in fact air planners and du bois
and king are currently working at an
airport in the region that we're giving
them those short-term
opportunities so that they can not be
hampered by three to five year
construction windows
within the one to three year
period of course we've already alluded
to the runways aprons and approaches but
also near and dear i know in the 2017
strategic plan for the city one of the
uh goals was to have 20 000 aircraft
emplainments
at las cruces by 2022.
and the you know the aircraft that we're
going to that air planners is working
closely with
airlines
is to find an aircraft
that would be able to provide
enough seats
so that
within the one to three year window
those ten thousand emplainments are
achievable at a minimum now i know the
city council would like to see 20.
frankly one ember 175 it's a 70
passenger aircraft one flight a day
would inc would would enable the
airfield to see over 20 000 employments
a year so
the the aircraft we're looking at and
all of the planning in the
infrastructure meaning the terminal
is is being considered so that we can
meet those goals
i do want to just uh briefly mention
that when it comes to a funding
perspective
currently the airport is funded by the
faa at about a hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a year because it's
considered a non-primary entitlement
airport
when the airport receives ten or uh
demonstrates ten thousand employments a
year that funding will be um
more than seven times that it'll go from
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
year to a million
so it's it's that you know i know the
city council said twenty thousand when i
saw it from afar uh ten thousand came to
mind and that's a huge ben benchmark for
the airfield it's very important our
planning is considering that
medium term i consider four to ten years
so again consider one to three years
temporary terminals put in place
interest state potentially even in tr
interstate are have begun
the faa in new mexico d.o.t sees that
there is actual air service
re-established here at the airport
and
4-10 is a proving ground really as far
as i'm concerned with faa in that
continued growth of the air service
which would include higher frequency
larger aircraft more passengers
and enable the airport to begin to get
that additional funding from the faa
this is in that four to ten year window
and then improvements such as
improvements to building 8960 which is a
budding building on the airfield where
customs could be established a true
customs facility currently you know
customs and border protection is is act
on call they do come to the airfield if
there's an international flight
it's not really efficient and frankly uh
just doing some improvements to 8960
would enable the airport to be a port of
embarkation
and
have that established customs with
full-time customs employees at the
airfield so that they could receive and
receive those international flights
that's in the four to ten year window
lastly i would say long term is when air
service is sustainable um you know our
mantra always is safety first then
sustainability and then growth
um you know we don't want to build
infrastructure that is not sustainable
it's going to so so we want to make sure
that it's sustainable within that uh
long-term window and in that case once
it's sustainable and air services proven
um it would be important at that point
to be designing constructing and
operating the commercial terminal
building which would be on the east side
of the airfield it's in the current
action plan for the airfield it's a
fairly large terminal
it's important that the council
understands from my perspective is the
short-term and medium-term fixes really
will enable the airport to
establish a sustainable air service but
we're also
there's a cost benefit to that for every
commercial flight that comes into the
general
terminal area you're going to hamper if
you will there's going to be some sort
of impacts to general aviation so the
long-term goal would be to establish a
stand-alone commercial terminal building
on the east side of the airfield so that
you have continued you just transfer all
the air service to the other side of the
airfield general aviation continues to
grow as well as the commercial flights
so
with that i'm going to
pass this off to my colleague with air
planners mr bill thompsich
thank you guy hello
[Music]
thank you guy my name is bill thompsich
pleasure to be here this is my second
visit to the city of las cruces
the first one was
two years ago in late october
and when we had a chance to get to know
some of the people in this community
and a lot has happened since and i
really want to focus my remarks today on
timing and why timing is of the essence
this is a chart that i track very
closely because it shows what's
happening in the entire united states
it's basically a chart that represents
total tsa throughput numbers at all
airports across the u.s the gray lines
across the top represent
what happened in 2019 kind of as the
benchmark year
the red line it shows what happened in
2020 and where things really fell off
the cliff as soon as the pandemic hit in
mid-march and then air transportation
hit rock bottom during the month of
april and you can see it was a pretty
slow recovery throughout the rest of
2020 and i point this out because it was
last september 28th right about here
where we actually did a virtual
presentation completing phase one of uh
some of the studies that we've been
engaged with i believe you all were part
of that zoom meeting uh like i said it
was on september 28th and i'm going to
touch briefly on on what's happened some
of the results of what was shared then
but since that point in time things
remain fairly static throughout the rest
of the calendar year obviously you saw
some spikes over the christmas holidays
and then a lull this blue area
represents what's happened year to date
here in 2021. uh we certainly saw a lull
in january and february but then things
started bouncing back very quickly
throughout the industry
particularly the last several months in
fact there is even one day earlier this
month where the total employment
surpassed this same comparable day from
one year ago and since the first of july
there have actually been
when i produced a slide there were nine
days with greater than two million
travelers in the u.s
there have been five more days since
including yesterday so there are now 14
days in the day of july were exceeded 2
million travelers
and then we focused on it regionally and
and what's happening one of the things
that we do with the other airport
clients that we work with is we take a
look at what's happening at some of
their peer airports and and how their
performance compares relatively speaking
we work with another client airport here
in new mexico it's a city of hobbs so
we're looking closely at what's
happening around the region and i
thought it was especially insightful to
see what's happening at el paso at the
top of this list these are monthly load
factors that have taken place since the
depth of the pandemic last april and for
the past three months in february march
and april the el paso airport has
actually had the highest load factors of
any airport across the region this
includes some of the major hub airports
like american airlines dfw and phoenix
being two major hubs
along with their system they seem to be
performing very well united has hubs in
denver and houston
not performing quite as well as american
and then you see all the other airports
across west texas and new mexico
further on down the list so the fact
that el paso is seeing really strong
results right now is is really important
so finally what i want to conclude my
remarks on is just to give you a little
reminder of
we the presentation we made last
september is a 25-page deck and our
colleague david becker from rrc did most
of the presenting of a lot of research
and methodology but i just want to
remind everyone here that the
conclusions of that presentation was we
believe there are about 650 inbound and
outbound travelers um from the to either
to or from the las cruces area who are
currently flying through the el paso
airport this represents roughly 14
percent of their total annual
employments of almost a quarter of a
million and that is a very significant
number because
that will certainly be enough demand to
support we believe two to four daily
interstate flights on 50 to 76 passenger
aircraft
most of if you follow the airline
industry you probably know that 50
seaters are kind of on their way out but
we're really focusing on 65 70 or even
76 seaters because those are the
aircraft that are most plentiful right
now and probably the best fit for a
startup market like this
finally in terms of timing
they say timing is of the essence and so
in this case
we actually had a meeting with american
airlines just the week before last and
we were talking about some opportunities
for another client the year after next
and as you can see with employment's
bouncing back across the entire united
states there's suddenly pressure on the
airlines to
allocate resources amongst competing
airports there are a total of 19
airports that submitted proposed uh
requests to the u.s department of
transportation for the scassidy grant uh
only a handful of which were actually
going to be awarded so the timing is
perfect right now uh to really get
things started on this air service
development project great that we have
guy working on the facility improvements
because that's going to be the first
prerequisite to make that happen but
there's something else that has happened
in terms of timing and this was not
anticipated when we spoke with you last
september and that is the development uh
or the announcement of the new mexico
dot air service enhancement act that
just happened in april so with that i am
going to transition to my partner kent
myers and have him tell you a lot more
about that thank you
thank you
thanks bill my name is kent myers i'm
president of air planters uh good to see
everybody again and good to see people
in person it's been
quite a journey from that standpoint
bill mentioned the new mexico department
of transportation air service
enhancement act
for
the state of new mexico this is
legislation that was passed
in the earlier this year in in late
april
in the legislation
session and it's really a cooperative
funding opportunity for reliable
interstate scheduled air service
the grants available up to
1.75 million dollars each year for a
two-year requirement so it's really a
3.5 million dollar
proposal for communities that want to
apply for the grant
there is a requirement for the local
community of 10
match of that
as far as successful awardees are
concerned
the opportunity for las cruces is to
develop
frequent year-round air service from
here to albuquerque and maybe santa fe
during the legislation session okay
that's all that it will produce for us
and it will be
only within those those two cities
that's what we're going to target
ironically
during the time frame where we did our
research
thanks to david becker okay brilliant
kind of guy
he did ask in the business community as
well as the residential
uh individuals some of the top
airports that people wanted to fly to
ironically
albuquerque is number three just behind
dallas and
phoenix
so it fits the model
and it also fits the amount of demand
in in the 2000
1920 survey
approximately 18 000 annual trips would
be produced
in a calendar year between las cruces
and albuquerque and albuquerque and las
cruces or about 50 people a day each way
so
this nine passenger aircraft we feel
will have lots of demand
for that service depends on the
frequency that we can offer it what days
of the week we all have to develop that
from that standpoint with our
grant application the next step we would
like a consensus for the council to move
forward because we've never really
presented this to you if this is new as
opposed to the larger service with a
network carrier
the department of transportation
in new mexico has not even published
the final
rules and regulations associated with
this legislation i can't answer all the
questions as it relates to this because
it's not published we create an rfp
to solicit the interest and select air
carriers we already have three care
carriers interested in bidding on it
we submit the grant application and then
we come back to the council for approval
upon a
successful grant award
pretty simple and straightforward from
that aspect
i'm going to turn it over to andy as it
relates to some of the cost
thank you very much kent
andy hume uh airport administrator
so as we outlined at the in a previous
slide the the grant there are certain
things we do know about the grant number
one
it's uh the
the highest grant amount you can receive
up to 1.75 million dollars
per year for two years
uh totaling 3.5 million dollars
there is a requirement on behalf of the
municipality or the successful awardee
of 10 match so this would be 175 000 per
year 350
excuse me 350 000
over two years so basically we'd be
taking 350 000 and leveraging that to
get 3.5 million total for this program
in addition uh there is a requirement in
the grant for uh setting aside some
money for marketing um so we would be
doing that and over two years we would
we would assume approximately fifty
thousand dollars so
uh
for us to participate we estimate the
total cost to be four hundred thousand
dollars over a two year period
to leverage against that three point
five million dollar program
and one thing i want to mention just uh
just
for for
to make sure it's 100 percent clear
is
we've been talking about two very
different types of
air carrier service in trust state
and inter-state all along we've been
talking about interstate that's what we
presented on in september
the idea of entrust date just sort of
kind of appeared because the state
legislature approved this act
and
said okay well here it is and it was
approved and so we said you know what
this could be a good idea to get service
started a little more quickly as we
continue to work the interstate
route so our interstate process so i
wanted to make sure that was clear with
with you all at city council
what i want to do for just another
minute or two is introduce this idea of
a las cruces air alliance
in
pretty much every case when you're
looking
at either intra or interstate service
putting together a public-private
partnership is really essential for this
to be successful
and so
what we've seen is
communities all over the u.s and
including in new mexico
hobbs is a good example of of an air
alliance
these alliances come together
and really encourage a grassroots level
support for
air service it's not just the city or
the county taking you know and and
pushing something through it's really
truly a community effort and you look at
you want to look at that from
from again a guy mentioned the
sustainability role you really want to
look at community buy-in to get that
sustainability long-term
so i'm very excited to say that las
cruces air alliance is in its developing
stages
we're very happy to see that this
collaboration is beginning we have some
excellent primary partners
uh the greater las cruces chamber of
commerce movida virgin galactic msu and
the business community and some at large
positions as well and really the key i
want to focus on is the title
connecting las cruces with new mexico
the us and beyond
we we had a great visioning session with
the air alliance and really out of this
came this vision that we have for the
airport uh connecting that can mean a
lot of different things it could mean
the flight you're connecting from one
city to another could mean you're
connecting with a friend or a family
member because you're going on that trip
and making those connections could be
business connections
and when we look at new mexico we've
talked about intra-state
connecting with albuquerque possibly
since
santa fe
but then what other possibilities are
there for interest state
maybe there are others in the future to
explore
certainly we talked about connecting to
the us
what does that look like maybe dfw
phoenix other connections
and the most intriguing is beyond
our partnership with virgin galactic is
going to be really key in this
they
we want to make sure that we have an
outstanding relationship with them
particularly as their
activities really grow out at spaceport
america so
connecting
las cruces with new mexico the u.s and
beyond we're very excited about this as
a long-term vision for the airport
and with that mayor pro tem thank you
very very much i'd like to thank all the
presenters here and we will stand for
any questions or comments thank you andy
i'm looking lucky
[Music]
council counselor
um
yeah let's do it
[Laughter]
let's get her done okay it's been a long
time waiting i recall about uh
oh the year
20 what did i write down here 2010 2011
2012.
when i was on the advisory committee for
the airport
there was a proposal
for intra
state service to albuquerque
santa fe la
la
los alamos and
ruidoso was also mentioned at the same
time
and they were only asking for about
300 to hundred thousand dollars
um
uh um
what do you call it when when you
support a project like that um cost
share not cost share that's a no subsidy
subsidy that from the city
um
so um
at that time it was in the middle of the
recession
and or near the end of it maybe and
there was just no money in the budget so
we just didn't really think very hard
about it so um
now now is the time i think this is the
time to get her done
we have to strike while the iron's hot
and so
yes let's get her done
that sounds very interesting i'm looking
for a flight this friday night to go to
albuquerque so
we're good
thank you man uh
uh mayor burcham
thank you councillor sore councillor
thank you mayor pro-tem thank you so
much andy and all everyone who presented
and has worked hard on this i think
honestly it's very exciting um honestly
my only question is
um
on council consensus what do you have to
bring something forth to a
uh on an official resolution
or how will that happen
um
thank you very much uh councillor
benkomo
mayor portem
we actually will be bringing forward a
resolution to city council i believe
we're scheduled on the 16th of august um
so
yes thank you very much for that we will
be bringing that um and it's it's sort
of
it's very general to support moving
forward with the air service uh one
thing i do want to point out as we did
in september and we're doing today we're
we're going to be regularly back before
city council to let you all know what
our progress is
and then particularly when it gets into
going out to rfp and selecting a
vendor and so on we will go through all
the procurement processes and then come
back to city council
thank you
thank you councillor bingkoma
council yes councillor beta stevie
thank you mayor protem thank you andy
and thank you to all of our guests for
joining us today um my question is
regarding the uh the matching funds have
we thought is that going to be out of
general funds or have we thought about
that plan
thank you very much councillor abe
testuvi mayor protem
i don't know that we've specifically
identified a source of the funding yet
we sort of wanted to get consensus first
from the from council to move forward
and then we'll be working with city
administration uh to identify the
funding source for those okay and so by
the time you have a resolution towards
us then we'll probably have that
identified uh we will make sure to work
with city city administration on that
thank you okay thank you and thank you
mary part time
thank you councilman bethesduvi yeah
thank you andy and our guests um
i this has been a priority for me since
i got elected and as we were right
putting the strategic plan together
counselor sword
um
and and you know at one time people were
like very against it um
instead economic development depart
director not the current one
and and we just had a vision and we want
to see it happen and i was one of those
individuals that was flying out of that
airport
with children right because i worked at
children youth and families department
flying children you know to residential
treatment facilities for appointments
and whatnot and and for me and i think
it's you know when you have a vision i'm
really excited about what i've seen i
had an opportunity as i shared um
at a regular council meeting um was it
last week yeah
last week
and
we had a pancake breakfast and it was
one of the first times that i had been
out there for a significant amount of
time there was so many people
um and then we got an opportunity to
tour the the
your office space andy and um i'm really
impressed and
there's some re there's some really
exciting things that are that are
happening so
um i just had a couple of questions um
when do we anticipate
learning more
about the grant and what is is
you know specific to that grant when do
you
um you have an approximation time that
we'll hear more
mayor pro tem thank you for that
question we don't have a specific date
although mr myers and i did attend a
virtual meeting with new mexico d.o.t
our our city was actually the only city
represented at that virtual meeting
where we had an opportunity to ask
questions and and get input
a specific date was not announced we are
anticipating them imminently so
um could we could get them tomorrow or
we might get them another week or two
but we will
we will let you know as soon as we do
get them so andy as you were waiting on
that i'm sure you're planning putting
the report your grant together if you
will i mean
how do you select um sort of the dates
and and times that we'll be having
flights out of there into albuquerque
and santa fe how is that decision being
made
well we're working with air planners
they're very tied into the broader
network and how to put together those
types of schedules so we will be working
with them on what that scheduling looks
like
and then also
working with them on structuring a scope
of work for the rfp
and then ultimately submitting that rfp
to the new mexico d.o.t
so to hopefully be a successful awardee
thank you auntie i'm excited i think i
agree we should
charge forward and good luck appreciate
all the work that you've put into you
should be very proud we're i'm proud of
you andy and the work that your staff is
doing over there thank you to our guests
um
upward and onward
is there any other um
yes i'm councillor flores yes
thank you so much uh madame
uh mayor pro-tem
and and thank you andy and thank you
kent and bill and gee
for uh
your words your very and your hard work
on this
as you all know i'm the liaison
to the airport advisory board and andy
has asked me to join
the airport alliance in their meetings
which has been absolutely wonderful and
um
and there's no question that this is
definitely an economic driver there's
just no question i think that this is
going to be the most
powerful
source of economic development
for the city
for immediate and i something that dr
bayatas can definitely
assess
and hopefully attest to in the very near
future
i'd like to note that jason lasich
is uh in our audience today um he's been
on the test uh
and were you in the most recent uh
spaceport no it was the the test
and we saw him about a few days
afterwards and he was still out in space
he was just a space case and now not
really he was just very excited about
all of that and then debbie moore of
course
who has been instrumental in that
airport alliance and
and i
there's been a lot of
ghee has been out here guy
ruel has been out here for gosh about
two weeks already and
just getting to know
the city and understanding
uh how the city works uh the dynamics of
the
of the population and uh
and
andy has been working very hard to make
sure that all the runways are set up
and um the air service that air planners
is looking at
is definitely
to be compatible with the air service
they're looking at and
[Music]
and
i know that
somebody mentioned i guess it was andy
or maybe guy
last year when this was present last
fall
we were looking at interstate but
interest date is definitely going to be
what we can achieve right now
and that and that grant
is going to make it a viable
um
and the matching funds will just have to
come out of somebody's
piggy bank or some accounting has to be
done and the money will be there i'm
sure thank you and
thank you for nodding to that
evo
um and i and i really want to thank andy
uh for um
you know i've said this before
and uh
right around the time that andy became
the um
the
it was before you became the interim uh
administrator at the airport uh we came
within
uh the you know the skin of our teeth
we almost lost our 139 certification at
the airport
so i want to thank andy for all of his
hard work and vision
and working well with air planters and
especially with
dubois
du bois and king
in making sure that our airport is is
coming back to life
and
and is working also very well with the
advisory
uh the advisory board which can be
really really really tough
because they're the ones that use the
airport and pretty much kept it going
when
the city pretty much fell asleep at the
wheel quite frankly
so i want to acknowledge everyone who's
made it possible to bring it to this
point
uh thank you very much madam
mayor pro tem and thank you mr pili and
thank you uh ikani
for being the liaison to the uh not the
liaison but
oversight
and thank you again andy thank you
everyone
thank you councillor flores councillor
sword
thank you madam
mayor pro tem
um a couple questions did come to mind
as as we were talking here
um
there was talk rather briefly about
improvements to the infrastructure at
the airport are
our infrastructure at the airport or is
it good enough for this intra-state uh
service right now
uh
councillor sword mayor protem yes okay
so we don't need to put any money into
that uh at the moment
i'm sure there's going to be future
improvements needed
but a 200 200 000 a year is a small
spice just pay for out of our budget to
provide this inter intrastate
service
there was one other thing too
actually there isn't because i don't
have it here so i'm good thank you
counselor thank you very much
thank you andy i'm going to ask for any
public comment
public comment on this item
see none
okay andy do you have what you need from
us
yes yes move forward thank you mayor pro
tem thank you council appreciate it
thank you andy thank you andy
next on our agenda 3.2 visit las cruces
update work session number 21-030
miller hernandez
i don't see miss
miller hernandez
she's actually in the other councils
yeah she'll be here and she's actually
here
rochelle you have your entourage here
hello visit las cruces staff welcome
[Music]
oh yes
in case people don't know there's some
great merchandise that visit las cruces
t-shirts
our water bar bottles we're beautiful
by the way highlighters
masks
okay we're just waiting for um
rochelle yes is she on her way
okay
do we have entertainment in the meantime
[Music]
just me
no i'm just kidding
maybe not not jokes no
hello mayor pro tem counselors city
manager how are you today good how are
you i'm good i apologize i have the
world's
most nervous bladder so i had to get in
there one more time
to be nervous about it right i know
thank you in front of well we're just so
passionate about tourism so we've been
preparing for this for quite some time
and i i just wanted to give you a little
backstory on that so
i'm i'm a little disappointed counselor
vasquez isn't here today
because in 2019 at a presentation
uh by dr griselda martinez he
said
what's going on with that visit las
cruces director's position
and i can't wait till that person comes
on board so i can get a marketing
tourism update
so
on that day i thought to myself if i get
this job this one going to be one of my
priorities
and then during my interview i i said
the same thing and then i got the job
and then we were all sent home two days
later
for the pandemic
so now
when ikani came on board i told him i
want to do this
and now that was in january and and now
it is july so
we're excited to be here
so thank you very much i'm excited to
see you and have your entourage here yes
thank you we brought the entire team
today so you could meet them thank you
so i wanted to start off with um
who we are as as visit las cruces
because um there's definitely different
interpretations
of what visit las cruces does and
i could read a really lengthy
mission statement but i prefer to just
keep it simple and easy and and remind
everyone of our purpose statement in the
peak performance
that states the purpose of visit las
cruces the program
is to provide tourism development and
destination marketing services to
current and potential overnight
travelers
so they can come explore experience and
discover what las cruces has to offer
so to this end
we not only want to give every visitor a
memorable experience we strive to make a
significant positive economic impact to
our community
there are 10 primary areas of focus at
visit las cruces so first of all many of
you have been to our office and and
thank you for visiting us but we are the
official visitor center
and of las cruces and with the closure
of the um
a few years ago a few years ago of the
state-run visitor center in anthony we
are unofficially
the
visitors center for southern new mexico
i'd like to introduce sonia banuelos
right here many of you have met her she
is our visitors
information specialist and now our
acting distribution special
information specialist
she greets and provides information to
thousands of visitors each year as well
as sends out thousands of collateral all
over the world and she's often
the first contact people have with our
city government and sometimes the only
contact she has with our city government
thank you sonia
our other areas of focus include special
programs event support and management
conventions and meetings
oversight of the convention center
management company
sports outdoor recreation leisure and
group travel special campaigns and media
marketing
so we actually encompass quite a bit
uh keeping that in mind i'd like to
briefly introduce our team so i i've
worked for the city for 13 years at the
at visit las cruces sonya has been with
us 22 years
leslie galbadon who is our
administrative assistant acting
communication specialist four years she
could not be here today but she's been
with us four years
uh
veronica quesada our sales and services
coordinator has been with the city 14
years
albert herrera our senior sales manager
and convention sales manager eight years
ed carnathan our sports sales manager
has been with us 16 years and if you've
never met him in person you've
definitely heard his voice as he is the
official voice of the aggies
and
hillary dutch here our outdoor
recreation sales manager has been with
the city eight years and paul dalgren
is our media publications manager he
interned with us
i think we think we decided it was 10
years ago and now has been with us for
three years
liz also started as intern with the city
in addition to our staff there is a cvv
advisory board which comprises of our
chair and a baron with town townplay
suites in fairfield inn bella alvarez
alvarez with hotel and kanto and
heritage hotels craig massey with new
mexico farm and ranch heritage museum
russell hernandez with salud de mesa and
deborah marks with the nmsu foundation
so to concentrate on the impact of
tourism i know a couple weeks ago we
talked about the impact
that covet had on tourism but today i
wanted to concentrate on
how tourism
outside of the pandemic affects our
community so tourism
generates state and local taxes so
before the pandemic the tourism industry
in las cruces was trending for its best
year yet
it was the fasting fastest growing job
sector in the state
and this slide shows you that
not only does it generate state and
local taxes that support local
businesses it also supports state and
local governments and essential services
for our residents without draining those
same resources so in other words
people come to visit and they spend
money
on lodging food retail leisure
and then they go home but then hopefully
they come back again and sometimes they
even come back and live here so a person
visits a city at least three to four
times before deciding to relocate
themselves their families and their
businesses and this is something we
brought up when we spoke about arpa a
couple weeks ago
so
in fy 19 before pre-pandemic las cruces
generated 2.2 million in larger tax
revenues and had approximately 783
visitors
783 000 visitors that stayed in lodging
facilities and the reason i changed that
to state and lodging facilities because
we have many more visitors in that those
are just the ones we can record through
lodgers tax we have people who come to
visit their families and stay
the
ones that stayed in the lodging
facilities that equated to an estimated
economic impact of 80 million dollars
and 12
of our las cruces workforce is dependent
on tourism travel and hospitality jobs
another thing that i thought would be
important to share with council is our
funding source so with the exception of
grants
visit las cruces is solely funded by the
lodgers tax which is a five percent
pass-through tax collected each night of
stay
of 30 days or less at hotels motels and
short-term rentals
and a minimum of 50 percent of lodgers
tax proceeds must be spent on
destination marketing and promotion with
the intent to generate overnight stays
and the remaining
must be spent on programs infrastructure
and operations that grow tourism
increase overnight visitation create
jobs and increase visitors spending
so it's very important to understand
arpa is giving us an opportunity that we
did not have in the past because of the
regulations and the rules behind
spending large tax and we have to spend
that money within two years
in addition a 2.50 convention center fee
is collected for each nice day up to 15
days which can only be used for the
convention center bond debt
so if there's a shortfall in the bond
debt then we have to take that from
lodgers tax
i received in the convention center fee
collections
so a question that's been asked of us
over the past couple weeks is our
partnerships within within loss
to be successful we just put a couple
because we didn't have enough room
of all the logos of all the people we
work with not only in our community but
throughout the state and city
departments
and actually nationally so
in order for us to be successful we have
to work collaboratively with our
partners so this includes our community
partners such as nmsu our local chambers
friends of oregon mountain desert peaks
the art council spaceport america and
that list goes on and on but also
we work with our city departments very
closely which includes park and
recreation economic development grants
and i started writing mount and
basically we work with every gis we work
with every department you can think of
which is amazing
but working with our state and regional
national and national partners is also
very important and that would include
our
the tourism department
the restaurant association meeting
planners international the new mexico
hospitality association and also our
destination
partners which is el paso trc van horn
albuquerque santa fe and others we
actually do work with el paso
selling our region because we have our
el paso aurora's
las cruces region in southern new mexico
and el paso feels some of the pain we
feel
since we're down south sometimes they
forget about us right well el paso feels
that way too in texas so we we try to
work together and and remember make them
remember that we're here
um
so our i brought my entire team today
because they are the experts in their
areas
i
encourage full ownership of their
markets and so i will now pass the
presentation to liz vega to present on
special programs and event support
good afternoon mayor pro tem and city
council liz vega event manager with
visit las cruces
as rachelle mentioned i will be speaking
to you today about some of our special
programs that we're going to be focusing
on this coming fiscal year and beyond
i wanted to start with our arrival to
departure customer service training also
known as a2d
this is a training program that was
brought to us a few years ago by the new
mexico hospitality association
it consists of two parts an online
learning module that highlights
specifics about las cruces and customer
service best practices
and a more interactive live class
the live class runs about an hour and
it's the chance for visit las cruces
staff as facilitators to check in with
any questions on the material covered in
the online portion
and to focus in on tailored content
and the best part about the course is
that we offer it free of charge in the
past year the live class has included a
20-minute section on space tourism
highlighting spaceport america and
virgin galactic
we're also expanding the live class to
include outdoor recreation opportunities
and
itineraries over the past four years we
have trained 300 plus individuals within
our community including city staff
local volunteer organizations
hospitality partners and private
business
during the pandemic we quickly pivoted
to offer a recorded live class to allow
interested parties to continue their
learning
this year we offered live zoom classes
for the new mexico farm and heritage
ranch museum staff and volunteers
as well as enchanted sun realty group it
is also a required course for nmsu's
hotel restaurant and tourism management
program and we estimate approximately
200 students have completed the a2d
class in the last couple years
our sales and services coordinator
veronica casada is the lead on this
program and is already scheduling the
next cohort of community members that
will become atd visitor champions
the next program i would like to
highlight is monuments to main street
this is a marketing campaign and event
calendar for the month of september
we partner with friends of the oregon
mountains desert peaks and other local
outdoor recreation businesses and
organizations
to gather the wide array of events and
experiences that occur in the month of
september
we then market them regionally and
nationally as a cohesive unit to inspire
visitors to add on days to their stay
because of the unique experiences and
events offered either free or at low
cost
after taking a hiatus in 2020 we're
excited to revamp this monumental
campaign
pet travel might surprise you to be
listed here but our research has led us
to embrace this travel trend as one that
can bring significant hospitality
dollars and visitors into our city
in the last 10 years spending on pets
rose over 70 percent
making it a 103 billion dollar industry
in 2020.
in previous industry surveys it's been
found that over half of pet owners
determine their vacation destinations on
pet friendliness
visit las cruces has taken steps to
capitalize on this niche travel market
by including a pet friendly page on our
new on our new website as well as
including it in our visual assets
we are also in the process of creating
pet trails that would cover las cruces
and day trip areas that include pet
friendly establishments restaurants
attractions and lodging
the next special program is explore to
live a concept that was initially
developed pre-pandemic that we hope to
revive in a pilot program this fall and
offer twice a year
this campaign is geared towards
individuals interested in finding a new
community to call home
and stopping over in las cruces for a
long weekend to see if we're the right
fit
we hope to tailor the fall experience
towards retirees looking for an active
community to thrive in
and the spring offering towards young
and mid-level professionals looking to
take that next step in their career
the long weekend would include a welcome
reception where visitors can meet with
chamber representatives realtors job
recruiters
economic development department staff
and other community members
they would have the weekend to explore
the city and meet with any professionals
to assist with their relocation
we would partner with our hotels to
ensure a special rate
and also plan this weekend around an
existing community celebration like the
las cruces space festival
in spring or the monuments to main
street kickoff fiesta in the fall
we see this program as a way to
capitalize on visitors spending and to
assist with workforce development
moving on to briefly touch upon cannabis
events we know you will be receiving a
presentation later this session but we
wanted to make you aware that we are
researching best practices when it comes
to the resources we can offer to support
cannabis events in our community
as we create our framework and plans we
will keep interested parties updated
and lastly on special programs i want to
talk about tailored conferences and tour
group experiences
these pop up from time to time for our
larger conferences or even as a regional
partnership with conferences or groups
visiting el paso
an example of this is new mexico
municipal league
our office assisted in planning and
implementing a 5k race and welcome
reception for attendees
we look forward to more opportunities
like this in the future as a way for our
office to be creative and showcase the
diverse amenities las cruces has to
offer
now on to event support and management
visit las cruces is lucky to partner
with local organizers to make their
event an experience that has the
potential to draw in overnight guests
some of these types of events are listed
here
i really enjoy talking about the las
cruces space festival because of the
amazing growth it has had since its
inception in 2018.
it has collaborators from spaceport
america white sands test facility virgin
galactic
the city and so many others and its
mission is making space for everyone
this specific event shows so much
promise that the state tourism
department chose it to be one of 13
events from across the state to
participate in the pilot program called
siri
strategic events recovery readiness
initiative
visit las cruces is assisting the
volunteer organizers and making the 2022
las cruces space festival one to
remember so mark your calendars for
april 7th through the 10th 2022
another event we have supported its
planning and development is make music
day
this is an internationally celebrated
music program that occurs every june
21st
2021 was the second year the las cruces
chapter put together programming for the
community
visit las cruces along with the donaiona
arts council las cruces ux local
musicians interested community members
and the city's parks and recreation
department made up the planning
committee
this year's event was a great success as
we were easing out of covet restrictions
we were even able to secure sponsorship
from a national mariachi instrument
manufacturer h jimenez
hmns sent us a violin and a guitar to
give away to the new mexico advocates
for the arts which will be used to
instruct a new generation of youth
mariachis
next we have spaceport america cup
spaceport america cup is a very unique
event that deserves more attention for
the huge impact it makes to our
community year after year it's an annual
university rocketry competition and in
2019 brought over 1400 students
from around the
america and 20 countries across the
world to our community for a week of
competition and recruitment
we look forward to continuing the
partnership with our friends at
spaceport america to make the 2022
offering the most successful yet
and to ensure that the many students who
visit las cruces get to experience our
great hospitality at restaurants hotels
and attractions during their stay
the las cruces international film
festival and baton memorial death march
are two established events that bring in
overnight guests and also events that
visit las cruces has partnered with for
years a specific example of the
developing partnership is the baton
march moving its registration pickup
from white sands missile range to las
cruces convention center
this allowed us to set up a table and
engage with thousands of marchers who
participate in this amazing event each
year
we were able to supply them with
information and souvenirs and encourage
them to become repeat visitors at other
times during the year
these types of interactions are so
important because they allow us to
capture contact information
and send relevant material to interested
parties to keep las cruces top of mind
when they are looking for vacation spots
in the future
there are many more examples of event
support and management that visit las
cruces is offered and will offer so stay
tuned to our social channels and website
for the most up-to-date information on
our events and those of our community
partners
with that i will turn it over to my
colleague albert herrera
[Music]
good afternoon mayor pro tem and city
council members i'm albert herrera
senior sales manager for visit las
cruces
the primary goal of the sales team is to
promote las cruces as a desired
destination to generate overnight stays
and visitor spending this is done
through convention meetings convention
and meetings sporting events outdoor
recreation sales and services leisure
and group tours familiarization
tours as well as itineraries essentially
i like to say we're the storytellers of
our city
we are we are a city rich in history
culture and hospitality it is here where
convention convention groups along with
sporting groups and tour groups can tour
the new mexico farm and ranch heritage
museum enjoy enjoy the sparkling white
dunes of white sands national park
or visit spaceport america where history
was just made all while enjoying any of
our 320 days of sunshine
we're the second largest convention city
in the state offering roughly about
3 200 sleeping rooms and over 128 000
square feet of flexible event space
which includes a recently expanded las
cruces convention center
convention meeting
meeting attendees generate more lodging
tax and grt per person when compared to
other overnight visitors to our city
some past success include
conferences such as educon a meeting
planner educational conference that we
hosted and left with over 400 pounds of
green chile
400 pounds of green chile
now
liz just spoke but uh liz was back then
was our sales and service coordinator so
conference started liz and i worked
diligently to put this together we
planned every minute minute to minute of
where they're eating where they're
sitting and where they were going and
last minute somebody goes oh what about
green chile
so here we go
liz steps up takes orders 400 pounds
later we are stuffing that tour bus
underneath and sending them they're
sending them home with aroma of the
southwest green chile so true story we
do have pictures unfortunately i wasn't
able to find it to to put it on here on
in time but
true story
um another another amazing conference
that we had was
the hispanic pastoral
musicians regional conference this was a
partnership through the las cruces
catholic diocese
with that by hosting that conference
here in las cruces that led to new
mexico hosting the national conference
now unfortunately las cruces was too
small to host a national conference
however i still like to consider it a
win as it came to new mexico
and lastly the last conference i'd like
to mention is the las cruces is the
society of american tribal writers
national conference a conference where
las cruces gained tremendous amount of
exposure i'll go back i'll go back into
that conference here shortly
we as a sales staff work hard to perfect
our craft informing potential clients
what las cruces has to offer through the
power of storytelling we are the lays
onto the city when we travel out we like
to tell exactly
what las cruces is all about we are not
san francisco we are not large cities
which have a major attraction we are off
the beaten path and we're okay with that
it's just it's our job to make sure to
let them know what we do have to offer
we're consistently networking with
organizations event directors meeting
planners and key potential influencers
to inform them on las cruces ways of
reaching potential clients
that have proven to be productive are
attending trade shows quarterly
newsletters mailing campaigns along with
familiarization tours
we have a proven success rate on
capturing the business when hosting a
fam tour
fam tours essentially are our tours
whenever we invite clienteles to
possibly come to las cruces and show
them what las cruces is all about um as
mentioned we we don't have those major
destination
tribal attractions right once we can get
them to las cruces we can capture it i
know we can um our track record for that
is proven every single person that i've
ever brought out for a familiarization
tour has booked las cruces um there's
only been one that hasn't and that was
due to pandemic um and that conference
was a conference that happened every
four years so now we have to wait eight
years
to possibly get that so the next four
years we'll work to possibly get that
one back
once clients agree to come come to a
hosted visit to las cruces they fall in
love with our area many of the past
success conference all attended a
familiarization tour
partnerships and relationships play a
key factor in finding business amongst
our industry going back to the american
society of tribal writers national
conference that was a collaboration
between el paso and las cruces las
cruces las cruces received the rfp we
looked it over as a team and said you
know what this would be amazing for our
region however we are too small
instead of just letting the bid go to
the side and just resting it and say you
know what
telling the about an organization
organization organizer thank you but no
thank you
we reached out to visit el paso and said
you know what we found we have a
opportunity
that we can work together
and therefore we would love to help you
put this together
there's one component in there that we
love to have which would be the board
meeting the boarding meeting was three
days of a meeting with 25 people three
days prior to the conference
el paso looked at it said this would be
great for us
they they put the bid together submitted
it and they essentially they won the
national conference
um through that
the exposure that happened within our
region not only in el paso las cruces
macia ridoso all the way up to santa fe
and albuquerque
was huge we had over 300 travel riders
up in our area
they fell in love with our area
that includes our entire region
um veronica veronica salder our current
sales and service coordinator worked
diligently hard to to help me plan that
three-day meeting i mean we had them
anywhere going from going to rads
rectorcade playing games to going out
with the chili pepper institute and
taking a look at different types of
chili that were put together as well as
organizing transportation to and from
every single place that we had so
they had an amazing time
not only
solicit conventions we all
as well as the other markets
we also assist them from planning from
the from the very beginning planning
process to designing agendas and to our
itineraries we are the local liaison
professionals that help enhance their
time in las cruces
according to the meeting planners
international outlook 2021 edition the
last cr the convention industry shows
that meetings will not be back to normal
until the year of 2023.
june of 2020 was for las cruces was
scheduled to be a highlighted month for
conventions in las cruces the majority
of those conferences have rebooked into
the years of 22
23 and 20 25.
coming up in the future i will be
attending a few key industry trade shows
the end of end of august and september
and we'll be able to once again be in
front of meeting planners and key key
planners to promote las cruces as a
convention city i will be looking
forward to those con we're looking for
those conference conferences and
conventions that we've that we feel
would be a right fit for las cruces
thank you for your time i'd like to turn
it over to ed carnegie to speak about
the sports industry market right quick
the sports market brings in the most
participants
of all the areas of our focus
thank you albert
welcome man the voice of aggies
yep
good afternoon mayor pro tem city
council members city manager i'm ed
carnathan i'm the sports sales manager
for visit las cruces
so to talk about
what we do with sports day in and day
out first we'll talk about what i like
to call the end game what is our purpose
right just like albert and just like our
tourism associates we're trying to find
events that we can bring to town it's
going to bring people
from outside the area to come in and
participate in event or to spectate
uh an event and that brings us to the
two uh different kind of events so uh
player participant events and spectator
events player participant event would be
uh any kind of the the uh
baseball softball tournament soccer
events that we have in town where the
participants
uh outnumber the spectators
and then there's spectator events where
uh obviously the spectators will
outnumber the participants so a good uh
example of the player participant event
would be the whole enchilada softball
tournament that we have each and every
year it's a great event and the
participants outnumber the spectators
and then for uh the spectator events
like any time new mexico state plays
utep and football and this in the stands
are full
there's more spectators than there are
participants
for the event so those are basically the
two type of events that we're always
looking out for and trying to
find matches
so we have a great list of sports
facilities that we have here in las
cruces
and we try to make matches with what
they're looking for if they need 12
baseball fields we have 12 baseball
fields if they need seven soccer fields
we have seven soccer fields so we're
trying to make those matches
on a daily basis
teammates you don't have a great team
without teammates
and we have some outstanding teammates
to help us bring in these sporting
events each and every day our number one
teammate is the city of las cruces parks
department parks and rec they do an
outstanding job with our fields here in
las cruces they keep them tip-top shape
we're very excited about the upgrades
and the new additions that are going to
be coming online here in the next
several years
another great uh teammate of ours is las
cruces public schools
they have a lot of great facilities as
well
and they help us each and every time
we're trying to line up those facilities
also new mexico state university with
the athletic department over there and
the great facilities that new mexico
state
has as well
and then our local leagues we have a
whole bunch of different local leagues
here in town for adults slow pitch
softball girls fast pitch
leagues youth baseball youth soccer we
have all kinds of great leagues and
those leagues are our partners as well
probably 90 percent of the events that
we look out
throughout the year you have to have a
local
contact you have to have somebody online
a good example that is you know the
little league baseball championship
we're not able to go and look
at little league because our local
league is not affiliated with little
league so we have to look at events
where our local people are affiliated
with because we need their help to try
to bring them in
new mexico activities association for
all the high school sport championships
that go on throughout the year they're a
great partner as well
talk about real quick about last season
past seasons we've had some great events
here in las cruces over the years
american junior golf association
we've had the biggest loser run walk
here for two years we were able to
get with them
and bring them to town also the u.s arm
wrestling national championship we've
had that in the past here usa bmx
usa softball which used to be called asa
softball now it's all usa softball we've
had them for many tournaments
and then one time a great event we had
the usa softball olympic team
come to town and they played the new
mexico state team and we had a ton of
people we had the turnaway people at the
gates if you saw last night usa softball
defeated japan
and they're going to be the number one
seed for the tournament part of the
event but it was great when they were
here
we have a good partner with u triple s a
which stands for united states specialty
sports association
and we do a lot of business with them
slow pitch softball youth baseball girls
fast pitch
we do a tremendous amount of events with
them we started to
build the global world series back in
2012 was the first year we had it
and we've been doing it ever since with
them as well super nit baseball girls
fast pitch nit we've had fast pitch
world series here in town throughout the
years
the western athletic conference which
new mexico state is a part of we've had
many of their championships here it's
very exciting back in the day when we
had the wac basketball championship
and we had fresno state hawaii utah
state
nevada reno all those different teams
and all their fans made their way to las
cruces for that championship and it was
a a great event and we'd love to have
that back in town
once again
we also have the softball championship
through the wac cross country tennis
volleyball and golf we've had all those
events
through the rack throughout the years
now what are we looking for in the
future what's on deck
we have new mexico's senior olympics
that's going to be coming to town and
that's going to start it was supposed to
start this past summer but obviously we
couldn't do it so they're going to be
back in 2022 and we'll have them for
three straight years and then with it
with an option to to sign on for more
after that
just recently put in a bid for usa bmx
to have one of their national series
races here next summer
and of course uh you know i talked
earlier about our uh new facilities with
the go bond it's going to be great when
those come online we're going to have
extra baseball and softball fields we're
going to have extra soccer fields with
that
and that's going to help us to increase
our team counts on the events that we
have already and then looking forward to
going after some big events
with other
associations as well
and now i'm going to turn it over to our
outdoor wreck manager hilary dutcher
mayor pro tem and city council good
afternoon my name is hillary dutcher and
i'm the outdoor recreation sales manager
for visit las cruces
so my position is a collaboration
between visit las cruces and the
economic development department with the
goal of growing outdoor recreation as an
economic sector and we do that in a
couple different ways so first by
increasing outdoor recreation tourism
and then by
supporting established outdoor
recreation businesses and encouraging
the creation of new outdoor recreation
businesses
so one of the things that we've been
working on currently toward this end is
marketing research visit las cruces and
economic development have partnered to
contract with the marketing firm and
we're currently with them on working
with that marketing firm on a research
study to gather data data that will help
us to develop a marketing plan
specifically for outdoor recreation that
speaks to the community and to visitors
i also work closely with economic
development to support the arrowhead
center's application for the outdoor
recreation incubator and accelerator
grant that was offered by the state's
outdirect division
so i just helped to secure some letters
of support for the application and then
after the grant was awarded to the
arrowhead center i worked to inform
people about the program and encourage
them to apply
this program is currently going on
right now with 10 participants chosen
out of 21 applicants
and i actually had the pleasure of
speaking with the class this morning um
just to tell them about visit las cruces
and what i do and how we can potentially
work together going forward
um and then in the future this will be
the framework for some other initiatives
um that rachelle is going to talk about
in just a few minutes
so like i mentioned in the last slide
one of my goals is to increase out to
recreation tourism
and broadly speaking i do this through
marketing and sales efforts supporting
established events encouraging new
events
and supporting the creation of amenities
that can increase outdoor recreation
so one of the most important aspects of
what i do is networking so i've been
reaching out to the community and made
many partnerships and have created a lot
of contacts
that can assist tour operators and keep
me on top of what's going on in the
community
and then i do my best to assist them in
return by connecting them with other
partners and informing them about
anything that could be useful to them in
their business
or
entity
like potential funding opportunities
i'm also networking outside of our
community particularly in the southern
region of the state
this is just another week for me to stay
on top of trends learn about what's
going on in other communities
and just giving me information about
what types of outdoor back are available
throughout the southern part of the
state
like i think liz mentioned
we also help support
events and promote events that are going
on
these are locally created events so
we prior to the pandemic visit las
cruces helped to promote the southern
sierra vista trail run which we've done
before in the past but this was the
first one we've done at time we've done
it under the outdoor recreation umbrella
rather than under the sports
um
there are
a couple of other events created by the
community that are on the horizon and
i'd love to tell you about them but
they're not my events it's not so i
don't want to announce them but i think
you'll be hearing about them very soon
and then there's some potential
for additional events
and i'm just keeping in touch with
partners
just being ready ready for when they're
they're prepared to proceed and to see
how we can help them at that time
so in addition to promoting those events
through traditional marketing techniques
i can share information about them at
conferences and trade shows so last year
obviously all the trade shows were
virtual but they were still very
informative
this year's in conference in person
conferences will allow me to meet
one-on-one with tour operators and
planners whose needs fit
what we have to offer
and they also provide me with the
opportunity to learn best practices from
peers and again keep me on top of
industry trends
last year we advertised at new mexico's
outdoor economics conference which was
virtual this year we'll be advertising
again
and will be attending the in-person
event and encouraging lots of partners
to
to attend as well so we have a great las
cruces showing
during the coven 19 pandemic um outdoor
rec was our main marketing focus and
we'll be expanding on those efforts
going forward paul's going to give you a
lot more detailed information about that
shortly
but on my part i focus on keeping our
website updated
with provider information so if people
were looking for a particular business
or outdoor wreck opportunity they could
find it easily on our website
and they could also find where to go a
lot of people don't
know how to find our trail heads and and
things like that so
just giving people information so they
can stay safe and get out there
i've also been working with liz and the
friends of the omdp monument to put
together monuments to main street this
year
and then also working with paul
on a regional marketing initiative so
we're collaborating with silver city
sierra county carlsbad alamogordo
just to create some
regional ex like expand on those
regional partnerships and create some
let's see
presence in the southwest when it comes
to tourism marketing so
now i'm going to hand you back over to
rochelle who's going to tell you about
space tourism
mayor councillors our main pro town
counselors rachelle miller hernandez for
the record
so space
tourism is um
a big thing right now
but i wanted to bring up that space
tourism has actually been centuries in
the making for las cruces
and and our team has promoted space
tourism for a very long time but but now
uh las cruces is in in the forefront
um
since since our history of space in our
area and our state is long and vast
it gives us a lot of assets that we can
promote for our city
and before this historic launch on july
11 spaceport america had already paved
the way by building this advanced
technological corridor that currently
houses multiple companies that people
don't realize are there and many of
these have performed
successful vertical launches and have
brought innovative uh technology to our
area and i can't share the date details
but spin launch if you've seen spin
lunch out there which is amazing we'll
have some very exciting news to us and
we'll we'll bring even more attention to
las cruces
so with that in mind our space tourism
campaign to capitalize on this valuable
asset is constantly evolving and
involves several integral parts because
you know
[Music]
i started with the city 13 years ago and
the big thing was space port america and
the convention center
it was built
and branson has finally launched so this
is an exciting time
part of this is brand recognition and um
you've seen our banners that say las
cruces is a place for space we're doing
a whole update on that that
paul is going to share with you on that
but it's also going to not only
capitalize on las cruces is the place
for space but las cruces is the place
for outdoor
cuisine
and culture
because we do offer all those things and
many more
when you think about space and even
cannabis tourism that we'll be working
on
um
people know that richard branson has
flown out of las cruces and people will
know when cannabis
uh that they can use cannabis here
recreationally they'll know new mexico
offers that what we have to do
as visit las cruces is remind them to
come and partake in those activities
in our city
so our marketing
is very multifaceted
so we plan on capitalizing on the future
launches by virgin galactic and many
other companies
as i mentioned while the virgin galactic
branson launch had a significant
economic impact on our community
it was only one of many launches to come
and that where councillor ben como you
asked about the
carry over
that's why we decided that those funds
were needed to be used for more than one
launch they needed to be used for the
many launches to come
so that our community can capitalize it
on the most they can
um
in fact virgin galactic plans on having
eventually 400 launches a year but
something that we have to remember is
they still have a couple test flights to
go so we're not quite there yet but one
something exciting to share is the
italian air force test flight is
scheduled for later this year and that
will again bring a lot of press to our
area
paul is going to explain in the media
marketing part of this presentation how
we will take advantage of of these
opportunities so i'm trying to give you
a little bit of notice so you can start
working on your italian also because
i'll be here soon
it's also important to remember that
spaceport america is home to several
other companies that do and will
continue to contribute to our workforce
economy and in fact space spin launch
was quoted as choosing spaceport america
because it invite it was very inviting
to small startup companies and did not
create hurdles like the kennedy space
center in florida and that's something
we need to consider and think about as
we come up with our economic development
business development workforce
development in this area they did not
have to overcome all the obstacles that
they had to at the kennedy
space center in florida something we
have to keep it top of mind
as i mentioned again paul will be
mentioning how we integrate space
tourism into our existing efforts our
future marketing and our advertising
efforts and this includes
travel writers as uh city manager pili
mentioned
and i have to make a correction here and
it's my fault
for not conveying it but we had 2.5
billion impressions
on
uh spaceport the spaceport launch and
the word las cruces
so not 2.5 million 2.5 billion
that's huge
and a lot of that had to do with uh work
that our team our pr firm
um
i'm not going to take a huge amount of
credit to that because we did have
richard brunson in the launch but we
invited several travel writers and and
when they were here they wanted to know
well what do we do while we're here the
launch is over and our team took them
out on tours and then we have several
articles and and
magazine features and so forth about las
cruces i was fortunate when i went to
the launch
i somehow got in the middle of all the
future astronauts i found this spot that
i wasn't going to give up because it was
like beautiful i stood there for ten to
excuse me two hours because i was like i
can see everything and next thing i turn
around and i am among all these future
astronauts and they're asking me
rochelle what is there to do in this
area and i'm talking about green chile
and white sands and
night sky photography and they're
telling me
i can't wait till we come back again
and we're we're going to call you and
you're going to tell us about these
great things that we're going to do so
these people come to our city
many times so it's great
the other thing that a lot of people
don't think about is our sales team that
albert was just was talking about
there's so much more to it than just the
tourism side in terms of there's also
conventions and events so our sales team
targets and supports space related
conventions and events such as the
american technical
association conference we've had the
astronomical society have their national
conference here
as liz mentioned the spaceport america
cup and then we have tour groups that
are interested in the space history our
space trail this includes student
education
tours this is where going to those
conferences and those trade shows play a
big part
promoting
promoting uh spaceport space history and
so forth
we already strategically made an
agreement with final frontiers which is
the official tour operator for spaceport
america and that's the only way people
can get out there you can't just drive
up and drive in you have to go through
through the tour company so we
have an agreement with them where they
start their tours in our visitor center
and that was strategic because we wanted
people
to come and and not only go on the tour
but say hey i'm here from new zealand
what else can i do while i'm here in las
cruces and stay a few more nights maybe
and we're also now working with um
we're looking into a space tour depot in
our city as many of you are aware who
who were
on council before or um
at least were were
up to speed on the development of
spaceport america they originally las
cruces uh put in a bid for the visitors
official visitors center and then at one
time it was going to go to hatch and
then end up in trc well now they want a
tour depot possibly in las cruces so my
team is working with them to look at
possibilities on that as well
and this will give us another outlet for
information on things and to see and do
in las cruces
and then lastly i just wanted to mention
through the arpa funds we can take that
framework
of this biz sprint that hillary spoke on
through arrowhead
to talk about
and teach our residents
on how to recognize and develop business
opportunities and growth for
this industry
lastly i have on here success equals
collaboration of efforts and the reason
i wanted to bring that up is because in
order for our city to fully capitalize
on space related opportunities it will
take a collaboration of efforts between
multiple city departments and community
partners
these opportunities will not only
include areas of tourism and travel but
also in technology research supply
chains manufacturing business and
workforce development and the ultimate
goal is economic prosperity for southern
new mexico so it was very exciting for
me to hear the support of city manager
pili during your report to city council
last week on the future economic
development of las cruces
so with that i will
pass this to paul who's going to do the
final part of our presentation
very important part our meeting
media marketing and advertising
initiatives and how spaceport uh excuse
me space campaigns and cannabis
uh tourism plays into that so thank you
very much
good afternoon mayor pro tem council uh
city manager um
let's see i'll go for it so for the
record i am paul dalgren the media
publications manager for visit las
cruces
and since last year was vastly different
than all previous years for
the tourism and hospitality industry i
kind of wanted to go over a little bit
of just what we actually do within my
department within visit las cruces
how we adapted to the uh pandemic and
then some of the programs and
initiatives we put in place to help
support local businesses
so my department is
probably the most diverse within visit
las cruces when i say we handle
marketing that also so that means
everything from advertising to marketing
materials to
photography videography website design
and maintenance
event marketing support partnerships
and we actually handle visitor center uh
safety and security as well as mailing
and logistics for visit las cruces so we
cover a broad range of
things and and we also handle
all of visual oscill's social media
channels which includes facebook
twitter
instagram youtube and tick tock
since we cover so many different areas
it's important to note that my
department more more so than
other sections within visit las cruces
we have to adapt very quickly to not
only changes in the industry but also
changes in the broader advertising
industry changes um changes to
technology
and
even changes to the news cycle all of
those in all of those things impact the
work we do
because whether it's on the marketing
side or the pr side
there's sort of ancillary effects that
happen along the way
and so the pandemic was actually a good
example of how we were able to adapt and
pivot what we were doing in terms of
marketing
quickly
for the benefit of
local businesses and um to really keep
tourism going to the extent that we
could
um so when the first when the pandemic
first hit
one of the first things we did is really
shift to a regional
regional marketing campaign so that
really focused on
markets that were within driving
distance
because we couldn't really market out of
state given the
quarantine requirements we really
focused on people
in albuquerque
you know a lot of the the areas
surrounding that could still travel
within the state and um we actually did
that through two campaigns one was
called we'll keep our soul
sun in spanish shining for you and then
the other one was our safe open spaces
campaign and both of those really
leveraged our one of our biggest assets
which is outdoor recreation um touting
the idea that people could still travel
and
spread out and safely still enjoy a
vacation
in the midst of everything
so another thing
we actually did that through
a pr campaign an advertising campaign
and that included billboards tv spots
print ads
and digital ads up in northern new
mexico
we also did a virtual scenic drive
series for people who couldn't who
couldn't visit
we had a feature in food and travel
magazine's safest places to to travel
edition and of course we had ongoing
pitches
to journalists influencers and travel
writers
so another thing we did when the
pandemic hit is we really emphasized the
idea of safety and so
within within our office we produce the
wearing is caring posters that i'm sure
many of you saw around town we produced
those in both english and spanish for
businesses to use
um we we were also the the lead on
developing the las cruces safe promise
logo
we developed a covet 19 resource page
for visitors and for for locals just to
understand the implications of what the
latest public health order
was
and we also promoted the new mexico safe
certified program
along with all of that we also had to
shoot new imagery um both
with video and photos
to really adapt to the situation at hand
so people at the time were expecting to
see ads with people wearing masks
obviously we didn't have anything like
that in our archive so it had
we we had to pivot really quickly and
develop those materials really quickly
so another another shift we made in our
program was
focusing on shop local initiatives
um so if you i'm i'm sure some of you uh
saw the downtown billboards we produced
that was done through my office with the
goal of really
because we're at the crossroads of i-10
and 25
the goal was to really drive people to
let's say the relative center of the
city to increase the likelihood they
would stay overnight and also
for for locals increase the likelihood
they would
you know continue to shop and dine
locally support those local businesses
so all of all of those initiatives were
also developed in collaboration with the
economic development department
and we continue to work closely with
them
to help with recovery efforts from the
pandemic
so these recovery efforts have included
several other initiatives um one of the
one of the things we've continued to do
since um since the pandemic hit was
cultivate local and regional
partnerships
um
the goal with that was to really shift
as much money as we could while still
adhering to lodgers tax funding
requirements um but to try and keep as
much money as we could within the
community
um and and as part of that we're as a
result of that we're currently working
with 10 different local vendors
including only local companies which
have been used to produce all of our
recent photography and videography
assets
we've also collaborated with regional
travel writers and influencers and
coordinated with the state tourism
department to bring in consistent earned
media
lots of
lots of people obviously even with the
virgin galactic launch came through a
huge number of journalists came through
so
and anytime we have people coming
through we we try and capitalize get
them to maybe extend a couple of days
past their initial assignment just to
um potentially develop other pitches and
get to see what las cruces is about
um so another major initiative we're
working on is a new website um the the
goal of that would to really be make it
more mobile friendly and another um
another key aspect of that is to
actually develop a spanish-language
version of that to increase
accessibility for both tourists and also
locals
and those those changes to the website
would also mirror things we're trying to
do with our printed marketing materials
um
so and and as we continue to update
website and marketing materials um
we'll continue working with local
companies to produce new assets um to
really
uh fill those out
so on that note um i'll show you some of
the examples of the media we've
developed over the past year
we've been working with three
three different local photographers and
two videography firms as well as the new
mexico tourism department
the first video is a general tourism
video and the second is an outdoor
recreation safety video that we actually
developed in partnership with the blm
and friends of the oregon mountain
desert peaks
and if you'll note in the outdoor rec
video we actually did everything
entirely with
spanish subtitles to make the
information accessible to locals as well
and and visitors
[Music]
las cruces is known as the land of
enchantment for good reason
[Music]
there's something magical about open
spaces
clear blue skies and breathtaking views
experience a world of possibilities as
you trek through wide open spaces and
otherworldly landscapes
explore miles of hiking
biking
horseback
and utv trails
national monuments
national parks
and exciting outdoor adventures
experience our history
our
culture our art
our people
and our award-winning food and drinks
[Music]
las cruces is a colorful city with vast
blue skies
vibrant pink sunsets and majestic purple
mountains
or maybe you prefer red or green
[Music]
discover new mexico like you've never
seen it before
we do things a bit differently down here
and we know that you'll love it
[Music]
explore
experience
discover
las cruces new mexico
[Music]
okay and the next one i'll show you is
the outdoor safety video we produced
and both of these were done by nmco
[Music]
discover the magic of las cruces as the
second largest city in new mexico the
area offers a variety of trails for
hikers of all abilities
since the desert here is such a unique
place before stepping out to explore all
that las cruces has to offer it's
important to follow these safety tips to
ensure your next adventure is a great
one
one thing that people don't consider
when they come out on a hike or biking
is to carry a first aid kit they're
small and handy you can put them in your
pack
and they will definitely help you in
situation from a fall or straight or
even from a cactus needle one of the
most essential things you should bring
with you
is water
for every hour that you're out
recreating in the desert particularly
the heat you should have a minimal of 16
ounces just a 16 ounce bottle or a liter
the weather in this area can be very
unpredictable in the summer we have the
heat but we also have thunderstorms that
can come in at any time during the day
and in the early evening so it's
important to be aware of the weather
conditions before you head out and also
carry the appropriate gear and clothing
to handle it another important tool you
can carry with you on your cell phone is
to actually have an app for weather and
for trail maps
know your physical condition for coming
out
making sure that you're rested you're
hydrated
and also that you know the environment
that you're hiking in there are apps
available that have
all the trails so those are great so
that you have an idea before you go out
what type of terrain and environment
that you're about to hike
people enjoy coming out to the desert to
hike and to bike for solitude
but when you come out by yourself it's
important to make sure that you let
someone know where you're going and how
long you're going to be out and when you
expect to return
for more information on all the
wonderful safe open spaces in las cruces
and the surrounding areas contact the
local bureau of land management or check
out visit las cruces dot com
cool and so um the the real goal of that
was we were hearing about during the
pandemic we were hearing about a higher
incidence of people getting stranded out
there um having to require search and
rescue so part of that came out of a
discussion that we had
what can we do to actually help people
understand what they need to be safe
when they're hiking
[Music]
um so here's an example of some of the
photography um we've uh we've produced
and licensed during the
during the pandemic
um again all of these we've only worked
with
local photographers and videographers as
of late and
we use those for both advertising and
for editorials so as travel writers
influencers as they write about us they
need sometimes they need photography to
go along with the story and if we have
all of that queued up obviously it makes
our life a lot easier to just be able to
send them really nice high quality
photos
so in the top in the top left of the
food photo we're working with a firm
called palomora
they've been updating a lot of our food
and dining photos
and beneath that is a photo produced by
the new mexico tourism department that
was part of a
support program they launched that we
were awarded and our very own senior
sales manager albert herrera and his
godson are featured in that wearing
masks
with the backdrop of the organs and that
is out at prehistoric track waves
the next photo right in the middle
you'll see with the donya anna arch was
a photographer we're working with uh
named will guard um we we've licensed
some of the photo the photos he's
actually shot
throughout the throughout the area
the photo beneath that was another food
and dining photo palomar shot at salud
and then off to the right was a photo
shoot we arranged for
four-wheel at spaceport america that had
a beautiful backdrop of the milky way
and actually will is one of the
photographers we're working with to kind
of develop a night sky photography tour
in the in the grand scheme of things so
when rochelle talked about space tourism
there's obviously
um
there's obviously broader
a broader audience for your everyday
families things like that
more so than just some of the astronauts
coming with their friends and family
okay so here you have an example of some
of the banners um that are right now
they're along the loman and amador
corridor the ones currently up only
focus on space
and really the the update where we're
wanting to do with those designs really
highlight
the different areas of interest
within las cruces
so this is a good example of how we
market different areas of interest
simultaneously so when we talk about
cannabis marketing when we talk about
space tourism
all of it essentially works in tandem
with the marketing and pr efforts we do
to market las cruces as a whole
leveraging all of the assets in these
different areas of interest that may or
may not appeal to different travelers
different journalists
and these were all so all of these the
designs for these were actually created
by our amazingly talented admin
assistant leslie gobeldone
so she produced those
and um
and yeah it's just a good a good
understanding of
how we how we market
these different areas of interest
so what's next
in terms of marketing we're planning to
continue
building on the strong regional campaign
we
we develop during the pandemic and then
selectively market to areas we know
where we have historically performed
well in terms of overnight visitation
and we're working with a company
currently to get that data we previously
haven't had that data
but in order to really capitalize on
some of the markets that are larger
and really difficult to get to dip into
without extensive marketing budgets
the goal is we're going to use data
sources to make informed decisions about
where to put our marketing dollars
and that's just one example of some of
the new technology we're using
which also includes our new virtual
itinerary planning software and our 360
degree virtual tour software
we're continuing to strengthen
partnerships with local vendors
organizations and businesses um
and also leveraging state funding so
within the past year alone we've earned
um a little over 200 thousand dollars in
state funding and support programs that
they've provided to us so that's a huge
boost to
our marketing budget
in addition we'll continue to grow our
shop local initiatives and drive
recovery efforts
um making our information more
accessible by offering those
multi-language formats for our marketing
materials
and another another key thing that
really
that really helps is informing locals
once
once people locally know what there is
to do here they become our biggest
ambassadors as they bring friends and
family and as they're traveling so the
more informed you have
the more informed everyone is here
locally the better the better they are
to promote tourism for us
um and then uh finally also to leverage
on um new areas of interest so cannabis
um and and it isn't so much new but
space tourism obviously has a renewed um
interest um so both of those areas are
areas we you know we're continuing to
research best practices so we can really
build a comprehensive marketing strategy
to put behind it that also adheres to
local state and federal law and
regulations
and with that we'll stand for questions
thank you so much paul
counselor soar counselor flores
thank you mayor pro tem
um
yeah i'm very impressed with all that
there's a lot of information and i see
you're well organized and
and
this is
important because this is a direct way
we bring more money into las cruces
it is secondary as primary money that
comes when people come here and spend
their money and all the things that we
have
[Music]
i had just some suggestions um
once upon a time we had an awesome salsa
festival
that would be nice to bring back
just saying
and then once upon a time we had a
balloon festival
hot air balloon festival that would be
nice to have too
um
so
i just brought those two suggestions but
here's a big one
and i've shared this before but i don't
think i've shared with all you all when
i first came here i i was so impressed
with the weather
and because i come from
a rather small market
of people
this seemed to just stand out
because i i like sports
and this is for ed
um
[Music]
the ncaa has national championships in
different levels of
their football programs
going from the nai a level schools
to division two three two one and one
called fcs that's a football
championship series now these are
smaller schools they aren't like
alabama and ohio state and our own new
mexico state university
they have
an actual
well so does the bull series too
um a playoff
for a championship game and they pick a
city somewhere in the country to uh have
their championship games
and so um i've seen them being played in
places that
in january of course that's when it has
to almost has to happen
uh lousy places to play cold and wet and
disgusting when we have the best weather
here for a football game it's uh perfect
for that and so um
i approached uh um the convention and
visitors bureau when i was first on the
council asking them to look into that
see what we could do
and it just kind of died and one of the
reasons later on when i found out is
that we just don't have a good place for
it meeting that obvious place is the
memorial football stadium on the
university
and i was told by the um
his name is about to come to my mind the
athletic director
that it's tough for them to do that
because at the time they had a grass
field
and they needed a artificial field
well guess what we have an artificial
field now so maybe the barriers to have
something like this are gone but this
would bring huge money especially if we
can get that fcs
level here uh that that's where the
little bigger schools like north dakota
state university
university of montana
and so on and so forth
um
so that's a suggestion and finally i
would like to to know if we could get
more of your information out to the
public by uh using our pio it seems like
i used to be
before the pandemic there was
several pios talking about the
activities that's going on in the city
here and i'd like to share that with my
constituents and anybody else really and
last but not least
you're right
people just don't know about us
i
recently i did a hike to picacho peak
and ran into four maybe five people
there from connecticut and i said how in
the heck did you find us here and get to
picacho peak
and they said well we visited northern
new mexico last year we just had to see
what southern new mexico had offered and
so i i'm assuming they went to a lot of
different places like white sands and
and dripping springs and so forth so
there you go thank you
thank you councilman mayor project
okay next um
cancer flores
okay counselor at babies to be if um
miss concert lotus is yielding to you
counselor abetha stevie
thank you mayor pro tem and thank you
councillor flores
uh we appreciate that
uh thank you rochelle and for your whole
team it was a wonderful presentation
very thorough
we can tell your passion and your
expertise for all of this so it's quite
amazing to be honest i actually have a
ton of questions but we have a full
lineup still for the rest of the day so
i'd love to be able to
circle back with you all about a few
things mostly on how we can best
leverage our positions to help market as
well
but with that in mind
the few that i do want to ask right now
do
work with our sports sales
and
looking at how we are
working with our perks and recs and as
we think about these go bonds
and perhaps a next issuance
of what are those gaps that we have of
what people are looking for here so that
we can attract the appropriate level
of events here
it sounds like there's perhaps
limitations with national events and i'm
assuming that's with
hotel capacity perhaps but anything that
you have to provide i'd love to hear
absolutely
ed carnathan sports sales manager for
visit las cruces
the national level events are always a
tough cookie to crack because
a lot of them there's an initial
investment that you got to make
to bring that event to town and of
course
here in las cruces in our our budget
that we have to work with is
is is not as much as maybe dallas texas
is or
uh
you know phoenix arizona
but we do have uh you know we have great
facilities that could
uh rival
some of those as well
yeah we we kind of fall short when it
comes to funding sometimes okay
what are the most requested or sought
after
i think sports
industries that are coming to you all
looking for events or venues well we
have you know we have 11 baseball
softball fields all in one location on
hadley avenue or a hadley athletic
complex
and
let's just give an example it's 11
fields all in one spot right
phoenix doesn't have 11 fields all in
one spot you got to go to one complex on
this side of town and you got to drive a
half an hour to go to the other complex
and then another you know another 30
minutes to go to another complex so
that's that's a you know i'd like to say
our crown jewel
for baseball and softball events and
we've always excelled in baseball and
softball events since i've been here and
even before then
we have you know some great events and
and definitely with the upgrade from the
go bond we're going to have a couple of
more fields to add
to the inventory and also all the
upgrades that they've done on the hadley
uh with the lights the brand new lights
and
it's definitely a great thing
fantastic thank you um as we move
forward i think for us to think about um
i know how
important it is to have as many um
fields available in that one location i
am a
i used to be a soccer mom that used to
have to travel all over and so as we
think about improvements for
um perhaps uh go bonds or different
events i think we should really consider
having more complexes that have the same
type of field available in the place so
that we can attract these types of
events more i think
it could be very beneficial
um
with that in mind like i said i have a
ton of other questions i'd love to get
back with you but just very well done
um and
you know our community i think the
biggest question i always get asked is
what is there to do
um and in fact i ran over to your
department to grab as many pamphlets and
flyers i was invited to a neighborhood
for just their meeting and
everybody had commented before i got
there that they had grandparents coming
in for the summer and people were
starting to travel so i grabbed as many
of those as i could and delivered them
to that little neighborhood just so that
they could pass it out and we can just
start spreading the word in different
ways so
other communities sand have really great
events that you are known for um
councillor sorek just mentioned um the
balloon fiesta
you know santa fe has zozobra
we can have our own events and hopefully
have that sort of recognition and
support as well so thank you so much
you're welcome thank you counselor and
to both your and counselor sorek's
comment we we just had a brainstorm
session uh amongst our team trying to
think of a great signature event and
salsa fest and the balloon fiesta and
things like that have come together and
before the pandemic i believe um you may
recall we talked about a las cruces city
fest um we were still developing it we
still are but we wanted to concentrate
on
on those those four things that we
talked about not only outdoors space but
our cultural history cuisine
all the things that we have to offer so
we we are working on that this year
would not be the best year to do that
something to be very successful needs
time uh to be planned correctly so thank
you for those comments it it makes us
feel
good about what we do so i appreciate it
thank you councillor beat this to be
councillor flores
thank you very much um mayor pro tem
gandala and thank you all for presenting
it was
it was wonderful walking into that room
and
being barraged with all of you it was
and i wanted to stay there it seemed
like it was more fun no not really no no
no no no no no
but seriously i want to thank you so
much and in terms of the cannabis and
the outer space
promotion
you know advertise it as exploring inner
space and outer space
i mean
i shared with economy three you know
ways to get high in las cruces yeah
we've got the face the mountains and
the balloon festivals yes there you go
even another one yes but in many ways
but cheers
something to consider
but um do you uh you know you mentioned
uh rochelle that there would uh be uh
transportation to maybe spaceport from
from las cruces and i was wondering um
one of the best telescopes
for viewing the milky way is at leesburg
park
and yeah in the world
in the world and those are the things we
want to share counselor with the world
wonderful yeah and so if you could
promote that and then when the italians
come
right and uh
maybe counselor pro tem uh
counselor pro tem mayor pro tem
gandara can maybe get one of her
grandparents to tutor us in italian
but
but seriously i think it's very
important to
have those materials multilingual
materials and it'd be great if we can
have maybe some nmsu students be uh if i
don't know how many departments there
are how many language departments there
are at nmsu
but
but someone who speaks spanish could uh
easily
go into the italian there's so many
similarities and then there's some of
those cognizants i mean they look alike
but they're not so you can
really make a big mistake
oh yeah
all of a sudden it's really a horrible
word in either language
but if we if we could um
have that or have this you know the not
a tour guide but maybe a welcoming
and and to show also the diversity and
show off our university and our students
and get just get everybody involved and
that could happen on the way uh well
depending on who's here so um
[Music]
also the thing that i'm really really
begging the powers that be here in the
city and of something
oh
we are the yeah yeah yeah right
um we we make decisions as to how money
is spent uh and maybe that's where the
power is but other than that uh
i mean
i'm sorry but you know
yes policy the policy should be
that we are not a retirement community
i mean you you mentioned rochelle that
it takes several visits before someone
uh decides to come to to retire here
and you know we're looking at really
dynamic we're going what activities are
there what activities are and then we
have our own bicyclists
whom i adore i mean as you know george
pearson always coming to us about we're
not bis we're not we're not we have this
big thing about walkability you know
sharon thomas you know for about two
decades now talking about connecting our
city and making it walkable and yada
yada blah blah
and we don't have
bicycle lanes we don't even have
sidewalks connecting from
sonoma ranch boulevard to road runner
parkway because i tried it and i had to
go back because it was just too
dangerous
all that being said it goes back to this
notion that we're developing the city
without due respect and i saw larry
nichols here a while ago oh he's here so
well i think he knows how i feel about
it um
or what i think about it
in that
make it a thriving community you know
don't say come to las cruces to visit
our retirement community or come here to
retire come here to live
and
and somehow integrate that into the
marketing aspect
of who we are
and yeah some of us are in our
retirement years but it doesn't mean
that it isn't thriving and it doesn't
mean that we can't bicycle and and have
our city uh look like that and then for
us to say oh spaceport america and this
that and the other and then it's like
you know promoting the the retirement
thing and i think we did or maybe had
something out there mr evopili
our only employee that's how powerful we
are
um
yeah just remember counselor though he's
all of our bosses
[Music]
there was a banner out there
and maybe it's still out there and i'm
begging everybody um
maybe we can all hear direct mr p
to take down that big banner that says
number you know we're one of the top 15
or top five retirement communities why
not put up their top bicyclists or top
mike mountain hikers or anything that
shows that there's a real thriving
whatever
so that's that's what i just want to put
forward and maybe i you know take care
of a couple of things and
so thank you but thank you so much for
making oh
why didn't you all wear your explore las
cruces t-shirts
we thought about it
i bought two already yeah she uh i had
the one and she loved it the one that i
bought that day that i went in
and then i told you i went in to to look
for something to talk to the league of
women voters of new mexico because they
had a virtual conference here in las
cruces and they asked me to be the
opening you know the key not the keynote
i think uh
mr peeley was but just the opening the
welcoming
and um
so i thought
gee you know what can i really highlight
and at the end so i had like three to
five minutes unlike now i have the whole
floor i'm gonna keep it here until nine
o'clock
so no um
but at the at the end the president said
oh
here she is living in santa fe or
albuquerque
saying oh i really want to see las
cruces now and it was like you haven't
been i felt like saying to her
you haven't been here i mean how could
you not be in the state of new mexico
for you know i mean we have a league of
women voters here we've had one for in
fact it was kathy matthews mother she
was one of the founders of the league
women voters chapter here in
las cruces and kathy matthews was one of
its presidents by the way i'm a fountain
of useless knowledge
so i can go on and on but um
oh i'd love to let me tell you about the
name benito my friend has a nate a dog
named benito and so i said to people the
other day there was a bunch of us
and little benito comes running and
barking away and i said benito
and he looks at me and barks again but
takes off okay fine
do you know the name benito where that
comes from benito mussolini
of that fame of you know
you know that era in germany he was
named after benito juarez because
mussolini's parents love benito juarez
little did they know that their son
would turn out to be
something quite different
what was i talking about oh the t-shirts
so the t-shirts
um so anyway and i wore my t-shirt for
that i just want to tell you yes we saw
thank you yeah and people have um
people have
you know they asked me when they look at
it and they really like so thank you
that whoever designed it it's great
explore las cruces
thank you not a not a retirement
community
no thank you i think thank god the dress
of it thank you
just to come up very counselor ben cuomo
oh i'm so sorry sorry yes rochelle
to comment very quickly uh counselor
flores first of all i always learn
something new from you every week so
honestly i appreciate that
and then secondly um
when we market the
that people come to visit and live it
it's to move move themselves their
families or their businesses so it is
not just the retirement community it's
something we emphasize but we also
emphasize that we have a mesh of
of
of um
retirees the university and our local
residents which makes us a unique and
diverse place to visit so thank you very
much for noticing that thank you
rochelle thank you councillor flores
concert bin cuomo
thank you mayor pro-tem and thank you so
much rochelle and the rest of your team
uh for that incredible presentation i
honestly don't have a lot of questions
but
um much like uh my colleague councillor
beethoven said it can tell the passion
in every single one of you and that's
really incredible and that makes me very
happy to have
this department being run by all of you
thank you um and i will say that it only
took our city manager pili one time to
touch the river and to be here to say
yes i want to live here and brought his
whole family so
um you know i think that's i think
that's a powerful story actually um and
a testament to our community
and then just for for full disclosure i
also want to note because you gave
friends of the organ mountains several
shout outs that my fiance runs that
organization yes congratulations thank
you yes
yes thank you i just wanted full
disclosure on that um for any future
conversations
um rachelle you had talked about
um
a tour depot
and then the agreement with
i'm sorry did you say fun final frontier
or did i totally make that up well the
agreement is with spaceport america that
they're that their official tour company
can generate their tours out of our
office so and what was that company
called final frontier okay yes
um that agreement has not been finalized
or it has no that we had already started
that before the pandemic uh caused him
to
to uh cease tours but they're starting
have they already started sonia are they
they were supposed to start in august
okay
[Music]
okay so yes that was an agreement
already made before the pandemic so
just for the record um you said that
tours may start in august again
yes okay from our office he also
generates tours out of trc who is
uh curtis roseman owns final frontiers
but um you can only get on to spaceport
on the official tour company or with a
special tour set up directly through
spaceport america okay that's good and
can you say more about the tour depot
so
currently spaceport america was looking
for a location here within our city
where they can um
residents or visitors can find out more
information about
space history uh spaceport america and
then we the the mindset is that the um
tours would then generate from there
because they will become more frequent
as well
okay and we will have visitors
information and so forth there so that's
very much a seed still an idea in its
infancy yes and we're we're looking at
different locations that might work best
for our community as well
and i
that location would be purchased by
where we were looking at existing
structures okay okay for example um
where the gallery not saying that we
would use this location but that where
the gallery were in the rio grande
theater would be a good example to start
and then uh move forward from there okay
great
i am
i have a couple other thoughts unrelated
to this but i do just want to say that
um
i don't mean to be a negative nelly when
it comes to spaceport america and virgin
galactic i just
um
i am not as i am not as excited
currently about this i think you know
there's this promise of 400 launches a
year that to me feels really far away
and at this point
we've only sent
one billionaire to space with a at a
publicly funded facility
and so that to me seems really far away
so i think it
unlike the monument and the cannabis
industry that are here that are concrete
that are ours right
um those things are real to me and um i
just want to make sure that there's a
balance between the kind of spending all
i keep seeing is new mexico las cruces
donate county spend spend spend for a
promise that is yet to be
um frankly met and so i just want to
make sure that there's a balance between
the kind of spending that we are doing
and the kind of
um
relationships are reciprocal and right
now it doesn't feel like they've it's
been very reciprocal so i want i just
want to make sure that there's a good
balance
yes counselor um that's a very good
uh observation comment we are very
strategic on how we diversify our
marketing
because not everyone is interested in
space terrorism or cannabis tourism or
outdoor recreation but we do have to
take advantage of these opportunities
where las cruces is in the spotlight
because of the lunch we will be in the
spotlight as more of this
cannabis tourism and other related
businesses
come to fruition and we will take
advantage of that as well but
as i've mentioned previously um
there's so much to do here we're so
lucky we have so many assets um i myself
was a military brat so who whoever when
you said um you came to our center to
see what there was to do i grew up going
to visitors centers and seeing what
there was to do so
like
i can't just even explain how passionate
we are about this so yes we do we do
make sure we diversify
um
that's why we don't just concentrate for
example on virgin galactic it's just one
company at spaceport america and i do
understand your hesitation
and i would love to speak to you outside
of chambers about some of our ideas
i would love that rochelle thank you so
much and moving away from spaceport
america
um the i also just want to know how
appreciative i am of how you and your
team have been even just talking about
the cannabis industry i think one of the
biggest
barriers one of the biggest challenges
and opportunities that we have as a city
as a state is really change the
narrative
about cannabis and so even you just
joking here about it and i think that's
really important and as as a city i
think we move forward
we
have to take part of what that narrative
is to try to destigmatize
um
what has been a very intentional war
against cannabis and and really move
away from that so that we can actually
see this growth flourish so i just want
to thank you for for that thank you
um just a couple thoughts um i'm
currently working with some advocates
and some of our staff around burn lake
and the possibilities of burn lake i
would love to bring in your team
eventually on what that could look like
because i think it could be another
great outdoor recreation
place that we can
get excited about and get other people
excited about so i'll definitely touch
base with you about that i fully agree
about the salsa festival but like the
original salsa festival where there was
a competition
and people made salsa and we picked a
winner that was
so much fun and i missed that very much
and i feel like that's very much a niche
that i think we could fill
two more things um
there was an nmsu athletics recently did
on social media like they lifted up all
the local athletes i wonder how we could
connect with them and do something
similar and like really lift up
all the local
um high school graduates who stayed at
nmsu who are partic and maybe not just
athletes like stem folks and like
students really shining light on justice
issues or whatever it might be but i
thought their campaign was um really
amazing and i wonder if you all could do
something um similar in partnership with
um with nmsu
and then lastly
i know that there's a really great
growing
um
the murals of las cruces project that i
think could be another great addition to
um what can you do in las cruces and go
check out all the incredible murals that
many local artists have done that las
cruces has invested in that the city has
invested in and so
i just wanted to point out that last
piece that las cruces could also be very
much an arts hub
that looks very different than santa fe
but
beautiful and unique on its own so thank
you so much thank you mayor purchase
thank you counselor um
bencomo i have a couple of
things i'd like to say thank you for
your presentation it was amazing and i
could feel the passion and energy and
commitment that you have to las cruces
and the love that you have just like me
so i know i'm in good you i feel like
the city's in good hands because you
love it just as much as i do right and
we all of us are ambassadors for the
city and so thank you i i i just felt
the excitement and it was it was a
really great presentation
i really appreciate it i had a couple of
comments slide six um you had made
mention that you listed all of the
various um activities or things that you
wanted to
to continue
um and and
you know i i have to admit that
that um
i
i've never was asked do you want to
focus on retirees your retirement
community you know when we've done
strategic planning that really isn't
what our our focus has been right it's
been about focusing on our students the
brain you know stopping their brain
drain making sure that our our kids stay
here that's it's there's fun that
there's jobs good paying jobs and lots
of awesome activities right for our our
children that grow up into youth and
then adults and stay here at new mexico
state university and then and then you
know just build a family here so you
know when she makes mention about the
retirement community although i love my
retirees and i do i i have so many in my
district and across the city i i
i it
for me hasn't been um a focus and so
when i think about some of these
areas that you've made mention
one thing that i think a lot about is
that leakage report that dr baetis and
others have have brought to our
attention and spoke very specifically
about our medical community right and so
much of our people are leaving the state
leaving our community even though we get
a good portion uh regional um into our
town back into our town for um for our
medical
what struck me was this um
i don't know you have these events where
you bring people right to to they get to
to know las cruces there's some
one-on-ones and i i keep thinking about
something that i heard um at uh from our
medical medical community right it's
it's like a chicken and egg
we have to have these physicians and
these specialties and they have wives or
husbands or partners that feel like
we're too small yet and or
that they're recruiting people from the
outside coming in
and yet
they don't know um what's available in
the city so i would really encourage us
to
reach out to our hospitals in our
medical community because i think this
is something that we
definitely need a lot of help in and
that i'm very passionate about we just
need more doctors here we need better
quality care and that starts with you
know the relationships with our
hospitals and our providers really
understanding what they're seeing when
they recruit how the city of las cruces
right visit the
visit las cruces can help in that
endeavor so for me it's a it's a nice
partnership with you know you hear the
leakage report i know dr bayatas and
others are really digging into
what that is
um
in terms of
more specifics right and what your plan
is to address that moving forward so i
want to really put a pitch into that
because i believe that we should all
have access to quality medical care of
at all levels and when we have to leave
our city um to other states it's a huge
burden on all of us and our finances and
such so i i wanted to bring that up um
rochelle
and then in um slide 11 you made mention
of that marketing research or a
contractor but didn't name i don't think
the contractor that you're working on
that is going to help with this research
and whatnot can you tell me who that is
yes
currently we are working on this
particular part of the project with once
a day marketing so this firm
this firm helped farmington and gallup
and some other
new mexico
destinations build their outdoor
recreation market
so what we had so far what we've done is
had a focus group that we had at the
convention center
and then now we're
sending out a survey um
a big part like we've all said several
times today word of mouth residents we
we have to find out what our residents
know what their perceptive perceptions
of of our outdoor recreation community
here in las cruces and then we'll know
how to to better market um not only to
visitors but our residents sure sure so
the once a day marketing is that here in
town or that is in new mexico it is in
the state though yes we have made
huge efforts into bringing everything
back to las cruces or at least new
mexico i'm i'm so glad thank you i know
there was an issue before and i'm glad
that that you have really pivoted and
made that a priority i appreciate that
and then slide 12 i think um
around the outdoor um
the different um
or i don't know maybe as part of the
of the presentation that she did
she talked about trail heads and maps
and those things and i'm i'm wondering
is what a gis kind of mapping
system is that part of the conversation
i think that would be
really helpful kind of like you know
those lending libraries that that are
food and books they have this whole they
have a gis mapping system where you if
county wide you can see where all of the
lending libraries are
at one time which i think is very
helpful
i'll let paul dahlgren speak to that and
and and hillary is also working with the
connectivity issue um that you brought
up as well council floors yeah yeah
thank you
paul dahlgren for the record um so it is
something um i know i've i've discussed
with um with our virtual itinerary
planning software that was one of the
things that um
hillary actually worked to get um
actually gis data showing some of those
actual trails like people who have hiked
it so it actually has the data that we
can import into our system so we're
currently working with gis and visit
widget who manages our our software to
really integrate those things so we
would have actual
um something closer to like all all
trails um so something that would
actually show you physically where you
can you know like those gis maps so it's
it's something we're definitely working
on and looking at um because we now have
that capability that's awesome thank you
so much for that and i look forward to
seeing that yeah yeah
um thanks again um you made me really
proud to be a citizen of las cruces
thank you so much for your work thank
you for your support can we appreciate
it very much thank you
thank you okay oh is there any public
comment
hey hey hey hey there's public comment i
want them to be able to come
all right no public comment three point
three
cannabis update
21-036
ikani tamoteo tom o'pale
did i butcher that i think i did ikani
i've seen you pacing up and down and i'm
thinking poor guys
he's anxious and i'm so looking forward
to your presentation
i don't want you to be anxious take a
deep breath and here we go five o'clock
is that what time it is thank you mayor
pro-tem
um i
i i know that uh you're you're aware
that we have a guest from up north i do
and ben
lingweger thank you mr lienger i hope i
didn't butcher your last name and we can
have him go further oh sure absolutely
i'll just get on the road or he can
spend an additional night in our
beautiful city now that he knows
all of the wonderful places to visit and
and mayor pro tem he's accompanied by a
manager of
a local cannabis business as well so if
there's any questions uh he'll he'll
enter
he'll introduce um his associate for
sure absolutely welcome you want to come
down to the
podium please
ben you were highly recommended by our
counselor vasquez thank you for being
here with us today of course okay
[Music]
good luck
and your associate i'm not sure of his
name yet hello
this is xavier hall xavier hall xavier
hall yes okay nice to meet you sir
uh mayor pro tem
counselor staff i i really hope that you
will share what a good job um i did with
councillor vasquez who can't be here
today
i am grateful to to be here
and i'm grateful that i got to sit
through several presentations before we
heard a presentation about revitalizing
a historic part of the city
we heard a presentation about inter and
interest state travel from the airport
and then we heard a presentation from
the the tourism bureau
and
i i'm just really delighted that
cannabis and this new exciting industry
touches every single thing that we've
spoken about today and even the the last
presentation from tourism had several
slides where they actually they named
cannabis so i'm i'm very grateful with
the optimism that um the the city of las
cruces is engaging this
exciting new industry i
i've
in several past lives i've worked a lot
with the city of las cruces and the city
and this governing body
has never disappointed and it seems that
that's going to continue to be the trend
with with cannabis and i'm just very
grateful for the opportunity to be here
the new mexico cannabis chamber of
commerce is an organization that's three
years old we were created at the request
of the legislature
you know we have a medical cannabis
program that's very robust and vibrant
that's been active in new mexico for
over a decade and the legislature wanted
a unifying body a voice that could
represent the cannabis industry
and that's what we are our members are
existing manufacturers producers
cannabis adjacent businesses like law
firms and cpa firms and
gross supply stores and health insurance
providers and all these businesses that
are really excited to engage in the
industry and our role is is shifting now
from supporting the medical cannabis
industry to kind of helping cannabis
move from raft to shore in an adult use
marcus and
we we have this
this wonderful foundation with the
medical cannabis industry that other
states haven't had and
i'm really excited to to be at the helm
now of this organization for the the
second year
so starting with some suggestions and
these are not necessarily only related
to zoning but just kind of how i wake up
and try and go about the work is
center all new rules and initiatives on
creating opportunities for new mexicans
to enter and be successful in this new
industry or at least
remove barriers for everyday new
mexicans to enter into and engage in the
industry how how they want and
again this relates to zoning but also
everything else that we talk about in
cannabis is how are we making space for
new mexico companies to be successful in
this industry and that is part of the
conversation around zoning and
local ordinances and then also to make
all decisions looking towards the future
of federal legalization
new mexico is the 17th state to legalize
cannabis
we follow
obviously colorado arizona
canada the country of mexico
and basically texas is the the last
holdout in our region
and
federal legalization is coming i think
sooner than
than others may expect
and it's really important that we don't
look to the past and we don't
re-stigmatize cannabis and we boldly
look to the future for
when this is the law of the land not
just state by state so that's just a
friendly suggestion or more of me
sharing how i go about looking at the
work that we do
so in that regard i just wanted to very
quickly share two slides about what's
happening from a federal perspective
senator schumer is pushing the
cannabis
administration and opportunity act i
think which is the federal legalization
bill this is a long shot president biden
has been very specific that his
administration is not going to be the
one to legalize cannabis i would bet
anybody in this room ten dollars that
the next democratic president will be
the president to legalize cannabis
um
there are two other important bills that
are right now in the senate the first
one is the safe banking act i bring this
up because
many people still think that cannabis is
unbanked in new mexico and that's that's
not the case all of our members have
bank accounts there are now four banks
or financial institutions that are doing
green accounts in new mexico what's
missing is lending and of course
new mexico is not a resource heavy state
in some regards so what the safe banking
act would do is open up financial
institutions to do lending just like
they do for for any other business
and this is in the senate i would expect
this bill to pass before the end of the
year and the same with the moore act
this is not a legalization bill this is
a decriminalization bill it would remove
cannabis from the list of schedule 1
drugs which includes heroin lsd
a variety of other substances that in
order to qualify to be a schedule one
drug you can have no medical benefit and
i i think we're well past the point of
you know it being proven that cannabis
has a medical benefit so that's that's
what this bill would do again this is
stuck in the senate i would expect it to
pass before the end of the year and then
i just want to mention
section 280e of our irs tax code
everything in the cannabis industry is
15 more difficult and 20 more expensive
and this is a code in
the irs that prohibits cannabis
businesses from taking deductions so if
you have ever owned a business if you
can imagine not being able to write off
any expenses
this is the the next big thing that
we're looking at federally we had a
briefing from senator heinrich several
months ago and he
basically said that congress and the irs
are two very different things and never
the two should mingle and there wasn't a
lot that he could do but this this is
something that our organization and
organizations like ours across the
country are are working on
um right now
and then moving from a federal level to
a state level and i i know i did watch a
recording of
the
hour and a half presentation and
interactive kind of town hall style
thing on cannabis that was last week so
some of this is repeated information i
do apologize for that but hb2 was the
bill that created the cannabis control
division within the regulation and
licensing department to administer the
cannabis regulation act and the
licensing provisions in lacua lacua is
the linen air and compassionate use act
that was the bill that made medical
cannabis possible in 2009 or 2010 in new
mexico
i know you've been briefed on all these
other things the tax rate that was a
really important piece we ended up on
that 12 number because that was the
number that would
uh help to undercut the illicit market
in states like california in oregon the
illicit market still
is a much bigger cannabis market than
the legal market and what we want to do
in new mexico is we want to undercut
that market and ideally
bring the unregulated market into a
regulated scenario there are tons of
talented growers and manufacturers
who have been operating unregulated in
the state for
generations
right side of history happened to be on
the wrong side of the law so a lot of
the provisions in the
the the legislation that legalized in
new mexico the idea is to you know bring
these individuals out and again going
back to what i first said about making
an industry that is for and by new
mexico so again
nothing new this is the timeline
uh as of june 29th all the staff at gdoh
the department of health that were
tasked with
regulating the medical program have all
moved over to rld
and then the next big deadline is no
later than september 1st
the cannabis regulatory advisory
committee has to be formed and they have
to open up applications for production
licenses which include the commercial
production licenses the the
production side of the vertically
integrated licenses and of course the
micro licenses which i think are the the
most exciting thing um
to expect in our industry for several
different reasons
and then rules fully promulgated by the
beginning of the year
and then the first retail sale no later
than april 1st
so these are the the license types that
you are now zoning and not you know not
just las cruces but this
this is happening in municipalities and
counties across the state
i will take the opportunity again to
just complement how las cruces is
really looking at this industry with
optimism and opportunity that is not the
case
across the state
i won't name any names
these are the the license types that
specifically you're looking at the first
one is a consumption area this is the
brand new license type
this is like a bar but for cannabis and
the sponsor of the bill representative
javier martinez was very clear that for
him this is a social justice
issue people who are unable to consume
because
they're in government housing or because
their landlord doesn't allow it this is
for them
what this looks like in other markets is
upscale consumption areas that are doing
fancy food pairings with cannabis
and you can basically do
anything
per the the state law now
as long as it doesn't involve alcohol
so consumption areas are actually legal
now they were promulgated by the doh for
the medical cannabis program more than a
year ago but no producers took advantage
because they they recognize the the
liability i'm the the former state
director for mothers against drunk
driving i don't expect any kind of
substance impaired driving issues
related to cannabis
the one exception may be these
consumption areas where somebody goes
and they are unfamiliar with cannabis
and how it affects their body and they
consume too much
so this is the most
i think this is probably where the most
discussion is going to be around zoning
other municipalities are looking at
zoning dispensaries similar to bars
and that's wrong but consumption areas i
think there is a good argument that
those are
more of a kindred spirit to a bar
and then manufacturer producer
testing and research labs i believe
these are and i have a slide just based
on what i learned from tuning in to that
uh the presentation from last week but
these are going to be
uh you know the
the industry zoned areas
and i i will say that
smell mitigation has come a long way
even just in last a few the last few
years the technology around how to
mitigate smell
around production and manufacturing is
much better than it was just a few years
ago
and at least in
albuquerque where i'm a resident of
please don't hold it against me
you will often be next door to a
production facility and not even know it
just because the technology is is so
good
and then retailers i i really appreciate
what the the city's approach is so far
opening up retail to um
you know any commercially zoned area
uh and then the micro businesses again
these are
in some states they these are kind of
akin to what's called equity licensing
but these micro businesses are going to
be the key for everyday new mexicans
coming into the industry and being
successful
if you have a grow operation with up to
200 plants that could be a million and a
half dollar a year business
um so that could be it that could be
your thing or that could be an entree
into a full commercial production
license but either way these these micro
businesses are really designed to be
to be friendly if there's not a lot of
capital up front which lots of people
especially people moving from the
unregulated market to the regulated
market are looking for and again just
that note on the bottom
there's very little prohibition for what
else you can do alongside cannabis you
can do hemp you can do food the one
exception is alcohol so no alcohol
really anywhere on the premises with any
other kind of cannabis business
okay
how to responsibly zone for cannabis the
the goals of zoning as i understand them
to be
is to segregate uses that are thought to
be incompatible and to preserve the
historical character of a community
so again when i came in we were hearing
a presentation about
what sounds like an awesome haunted or
perhaps not haunted hotel
that is really it is haunted
excellent
uh
um that makes me i worked in a haunted
hotel in albuquerque for a long time so
that warms my heart i like the ghosts
um so what what i would argue and i
think what a lot of people without
knowing the the situation specific to
that site i think a lot of people would
argue that cannabis could come in and
hurt the historical character
of a building or a neighborhood
and what i would argue is there's an
opportunity for cannabis to come in and
alongside a historical neighborhood or
building revitalize the neighborhood and
be complementary so i would just ask
that
you know we look at that instead of
automatically assuming that cannabis is
going to be
something that hurts neighborhoods
because
you know i'm not naming any names but
that's what other municipalities kind of
has have taken as their de facto
position
so this is guidance from hb2
municipalities local ordinances are
responsible for creating rules that
reasonably
limit density of licenses and operating
times consistent with neighborhood uses
i
bolded reasonably because that is every
time i hear the regulators talk about it
that's how they say it they say
reasonably they say it a little bit
slower because it sounds like that is
that's the wiggle room for local
ordinances to figure out what they want
to do and that's also going to be the
argument point if there's ever a
disagreement
with the state or legislators or or our
regulators and then to avoid prohibitive
rules that re-stigmatize cannabis that's
not from hb2 that's me
we we can't move backwards in the
stigmatization of cannabis again we have
to move forwards assuming that
the next president is going to legalize
for the entire country and this is our
opportunity to really get our our ducks
in order to take advantage of what
being able to move cannabis across state
lines could mean for our state
um impact of cannabis this is from
a report
for commercial realtors but to give you
an idea
states like ours who had an existing
medical cannabis program and then
shifted to adult use after three years
they saw a 42 percent increase in demand
for warehouses 27 percent increase in
demand for storefronts 21 increase in
demand for land
and
addendums to leases to allow for
cannabis businesses to exist and be part
of the business community
this is
in writing this is the the guidance that
municipalities were given from rld so
again
um
your immediate responsibility and
you have the ability to reasonably
create laws um and and rules to
make the cannabis industry specific to
your community but your immediate
immediate responsibility per rld
is to
set a minimum distance between cannabis
establishments and schools or daycare
centers the legislature specifically did
not include places of worship because
they did not see a connection between
churches and dispensaries which the
behavior around dispensaries is people
go
make a purchase and then take it home so
it's more like a walgreens than it is i
think i said it's like a starbucks which
i'm i'm not going to say public publicly
again after this because i got dinged
pretty bad but it's more like a
walgreens the behavior is not that you
you know you're going to go and leave
and immediately pull out whatever you
purchased and used which is still
illegal you can't just use you know
anywhere on the street but the behavior
at least what we know from the medical
program and what we know from other
states is you make a purchase you make a
legal purchase and you go home and enjoy
it in the comfort of your own home or at
somebody else's house so that's what we
have no reason to think that's what we
we shouldn't expect
um
so the minimum
distance is what i believe is also the
recommendation for your zoning is 300
feet not including churches
and then also any cannabis establishment
that is licensed
basically needs to be grandfathered in
so i have a slide here that shows all
the current medical cannabis
dispensaries
that are going to lay a strong
foundation for a successful adult use
industry
and i would i would strongly recommend
that there's an inclusion that existing
cannabis businesses
be grandfathered in and i know that
it seems unreasonable or there's
probably some kind of law that you can't
zone somebody out of business but the
concern is
right now it's the medical cannabis
industry that they're participating in
so there is concern that there there
would be a prohibition based on zoning
to prevent existing businesses from
competing in an adult use industry and
we really need this strong foundation
with the medical cannabis industry to be
successful there's going to be plenty of
business for everybody and
there's no way that we don't face a
supply
limited
scenario at least for some point in time
and the
existing medical cannabis industry is
going to be really helpful to limit that
time
where
you know we have we're in a supply
constrained environment and especially
for the patients who rely on cannabis
for their medicine
there's a typo here this was from a june
15th letter
my brain
starts a sentence with superintendent
that ends with trujillo and i put in
karen
of course linda trujillo is the
superintendent of rld i'm sorry for that
mistake
so
i'm grateful that the city of
albuquerque went first
they were forced to because they can
only
do
ideo amendments once a year so they have
you know one opportunity a year to do
these zoning amendments and
mayor keller kind of put it out there
and
was the early bird who didn't
necessarily get the worm in in some
situations but what mayor keller kept
saying was he wanted albuquerque to look
like durango not trinidad and if you've
ever driven north i-25 into colorado you
probably know what he means where you
see billboards you know before you enter
trinidad trinidad has a really high
density of cannabis businesses
and
as a community from an economic
perspective they're doing great
but i i do understand his sentiment
wanting it to be a little bit more like
durango i would argue that that would
never happen in albuquerque
there was a long period of time where
trinidad was like the the gateway to
amsterdam in
you know definitely for new mexico but
really
in our country because that's where
people were going to participate in
cannabis tourism
las cruces on the other hand
with texas probably being one of the
last states to shift to adult use
i i think that this um
uh this comparison is probably more apt
for las cruces than it is for for
albuquerque
um
i think that's what what it's worth
i i want to applaud whoever in las
cruces created your version of
the the survey that you shared with
residents
i've i have experience with a lot of
polling um i don't know what's
scientifically valid but i i did like
your survey
a lot more than what albuquerque did
here's one question
it asked should clusters of cannabis
stores be allowed throughout the city
and i think from the way this question
was phrased the expected answer was no
but the response from albuquerque
residents was yes
and a lot of credit to city councilors
in albuquerque who
went out and spoke with other businesses
who were very happy to welcome cannabis
businesses they wanted the foot traffic
they were sick of seeing vacancies in
their neighborhoods and there was
a proposed
rule a prohibition along main street
corridors which basically would have
disallowed cannabis businesses anywhere
on central and that was shot down by
businesses along those main street
corridors who were very welcoming to
this new industry
the one thing that did happen in
albuquerque that was um
that i you know was part of the initial
proposal was a one-year moratorium in
old town proper and again that's where
the city is trying to find that balance
of how do we preserve the the cultural
and historical character of a
neighborhood
i would expect that moratorium not to
continue after this i think if you know
again if there's a neighborhood that
isn't thriving as much as it could be
then cannabis may be a way to to help
that and of course existing legacy
licenses is what the state is calling
medical cannabis licensees who are going
to participate
in the adult abuse market
so these are the current las cruces
dispensaries i think there are three
more
that are waiting for approval from doh
to open
approval that
you know long
is probably long standing since well
before our state legalized just
department of health did their best they
were never intended to be a regulate
regulating agency
so there's a lot of outstanding
amendments still in the medical cannabis
program but this is a snapshot of what
the dispensaries look like in the las
cruces area
again i love las cruces but
i'm from albuquerque so xavier hall is
the
uh he is the regional manager for one of
our member dispensaries um
and he is a true son of las cruces and
if you ever have questions i think one
would be hard-pressed to find somebody
who understands
the on-the-ground business of cannabis
in las cruces and southern new mexico
better than him so i'm volunteering him
to
answer any of your questions or for you
to reach out to him in the future
so these are the current proposals as i
understand them from the presentation
last week
cannabis retail
in all the commercial zones with
consumption being limited to zone two
and three
sounds great
we love it the industry supports that
cannabis industrial which includes
cultivation managing manufacturing
limited to those industrial areas
sounds great the cannabis industry loves
it cannabis research i didn't see
testing facilities um included in there
but i would expect or hope that they
would be
and then my question is just making sure
that nmsu
is able to participate in research and
testing just to make sure that that that
is zoned properly and then micro
businesses um ee and rem
with a special use permit and i just
wanted to clarify that those are also
allowed
everywhere where the above bullet points
are because again those micro licenses
are going to be the the homegrown
businesses that grow into the most
successful businesses in our state so
just making sure that those micro
businesses are also allowed anywhere
else where cannabis
businesses are allowed
300 feet from school and daycare great
300 feet from single-family residential
great a thousand feet between retail
locations
we're saying 600 feet is what's going to
make the most sense for municipalities
and that could be accomplished either
with some kind of
you know special use where they have to
make an application to be
co-located within a thousand feet but
based on what we think is best practice
in other states and what's going to make
the most sense for new mexico we're
saying 600 feet
and then of course
making sure that there is language to
grandfather in the existing medical
cannabis businesses that are going to
lay that strong foundation for success
in the future
thank you very much
i
if it's okay i would love
for xavier just to be able to introduce
himself
good afternoon mayor pro tem council
members
um
my name is xavier hall
excuse me if i'm a little nervous i'm a
little new to this um i will kind of
make this very short and sweet i just
want to kind of put a face to the
cannabis community that we already have
established here in las cruces
um
i'm a member of las cruces i've been
here i've lived here for 15 years
i'm from columbus ohio father got a job
here at new mexico state university
and is working with the athletic
department he's an associate athletic
director here at new mexico state
graduated from las cruces high played
football las cruces high earned a
scholarship and played football here at
nmsu as well um actually professor
bayata is was a professor of mine or dr
buyout that was a professor of mine at
nmsu he might not remember but
economics252
helps out a lot
[Music]
no i just want to include that um i kind
of got in this business i didn't mean to
get into this business honestly um i was
finishing up my last semester of school
my college quarterback at the time was a
was the manager at
mj espresso now pure life and he knew i
had some free time i was in my last
semester kind of asked me to come by
interview
and so i did that just kind of working
as a greeter
part-time
had no had no
interest in being in the cannabis
industry honestly my parents being the
way they were
my
my background it wasn't um something
that was so was such a positive thing
for sure
but like i said it was not something i
was looking to further um i had every
intention to move out of new mexico las
cruces um have a career in freight
brokering with my brother up in reno
nevada
but the day before my college graduation
i found out i was having my daughter
so that changed some things and you know
i had to buckle down i had to figure out
what i was going to do here in las
cruces
and the opportunity that i had provide
in front of me was enough for me to
to stay and just kind of buckle down and
work hard and move up in the ranks which
i did very quickly i went from a greeter
to a regional manager within i would say
about a year and a half
and it's been a great experience and
it's a it's provided me an opportunity
to provide a very good life for my
family here in las cruces and
it's helped provide a lot of people with
the opportunity to provide a family
provide for a family in las cruces and
i just i i just want to
you know touch on that because i think
it's so important
for people to understand what this
industry can do for this community i
love i love las cruces this is home i
would like to stay here as long as
possible um and i think it's very
important for us to move forward in the
right direction and how and give and
provide opportunities for hundreds if
not thousands of people
per to find employment here in las
cruces in this industry
you know like i said i do believe it's
very important in our you know our city
is growing and this is um an industry
that can help move us in the right
direction and and provide jobs and like
council member flores said you know
we're not a retirement community we're
not and we need to start thinking about
the ways that we can progress in the
ways that we can fund this community and
cannabis is definitely one of those uh
is an avenue that we can take to do so
and like ben said you know i'm here to
be an ally i'm here for for any
assistance any questions i would love to
help out in any way that i possibly can
thank you
thank you so much mr hall
thank you
counselor sorek you have a question
yes i have a couple questions thank you
uh
um mayor pro tem
kandara um
first of all there is
in this chambers we had a meeting of the
task force for
marijuana legalization
the task force was here here and we
debated one of their meetings we had one
of the meetings here
and one of the things that came up was
advertising
um i don't know what happened in the
final bill as to controlling advertising
but i was wondering are there any
restrictions or
is there any restrictions on billboard
advertising
for
marijuana here in the state
mayor pro tem councillor sorg i can't
remember exactly what they are but there
definitely is
pretty strict rules in hb2 particularly
around advertising to minors regardless
of the the medium
i do know that one of the other
discussions within another city was
disallowing
like cannabis leaves on the signage for
dispensaries and and that was shot down
but there are really strict rules in
statute particularly around advertising
to people
under 21. and i can't remember if it's a
complete disallowance for billboards or
if it's just not being able to use
you know cartoons or other kind of big
tobacco type marketing things to attract
young people yeah it's similar to other
products too that are
not
good for minors
i'm not going to be talking much anymore
here but i have one last question
uh is it um
i hate to use the word but is it legal
for uh somebody oh let me back up as of
uh june 29th it's not illegal to have
possession of some amount of
of cannabis in in your possession but is
it is it legal to give it away
um suppose you have a
business that you
are selling something else and and that
product is you buy that and as a gift
you get
an ounce of
cannabis
mayor pro tem counselor sorg unclear
i i know before we legalize cannabis
because it is
permissive for medical cannabis patients
to give to other medical medical
cannabis patients so what we saw
in cbd shops was people you know selling
you a 60 mug
that happened to have cannabis in it if
you could prove that you were another
medical cannabis patient and i i do know
that these are
popping up i while i was sitting back
there i saw a facebook post for
a dispensary that is offering a food
pairing they brought in a fancy
executive chef and they're
giving away cannabis to adults over 21.
what i have heard from rld as of friday
was they are aware of the situation
and they are trying to figure out how to
handle it okay it seems like it may be a
loophole but that is definitely not the
intention yeah the intention is people
are allowed to have cannabis now but
it's
probably because they grew it themselves
and i i think what should happen is you
are allowed to gift cannabis to other
people but
what you're describing is a clear
transaction which i think
is definitely not the intention okay
thank you thank you
uh mayor pro tem andera
thank you councillor sorkin
hello
anything else
connie
oh i'm sorry counselor bing cuomo sorry
no that's okay i just wanted to ask uh
thank you pretend if there was another
presentation after this or
there's one more okay i'll hold my
questions until after that
mayor pro tem counselor thank you very
much thank you so much for being here
and for waiting all this time appreciate
your presentation
hey connie
thank you
ikani and you can raise the podium up
there
it's there to that you see it
there you go
thank you
i thought that was a joke i don't know
actually
thank you
[Music]
so
[Music]
all right um
thank you for the opportunity uh mayor
pro tem gandra and city council my name
is ikani tomopiao
one of the assistant city managers for
the city of las cruces and i'm excited
to be here in front of you all in the
community today
i have been in las cruces for
for a few months since
since new year's
and i i've loved it
ever since and so
before i arrived in las cruces i was in
california
and in california i happened to be there
when they legalized cannabis i was
working for cities just like
just like i am doing here and i just
wanted to share a stark difference
between what california is doing and
what new mexico is doing because i just
wanted to make sure
that that people know that all states
are different and they
they legalize things differently in
california when they legalized
adult use cannabis
the state approved it
but state but cities and local
jurisdictions had the local autonomy to
to completely ban i'm sorry we have we
don't have a report
oh oh thank you jennifer
one moment
thanks christine
there we go
all right we get to get to continue yes
connie thank you yeah no problem
so again california
cities were allowed to opt out
essentially when the state approved
recreational cannabis in new mexico
that is not the case when the state
approved it and governor lujan signed it
into order and it took effect in june
earlier this year
cities
can't completely prohibit or ban
cannabis businesses but what they can do
is reasonably
uh
regulate time place and manner of the
businesses and so again we're the 17th
state to legalize cannabis but there are
differences uh in in in which new mexico
decided to legalize cannabis and i'm
bringing up uh comparisons between
california but
and i'm not
sharing what's
what's best and and what's worse i'm
simply sharing that there are
differences
i i know in looking on the website of
how
house bill 2 was drafted they did pick
pieces and they share which states they
looked at when they were looking at
adult recreational cannabis as
legislation and so
those policy makers looked at
massachusetts they looked at maine they
also looked at some parts of california
and colorado when they were putting this
in additional states there were
additional states that were scrubbed as
well but i just wanted to give you a
comparison of what was looked at when
house bill 2 was
set
one of the things that i want to share
for you as council
ben hit on
as well and the community that you may
your constituents
may bring up that this
cannabis and adult use recreation is a
conundrum
it's
it's a schedule one drug on the federal
level
but it is not considered schedule one
drug here in the state and the reason
why i bring that up is because
we are surrounded here in the southern
region of new mexico by
border checks
and so border checks are
our federal
agencies and so
if you are
if you are delivering cannabis and you
go through a federal checkpoint they can
confiscate what they
what they see as a federal drug and so
that is one of the things that
that's challenge that could be seen as a
challenge another challenge as well are
what i've been told
from from my sources that there are only
two labs
right now that test cannabis in the
state those labs are not located in the
southern region of new mexico they're
located in santa fe and located in
albuquerque so anytime you produce
cannabis and anytime you manufacture
cannabis you have to do a quality
control test to ensure that the thc is
stabilized to ensure that the chemicals
are not high but they're they're stable
and so you have to take them to a lab
and so
that's that's one of the issues that if
we were to move forward today uh going
through those checkpoints would be an
issue now as i mentioned to the economic
development prc uh
[Music]
i i truly believe in capitalism and so
council
at the will of council if they were to
move forward that the market uh
the market would be the market and so
capitalism would take over and if
there's an opportunity for a growing
opportunity in a business i i truly
believe uh being in economic development
myself that a business would look for
the opportunity if it made sense here in
the region so i i share challenges
that yes we are located within uh
borders but
we also talking with the economic
development uh department take it as an
opportunity
to again
at the world of council if you were to
move forward with
zoning this that you could essentially
create a local ecosystem of cannabis
going from
from seed to table or from seed to
retail here in this region and so there
are opportunities again i share this
conundrum that it is true many people
may bring up um
and and say
it's not it's a schedule one drug at the
federal level but not at the state level
it is true but there are also
opportunities as well
and so i wanted to share that because
you know those those are some of the
things
that seems to be the elephant in the
room
um also sharing we're coming in front of
you today at a work session
because there's a compressed timeline
from the state the state
passed this earlier this year and so by
september 1st
the state will start accepting producers
cultivators applications for micro
business producers those that produce
and cultivate
by january 1st 2022 the state
is posed to be ready for all other
business types that ben shared in this
presentation
now you may ask yourself why producers
why do the producers go first
why not just accept them all in january
1st what they have seen in other states
if you're familiar and i bring this
up for for comparison is black friday
when sales go
for the first time you have a frenzy
that happens and so when this was
legalized in other states again we're
the 17th
our state has looked at other states
that have legalized this and they have
actually
had issues with the supply of cannabis
being ready and so
they're not really worried about adult
youths adult use and recreational
users they're worried about medical
patients and not having enough supply
for the medical patients so they want to
ensure
that there's enough cycles happening
before this is accepted on january 1st
for all other business types and then
april 1st 2022
no later than april 1st 2022 cannabis
retail dispensaries can uh begin selling
again that's a no later date
so i wanted to focus on september 1st
again sharing
there's a compressed deadline from the
state and this is why we have our
compressed deadline here and presenting
to your work session but i want to share
with you
some of the meetings that we've had and
some of the meetings that we will
have in front of you we've had three
meetings so far where we involved the
community
and involved u.s council we've come to
economic development prc last week
quality of life prc and we've
had our first cannabis town hall meeting
last week and
i i want to share when i'm in front of
you i'm alone but i want to make it very
clear very present that all of the
departments behind me have been touching
cannabis we've been meeting
uh weekly if not daily uh met with legal
and community development today this is
a discussion that again it's it's not um
it's not individual effort this is all
departments coming together and so
they're behind me right now and i'll
have community development speak but um
i i just wanted to let you all be aware
it's it's
it's all the departments we're meeting
on this and we have our reoccurring
meetings i wanted to share that
but at the
first
cannabis town hall meeting we had about
uh approximately 50 people show up to
that it was a good turnout
and i'm glad ben had the opportunity to
follow us
on
online and look at a recorded
session of that
today we're here at work session
tomorrow we'll
we will have community development go to
pnz planning and zoning commission there
will be recommendations uh going to pnz
but those recommendations
we'll be sharing with you and these are
only staff recommendations we're coming
here at work session we want you to pick
at it ben had some
and again i just want to share for those
that are watching online or those in the
community um
[Music]
uh ben
lewinger uh the the gentleman that spoke
before me presented a presentation uh
that
that was requested by councillor vasquez
from
from the meeting prior so that's why he
was speaking before i did so
that was something that mayor pro tem
and council allowed and so that's why he
was speaking before i did
but again
not
he shared some of the things that he was
uh requesting from his organization uh
we we will present to you some
recommendations from staff but again
that's only a recommendation from staff
if there's this is the work session that
we would love to hear from you if we're
not meeting the mark or if we need to
make some modifications
august 12th is the second town hall and
the the last town hall meeting that we
have on the topic
and then after that on august 15th is
the last time to take the cannabis
survey i would invite and make a plug
for the cannabis survey looks like
it's the best in the state right now
according to ben
and and we appreciate that kudos because
again the team worked very hard on
putting that together
and we appreciate albuquerque survey
because again um
it was
one of the surveys that that we looked
at but working together as a team
we have a very interactive survey it's
in spanish and it's in english and it
explains the zoning and so a lot of
things were put into the survey so that
if the
a lay person read it they could at least
have understanding of what these zones
were as opposed to where should we zone
it and not explain zones
including partnership with our gis
department so huge huge props to the
whole team behind me and to our gis
department community engagement and pio
department
then we have on august 16th the day
after the
survey closed we'll come to you with the
results not only with the survey but
also
recommendations that we take from you
today recommendations that we have from
pnz and then we'll come once again to
the full council on the city council
meeting on the 16th
and then we'll come again on
second council meeting on september 7th
and of course at your will if you would
like to have additional council meetings
uh it is
your choice
so um speaking on house bill 2 this
house bill 2
allows 20 21 those individuals that are
21 years and and older to possess on
on them
on their body
no more than two ounces of cannabis 16
grams of concentrated cannabis and 800
milligrams of edible cannabis
they're allowed to possess
more than what i just mentioned in the
above bullet point but they have to lock
it on the premise and it has to be away
from any visible site
and and so this is where it can be
stored
now talking about personal growth
personal growths are allowed due to the
house bill 2 regulation
per 21 year old in the household
depending on on how many 21 year olds
there are in the house you can grow up
to no more than six mature plants and
six immature plants at one time if you
have additional 21 euro year olds in the
house then the max you can have in that
household is no more than 12 mature
plants at one time
and if you do that is a fourth degree
felony
you uh 21 year olds in the home are able
to
to create cannabis infused foods at home
and perform extracts that do not involve
volatile solvents
allowed smoking areas
essentially what what um
what we saw the state do in this uh
house bill 2 regulation is they lumped
in
cannabis smoke
smoking of cannabis and they lumped it
in with the smoking of tobacco so
the areas and you may not be able to see
but
the areas
in white
is all that was already allowed with
tobacco
tobacco retail store cigar bars casinos
designated outdoor smoking areas private
clubs hotel motel rooms designated as
smoking permitted rooms as long as
they're not more than 10 percent of the
total net rooms and hotel cultural or
ceremonial site by native americans in
theatrical stage motion production and
tv production during performance
these were already in place
with tobacco essentially what cannabis
did was they didn't want to treat
cannabis smoking differently and so they
lumped lumped them in under the clean
indoor air act
but what was different was the first
bullet point
under allowed private in private
residents indoor
and or outdoor consumption areas with
certain requirements this is
one where areas are allowed but they
have to apply for a license at the state
and this is one of the
10 business types that are being allowed
one of the recommendations
i think we came up just this morning
and it may change but catherine and and
legal can speak to it um when we get
later in the presentation is
we are
making the recommendation to allow
indoor but not outdoor consumption areas
at this time
and again if anything changes
recommendations come please feel free to
to share but that is our recommendation
but would love to hear um from you
buffer distance and comparables we have
looked at cities around the nation at
some of the the areas
the sensitive areas and what house bill
2 for cannabis considers are really two
sensitive areas one is for schools and
one is for day care centers
as ben mentioned the presentation prior
church
and places of worship are not considered
a sensitive area although it is
considered sensitive under abc liquor
license but is not considered sensitive
with
with cannabis
so schools
about a thousand and again we're looking
at big cities these um are huge uh
cities but we can see in these cities
they're about
um uh about a thousand in sacramento
they have
um
a buffer of 600 500 in in boston
massachusetts and then we have child
daycares
here
in new mexico
all cannabis uses must be at a minimum
distance that is not more than 300 feet
from schools and day cares so if we do
nothing and we're we decide to do
nothing on the buffers
and don't set a standard
any cannabis business could come in and
essentially go anywhere from zero um
they they can come right next to a
sensitive area if we don't set anything
that's essentially what happens so
house bill gives us the opportunity to
set a standard that the minimum is no
more than 300 so we're making the
recommendation to keep it at the max
minimum which is 300 feet away from a
sensitive area again if you have any
recommendations uh to lower that
feel free to share
so here is um our gis department they
produced uh 300 feet buffers from
schools and day cares
this may be uh
oh actually it's hopefully you can see
in front of you looks pretty clear
the difference
here is
the the blue areas with the lines around
it those are schools and and those blobs
that don't have any lines around it and
any boundaries within that blue are day
daycares so
uh just to highlight we have some
schools here that it's pointing to
and this essentially shows
uh the buffer so you have the school in
the boundary
and then the buffer of 300 feet goes
beyond the perimeter the rectangle that
you see that just shares how
that just shares that buffer
and then daycares as well that it's
pointing to hopefully you can see in
your screen
daycares are pointing to the blobs
without any lines
but
but these are
what we have right now as a
recommendation
another buffer that we added as well
again we are at your disposal to hear a
comment from us council is we added a
residential buffer of 300 feet away from
residential
properties
and a thousand feet from another
business and so the green circles
are hypotheticals of where businesses
could locate in commercial areas
and so that's how big
a thousand feet buffer would be in the
middle that would be a dispensary and so
i just wanted to share
kind of the impact of that so you may
see that and say oh no that's a little
too big for me um we need to go lower or
maybe you might say we need to go higher
um but again this is just trying to
share because one of the questions that
i believe came up in the
edprc talking with u.s council is we
need a perspective help us understand
what a thousand feet means help us
understand what 300 feet means um and so
residential buffer i don't know if you
can see it but um
the the reds the red layers on the on
the
the red layers are commercial zones
and then the residential zones are the
yellow layers
and so if you
look
um
from the edge of the
the edge of the residential zones it'll
buffer about 300 feet uh from there and
so where the
where the arrows are pointing is really
the buffer that would exist from
residential buffer so you as council
could say i don't like residential
buffer let's eliminate that or that's
fine let's keep it well let's play with
it again these are recommendations
from staff and please let us know your
thoughts state cannabis licensing
there's 90 days once a complete
application is
submitted to the state they have 90 days
to approve or deny
applicants may not have prior
convictions that are substantially
related to the qualifications functions
or duties so any embezzlement any fraud
any deceit sale to
a minor you cannot apply for an
application
but if you have a prior conviction of
cannabis
possession of cannabis self kind of
cannabis that is okay
so just wanted to make sure that that's
clear
business requirement regulations the
cannabis control divisions at the state
they will ensure that all these bullet
points are followed
they will
look and do quality control when they
review the applications advertising so
we brought up billboards and just to
mention on billboards i'll have a slide
on that
they are allowed in the state
but i'll go more into that
in the next slide i believe health and
safety testing labeling packing
regarding additives quality control
environmental protections and here we
are
so just to mention
billboards as as the presenter uh
before me mentioned
you cannot have predatory uh predatory
marketing you cannot lure miners
you can
the only place really where they're
allowing
marketing is as it mentions here in the
bottom bullet point only allowed on
subscription-based media for adults to
opt in so nothing on tv nothing on radio
no mass transit
and in the legislation they actually
single off billboards you can't have
them within uh 300 feet of sensitive
areas
and even the viewing within 300 feet you
can't view a billboard within 300 feet
of that so essentially it extends beyond
the way it's it's it's stated
interesting enough so if you're within a
300 feet uh
of a chair uh of a school or daycare and
you can view it essentially what they're
saying is it has to be pushed out
farther until you can't see it no more
hide behind a tree or something
[Music]
so again no luring
no luring to the miners or
predatory marketing and cannot be
designed to appeal to minors must be
child resistant must have poison control
number there's a lot of regulations and
restrictions before it can even leave
and be sold to the consumer diversity
inclusion
this part was huge from the state they
wanted to make it a purpose to
uh to follow procedures that promoted
and encouraged full participation in the
cannabis industry and how they achieved
this was essentially um
making and available for those that have
prior convictions on your record if you
had cannabis conviction prior
and making it available for applications
to apply
they essentially encourage full
participation by doing that
normally
you know the the the olden days if you
had uh something on your record for
cannabis
you wouldn't be allowed to do many
things um with that record and so what
they were allowing diversity and
inclusion was essentially
not only did was it the expungement of
that that happened years prior but the
act of allowing um conviction
conviction priors not to um
not to preclude you from the application
process so i wanted to make sure that
that was mentioned and that was
important from
from the state to include that
so what are some public health
considerations odor control is huge
during the production and cultivation
this will stink
this will there will be a stench um but
as mentioned technology has um
has been advanced in the odor control
and they have carbon filters and other
type of filters that will be able to
um
will be able to
mitigate the odor control
but it is still one of those health
considerations pollutants air quality
overdose response calls
there will be increase
to access by youth and homes because now
personal growth will be allowed
and
we may see
illegal sales
as well
some public safety considerations again
youth may be exposed to growth sites in
residential property youth may have
access in homes maybe illegal
cultivation activities there may be
illegal business activities may see an
increase in traffic from retailers and
driving while impaired
driving while impaired there is no
breathalyzer standard tests for driving
if you partake of cannabis
thc
and cannabis can stay in your system
upwards of 25 days if not longer and so
right now the only way to tell if you're
impaired there's no machine that exists
it's really the state allows performance
of of a roadside sobriety test and so
those uh that is
uh the way for
to detect uh
driving impaired cannabis
public health and education by september
1st 15 professional
individuals from the
health
epidemiologist occupational safety
medicine and similar fields will be
selected
they will
be
they will have a goal to to create an
annual report by december 1st 2024
to report on to the state health effects
of legalization of cannabis child access
workplace safety road safety consumer
safety
and so this report will be ready looking
at the state as a whole by december
first twenty twenty four
this is going to be helpful information
and i worked with our economic
development department francisco and our
local economist carl
to
and they accepted the challenge to see
what we can do to look locally as well
so not only waiting for the state to
to see what they come up with but
perhaps by 2024 we can start coming up
with with our own impacts and start
measuring what is happening locally and
so they accepted the challenge and
some of the
some of the demands and supply
indicators that they're looking at right
now um are all those that are listed
demanding
demand indicators and these are that
the the indicators that exist today uh
we understand that because this was
barely legalized just a few months ago
there may be additional indicators that
we may need to pull out we may need to
work with hospitals to pull out even our
local law enforcement
i've talked with deputy chiefs as well
as how can we pull out
can
anything related to cannabis and so it
will take some time
but at least we're starting the
discussions early wanted to let you know
as council the team is uh leaning
forward being proactive on how we can
measure
not only uh have the state do it but
along locally regionally and so we're
looking at all these bullet points
and these are just some of the graphs
again
these were what the numbers that were
used on the previous uh the previous
page but again what i would focus on is
we will have better indicators we'll
have as time goes and as
as we have as the legalization of
cannabis has another year and then we
have other years and we start recording
metrics from hospitals and from schools
and from law enforcement the hope is
that we'll have better
better data and a lot better output from
that
local control
again
as local control we can't completely ban
we can't completely
prohibit
but we can reasonably regulate time
place and manner
and
cities may not completely prohibit as i
mentioned
we cannot prohibit transportation of
cannabis through locality we
we cannot restrict signage at licensed
cannabis businesses that identify them
and we cannot prohibit personal home
cultivation
cannabis excise tax so there is an
excise tax
that the state established about 12
of that 12 percent
the local municipal distribution of that
12 percent is 33 percent
and so that equates to about 4 that goes
back to las cruces up to 2024.
that four percent starts at 2024
and it increases gradually until 2030 it
essentially becomes about six percent
at twenty thirty so of that eighteen
percent we will get about six percent of
that back to las cruces that's just from
the excise tax just wanted to share that
what what that means
in addition to the excise tax we have
grt gross receipt tax right now it's
about eight point uh 31 percent
and collectively we have uh 12 percent
from the excise 8 percent from the grt
and is about 20.3 percent collectively
and so that that is on adult use
cannabis medical cannabis there is no
excise tax there is no grt
and now i will have uh my community
development team catherine and then
we'll have dr pitts and larry
at the ready and then we'll take some
questions after thank you
thank you connie hi hi
good evening mayor pro tem and members
of city council
i wanted to talk a little bit about the
recommendation that staff is making in
regard to zoning for cannabis
again as ikani had mentioned we can
control the time place and manner
including density but we can't restrict
transportation prohibit operations i'm
sorry i'm gonna stop you you didn't say
your name would you please for the
record i'm so sorry you're always so
good about that
it's okay catherine harrison rogers for
the record it's very late isn't it it i
was gonna say good afternoon but it's
now good evening
um thank you for the reminder
um we can't prohibit or limit signage uh
related to cannabis uh we can't require
the relocation of existing uh and we
can't prohibit personal use or
production
uh some of the recommendations that
we're making are are really just sort of
logical leaps in terms of of like land
uses and what we should do
uh right now we're proposing cannabis
retail zones be located in c1
that's our neighborhood residential no
consumption in that particular zone
simply because at this point in time
bars and taverns aren't allowed in that
particular zone it it made sense to us
we're also recommending that it be
allowed in c2 and c3 with consumption
areas
we are also recommending that the
production and manufacturing be located
in our industrial zones that would be m1
m2 and m3
cannabis research laboratories also
located in industrial zones with the
ability to also be located in our
industrial technology zone which is mt
and then we have a cannabis micro
business category slightly different
than how the state defines it that would
be allowed in ee which is
equestrian estate and rem which is rural
estate mobile with a special use permit
those particular zones do allow for
horticulture
and also have some current allowances
for wineries and breweries associated
with products that they grow on site so
we're treating it in a similar manner
um do want to point out that you'll see
that we
don't have overlay zones listed here
that's something that we're still trying
to feel out we have so many of them
in in the city uh we're still doing a
little bit of work on those
however this reaches most of the city at
this point in time and there are some
options in in some of our overlay zones
in terms of moving forward quickly if if
someone were to need to do that and that
includes our infill development process
which is a free process by which
somebody can propose a whole slew of
uses
not otherwise covered under the code it
does go to a planning and zoning hearing
but again it is free and it's a fast
track process that we
have available to people on eligible
properties
do you want to point out some of the
areas that we're talking about
all of the areas in sort of the red pink
color would be the
the commercial zones around the city
those highlighted in purple including
the las cruces industrial innovation
park which is in in this
bluer color
those are all those industrial zones
where one might see the growing and the
manufacturing of cannabis
you can also see some of our other
overlay zones such as the
university district downtown
the south mesquite north mesquite
districts in alameda depot
also in that blue color and then the
light green colors that you see
scattered about are those
rural residential zones ee and rem where
those smaller micro businesses would be
allowed with a special use permit
we are recommending some conditions of
course this is just a recommendation
recommendation you as the policy makers
ultimately will
provide direction in terms of what you
want to see we're recommending of course
that that these uses be 300 feet from a
school or daycare that the cannabis
retailer also be 300 feet from a single
family residential zone and a thousand
feet from other cannabis retailers we've
received a lot of feedback on these um
about
perhaps that those might be an overreach
in terms
of the part of the city since we don't
require that uh for either bars or
pharmacies or other like uses
at this point in time the way we have
written the language we do have some due
process available if people
in those industries did want to be
closer to those residential zones or
from another cannabis retailer
in terms of cannabis industry
you can have accessory to reach you can
have accessory retail
located on those sites again in any of
those industrial zones you could have a
micro business as defined by the state
where um it covers the gambit in terms
of all the types of of cannabis business
that could be allowed at that location
and again the cannabis micro business is
required with a with a special use
permit um again this is the this is a
not exactly the state's definition this
is
something that we developed in house
similar to
it allows accessory this has to be
accessory to primary residents on-site
because again these are residential
zones it's limited to no more than 200
mature plants products for sale must be
grown on site
must be located in a fully enclosed
accessory building and must be located
um the accessory structure itself must
be located 100 feet away from other
residences
just want to remind council that these
are really large lots generally
they are
rural in nature and so the hundred foot
distancing from other residences
is not a challenge based on some of the
research that we did in looking at the
maps and looking at adjacent properties
and where homes were located
again i know that economy already went
over this but this is a great example of
what some of these buffers might look
like especially from the schools and day
cares
in comparison to
those areas where these businesses could
be located of course in the red
and again he already went through these
in terms of of what this might look like
on the ground
and again if if city council were to
entertain those additional buffers
from other businesses or residential
zones this is an example of how you
might see these spread out throughout
the city
and i'm going to go ahead and turn it
over to
dr tim pitts who's going to talk a
little bit more about our business
registration process and how that might
be handled
thank you catherine tim pitts uh deputy
director for building and development
for this city so i'm in charge of our uh
permitting and
uh business registration processes for
the city and uh i wanted to sort of give
you a couple of examples with our
pictures here of of what it is we're
we're anticipating uh and what we're
anticipating is what i would just say
are kind of normal businesses we aren't
expecting to see things uh in the grow
facilities uh that are
they they probably have higher uh
maybe even higher technology than than
what we're seeing in most uh similar
types of things but
but stuff we would see in other
industries
and in the retailers there's some
examples that we found are showing
retailers that are not that much
different than you'll find in a regular
retail store or in a
grocery store or a convenience store or
something so we're anticipating kind of
the same sorts of things and that's
really our
our approach to this on the
on the procedure side of how we
anticipate to
manage the
permitting and licensing of these of
these businesses and that is to follow
our our current business registration
process uh the the the application will
come in as a as just a normal business
registration we'll have the businesses
will need to have a tax and rev id a crs
number before they come in
they'll have to have a location
all that'll have to be determined
beforehand we will take in their
application with the appropriate
documentation that we need uh we will
review it the same way we do every other
business
do inspections the same way we would
anything the primary three things
in the case of businesses that we're
looking at is the zoning which
catherine's already talked about the
rules that we would have we would have a
zoning
review of the
of the process we would have a
building review of the of the business
what's the building like so the zoning
talks about where it is and and as ben
was talking about it's really about
minimizing land use conflicts minimizing
conflicts between neighbors
so that we don't have people arguing
with each other and taking things into
their own hands and so on
we kind of
ahead of time deal with what are we
anticipating people to get angry with
their neighbor over and let's see if we
can we can adjust that now and so that's
the zoning the building is about
making sure buildings are sustainable
and built for the purpose for which
they're being used we're looking for
safety in there we're looking for
accessibility
we're looking for
you know and larry will talk a little
bit more about that and then fire is the
third thing that we'll review for um
we're interested in is this a building
is this a a location that's designed
safely
that people can get out in case of an
emergency that emergency personnel can
get to in cases in which it's needed
and so that's really how we're we're
looking to approach this
there will be some parts of the
municipal code that will need to be
updated
we're right now proposing updates for
the zoning portion uh but we need to
look into chapters 5 and chapter 16
to present to you
options and i think we need to hear from
you what is it that we are looking to
regulate in those uh in those instances
uh right now we're proposing to to
basically follow similar rules to to to
do we do alcohol or or bars or taverns
or anything but in the processing we're
going to do it the same we do for any
business i point out on the right this
is a the new mexico state fee schedule
this is not our fee schedule we don't
get to collect any of these fees the
state collects all these fees we get to
collect one 35 dollar
business registration fee and since you
have reduced that to five dollars for
this year the first businesses that
register will pay five dollars to get
the their their business registration
with the city
so i mentioned they're going to come in
they're going to have to have a tax and
taxation and revenue crs certificate
with a crs number
with the appropriate with the correct
business
physical address of the business so that
we can uh uh we can issue them their uh
business registration
um and and that's uh that's really it
we're we're trying to take an approach
that is
um as as open to to
allowing things as we would with any
other business we're not looking to make
this anything uh anything more
restrictive anything more difficult so
i'm going to turn it over to our
building uh our community development
director larry nichols who's also our
building official
good evening mayor pro tem city
councilors larry nichols community
development director
many of the items have been covered this
evening from our cannabis team we're
calling it
iconi did an excellent job explaining
the regulations that are coming down
from the state and some of the taxation
parts some of the economic development
incentives and abilities to increase
that industry
we've talked about zoning
katherine presented how we're going to
accomplish that in land use tim
mentioned about business license
i'm going to mention very briefly about
how
finding people that
discover a facility that they want to
use to do the bill to do their business
and how will we applying the building
codes
to that the types of facilities that we
will be anticipating seeing will be
growth facilities extraction facilities
dispensaries
laboratories and supply or retail stores
the building code requirements are the
building codes that we have existing
right now we won't have to develop new
regulation building code regulations to
address
the facilities
bless you
the uh we'll do this by occupancy
classification
um
an example of an occupancy
classification if this if it's a retail
business that is the classification by
our building code it's called a business
and they have certain
items that they have to meet in terms of
accident and safe occupancy and that
type of thing if they had an occupancy
of a dispensary or extraction facility
or a laboratory where there may be
chemicals that are used in that that
would have more
risk if you will because of the
volatility of fire and that
then we would have that classification
additional applicable codes would be the
fire code we work with the fire
chief on on this and reviewing this for
the presentation
we have found out from other
jurisdictions i've spoken to in colorado
and some of the other 17 states
that have the
regula have the cannabis industry in
full effect
they tell me that there is a
quite a requirement for electrical
uh power for for the
cannabis facilities because the lights
are on
all the time for the growth pattern
in many cases
plumbing is another item will be tying
in and utilizing the city's utility
department the water system that they
have a demand for water
for growing the plants on cultivation
mechanical we we've talked we heard
about
the
exhausting of maybe
the
the different types of buildings and how
that might impact the air quality
and then lastly we have adopted the
energy code recently and the energy code
will apply to the building facility
itself
commercial facilities are not going to
be
permitted
for single family dwellings some of the
some of the
other
i spoke to
they said that commercial developers
have come in and purchased a home
and they have gone into the home and
taken all the interior petitions out and
basically established a commercial
endeavor so we
we're not
proposing that that be allowed for for
this
and i believe
just give you an example of some of the
things for about building safety
and how we're going to apply the codes
the slide on the left you'll see is
there was an extraction activity going
on there there was some vapor from the
extraction in the air
the person that you see there
kind of reeling back
applied a heat gun
for part of that and the heat gun
ignited the vapor
and then of course on the other side is
a
extraction facility and a residential
property
that obviously created an incident like
this
so those would be the building codes
that we'll be applying to
the the zoning as well as the business
licenses
and i believe we go back to
iconic thank you
thank you larry
thank you larry and team
all right so
we would like to end with
before we get to
questions or while we're doing questions
is here are the policy considerations
that we have for you
today to discuss
some of these
these recommendations some of these
policy considerations number one is
consumption areas
right now
we are
recommending
consumption
recommending all consumption areas be
limited to indoors in compliance with
the clean air act as amended and not
outdoor
consumption areas that's what we're
recommending as staff and we would love
to hear your thoughts on that
jurisdictions may exclude consumption
areas entirely
and so this is the consumption area
that it says in house bill 2 legislation
as one of the bus as one of the 10
business types it says cities may allow
consumption areas it doesn't say it has
to so that's that's what this means here
again what we're thinking as staff is
recommending uh indoor not outdoor
again buffers buffers is coming up and
so we'd love to hear your thoughts
several concerns have been voiced by
public regarding the proposed uh
thousand-foot buffer distancing between
businesses we just heard from the
cannabis
chamber of commerce
in the state of new mexico
they were mentioning if we could settle
on 600 they'd be fine with that again
representing the cannabis industry just
wanted to share that again curious to
hear your thoughts maybe you'd like to
go lower maybe you'd like to not go
lower up to you and then alcohol uses
are not buffered from one another or
from residential zones bringing up the
example that we're not doing that right
now with uh with liquors so then the
question can be why would we do that
with cannabis industries
and so those are some of the policy
considerations that we would love to
hear your thoughts on
in a discussion so that we can take this
with the direction pnz and then come
with recommendations to you at the full
council meeting coming up next month so
thank you connie
gil joanna
and counselor beat this dude
sorry counselor sorg
thank you
thank you mayor putin
um
you talked about go back to the slide uh
consumption areas
and we're talking about smoking
consumption not eating right or both
uh good question we're talking about one
of the ben
10 business types
allowed for cannabis consumption areas
that is cannabis consumption oh this is
a business this is this is a business
correct yeah this is residential it
doesn't yes
exactly if you're referring to the slide
of the clean in the clean indoor air act
where we cannabis got lumped into all
the other bullet points yeah that that's
something separate yes sir
and then um
a quick question on slide 31
where the state
fee schedule is
it just simply says 50 per plant
are we talking about individual
marijuana plants
or are we talking about plants that grow
what is that fifty dollars per plant
that can't be perfect
really who wrote that
mayor pro tem
counselor story thank you uh tim pitts
uh
uh i believe that is a
um
that's for the micro uh the micro
businesses when they're when they're
it's it's not for res it's not for re
it's not for individual use those are
not regulated we don't we don't regulate
them the state doesn't regulate that's i
believe that's for where it's not
otherwise
because in the other ones they have they
have specific numbers for what they're
doing so as i say this was just copied
off of the states we're we're not
necessarily answering for their
for what they're going to charge
for commercial production right but it
would be for commercial production yes
yes sir but is it per
individual plant
amazing yes i believe that is but uh
but we would need more we would need to
look up uh we would need to go and and
uh see what the the the state is doing
in that but but i believe that yes it is
for individual plants may i ask if ben
has more information on that
this doesn't make sense to me
mayor pro tem councillor sorg it is an
additional per plant fee could you
please repeat your name ben lewinger
executive director of the new mexico
cannabis chamber of commerce thank you
mayor pro tem councillor it is an
additional per plant fee right now rld
is
in a public comment period to promulgate
rules with
tiers for commercial licensing so there
will be a fee if you want to grow up to
2500 plants if you want to grow 2500 to
6000 these are made up numbers but
that's what they're working on right now
but the the 50 per plant fee is in
statute for all of the commercial
production licenses except for the micro
businesses
so here it is 50 additional per plant
there goes the profit
okay thank you very much madam
thank you
thank you counselor sir councillor ben
como thank you mayor pertam and thank
you so much acm tommy pio for your
presentation very thoroughly and for the
staff who've been working on this
very
diligently and then of course for our
two guests
i first of all i just want to say that
i cannot believe this is happening
part of me cannot believe this is
happening honestly
um and i'm very i'm actually very
honored to be part of this conversation
and to be on this council talking about
this in this moment so i just wanted to
know
the surrealness of this
um i have
a lot of questions um
i'll just start with
that that last slide um since we're
those were some of the policy
recommendations at the forefront
um and perhaps this is for both you
ikani and ben
um
where are these numbers coming from the
600 the 1000 feet
in terms of the spacing are they
arbitrary are they data driven where are
the numbers coming from
that's a good question i can speak on
the thousand i actually have
uh catherine speak on
um on the thousand
and then we'll have ben speak on
600.
again catherine harrison rogers with
staff mayor protem members of
city council
so we have some other
buffers in in the city that do require a
thousand
foot buffering
it's not really
it's more of an apples to oranges
comparison because i can't say that
cannabis and then adult uses are the
same thing but we were trying to at
least find something that that was
comparable um and i and again um just
trying to
to come up with something that we've
seen elsewhere in the city is really
where that that's come from and then on
top of that there are some other
jurisdictions around the country who
have some similar types of um spacing
distances but i can't say
that there is specific data behind why
that distance is chosen and hopefully
that answers your question yes thank you
catherine quick follow-up before you go
um you mentioned so right now that
exists that 1000 foot exists with
medical
retailers
i'm sorry
so uh
to answer your question um
there is not a thousand foot distancing
for medical marijuana um retailers um at
all we've we've likened them with
pharmacies and that's how they've been
categorized so anywhere a pharmacy can
go they can go and and that'll hold true
we have um once the regulations change
and and if these are adopted then
there won't be any spacing requirements
for them they're considered a
non-conforming use and continue can
continue to exist um as long as they are
there okay and i'm so then i apologize i
missed the comparison you were making oh
that's it i'm sorry
so i'm sorry yes so what it does exist
for is for adult um entertainment uses
um there's there's some distinction
requirements there um and again that's
apples to oranges because of course
cannabis and adult um recreational uses
are are not the same when i talk about
that it's the sexually explicit
businesses got it thank you yes
ben lewinger cannabis chamber i'm sorry
akane and catherine i didn't mean to
blow up your presentation so
from the industry point of view the 600
number is data driven but maybe not in a
in a way that
in the way that you would think it is
basically we looked at
where the existing cannabis
medical
dispensaries were and where there would
be the fewest amount of having these
businesses move
and then we looked at
areas mainly in albuquerque mainly in
the main street areas where we thought
it would be reasonable
and
this is where it's not scientific just
you know our board of directors and our
one of our committees got together and
said this is where we thought it seemed
a reasonable distance between
dispensaries so areas like nob hill and
albuquerque
didn't only have one or two dispensaries
but it also didn't you know it wasn't on
every single
street corner so
you know officially i think the industry
would be okay with the
minimum distances between businesses but
600 feet just seemed like a reasonable
number based on similar numbers that we
were hearing from the work of other
municipalities
ben do you think that then that
recommendation could change by
population of a city
do you know what i mean so if you're
saying in albuquerque it's 600 could
that be different for las cruces
um mayor pro tem councillor ben como i i
think that you know your community
better than anybody else so i wouldn't
want to assign any kind of
hard rules like that and then really i
think this is an area where
statute is pretty clear that local
ordinances have the ability to make
decision with this specifically
so i
i wouldn't make any rules like that i do
think that that is how it's done with
alcohol outlet density and why you would
see more
bars and and liquor stores you know per
capita in some communities than than
others thanks i appreciate that
mayor purcham councillor ben como i do
want to point out that in the core of
the city an average block length is
around 300 feet uh if that gives you any
sort of perspective that's in the core
of city when you start moving out to the
sonoma ranchers of course those block
links get really big but um just so that
you're aware that is very helpful
actually thank you
um you know just sticking with the how
do we try to destigmatize this as much
as possible
um i would personally be
comfortable and supportive of going down
to 600 and take the recommendation of
the industry
um again that's just me
um
okay couple more questions
um
in terms actually is adrian whitmer
still here
oh i'm sorry she just
yeah she might be back but i saw her
step out for a bit i will wait and
hopefully she comes back
um
let me get my bearings here they're not
in any particular order i'm just going
to ask them okay so maybe this question
is for ben as well but and for you
economy um there was
you had mentioned um
around you know really bringing the
underground market to the regulated
market
what are some of those strategies you've
seen
in other cities
of regulating
yeah so there was so ben talked about
the unregulated underground market right
and and the challenges of bringing those
markets into the regulated market i'm
curious with some of those strategies
yeah um i i think he mentioned one and
i'm sure he has some points i would say
one of uh one of the issues
is the economic side of it
which the higher you are on the excise
tax which is really handled by the state
right now i would say collectively and
ben could attest to this
we're lower
on the economic side than compared to
other states but again you know we're
new mexico but
what i do here and you could
confirm with other states is that they
are threatened where we're starting off
and it's a gradual
and in in cities that opt out what
happens is like such as in california
they can control the local tax option so
right now there's no control that we
have and so greedy cities in california
because they're greedy and i'm from
there i can say that
they they can control that any which way
in addition to a 15
excise tax on top of what the state
charges so there's 15 excise tax in
addition to whatever local tax option
and the state would say oh we can't go
over above this threshold uh and so
there's this uh there's this pool so i
was the economics is huge of that but i
think we're one of the lower ones in the
nation um but i would i would just kind
of stick to uh economics on that and man
curious to hear your thoughts
i think the biggest challenge for
micro businesses is going to be startup
capital so whatever you can do to
create funding or you know keep those
fees at five dollars versus thirty five
dollars for the the local licensing and
it seems like if i understand what
catherine said correctly uh opening up
and being a little bit less restrictive
with zoning i think it was an equestrian
area
with an attached retail option but i
think those kind of allowances
specifically for the micro businesses
are going to be what's going to have the
biggest impact
great thank you
thank you both actually adrian i had a
question for you
i'm so glad you're here
we're currently having conversations
about
um water conservation at the las cruces
utility board and so
um adrienne i'm curious if you have and
very open-ended questions i'm curious if
you have any
um
recommendations advice as we think about
the
water conservation plan and this
industry
mayor pro oh
i'm a shorty
mayor pro tim
councillor bencomo adrian woodmer
assistant utilities director
so when it comes to that more than
likely um whoever's using that they're
going to have a meter
and so it will be metered we will get
the revenue from that and as far as the
con conservation of that of course that
will be something that's looked at but
they would be treated just like any
other
any other user
they use the water they they pay for the
water obviously uh that would go into
part of the gpcd gallons per capita per
day um
calculations for the end of the year and
we would take a look at it and see what
it is and and maybe talk to them about
ways to conserve water
but um you know it's just like any other
industry if they come in we will be more
than happy to give them a meter and we
will be more than happy to take their
money
yes absolutely adrian thank you so much
that was a great response thank you
you're welcome thank you
um okay i'll make this quicker on the
consumption areas i fully agree with the
staff's recommendation i do have one
additional
thought though for the first time ever
we have a rooftop bar in las cruces um
right at the amador
i'm curious if
so now we're excluding
sort of patios and outdoor areas from
the consumption air areas
could there be
an exemption to that to rooftop
consumption areas
i'll
defer to
catherine and or uh jennifer see if you
have any
thoughts on where we are heading with
that because we did make the
recommendation too do those exist
anywhere
to to prohibit outdoor recreation but
katherine what's your thoughts
um so so very quickly i know one of the
conversations
catherine harrison rogers for the record
uh mayor pro tem members of city council
uh counselor ben como i there had been
some some questions about informed
consent
um
and uh potential issues with with um
outdoor consumption areas uh because of
that
however that being said i mean one of
the options that we have from a land use
planning standpoint is our special use
permit process
where if people wanted to make a special
exception
one could go to planning and zoning
commission um and go through a public
hearing process
um and that is an opportunity but again
um that's something that that we would
like some direction on and then also
look to jennifer to see if she has
anything more to add to the informed
consent component honestly catherine you
had me at informed consent okay that was
plenty for me to hear um i fully support
the recommendation of the staff
currently on consumption area so i just
wanted to note that but of course if
jennifer wants to add anything okay
okay two more questions um in the survey
there's a question about um additional
regulations for home cultivation and use
what would that even look like if
an overwhelming majority of the
community said yes more regulations
yeah great great question um
[Music]
what happens right now and we have
actually had this discussion
if you don't
add any regulation
the code is silent on where you could
plant uh cannabis plants and we just
hypothetically said nothing would stop
based on the legislation
stating that you couldn't just plant it
on your front yard
now i think there was some discussion
but again it was a gray area that you
know that wouldn't be but it doesn't say
um it doesn't ban outdoor personal grows
it just says you're able to grow on the
premise
that's it that's where it stops so
that is a very general broad area and
people could get very creative with that
the issue is
you know there's the visual
aspect of it which
that we want to just bring to your
attention but i think what happens is
there's the smell when it grows as well
and again it's just you know 12 plants
max could be at one time but again
that's a neighboring proximity of that
but
one of the regulations could possibly be
allow indoor grows
and ban outdoor grows on the personal
side
now that's a question that um you know
could could come up is could we even
regulate personal growth that's another
question as well that has come up and um
what's happening here and i'll i'll
share this that
when we uh when california approved
recreational cannabis there were a lot
of trailer bills because the states it's
hard for them to get it right cities
bring up great questions community and
businesses bring up quite great
questions and then things change and
then everyone starts pivoting so i just
wanted to share that right now
everyone's moving so fast there's a lot
of questions we're not getting the
answers back as soon as possible but
just wanted to share that as the
regulation questions can we can we
regulate can we not regulate personnel
but
part of it was perhaps council wanted to
say yeah you know let's let's regulate
what could we do we wanted to be ready
to have some options or just say the
community says yay or nay on that okay
that's helpful i'm very excited to see
the results of that survey my last
question on tax revenues when will we
as a council discuss
how to use that
that's a great question
whenever you would like
one of the things that happened in the
state and i would like to
to impress this upon you and council
we're we're at your
disposal whatever you would like to do
but
this was an issue at the state talked
about on the apportionment of the funds
of the excise tax and because they
didn't want to delay this build any
further they decided to wait another
year just because there's too many
moving parts and i would say here
with the timelines that we have
i would say maybe not
we're not no one's tracking that on the
allocation of that but um
once we have this ordinance placed in
september any time after if you would
like to talk on allocation it's at your
uh disposal at the behest of the council
feel free to uh discuss that that makes
sense i'm already i don't know about you
all but i'm already getting emails of
ideas of how we can use that so i'm also
very excited for that conversation and
those are all my questions thank you so
much ikani and ben and and everyone for
all your workiness thank you
thank you councillor binklemore
councillor beethoven
thank you mary portem um and thank you
ikani and staff for this presentation we
did get to hear it in our quality of
life
prc last week and we did have a few
members uh attend as well so it was
great to be able to get those types of
perspectives a lot of the commentary
that came
was questions around the texas and a lot
of
issues at the state level that we didn't
really have
much control over but were important to
hear from the public
in general i actually i agree with all
the staff recommendations that we have
including actually the 1000 foot buffer
zones
with the option of having
[Music]
the due process to look
and adjusting that for a 600 feet
but i say that because in most other
places as presented on the slide
the specialty zones for child cares or
daycares and schools is usually a lot
greater boston had one of the smallest
and that was 500 feet and ours is 300 so
keeping that in mind i'm good with the
staff recommendation
with that due process clause
and i do have some
concerns just with the consumption zones
as
kind of mentioned before we're going to
have probably a lot of new users
and that may not understand or know how
their body is going to react
so with that in mind i was wondering if
we were doing any sort of considerations
about
on these new properties about lighting
for entries and exits for the
establishment
and perhaps speed limits
during these times if there's going to
be
anything and if there are some
consumption zones that are within
pathways especially of schools
i'm thinking of like high traffic times
in the morning or after school mostly
when you have a lot of students walking
about if we're thinking about those
types of issues
thank you counselor stevie great
question
for the lighting that is something that
are one of the that is mandatory uh that
the state will be looking at lighting
cameras ensuring that there's security
proper security with the security guard
that is one thing that is being taken
care of
and so we'll
we're working with the state as well
so that we can review those plans
because what's going to happen is uh the
state reviews the application uh but
then we're stuck with enforcement and so
what we have one of the public comments
getting ready with several other public
comments that closes early august is
that we want to be part of the review
process so that not only are we stuck
with the enforcement but we're actually
part of the review process
which
again we're going to share our thoughts
because right now the state is taking
all of that but there will there there
is lighting um in all the security
measures to ensure that uh they could be
spotted on camera uh as well and so
there's gonna be um there's gonna be
that one of the things that um we can
look into and we can get information is
that the type of speeds you know we can
give with public work and see
these areas
[Music]
along the commercial sites that might be
that might be perfect spots for
dispensary locations we can look into
those and and
you know do an assessment and see where
we're at right now and present that at a
later date um counselor stewie if that
is your will but just wanted to let you
know any
any thoughts on that um
thank you um
with that in mind i do think um at least
cameras and lights especially very
clearly marked at the entrance and exits
as people are pulling out um i think
they need to be
able to have like really clear views we
do have some properties i know i have
one um
at the corner of university in el paso
where there's trees that are meant
as you know um just decorative but they
do pose a bit of a hazard when it comes
to pulling out of those areas so
perhaps those are considerations to make
sure there's very clear
sight pathways
in and out of these establishments
you got it counselor
then um
honestly this was not an area i was very
familiar with so i had to do a lot of
research
um
but the other kind of good question and
you briefly talked upon it that we're
going to have enforcement issues
that we're going to have to look at and
there's a lot of staff time and update
um so with that in mind i hope that we
take into consideration
those types of costs we're going to have
more inspections i'm sure to do
as well
and
as we get that excise tax and perhaps
even there's going to be some
educational bits and we'll just have to
consider those
before we start
handing it out to other
really good projects
and the last portion is when talking
about
in-home
consumption
or growth
i think that
perhaps
an idea is to have it as a gated area so
as you can said before not having the
plants in the front yard
but if it is in the backyard perhaps it
needs to be
at least gated so that people can't walk
in and out as well
for safe reasons
and i think those are all my questions
thank you mayor pro tem and thank you
ikani and your staff
thank you counselor i beat this to be
sorry it's pretty loud um i have a
couple of questions um
yeah i
the thousand distancing
is relates to the buffer seems a little
much to me i think
and i don't know
if are you telling me a county that that
has to go through legal still to ensure
that we are within
[Music]
people's rights if we add if we either
decrease it to
whatever 600 300 i mean i i don't know
why we wouldn't um
well first of all alcohol doesn't have a
buffer right so why would we buffer this
i understand the schools but i don't
understand the other piece the business
side
and that that is
that is a valid recommendation kandara
and that's what the businesses are
making uh in the industry
is uh you don't treat other businesses
the same why should you treat us
uh
that that way and add an additional
barrier that doesn't exist right now so
uh
that so i really would like to look at
that and get a
legal
weigh-in if we can
would be for me helpful
the other is
the consumption area i'm in agreement
with um
connie on slide 10
you spoke about the lab
no labs
here in the southern part of the state
what are we doing and is that something
that we're working with a state on in
terms of the labs all the labs are up
north correct
yeah that is my understanding and
catholic did you have something
thank you mayor pro tem catherine
harrison rogers for the record from a
land use perspective there's there's
nothing preventing the the labs as in so
long as they're licensed by the state
from because we already have a category
for laboratory um it's so
from the zoning perspective um
it's fine but how to entice them to be
here is a whole other fact
i think we need to have a plan to entice
them to come here
to the southern part of the state which
has been a problem
for
labs
right in terms of
you know other things we don't have a
lab
specifically when we talk about rape kit
kits and such we have to transport them
right up north so
do we have a plan in place yeah entice
them um great great question mayor
pretend candidate um
right now our plan is let's uh work on
zoning
and in the meanwhile we can have
economic development
from dr bayatas is here and we can
definitely get on that and see what we
can do learn the industry
from our economic development department
and see what we can do
to get that plan that you're talking
about and i think someone mentioned new
mexico state university and and working
right in collaboration with them
as well i think ben had something to say
thank you connie
thank you ben lewinger from the cannabis
chamber until very recently one of the
two testing labs in the state was in las
cruces
and it left only a few months ago and
the biggest challenge is most of the
production happens north of the federal
checkpoint and of course there's no
checkpoint if you're coming from the
northern part of the state driving south
so there was no no risk
and out of all the different license
types a testing lab probably is a
minimum of six million dollars to
acquire all the equipment
that's necessary to do the testing and a
lot of the testing in statute is from
our medical cannabis program and we have
the most
comprehensive
panel testing for cannabis compared to
any other state in the country so the
the cost specifically for testing
facilities is prohibitive i would say as
we have more production in the southern
part of new mexico there will be a need
for
a testing facility and the market will
drive a testing lab here
i would imagine pretty soon after
production licenses are granted
right i appreciate that and i'd rather
see that sooner than later and maybe a
private public partnership might be
something that we look at thank you
thank you ben
site 16 you talked about enforcement my
colleagues here talked about enforcement
i'm i'm
you had indicated
that the breathalyzer is the only thing
right if you're driving impaired
uh it's it doesn't work doesn't work but
that's what you're gonna use
no you won't use that at all yeah i
won't use that at all the only thing is
just wrote sobriety tests road sobriety
tests okay what about the drug dogs what
are you going to do about them
jennifer did you want to see something
generally speaking
mayor pro tem and city council i'm
jennifer vega your city attorney um
there are a couple of things when it
comes to
um driving impaired
um there and i'll
defer to lcpd for this but um there are
we can have drug recognition experts
they would be required for this type of
impaired driving and also
blood testing
there are some
legal issues with blood testing that we
have to deal with
it requires a warrant on some cases
but there are some several
issues that we should discuss probably
and maybe it's a good place to discuss
them in the public safety
select committee so that we can talk
more in depth about them okay i
appreciate that
hi
good evening mayor pro tem and council
deputy chief paul brock
for the record
city attorneys correct on the issues she
was talking about relate related to dui
in the testing process i will answer
your question related to our current
canines and future canines with the
whole issue marijuana detection
our current canines you have to remember
that they're dual purpose dogs so
they're also trained in apprehension
uh currently we're not utilizing them to
detect um the order of narcotics because
they are trained on marijuana but they
are
still being utilized for
criminal apprehension
evidence de
location
area searches building searches things
of that nature in the future
our future police canines will not be
trained on the order of marijuana
thank you for that yes ma'am
let's see
i think that's good
oh this is for um
community developments um slide 35 what
what time frame um
are you considering in terms of someone
approaching you with a business license
to that they're going to open up a
business a company
and they need
the various licenses what would one
expect coming from day one say today i
present to you a business license
to actually
operation what would that time frame
look like
thank you mayor
tim pitts
from community development
we ain't as well we'll have our ability
to take applications
before the state is ready uh we're ready
today if if need be but there we don't
we're not exactly sure of all the rules
yet so it's it's a little premature for
us to do that
i might anticipate somebody wanting to
set up a facility in which they needed
to do a building permit
and that would come
the normal way we handle it when there's
a
business
and they're building their own facility
or they're doing a tenant improvement on
their own facility is
they they can start their business
license process early
but they can't do anything until they
get their certificate of occupancy so
it's really related to the time frame of
construction
and construction these days as you
probably are well aware is
way longer than what i mean you just
heard
testify earlier today on why things are
so expensive and and so it's it's
that's happening for everybody and and
this may not be the best time for maybe
somebody who's kind of strapped to try
and try to start a business if he has to
do some construction in the in the
process so um
but uh so assuming there doesn't have to
be building
uh construction and and go through that
permitting process
we should be able to do all our uh our
our whole thing within about a
a seven to ten day period
that's that's my anticipation the state
has up to nine up to nine uh 90 days i
believe it is to to process the their
their permit
we will not i i can guarantee you this
that we will not be holding up the
person's business from opening
did you hear that everybody write it
down it will not be the city of las
cruces community development department
holding up dr pitts thank you okay thank
you so one more
question do you have enough staff to
handle
the
need i i do not anticipate that we have
currently enough staff to handle a
heavy influx and i think it's going to
depend on what we're talking about over
the next year but we will
in the budget process
request what we need from
from uh
from from you
um and and that may mean moving some
staff around it might maybe it could
mean a lot of things i'm not going to
speak for what that is but
my current permitting staff that handle
the business registrations and the
permits
are
i'll just say they're busy they have a
full day
if we threw in a few
100 cannabis applications it could be
it could be a problem so yeah we will
have to deal with resourcing that
as part of this discussion now what
about permitting i mean excuse me
inspectors that has been an issue in the
past are you
prepared for
it it's going to depend on how much
inspection is required now of course
part of the inspectors are fire
inspectors and so the fire department
may find their own need uh and jason's
here to speak to that and and really for
for life safety issues we rely on the
fire inspectors more than building
inspectors okay uh so we would we would
probably have to worry about it but
we probably would need more um resources
for for inspection and again multiple
ways of solving that but but okay it's
something that it will be it will become
an issue don't wait till the end of the
visit the budget cycle to say
i'm i'm growing inundated i i would ask
that you
bring that up because i think we want to
be customer service friendly timely
getting these out and we don't want the
other things that you do here to be
affected by that
well thank you thank you very much
i know i put you in a
weird position there but
mr peely can tell me
yeah
what he wants
thank you so much
i would like to hear from jason um
excuse me i'm sorry chief smith
i'll make it all worth you staying late
chief smith
uh good evening
jason smith fire chief las cruces fire
department
so in the area of inspectors and and our
process for this
uh we don't plan on doing anything
different than what we do right now for
a business opening we'll look at the
classification of what they're going to
be doing on site and apply the fire code
accordingly
i can't make dr pitt's claim that we
won't hold people up
we probably will if they're not
addressing life safety issues so we're
not going to skirt around that need
for the public or for the business
we are we are there to help support them
and the meeting of the town hall
made it very clear i think our hope
that before they open we're willing to
sit down and look at their plans and
their operations and try to work with
the business owners so they know what's
expected of them for the fire code going
into this
that is our hope
when it comes to the number of
inspectors we have
i have
in our staff we have a lieutenant two
two investigators and one inspector
so if there is a great increase
we will not be able to meet the demand
probably very timely
we have annual business inspections so
if we also have a lot of new businesses
opening and our current load
of
businesses we're close to 4 000 right
now
we're about 10 to 15 percent of those
businesses being inspected annually
so we're trying a new software system to
help address that we're also bringing
inspections back to operations so our
emergency response personnel
will go back to doing
business inspections to help manage that
and then we did have a um i'll use the
word robust business
budget request this year
that we did put in and we know that
there is a struggle with grt and
positions so we are looking for other
innovative ways to meet that demand
thank you chief i appreciate that
thank you so much
those are all my questions sir connie
thank you um yes counselor flores i
thank you
and thank you connie and catherine and
tim and larry and
and ben
so if we don't have any labs to test how
are we going to get the lamigra out of
this how are we going to get through the
checkpoint i mean
it seems like
yeah i mean if we can't get it tested we
can't sell it
i don't i don't mean well we as a city
so
what's up with that and what do we
what are we gonna i mean
it's six million dollars to have a lab
going
maybe we can work with nmsu or something
or something i mean
i mean it almost seems
if we can't have a lab down here and we
can't transport it because the federal
laws will prohibit that
i mean it's going to be a class it's a
class one it's classified as a
i mean it's it's a felony
according to the fed so
it's like we're paralyzed in that regard
so what are we going to do about that
counselor flores i have somebody the
perfect person who actually works for
the cannabis uh chamber of commerce he's
here today and so his job i imagine just
like any commerce is to attract local
businesses in the cannabis industry
which he works for so
ben
ben ben lewinger new mexico cannabis
chamber of commerce for the record
uh more like benito de juarez than
benito mussolini
also for the record
so to be clear cannabis and money from
cannabis does pass through the
checkpoint every day it's not like
they're stopping
every single amount of of cannabis i
think this is part of the
the challenge of having something that
is
even with the medical industry legal at
the state level but still federally
illegal and at the beginning of my
presentation i mentioned two pieces of
legislation one is a long shot
legalization bill the other one is a
bill that i think
has a very good chance of passing
through the federal senate
before the end of the year and that's
the moore act and that would
decriminalize cannabis and deschedule it
from the list of controlled substances
and i think that would
that would change everything
but you know there there are some uh
cannabis companies that do fly cannabis
over the checkpoint
um
and it's all just a very gray area
medical cannabis patients are allowed to
fly with cannabis to other medical
cannabis states that have reciprocity
um
so right now just to be clear there is
cannabis that's moving in and out of the
checkpoint but
there are definitely stories of
the the federal officers there
repossessing cannabis repossessing
hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash
and up until now
that's kind of been a cost of doing
business
and i think that probably changed with
the single testing facility moving from
las cruces up to albuquerque
um
so there's no good answer to your
question
so my question then becomes
what do we do now
i mean yeah so what do we do now so
we're moving along in in zoning and
we're moving along in um
well zoning and and planning i mean
dr baetis do you have an answer
you look like you're ready to go are you
ready to go home
you look pretty eager to something
you're
that body language said a lot you're
ready to run out in your
motherboard
counselor for us i was stretching a
little bit but now that i've been called
to the to the action
um
this is not me
knowing the answer to this i by no means
i i consider this to to be knowledgeable
however this seems to me
um
be a problem of that that potentially
the market could resolve
for instance
uh it seems that the reason as from what
ben was mentioning that the reason why
the the lab did not fulfill its efforts
here was precisely because maybe there
wasn't a full market for it
develop because maybe the the import
from
technical import from from albuquerque
over here was
satisfying the market without the need
of having the production locally
it seems to me and again this is just
perception not not fully understanding
the industry by no means but it seems
that if the market could
sustain it
there would be an unnatural growth for
for something like this and and maybe
that's something one of those instances
in which we have to
see what happens and then act based on
what happens rather than trying to
predict what happens before
but that doesn't make sense
i'm sorry to interrupt
i'm sorry
um so dr bayatas if we then uh proceed
uh
if we proceed
uh with businesses you know the
applications and starting the
cultivation and all that sort of stuff
and then it becomes a a real problem
because then
the federal you know the the
customs people
actually you know it's supposed to be
immigration you're not necessarily
custom so that's a point
you know i wish
you know anyway that that's a legal
issue but
so if they
um
get on you know they they're going to
know that las cruces is is now starting
this this industry and they know that
the labs are up north
i mean that might create like a um
i mean
that might just give them an incentive
to collect more money
you know and uh and and then our
businesses would really you know they
would bust
so it's like a catch 22.
thank you my mom
i think you're absolutely right but
currently
the medicinal cannabis is
legal in in las cruces and unless i'm
i'm not fully aware of this i'm just
speaking out of speculation i don't
think we have seen a
lack of supply
in las cruces in the medical cannabis in
the
seven years that it has been legalized
at least not not very pronounced or not
something that has been brought to the
to the public i so i would not fully
understand why
[Music]
in a greater scale uh potentially there
could be
a lab relocating or perhaps even more
doubling of the efforts of trying to
stop that from happening i see
okay but it would still be a risk
correct thank you thank you so sorry for
not answering further
i apologize not having the response
that's okay that was a good stretch
thank you
thank you counselor please counselor
sword
you had your light on them just do you
want to say anything
i'll say it okay yeah thank you
i correct me if i'm wrong we can import
all tested
products here into
las cruces it gets past the
checkpoints they don't check coming in
they only check going out
so we're going to have a supply as long
as we're willing to buy it from
outside of our checkpoints
right am i right or wrong
yeah i
i
i would say
dispensaries are are fine if they were
to set up let's say it's legal
dispensaries just like uh federal
checkpoints you're fine until the dea
comes well no
the problem will be if the grower here
needs to have his product tested before
he can sell it here that's going to be
the problem because he has to get it to
a lab
and the lab's not here
so so my understanding and ben can can
share
when deliveries are are going to occur
and those transporting
if it's anything that i'm familiar with
deliveries
the vehicles that deliver cannabis
have certain rules that they have to
follow part of it is identifying uh
the the type of business that is
essentially doing uh the delivery and so
there's certain applications um and
certain requirements that have to be on
that vehicle now um
ben may have additional information on
what carriers are posted but when you're
identified uh going through a checkpoint
i think uh one of the questions that you
have is
if they don't check then they're fine
and and that's that's the assumption if
they if they don't check and they just
perhaps maybe you haven't lived along
the border long enough
there is no checking coming
into las cruces from any of the highways
unless you're stopped by highway
patrolman now obviously but the border
checkpoints only check people leaving
the border not entering
oh got it got it yeah okay thank you
yeah
thank you
that give me a nod there uh ben
yes or no
he wants to come up and answer sure okay
that's fine mayor pro tem counselor you
you are correct state your name ben
lewinger new mexico cannabis chamber of
commerce for the record the uh the
stores in xavier's area where he's the
regional manager all of those stores
receive cannabis product from
north of the checkpoints and you're
absolutely correct driving south you
don't have to pass a checkpoint
i i would say the challenge is las
cruces has the agricultural heritage of
new mexico here so how do we
i think the way akani put it was how do
we create micro ecosystems of cannabis
and ignore the federal checkpoints so i
i would say that cannabis cultivation
is part of
this community's
future and eventually you're going to
need a testing facility
to grow it that's for sure that's the
cbd uh business business which is not
part of this
uh act uh it has already demonstrated
that we have a large cbd production here
um
so
the problem comes is if we want to uh
um test what we grow here
and uh we can't because you have to
leave the
the area and go through a checkpoint
yeah right now and fly it up north yeah
i'm an airplane anyway but that's we
can't even fly because that's faa
but anyway yeah um
i hope that problem gets solved sometime
by having a lab here
if we are going to produce as much a lab
might be worth it i would suggest to our
economic dependent department contact
the labs up north put a branch a lab
down here yeah okay i do know mayor pro
tem counselor i do know that the lab
that moved from las cruces he's working
on that right now is setting up a
satellite facility but that
lots of the companies that would start
production facilities in las cruces are
looking north of the checkpoint for
exactly that reason which is an issue
thank you thank you so much thank you
counselor
counselor and global counselor
thank you and i imagine i'm glad council
flores brought this up though
is important conversation and definitely
a north star but i also imagine that i
didn't hear you raise this issue as the
industry had this issue i also i
actually think what dr bayata said was
kind of right on in terms of the market
will probably have a solution i imagine
that growers and the people in the
industry who have a lot more experience
as than us up here or at least that's my
assumption
um but i think people will figure
we'll figure it out honestly and i'm
excited also i can't uh i will always
take the opportunity to say how actually
ineffective border patrol checkpoints
are even though they're very expensive
thank you
thank you counselor bencomo counselor
flores
thank you um
thank you mayor putin
so ben i have a question for you
why are you so sure
that this uh
declassif
declassification of marijuana will be
successful
by the end of the year
is that because it's almost christmas
and you're thinking
everything on your wish list will come
true
mayor pro tem counselor
i went to school to be a religion
teacher
i i spent 12 years in higher education
to teach religion
and i am a man of faith
i love that answer i i i love the answer
in you know and fear well just out there
somewhere i love that answer but
seriously are you serious about or maybe
you've had
never mind i mean so are you it's a
crystal ball i will say that the i mean
you just you said before earlier you
said that biden said that such a law
wouldn't pass under his watch right so
there's biden is not going to be the
president to legalize cannabis the
second bill is the more ass act which
passed the house
twice now the first time in 2019 and
it's been stalled up in the senate and
the composure of the senate is becoming
more friendly to cannabis
as the number of republicans in the
country who support legalization
continues to grow so for the first time
in the history of our country
at the end of last year more than 50
percent of registered republican voters
supported the legalization of cannabis
and that number continues to grow with
every
polling instrument that i see
so it could pass but then the president
could veto but then
there can be an override of the big deal
so the the distinction is
decriminalization
and descheduling and legalization
president biden's administration
supports the moore act and will
decriminalize oh will but won't legalize
he doesn't support full legalization but
he supports
descheduling cannabis as a schedule one
drug
which would change everything from a
federal enforcement perspective
well declassification
was so what would it be lowered to i
mean if it's not
if the criminalization isn't eliminated
entirely it wouldn't be a felony
but it would still be under federal law
and it still could still be the
transportation of uh
it could be yeah so the department of
justice has issued several memos um
basically saying in states where medical
cannabis is legal
they're not going to enforce it and the
days of
you know the feds coming in and
repossessing or shutting down medical
cannabis dispensaries is is long over
well as you said you're in communication
with god for 12 years so from your lips
to god's ear
thank you amen
thank you counselor
any other questions
public comment
yes sir
come on up please state your name
you've been so patient thank you
absolutely thanks for having us today my
name is derek pacheco for the record
uh just have a dump of notes here in my
notebook i just wanted to go over real
quick
i think maybe keeping the airport
non-sterile
for a little bit
it might help transportation from south
to north and vice versa
the faa
doesn't really step into that realm as
far as i know
you can go state to state
with medical programs on an airplane
um i just want everyone to remember that
zoning rules are based off of racist
ideals
we have zoning rules because we wanted
to keep colored people from owning
property
from doing business and from being part
of our communities
we can look at zoning
for what it is but i want to
make a point to maybe not go too far
with the buffer zones
and these other rules that are going to
really hinder the small guy
to me dispensaries whether recreational
or medical are the same
it's the same product
it's the same interaction with the
retail store
we have
we have medical dispensaries
integrated with within the neighborhoods
here in town
consumption
smoking eating that's not defined in the
consumption license
so to say that we can't consume outside
means that a fine dining a fine dinner
with cannabis infused
foods is not going to happen outside
and it should we have beautiful weather
the point that we don't want our youth
exposed to grows grow sites
or plants or smells
that's re-stigmatizing
the entire plant
kids shouldn't be consuming it
they shouldn't be smoking it but they
can look at it
they can learn about it
and they should
again the buffers will affect the
poorest parts of town
the blocks are only 300 feet
our commercial districts often abut
residential uses
our
original town site here is full of a
mishmash of use historically
from residential being next to
manufacturing being next to equestrian
it's just a mishmash
in the poorest areas of town
i'm not talking about the new
development up the hill
but buffers will hurt the poorest parts
of town
i support rooftop consumption areas
right now you can't delineate between a
roof elevation and a ground elevation on
a patio
so i say
get rid of those restrictions
that's all i have for now appreciate it
thank you mr pacheco anybody else yes
sir please come and state your name
and i'll give you three minutes mr hall
thank you i'll keep it quick mayor pro
tem council members xavier hall i just
want to
speak on the 1000 foot
buffer zone as far between businesses
being on the ground understanding how it
works
that only adds to kind of
a a hard problem that we have so
working for pure life i've been recently
over the last year and a half looking
for a new location for us because we've
outgrown the location that we're at
right now
um what i've run into is that
yes you think facilities are open but
property owners don't want you they
don't want you there and so that is a
problem that we've run into and i don't
know if it's a problem that's being
looked at um you know by the city
i won't speak against bend because his
the president is my boss so i won't
speak against his 600 foot
distance but i can tell you a thousand
feet is is a lot and we already run into
enough problems
and like ben said earlier
we cannot be provided lending um
from the banks so
it is you know our owner financing
having to buy properties so and i mean
that's tough depending on how much money
you're bringing in the facility you're
looking to get that makes it very very
um tough so just wanted to comment on
that thank you so much mr hong i
appreciate your comments anybody else
okay see none and council
okay um we i've decided to take the
noise ordnance off the agenda and place
it on august 9th
mayor protem yes councillor ben como
thank you i fully support that though i
have a constituent here who stayed the
whole day can will you give him three
minutes to speak on the noise ordinance
absolutely i'll give him three minutes i
know he's been so patient and thank you
here we are close to eight but yes i'll
give you three minutes sir hi please
state your name my name is jim wilcox
i'm a resident of las cruces thank you
mayor pro tem and council members for
giving this time at the end man your
work sessions go long i'm telling you
i moved here in january and
i have to say councillor flores i'm an
avid cyclist
so
i fit that one of that profile you
talked about people you want to attract
here but i'm going to throw a curve i'm
also a retiree
so now you got to figure all this out
again
so i just wanted also to say after
hearing about
the different
ideas about las cruces i would say the
elevation the mountains spaceport
spaceport cannabis las cruces just a
little higher
so that's my idea for a slogan
i'm also
i'm
thank you and i'm also the regional
representative for
um noise free america and i got involved
in looking at the situation with some of
the noises around town and i and i felt
that there were some issues around
mostly vehicle noise that i found then i
heard about the study that came
came out and a lot of you haven't had a
chance to
look at it yet
so i i'm going to offer you i'm going to
give you an offer you can't refuse
i'm going to say let's postpone my
presentation about that
counselor ben como has my re my response
to that study
real quickly it says on page 16 based on
the scope of the study this indicates
that las cruces doesn't appear to have a
significant no have significant noise
issues remember it's in the context of
the study and i want to thank the
council for
doing this study because that's great
that you're concerned and you want to
know more about noise so i'm going to
have counselor ben como send to the rest
of the council my thoughts about the
study and i will be back on your agenda
i won't be on the agenda but i'll be
back when it's on the agenda again and
then you can throw all your questions at
me
thank you so much okay i appreciate your
efforts and
counselor pickleball you want to send
that to christine and she can then um
forward that on to us
great thank you okay thank you
okay christine then we need a motion to
adjourn
second
motion made by counselor bencomo second
by counselor flores christine please
call the role
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor beta stevie yes
councillor vasquez is absent counselor
ben como
yes the mayor is absent
thank you everybody good night
you