Work Session Meeting September 9, 2024 MINUTES Work Session Monday, September 9, 2024 @ 1:00 PM City Council Chambers, City Hall PRESENT: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, and Councilor Cassie McClure ABSENT: Councilor William Mattiace 1. PETS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Carol Nielson, Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley presented Pets of the Week. 2. AGENDA ITEM 2.1 THE AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT (ARPA) UPDATE. Leeanne DeMouche, Finance Director gave the overheard presentation. Liam Beasley, Accountant II continued the overhead presentation. Jason Smith, Fire Chief continued the overhead presentation. Lorena Lozano, Marketing Director continued the overhead presentation. Carl Clark, Assistant Utilities Director continued the overhead presentation. David Sedillo, Public Works Director continued the overhead presentation. Gaby Prats, Grants Manager continued the overhead presentation. Natalie Green, Housing & Neighborhood Service Revitalization Administrator continued the overhead presentation. Celina Morales, Interim Deputy Director Economic Development continued the overhead presentation. Irene Para, Business Development Administrator continued the overhead presentation. Liam Beasley continued the overhead presentation. Leeann DeMouche continued the overhead presentation. Councilor Flores asked if you could go to page 28, please? This is for MVEDA. When money is allocated to an entity it was very clear what the outcomes were for a lot of the organizations that did receive money, but we don’t have any outcomes for MVEDA, and I want to know why we don’t have a report on that? What I have deducted is that there has not been any achievement. Leeann DeMouche said when we brought these to council it was very close to the end of the fiscal year but since that fiscal year was ending, we were working with all these participants in the workforce programs to get them all set them up as a vendor in our system and so they are all set up. We have opened POs for all of these. Except for one, we still have one that we are working on right now to set them up totally into a vendor and then they have received their POs and should be working on that. So, the next update that we have for you, you should be seeing some results on all of these workforce programs. Councilor Flores asked there is a reason in terms of the administration of the funding that was provided? Leeann DeMouche said yes. It is administrative or just our internal controls. We do have to look after this money. That is one of the reasons why we reached out and contracted with CLA is to make sure that we do everything correctly being that this is money from the US Treasury. We did have to set them all up as a vendor and that took a little bit of longer time than we had expected. Councilor Flores asked when was this money distributed or the agreements reached? Leeann DeMouche said it was June when the resolution came before you and our fiscal year ended on June 30th. So, we have been working on getting them set up as vendor and getting the POs open after the fiscal year. Councilor Flores asked you will report to us that yes, all this stuff has been done, we have the apprenticeship program going and we are going to have all these little geniuses with jobs? I have a question for Carl. On the sewer work that has been done at Hacienda Acres, there were some homes within those plats that hadn’t been serviced, do you know why? Did they do their own? Carl Clark said yes, some of them selected not to participate. We sent out plenty of letters and we only had 77 that replied. I think there is 150 I showed on there. It was kind of a strange thing that they didn’t want the free money. We had people directly tell us no we are not interested. Councilor Flores asked what about north of Highway 70? I know there were people at the last big meeting that the city held. There were a lot of people north of 70 who wanted to know why they had been left out. I am still wondering. Did letters go out to everybody in that area? Carl Clark said letters when out to everybody that we went out and installed the septic sewer main in front of their property and it just went out to those because if they don’t have a sewer main I wasn’t able to connect them to municipal sewer. So they had to have a sewer main out in front of the roadway there, so like Rising Sun, Calle de Ranchero, those all had sewer installed with the legislative funding that we received and so there was something that they could connect to now and then at that point we reached out to everybody that was along the sewer main that had not connected and we sent them a letter and some responded and some did not. We even especially in Hacienda Acres went and knocked on doors on those that we didn’t get anything back. We also found people that connected illegally. Councilor Flores asked when it is illegal what does that mean? Carl Clark said they did not notify us of a connection. Somehow, they hired a plumber that did not go through permitting. Councilor Flores said well this is just ARPA money reporting so I am still concerned about funding for that and I know you will keep an eye out and I know so will Leeann. Carl Clark said we will continue to ask for legislative funding for future projects. We want to word it in there so we can try and get that we can not only install the sewer mains, but we can also get them to convert from their septics over to that, it’s a big expense for them but we are working with the state to make sure we are allowed to do that, and the anti-donation doesn’t come into play. Councilor Flores said we should be allowed to do it because you can’t have people randomly getting rid of their septic tank. Councilor Bencomo said I think last time you all presented, gosh I don’t remember at this point when that was, but I remember feeling really confident at the end of that meeting regarding the timeline of obligated funds. Today I am a little bit nervous. Four million dollars is a big chunk of money. I don’t want to send a single penny back and so I am just curious if you could speak to that because this $4.3ish million in obligated funds doesn’t mean that we have money for because I have plenty of ideas, so I think a lot of us do. That is not what it means, right? Like those four million dollars are designated somewhere? Leeann DeMouche said if you will see like when Mr. Clark was talking, he is already giving you updates because he is continuously spending this money. What Mr. Beasley was showing you was at the end of June, June 30th which was at the end of our fiscal year. So, we are constantly moving on this. As you know our funds are moving all the time. I just did a program with the Storefront Repair where we found a way through the US Treasury, we talked with them of how we can obligate the Storefront Repair because we have to open an individual PO with every single individual business. So, we never know who is going to walk in and say I need these funds. So, in order to be able to obligate that we did an MOU that our City Manager had signed with Elizabeth, our Economic Development Director and so we are able to obligate those so trust me Councilor I am on it, I am obligating it. Councilor Bencomo said you figured out a way with the Treasury’s permission to say we can’t possibly know every individual business that is going to come in here, but it has been obligated to a specific program. Leeann DeMouche said it has been obligated and I am not quite sure I think on like with Irene’s presentation all of those workforce we just opened the POs for all of those except Ngage just last week. So, all of that has been obligated since June 30th so I will honestly tell you that I have made a commitment to make sure that every dime is obligated. Councilor Bencomo said thank you so much. I think the workforce development programs are the ones that make me the most nervous. We went through a little bit of a situation with that to finally get us to this moment but Leeann you are exuding a lot of confidence, and I deeply appreciate that. Three months you are saying yes? Leeann DeMouche said yes. Councilor Bencomo said I have a question for Nicole on the Landlord Mitigation Fund. Nicole, I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about those 18 landlords? Are they individual housing units? Are they landlords of apartment complexes? They were brand new landlords to Community of Hope, those kind of questions. Nicole Martinez, Member of the Public said I am with Mesilla Valley Community of Hope. It is a mix of landlords. Mostly existing landlords. We have seen a reduction in landlords that we have been partnering with over the last few years just in terms of the affordability of the rents. So, whenever we have damages in excess of what the security deposit might cover, and then we can turn to the landlord risk mitigation. It is mostly existing landlords. We have been able to incentivize bring on at least one new landlord. We have spent more since we sent in that original data and also ours was kind of behind because while there were some ARPA issues with the city and the contracts we went after private funding for it because we had already done that with a foundation and we had asked them to reinvest in that program because it was so successful, so they did. We were waiting until we expended those funds to start kicking in using the city funds. Councilor Bencomo said Dawn, just a couple questions for you about the Family Prosperity Program. I am wondering how many months the program has been going already. I know that you had a ton of application, and that process was long. I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit? Dawn Hummer, Member of the Public said I am with Community Action Agency. We initiated our first payment in March, our sixth month payment will go out in September. Councilor Bencomo asked can you tell us of the selection process of the 150? Dawn Hummer said what we did is we had some big launch events that we did but we also sent flyers. We did a lot of outreach to kind of cover the whole city and what we did was we set up a very simplistic online applications that had the questions. What income was? Geographic location? Whether or not there was a child in the home under 16 that just listed the criteria and then what we did from that is everyone who passed that initial process we assigned them numbers. We sent the numbers to our research partners, which is our Crimson Research partner, they randomly selected whether or not they were going to be in the comparison group which is normally called the treatment group. We just try and stay away from that word, so we have a comparison, and we have an active. The active receive the payments, the comparison is more like the control group and so, they just randomly picked until we had it. Once we had that, that is when we went in and got all the documentation and did orientation and worked with the families because otherwise it would have been 2,000 people that we would have been doing that with. I do just want to say that this program has been absolutely just unreal because of some of the delays that we had in the ARPA Funding we had a little bit of funding and some research dollars, and we started a pilot program in Hatch with 12 families. It is not a lot but 12 is better than zero and the success stories that we have just out of 12 families is absolutely unreal and even with this my colleague was talking to me about a participant in the Las Cruces project that started a home visiting program with her siblings, she is enrolled back at DACC, so it has been wonderful. Councilor Bencomo said my last question is for the Lift Up Fund. Leeann DeMouche said those funds have already been spent. The last update that we gave they has spent all of their funds, so they are not here today. Councilor Bencomo asked is that information in the link that you showed me in Open Gov? Leeann DeMouche said yes, it is in there. Sandy Smith, Member of the Public said I am from Cruces Creatives. Last time I came in I brought some stuff for you to touch. I wanted to do that again just so that you could kind of see what is going on. So, Cruces Creatives has been working on some educational programs. This cool little guy that I am going to put on the tray is a robot design that is getting ready to go to the robot combat club. This particular one is being designed by a 7-year-old and you will notice the grading on the little front they are learning how to change the 3-D printer colors. This is a project that we have fourth and fifth graders working on right now. So, they do the design digitally, then the laser or the cricket cuts them out. The kids then do the sewing and the stuffing, and they do the soldering to get the lights going. One of the fun things that we get to do after we have cut out the outside, we shred the extra felt and it goes in on the inside. This is one we are doing with older students. It is called a layered resin painting. I don’t have the cells with me today but we also have another batch of the layered resin that are focused on plant cell and an animal cell with each of the components of the cell and it has a lid over the top of it that labels it but this is a sneaky way to teach some engineering and advanced thinking because you have to actually start painting in reverse while you are doing this one. As a person who works with physical things I think it is just fun to share. Thank you all. Councilor Flores said I want to thank you for everything that you do at Cruces Creatives. It is just a wonderful place. I encourage everyone to go and visit. It is almost like a museum with a workshop. Sandy Smith said we tend to think of it more like gym only instead of exercise equipment it is making equipment and if anybody wants to come take a field trip and take a tour, I am happy to do that for you. The ARPA funding allows us to do a lot of the youth programing but overall, we are also serving the broader community. Ashley Echavarria, Member of the Public said I am with the Boys and Girls Club. I just wanted to come up and thank you guys once again for the ARPA funding and give you all a quick update. You saw kind of where we are at in the middle of a capital campaign. We were also very excited to also receive some funding designated by Gabe Vasquez in the amount of $1.466 million and I just got that contract, so that is going through HUD. We are deep into the architecture. We pretty much have the entire layout of the building finalized. I am at a point now where I am picking door by door, it is a lot of fun but of course we have a lot of money to raise to get the project complete. We were hoping to get some demolition done this year. That might be on hold because we are in the middle of that environmental assessment and so we are just waiting for boxes to get checked and I think the city and the HUD Department has been super helpful and guiding us through this process. Once that is all clear then we would like to get the interior demolition done. That will more than likely spend out the rest of the ARPA funding but that was kind of the plan for it for the pre-construction. All the while we are still working to raise money. I am waiting and should hear any day on a funder that could take us over the halfway mark of our goal, so that is exciting, and we will continue to be out in the community asking for support. Most of you are aware of the longtime partnership with Lou and Mary Henson and so to honor their legacy we are going to be hopefully naming the basketball court, Lou and Mary Henson Court and so we will be doing a little kickoff event for that later this month and then we are always searching for capital campaign committee members, and we have a pretty small but mighty committee right now but we are looking to add to that because those are the ones that are really making it happen, going out talking to people and trying to get support. We are still hopeful to be opening the doors and welcoming kids into the building in 2026. I am just not going to say if it is going to be January or December, we will see where we are with raising the funds. Councilor Flores asked are all those theaters going to be gutted but the structure will remain as it is? It will be gutted and redesigned? Ashley Echavarria said the outside structure will remain. We will cut some windows to let some sunlight in because it was a dark building because it was a theater and then a complete remodel inside and then the goal is to also add a gymnasium. The theaters were just too narrow to get a gym out of it so we would be adding a gym and then of course we will have outdoor play space and then green space for the kids to run around and then hopefully the renderings if you have not seen them, you can find them on our website. Councilor Flores asked how many acres? Ashley Echavarria said it sits on almost 4 acres. Lori Martinez, Member of the Public said I work for Ngage New Mexico. We are working on the Child Care Accelerator Project that is specifically to support our home childcare providers. We have since received some updated data. Just to show you some updated numbers on the need for this project. Our data partners at center for Community Analysis at NMSU were looking at the numbers between 2022 and 2023, so this project is to support our home base providers specifically because what we saw happen during the pandemic, there is a child care crisis across the country particularly with infant and toddler providers but what we saw in Dona Ana County during the pandemic was that in New Mexico we allow for licensed centers and also home based providers who can be registered or licensed and so during the pandemic we lost a lot of providers in both centers and home and the center based providers bounced back. We are back at pre-pandemic levels actually higher, but our home- based providers didn’t come back. They are going away, and they are staying away. Hence the need for this project so we are super grateful to the city and Irene in the Economic Development Department for noticing that need. They presented data to you last October what we ran in December, we have updated data between 2022 and 2023. Now we run our data by school district not by the city boundaries but what we can tell you from 2023 compared to 2022 is that in 2022 in the Las Cruces Public School district we had 245 providers by 2023 that had dropped to 230, that is center and home based but we lost 102 registered home slots and 264 licensed center slots. We did increase in some of our home provider license slots and so what our goals for this project are as we get our home-based providers to license status. When you hear focus or five stars it is the same thing as a childcare provider that provides some sustainability for them because they receive much higher reimbursement levels for the state but also it is a much higher quality of care for the kids that are in the program and so there are a number of efforts that are going on. One reason this effort stands out because statewide there is finally the attention starting to be paid to child care that it deserves and that it needs for our kids but also for the state of New Mexico’s economy and so what you will be seeing and hearing more within the next year is the attempts to implement, multi fund and implement a wage and career ladder so that child care workers are paid fair and dignified wages. It is critically important that that wage and career ladder as it is implemented takes into account not only the child care educators education but the years of experience and so the state you will see during the upcoming legislative session you will see that likely coming up and so it is really important at the state level that they are seeing that out local communities and local governments are making these investments in child care as well. So, I just wanted to impress upon you the importance of this kind of work. 3. ADJOURNMENT 3.1 Councilor Yvonne Flores moved, seconded by Councilor Becky Corran, to adjourn at 2:12 p.m. RESULT: Carried MOVER: Councilor Yvonne Flores SECONDER: Councilor Becky Corran AYES: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, and Councilor Cassie McClure Mayor City Clerk