Work Session Meeting August 26, 2024 MINUTES Work Session Monday, August 26, 2024 @ 1:00 PM City Council Chambers, City Hall PRESENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace ABSENT: Councilor Johana Bencomo 1. JOBS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Sarah Raney, New Mexico Workforce Connection presented Jobs of the Week. 2. PETS OF THE WEEK 2.1 Amy Defelix, Animal Services of the Mesilla Valley presented Pets of the Week. 3. AGENDA ITEM 3.1 CITY STRATEGIC PLAN REPORT. Srijana Basnyat, Innovation Strategy Administrator gave the overhead presentation. Mark Miller, Lead Planner continued the overhead presentation. Srijana Basnyat continued the overhead presentation. Councilor Corran said thank you so much both of you for this presentation. I also really appreciate all the efforts of all the staff who I know translating qualitative of things into numbers is not an easy task and I realize that at some level this is all for us because some of us are here for the graphs and the Venn diagrams, thank you. I think also it is really important for the public to know I think I know a lot of departments really and this is not necessarily the reporting that you think about doing but when folks say what are you doing? It is not always completely apparent, and this is really translating something that is making what our city government does translated to public and consumable place and so I just really want to thank you and all the folks who have contributed to putting data into the system and it really does help us understand where we are and what we are doing and what we should invest our advocacy time or efforts into so thank you I really appreciate it and I look forward to all the future presentations that you all do. Councilor Flores said your reporting was very comprehensible to me, so I appreciate that. I would like to see or hear in the future the how or why of prioritizing certain projects, is it monetary, is it something that is pie in the sky dream that the city council had, and you just want to appease us and be polite and kind? There is 96 associated actions required, which requires council approval so the ones you are working on now have had that council approval, is that correct? Or is it forthcoming projects? Srijana Basnyat said I believe you are referencing the 96 actions that are associated with the land development code. So yes, those are looked at as actions that will come into effect upon adoption by the city council so there is a huge assumption on our part just to simplify things I suppose but the rest of the actions don’t necessarily go through city council adoption. Really the policies and the goals are what you adopted for us and then it is our job to start implementing them with tasks and projects and so I don’t know that gets to a little bit of the question that you have. Councilor Flores asked can you in any way see how long or project how long it would be when those 96 goals be implemented or come to fruition or met? Srijana Basnyat said I will say two things and then defer to the department that is running that project for you and while they approach, I am just going to maybe frame it by again just referencing back to that evaluation phase. So 100% of everything that the city Strat Plan or Elevate listed out as actions that are associated with that particular document may or may not be completed through that document and so there is still that piece left to evaluate upon adoption and so there is a little bit of uncertainty there because of course it is the will of the public and the city council to make amendments or change or whatever you all may do. Larry Nichols, Community Development Director said you heard reference several times in the presentation today of Realize Las Cruces and how it relates to Elevate Comprehensive Plan. The Realize Las Cruces land use ordinance that we are using now is a 2001 version. So here we are 2024, that is 20 some years of waiting for things to be updated and brought into a use for our new technology, our new strategy for further developing community. We have been working with Realize Las Cruces now for about 2 ½ years. We had hired a consultant to help us with that and then we also formed an Ad Hoc Committee of 13 to 15 different developers, real estate agents, interested associations in the community. That review has gone through some 30 to 40 meetings. We are now in the process of having a draft and trying to get it completed by October so that we can codify the language in the adoption and bring it to the council and we are going to have a P&Z workshop I think in another month and you will have a workshop as well in the next month or so and then the spring of 25 about March, February or March we will bringing it to city council for your consideration for adoption. So those are the dates of progress, but we mentioned about progress through the presentation today. We have been meeting every single month. We have been making progress on the updating of the land use code which is Realize Las Cruces. Councilor Flores said on page 16 there was a category for lack of a better word for underrepresented groups and I think there hadn’t been any progress or outcomes, that would be page 16 on the monitor. Mark Miller asked are you referring to the report that we provided you? Councilor Flores said I am referring to your presentation. There was a statement on one of those pages, it was the lowest progress regarding the underrepresented group, and I don’t remember what the goal was but are they so underrepresented that they are invisible? Or what does that mean? Mark Miller said I think I can clarify. When I was talking about the underrepresented groups here, the full council goal is identifying appropriate communication methods to reach underrepresented groups. The reason there is no progress shown is not because there is 0% progress it is because instead of assigning progress percentage to it because that would imply that there was a time this goal would be complete and so staff recommended not to include this as a goal that can be complete at a certain point and rather say this is an ongoing goal and that we are always going to be trying to improve and identify additional appropriate communication methods to reach those underrepresented groups. Councilor Flores asked how would you go about that? If they are underrepresented groups, is there a survey? Do you go by the census? How exactly is that? Mark Miller said there was some narrative provided in the report. Mandy Guss, Communications Director said there were several groups that were specifically identified. I don’t know if that was in Elevate or the Council Goals, it was those in poverty, we had seniors, and those with disabilities and so we have made ongoing efforts to identify where certain underrepresented groups are getting their information. We made several and I think was noted in some of the things we have done for progress are things like reaching out to Spanish speakers, for ADA compliance, making sure that everything on our website is ADA compliant, that we are providing closed captioning not only in English but also in Spanish and we are expanding to allow for other languages and so there are multiple ways that we are addressing that. The reason that it is an ongoing action is that we know there will be continued improvements. Like Mark said there is not an end goal, yeah, we have reached everyone, we always need to improve the way that we reach all groups. Councilor Flores said it seems to me that there would be some underprivileged groups in that categorization and by underprivileged, I mean people that wouldn’t have access to even know that this information is being gathered and so that is my concern there. Mayor Enriquez asked in the presentation it was building local wealth as one of the categories or actions, can you define that? Mark Miller said the full council goal is establish a building local wealth component within the city’s Economic Development Department. I would defer to Economic Development to assist in answering that question for me. Elizabeth Teeters, Economic Development Director said the building local wealth is because of anti-donations and how hard it is to get certain programs in place and processes in place. It is just taking us a little longer to get going on that, but we are making progress. We are getting the MRAs in place. We are working our industrial park and everything, so it is moving along it is just moving along a little slower. Mayor Enriquez said that was my question. It is not so much like what is building local wealth like specific, but it is more general and that is what I was looking at that category and how is it defined? Srijana Basnyat said building local wealth is a fairly new approach. A few years ago the Strong Towns philosophy kind of pushed that into our repertoire in terms of planning where we are looking at not just at attracting big businesses but really trying to grow wealth within our community so the intent behind that goal was really geared toward empowering people who already own or could own for example property in Las Cruces and could develop their own little plot of land in ways that would build their own wealth and then cumulative effort or the e-fact is building local wealth together as a city. Also, that is a general sort of background behind it. Mayor Enriquez said I was looking for something in general and I the economic element aspect of it all, but I was wondering if there was more getting out of poverty would be, you know being an entrepreneur and doing those things, so I guess it all ties in. That is what I was getting at so thank you. 3.2 6TH SEMI-ANNUAL POLICE AUDIT REPORT PRESENTED BY THE OIR GROUP. Viola Perea, City Auditor introduced the topic. Teresa Magula, OIR Group gave the overhead presentation. Stephen Connolly, OIR Group continued the overhead presentation. Teresa Magula continued the overhead presentation. Councilor Flores asked how do you find out about the cases that are problematic? Who reports it to you? Teresa Magula said we receive cases directly from the department. The way that the process works for the department is that any member of the public who has a complaint, whether that be on the scene of a particular incident or after the fact has access to be able to communicate that complaint to the supervisor on that particular watch. So, the member of the public can submit a form, an actual paper form to do so. You can submit a complaint on the city website. You can call directly to the Police Department and speak to a supervisor who will take your complaint. The other way is to call the city’s anonymous hotline. So, there is the city’s hotline that will also take complaints against members of the Las Cruces Police Department. So those are the avenues that a member of the public could potentially take if he or she had what they perceive to be a negative encounter that requires that action from the Police Department. Another means of course is to email us directly if that is something that the member of the public feels more comfortable doing. So, we will forward those complaints to the Police Department in those cases. The other category that we review is those complaints that are internally generated. So that would be something that either the Chief or his command staff or supervisors determine is an issue that needs to be investigated formally because it involves potential misconduct. Those cases also come to us and so we review both categories and those are the mechanisms by which those categories are initiated. Councilor Flores asked has there been a rise in reports that you receive about misconduct or disciplinary problems or anything of that sort? Stephen Connolly said I think the information Teresa provided was helpful. I am wondering if you were almost expressing how do we know we are getting everything that is actually is being raised? Councilor Flores said that is my question and I am asking it for transparency’s sake and to let our public know and our fellow employees, our city people know here how the information gets to you. Stephen Connolly said I would think that it is a very fair question. I will say a couple of things that are checks and balances there. One is as Teresa said the public is aware of when it has made a complaint. It is aware of the different mechanisms that are in existence and theoretically there is accountability there in terms of somebody having the opportunity to make sure that any issue they have raised has been processed appropriately and second in terms of the things the Police Department is presenting to us obviously we are dependent on them and their transparency and cooperation with process but we have had no reason to believe that they have held things back and in fact they have shared things with us that obviously don’t reflect particularly well on the department, so we don’t think that they are trying to massage or sensor material in anyway. The last thing I would say is that I don’t think there are any guarantees if there was going to be a big conspiracy but again we have had a very positive impression of the department and I think from a checks and balances perspective having something like that come to light a year later, two years later, wow this thing should have been given to the independent auditor and it wasn’t and it looks like they were hiding information from us. That would obviously be a very negative consequence in and of itself. We have not had that experience in any of the agencies that we have worked with and all of the indications that we get in Las Cruces the process is legitimate in working the way it is supposed to. Councilor Flores said Ms. Perea does provide us with the reports that you submit to the city, and they seem somewhat thorough. Some of those cases I think are based on people who call in. Is everything submitted to Ms. Perea? Stephen Connolly said everything that we have hands on is going to go to Ms. Perea for her review and the City Attorney’s office as well. To be clear and as Teresa said in the beginning there were actually other categories of complaint that are less severity that are not part of our scope of work so we don’t see those, but other city officials there is transparency in terms of those things and the Chief actually provided us with some information today about some of the cases, some aggregate data on some of the cases that we don’t have exposure to because they are at a lower level or below our scope. Councilor Flores asked you do review some? You review everything that is sent to you and then you have an opinion on that? Stephen Connolly said everything that is sent to us gets the same processing. We scrutinize them all pretty carefully. 4. ADJOURNMENT 4.1 Councilor Yvonne Flores moved, seconded by Councilor Becky Corran, to adjourn at 2:48 p.m. RESULT: Carried MOVER: Councilor Yvonne Flores SECONDER: Councilor Becky Corran AYES: Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace Mayor City Clerk