Work Session Meeting July 8, 2024

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, July 8, 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, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William

Mattiace

ABSENT:

1. PETS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Amy Defelix, Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley presented Pets of the

Week.

2. AGENDA ITEM 2.1 ANNUAL UPDATES FROM ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS: FILM

LAS CRUCES AND THE FARMERS AND CRAFTS MARKET OF LAS

CRUCES Chris Faivre, Deputy Director Economic Development introduced the topic.

Adrew Jara, Film Las Cruces gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Flores said I am very glad to hear that you are reaching out to the local businesses to serve whatever needs you have and maybe Chris has that information of the revenue that is brought in. Do we have a break down on that? How many scouts do you have?

Chris Faivre said we don’t have any direct economic impact numbers right now, but I can certainly get that for you.

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Councilor Flores asked the employees, are they all from Las Cruces or from our little surrounding towns? We are a little city too but are they all from this local area?

Andrew Jara said yes, it depends. We try to get them as locally as possible. It is beneficial for everyone including the production. They save more money if they hire locally so what we have noticed is that now they just seem to be hiring outside of the area when they absolutely need it and that is why again we are kind of focusing a lot more on getting people like Patrick Sanchez to get those head roles because we have a lot of below the head department and so we want to get as many people as head so that they can hire one. Another one was Loris Allen who has not only become production designer, but he has opened his own prop house here in Las Cruces called the Gold Room. That is one of those things since he has both of those things every production that has been in town he has been working on it just because again he is local, and it is easier to hire them. I would say right now it is probably about

60%-70% usually is from local.

Councilor Flores asked local meaning how far north and how far south?

Andrew Jara said in the county.

Councilor Flores said I was really happy to see that Tyler Perry did a film here because I really follow his movies. They are universal, life and its tragedies or whatever challenges. That is all I have I just wanted to thank you very, very much for making this happen. It was a long time coming and I thank you very much.

Councilor Corran asked I am curious about the new building that the CMI Program is about to open I think, and I don’t know how that might affect you all? I think there is a pretty big sound stage that is a part of that, but I am not sure if that will help in the scene.

Andrew Jara said it has not opened yet. It should plan to start accepting students and also it is DACC not CMI but it is planning to open and start accepting students in

August and it should officially open in September but that should be a great help to us. They can’t let people use it yet but if we can fit it in the space of their breaks, we can possibly use it. So, it is going to open another window. I think right now our biggest issue we have to which it will also solve is a sound stage and CMT will provide that even if it is not as big as a normal one it will especially for car scenes, so we are very excited for them to open and of course with that you also have all the students will now learn how to work on a studio because it is not the same as working on the outside. It is very controlled which you need to learn how to do that. So again, that will also help to add to our crew base so we are very excited for those kinds of additions.

Karin Bradshaw, Las Cruces Farmers and Crafts Market continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Flores asked last time you presented I asked a question about the revenues

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insofar as the taxes because a lot of the vendors have a cash bar, so I was wondering and I have not asked our department to see, our Economic Department to see if there has been any headway on that or if there is any tracking of that?

Karen Bradshaw said we have no ability to track and in fact the state changed their parameters where it has made us even more difficult for us to even access our vendors accounts.

Councilor Flores asked the state is the one that regulates the farmer’s markets throughout the state?

Karin Bradshaw said no ma’am. That is just as far as any access to revenues or anything like that. All of our vendors are individual businesses. They are in charge of their own finances and the only thing that we attempt to do per our agreement with the city is to ensure that our vendors are at least filing their gross receipt reports.

Councilor Flores asked with the city?

Karen Bradshaw said with the state. Gross receipts reports must be filed with the

State of New Mexico and per our agreement with you guys we do verify that the vendors do that, but we do not have access to the reports themselves of what they file.

Councilor Flores asked is there any way of tapping into that?

Chris Faivre asked you are looking for specific revenue related to each of the vendors? I don’t know if we would have access to those reports but maybe we could work with the market staff to do some sort of a survey, an unofficial survey to kind of gauge maybe the ranges of revenues that they are bringing in to give us an idea of how successful they are.

Councilor Flores said I think they have been very successful. I think the city should be benefiting a little bit too after all we do have the agreement and it’s our plaza and our beautiful downtown area so I was just wondering if there had been any progress or any change in that.

Karin Bradshaw said we do inform our vendors that the tax rate code that they are to use is the one for the TIDD district. We ask them to please do that that way all the gross receipts that do get reported go directly into the TIDD for the downtown area.

We do per our agreement with NMFMA, New Mexico Farmers Market Association which is part of the program for the SNAP and Double Up Program, we do a survey and it’s a rough estimate of monies that comes in through the market per our farmers and everything and this last year the estimate for produce sales and everything else was almost between the SNAP Program and the WIC and everything else just regular sales was close to a billion is what our estimate.

Councilor Flores said then a lot of the vendors are cash only.

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Karin Bradshaw said we have a lot of vendors that are cash. We have a lot of vendors that are a lot of cards as well.

Councilor Mattiace said I am always excited about the market downtown. It draws a lot of people. I just like a small request, I had some friends and we did the market this weekend. Is there any signage that reads, if you can spit your gum into a gum container? It is a little bit unsightly, the sidewalks, everything else is fine. The vendors were fantastic. There is some graffiti by Las Cruces Furniture Store that needs to be cleaned up. Who manages that, is that the City?

Karin Bradshaw said yes sir. We just utilize the space for that four and half hours, actually 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday mornings. It is still classified, public city property.

We just have the use of it.

Councilor Mattiace said I am also a little bit apprehensive sometimes about the number of dogs that come down there. I had my pug, he’s eight months old so he was controllable but there were some large animals and sometimes that is a little bit annoying.

Karin Bradshaw said it is the owner’s responsibility. We are a pet friendly market.

Everyone knows this. It is up to the owners to ensure that their dogs are controllable.

We do have poop bags available throughout places in the market. Our vendors provide water for the dogs to drink throughout the market.

Councilor Mattiace said maybe the city can add a little more signage for the gum spitting or littering containers and/or some signage about control your dog and if they are going to leave a deposit, take it to your own bank.

2.2 INDUSTRIAL REVENUE BOND (IRB) POLICY. Elizabeth Teeters, Economic Development Director gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran asked if we are looking at how we support economic development is this in the normal wheelhouse of things or is this an exceptional practice? Why haven’t we been doing this already? Where does this fit into the scope of packages of economic development that we use and I don’t know if there are other more, the industrial park is a unique situation. I don’t know if there are other applications that you can tell us about as well.

Elizabeth Teeters said I don’t think this has really been used previously because up until a few years ago the industrial park wasn’t a priority for the city. So, this has just been as we put the industrial park plan in place the overlay district, everything that went along with it we have been trying to just get everything in place to better compete with other cities that are already doing this. The County and Albuquerque already has these policies in place. So basically, where we are now is just another step to get us at the same level of other communities and other counties in the area.

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This tool is mostly used for industrial type businesses so it wouldn’t be for the

Walmart’s or anything like that. There are other incentives that could potentially bring in retail. I wouldn’t say Walmart is one of them but there are other incentives that we could potentially look into formalizing as well.

Councilor Corran asked under general policy projects of specific interest to the city, for me I do believe some of the things that happen in particular very extractive things like server farms often are built to take advantage of incentives like this and I would ask that we might consider articulating as things that are priorities to us are not looking to incentivize businesses that will just take from our water in particular at the industrial park but I am sure there are other extractive things that I can imagine that could happen and the most proximately water. I don’t know if it is possible to include that as part of what we are interested in that I would like us to articulate that we are aiming to sort of build sustainability as part of this as well. I don’t know if that is possible but I would just like to say that is the one concern that I have in thinking about incentivizing folks here and I see, and I think we should and I want us to be there and I want it to grow and thrive and I don’t want it to be at the expense like things like our water.

Elizabeth Teeters said our IRB counsel wrote this policy for us and I think sustainability is a good word so I can always take it back to them and see if they can draft up language to put into that section so that when I bring it back for adoption that can be considered.

Councilor Bencomo asked this would be primarily the focus of the Industrial Park but in the policy, it is not saying strictly the Industrial Park, right? And I ask that because you are talking about housing and so I don’t think we are talking about building housing at the Industrial Park, right?

Elizabeth Teeters said yes, it is mostly used for industry and at the Industrial Park, but it is written into the state statute that affordable housing is allowed which is why I spoke with Ms. Natalie Green and we decided to write it into the policy so that is and I wanted to make sure it was in the policy so it could be considered in the future.

Councilor Bencomo asked can you give us an example of how this would be used for affordable housing development? I know you said Bernalillo and the County are using this already. Is it for housing?

Natalie Green, Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Administrator said Bernalillo

County does use the conduit financing for multifamily rental housing. We are actually using this process right now with the Pedrena Senior Apartments. The difference is

Dona Ana County is the conduit financer, so our program was not in place at the time that they were closing on their deal, so we were able to, well we weren’t able, but we weren’t prepared to be the conduit financer for their bonding and so the county was kind enough to step in and they’re doing it. So, this as Ms. Teeters mentioned just adds an extra tool into our toolbox when we are doing affordable housing development it helps make the projects more sustainable because they are not paying property taxes on affordable housing and so it just gives them that extra financing that

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they need to make the numbers work long term. Some projects do have other types of exceptions we have been able to get for property taxes, but it is not always applied across the board but is really dependent on the assessors, so this gives us a guaranteed property tax exemption for these projects.

Councilor Bencomo said thank you, I appreciate that. I think it is helpful to know it is another tool in the belt, but I did say wait a minute we are talking about housing, and I don’t think we’re going to make people live out there.

Natilie Green said so, when someone looks up Pedrena they will actually see that the physical property is owned by the County and they lease it to Pedrina LLC., for the apartments.

Councilor Bencomo said I think this helps me a little bit more to be more supportive of this because as I first read this I thought we are right now having a big conversation about GRT and increasing the GRT. In the meantime we are talking about giving some of these big businesses a ways out of the GRT and so that feels a little bit tricky for me right to sell to the public and so I think it is really important that we talk about what are the gains then, like what is this community gaining because of this kind of economic development tool so you know we can be better champions of it. That would be my only suggestion Elizabeth just thinking about the narrative around this.

Councilor Mattiace asked you’re saying the Industrial Revenue Bonds have never been used by the City of Las Cruces or by the companies out at the park right now?

None of them have received any kind of tax abatements?

Elizabeth Teeters said so Saputo Cheese back when it was FNA Dairy they did use it years ago. When Saputo did their expansion three years ago now, they had originally reproposed giving them an IRB but they pulled out of the deal and we just did the

LEDA instead and so we haven’t used it in recent years.

Councilor Mattiace asked it was used by FNA and how many years did they go with the termination out there, 20 years, 30 years?

Elizabeth Teeters said I am not sure off the top of my head, but I can get that information for you.

Councilor Mattiace said when I think of IRB’s and Mr. Lopez realizes my tenure at

New Mexico Border Authority with Jerry Pacheco and many of the companies that come into Santa Teresa in the free zones as well as using IRBs down there it created jobs. I thought that was the primary purpose of IRBs was creating jobs. Is that still the principal use?

Elizabeth Teeters said whenever we look at incentives for any business it is really each community that sets their own benchmarks or like their own expectations. We have always looked at jobs, wages and investment. Those are our three when we are considering giving an incentive to a business those are the three big ones that we consider. So, whenever a business fills out a IRB application they will have to put that

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information in there and we will decide whether it fits what we are looking for or not.

Councilor Mattiace said then the ROI, the return on the investment.

Elizabeth Teeters said yes.

Mayor Enriquez said I think this is an incentive that we would want brought forward for our economic development, so thank you. 2.3 ACCOUNTABILITY IN GOVERNMENT ORDINANCE DISCUSSION. Brad Douglas, City Attorney gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran said I appreciate you opening the language to allow for other folks to be appointed because I think it is really hard to get people who are functioning as professionals in any field to give up a lot of time to be on an unpaid volunteer committee for the city which is across the board but specific to this. In that same paragraph there is a clarification about, I do wonder the very last sentence as to not to form a quorum, no more than three council members shall be in attendance. When you say council members does that include the Mayor? I ask this because I don’t know if we should make that more explicit and say.

Brad Douglas said yes. It would be our intention that the three council members would include the Mayor but we can clarify that wording if you like to be more specific.

Councilor Corran said just so that it is more clear across the board. I am hoping that you can really talk about what the flow of reporting concerns is and how the IG relates to the Oversight Committee as it relates to audit and just sort of paint a picture as to what that looks like when someone complains about something or when someone has a concern internal or external. Where does it go? How is it triaged? Is it independent, is it simultaneous, how do those reviews work with those three sets of sorts of different overseers and how do they relate each other?

Viola Perea, City Auditor said as far as internal audits are concerned every year we develop an audit plan and we bring that plan forward for council approval, should there be an issue that arises where a special audit needs to occur, something that we didn’t anticipate initially that we need to add to the plan we will bring that forward to the city manager and also report that to the Oversight Committee to let folks know that we are going to substitute something on our plan for that additional issue that has risen without prior knowledge and we will be able to conduct that audit. As far as investigations are concerned and I don’t want to speak for the IG but I will give you just a quick background and then I will let Charles inform you additionally. When a complaint comes through it has various avenues where it may come to our attention whether it is in person, verbally in person, we have our hotline, whether it is a PD complaint that goes through the Police Department’s hotline. There are various avenues where a complaint can be raised. If it does come through either internally or through our hotline process all of those complaints will get directed to the Inspector

General and he will be able to determine whether or not there is merit to move forward. He can do some additional inquiries to determine the validity to move

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forward. If they go through the PD that is under the purview of Internal Affairs, however with this revision that we are proposing if there is a complaint related to fraud, waste, or abuse the IG will now be able to assist with that process by being present during those processes.

Charles Tucker, Inspector General said when a complaint comes in like Viola said if it comes in through our hotline, I review them all. If it is something that has to do with fraud, waste, and abuse then I will let the hotline committee know my recommendation that I will take care of that investigation. If it is not, then I will make a recommendation that it be looked at either through one of the Assistant City

Managers and their subordinates do the investigation if it is not something that is fraud, waste, or abuse and then we handle it that way.

Councilor Corran asked how do you relate to the Oversight Committee? I sort of understand how audits fit in there and if there is sequential or subsequent, if there is feedback loops between them?

Charles Tucker said when I sat on the Oversight Committee the intent was for us to review the IG’s products. So once the IG is done with his investigation, the fraud, waste, or abuse it would go to the City Manager, City Manager signs off on it. I can’t hang it for public distribution, or I can’t redact it or I will redact it, take it to the

Oversight Committee for review, they will look at my product, they will make recommendations on whether I should look at something a little bit more or again they may make recommendations. They can’t change my product. They can’t tell me that I am not doing the right thing. If they make recommendations, I prefer written on my product and it has to be posted for transparency reasons. Now because we don’t have an Oversight Committee right now, I have got a lot of packets once we actually have one. We are going to be going through a lot of investigations that have been done so that we can actually put these out for public but that is something that will happen once we stand up an Oversight Committee.

Councilor Corran asked the triage happens at your level?

Charles Tucker said yes.

Councilor Corran said that is what I was curious about because often people write and say this city staff member should be fired and I say that because probably I get 10 emails a week saying things like that, and I hope that someone is triaging those at some capacity. Not to dismiss it but I want there to be a layer.

Charles Tucker said I get complaints of people not flushing toilets in City Hall to cars being driven crazily so I see the gambit of it all. So, I do the initial assessment and then we will determine what route that goes to.

Councilor Flores said Viola did an excellent job when we had that snafu, I don’t think I want to go into the details, but I think we all know what I am talking about. Would it avoid that kind of a scenario? Who oversees the IG?

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Brad Douglas said it is my hope with a more robust oversight system which I do believe that we have maybe incidents like that could be avoided because the

Inspector General monitoring the hotline complaints and having, I don’t want to say carte blanche authority but a very wide latitude to do investigations throughout the city and including investigating city contractors, subcontractors, or lower tier contractors.

That is not something that has always existed and in any event that those parties do not cooperate it is anticipated and built into the revisions. For example we have an allegation of wrongdoing, an allegation of fraud on behalf of one of our city contractors or employee and let’s say that the contractor refuses to cooperate with the IG investigation at our discretion, the city’s discretion that contractor may be barred or rather disbarred from doing business with the city for a prescribed amount of time at our discretion and so this has some real teeth in it to encourage transparency and cooperation. It is kind of loke the universe to as what I was speaking about earlier if we have a city employee who may be accused of some wrongdoing. At some point during the investigation if it truly does turn criminal then our IG will turn the matter over to law enforcement but if it is not criminal in nature, we don’t want to make every possible infraction criminal in nature because then nobody is going to talk to you.

They are going to invoke their rights and going to want an attorney present. What we really want is that cooperation and so the carrot would be taking away the criminal penalty for each and every possible, imaginable violation of the ordinance. The stick would be if you are a contractor who is doing business with us, you aren’t cooperating with our investigation you may not be allowed to do business with us the city in the future. With regard to your second question. Who oversees the office of the Inspector

General? Under our proposed revisions if there is a complaint concerning the fraud, waste, or abuse and I am not picking on Mr. Tucker, it could be anybody but in the

IG’s office external review counsel will take over that investigation themselves, the

City Manager, and the City Attorney will be notified immediately. There will be people tracking that.

Councilor Flores asked who are the people that will be tracking that?

Brad Douglas said well, the City Manager and the City Attorney would be at least apprised of the investigation.

Councilor Flores asked what would prompt the investigation? I just want to know how it all functions and how that person sitting in that position would be checked.

Brad Douglas said probably the most common way that would come about would be through our hotline system, but it can also come about through internal complaints or external complaints from anyone in the community.

Councilor Flores asked there is enough of an internal oversight administratively speaking?

Brad Douglas said I believe that there will be. Right now, there is very little. At the conclusion of external review counsel’s investigation, they would generate a report for the City Manager to review and then the City Manager would take additional steps appropriate.

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Charles Tucker said when we get a hotline complaint that comes in, I am not the only one that reviews it. I do the initial review, but it has to go out the rest of the hotline committee for their suggestions and for how we process those. If there is a complaint against me, I don’t have a choice I have to send it out to both ACMs to look at, the HR

Director, and the City Attorney. So, all four of those folks review every single hotline complaint that comes in, not just me.

Councilor Flores asked what about the Auditor?

Charles Tucker said no. We wanted to do that so that she could focus on her audits.

That same question that you brought up was brought up by Chief Story. When we initially sat down, and we were talking he said who watches you? Because right now we don’t have anybody watching me. The way the ordinance is written if I was to go rogue. We are trying to write in those safeguards because I am not always going to be that IG. It could be somebody else that doesn’t want to follow those rules or wants to paint outside the lines, and you never know where that could go. If you give somebody this much power or the office grows in some cases, and it got really ugly with the IG up in Alburquerque where she ended up having to completely separate her office from the city. It got real political and so we didn’t want to do that and we wanted to make sure that we had somebody who could keep the IG under a microscope if needed.

Councilor Flores asked you participated and the City Attorney, Brad Douglas and then

Viola Perea participated also in the framing of it?

Councilor Graham asked I am looking at Section 2-176 and of the proposed definitions for abuse, fraud, and waste, only abuse refers specifically to government resources. The other two do not and I am just wondering why there is a distinction there?

Brad Douglas said these definitions I wish I could take credit for crafting them on my own, but they were pulled directly from the Federal Government’s Office of

Government Accountability with regard to fraud and waste, we could certainly make edits to those definitions to clarify that they do apply to government resources so I will take a look at that.

Councilor Bencomo said I continue to have some concern about the oversight of the

IG. I think everybody has a boss, right? So, I think with this revision we should really consider are we really changing the character of the hierarchy map of the city, right?

The top boss is our bosses which is the public, and then the city council and the

Mayor are the bosses of City Manager and then the City Manager is the boss of literally everyone else. I think even when we think about Municipal Court which is sort of over here, right? Even Municipal Court has a boss which is the public as well, right?

I do feel like there is some concern just regarding who then the IG is reporting to. I think that needs to be clarified and I would strongly discourage us from thinking about

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the committee, the Oversight Committee. Like those were volunteer folks and I feel like that would be highly inappropriate as well and I think this is also where we want to avoid saying well I guess the IG’s office should be an elected position because then that becomes deeply political and I don’t think that is the point of this kind of office so I understand the messiness of having the IG be under the City Manager but I just feel like for me there is still a big concern around how we navigate that Brad so good luck to you. I think there is still room to grow this conversation around the oversight of the

IG just so that we are cognizant of the makeup of the hierarchy of the city as it is. So that is one of a little of concern for me. I did go back and in preparation for today I did go back and read the McHard Report and I think the enormity of what triggered us to be talking about Oversight and the IG obviously is, I think is important for us to remember what is at the core of why we are doing this and I promise this has a point because I just keep thinking about how do we ensure that in this revision we keep the integrity of effective oversight versus what could spiral into the petty, like the toilet situation. How do we keep, and I am not saying to whoever made that complaint that there is some validity in that I guess I just want to make sure that at the core of this office in this committee is that integrity. Like we are talking about fraud, waste, and abuse and so how do we put that into language? I think because in some ways that is sort of subjective. Do you understand what I am trying to get at?

Brad Douglas said I certainly do. I will be very candid with all of you. This had been a hard ordinance to revise. Something that I have to, and I am not very good at following this advice is, something I try to tell myself specifically with this ordinance is don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good but it is very difficult and I can promise you that these are conversations that we have had internally between myself and Ms.

Perea, Mr. Tucker. As it stands now there really is no oversight for the Office of

Inspector General and we welcome ideas but the way that the revisions read if there is an allegation against the Office of IG at least now City Manager and City Attorney would be immediately be made aware of it and we would be made aware of it anyway because we get those hotline complaints and we would coordinate with external review counsel and if something very untoward had taken place then the City

Manager at his or her discretion could take corrective action but that is a balancing act because we also don’t want to live in a world where the City Manager whoever that might be directing the IG investigations or stopping them in some scenario but I do welcome your thoughts and that is something that I do consider.

Councilor Bencomo said that is tricky, I hear you, Brad. I don’t envy any of you as you do these revisions but I know that I read somewhere in here that you are definitely looking at best practices from all over the country and so I know that you will find the right answer. Just to clarify, the IG is very much like the City Attorney in terms of who appoints and who fires that person, correct?

Brad Douglas said right now the way the ordinance is written the Inspector General reports to me. It doesn’t feel appropriate to me. I would like for the IG to be more independent.

Councilor Bencomo asked but who hires the IG? The City Manager, right?

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Brad Douglas said yes, Mayor Pro Tem.

Councilor Bencomo said that feels, super muddy still. So, I know that there has been some push back from even members from the Oversight Committee, so why aren’t we meeting, what’s going on? I appreciate the thoughtfulness behind this ordinance, again it came out of a moment of crisis and then it was put in place, and it was necessary in all of that, and I think now I think it is important that we are thoughtful about how this is written in the way that we are effectively looking at fraud, waste, and abuse. I also wanted to talk about the role of the IG regarding any complaints toward volunteer board positions. We have a ton of boards that we ask people to be on, is oversight included there?

Brad Douglas said I have not considered whether the actual oversight committee would fall under the purview of the IG.

Charles Tucker said I have had to sit in because I have gotten complaints on different commissions and boards and I have gone down to watch and a lot of it is how people act, how they treat city employees, and so I go in and I observe. What end up happening is if something was found it would end up going to Christine and stand up the Ethics Board and then we would go that route and have somebody to be removed if that was the case. I don’t have authority over a civilian. I have authority over a city employee, authority over contractors, somebody that has a financial contract with the city, their subcontractors and even the third tier down subcontractors but a volunteer is another thing. We would do it through an ethics to remove somebody that way.

Councilor Bencomo said okay, that is helpful. I think this is important because oh my gosh I obviously appreciate every single person who volunteers their time to sit on any board, Oversight, Parks and Rec, the Utilities, any board, right people are volunteering their time. Also, the fact that you don’t have any oversight doesn’t also give anybody the right to treat city staff to abuse or treat poorly of any city staff. It is important.

Charles Tucker said it is in our ordinance that the members of the boards/commissions have to treat people with respect. It can be founded if that does happen. Again, it would go through the Ethics Board for the removal of the person if that is the case.

Councilor Bencomo asked you make that call or who makes that call?

Charles Tucker said I don’t make that call. I would observe it and then I would refer it.

Councilor Bencomo asked are you the only one that can refer that?

Charles Tucker said no. Anybody can refer to the Ethics Board.

Councilor Bencomo said that is helpful. Is that written somewhere? Where is that language?

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Charles Tucker said it is in our ordinance.

Councilor Bencomo asked back to the complaints of fraud, waste, and abuse versus personnel matters, right? Even the city council does not have anything to do with personnel matters as the City Manager is our only employee. How are you navigating that? Are you then taking it to the City Manager? What is the process there?

Brad Douglas said by law the IG doesn’t have authority to investigate matters that are purely personnel based in nature. That would be more appropriately handled by or redirected to our Director of Human Resources.

Councilor Bencomo asked is that language differentiated here?

Brad Douglas said yes. What we were trying to do and maybe we didn’t do a good enough job. We will go back and look at it again is to make sure that the only thing the

IG looks into are matters concerning fraud, waste, and/or abuse.

Councilor Bencomo said maybe if there is just a way to clarify that a little bit more, I think that would be helpful. I do apologize for making this a little bit messier if anything. I will continue to do some of my own research but gosh I have full faith that you all are looking at best practices and finding the best ways to move this forward.

My last question would be around the Oversight Committee and when that would be brought back to life and I know that there is only one member right now and then so there are two vacancies, right? And then I think the Mayor and Council appointed two members of the council already. Just a timeline on that?

Brad Douglas said our goal is to have this first read August 19th and second read

September 3rd and hopefully very, very shortly after that.

Charles Tucker said you mentioned HR. Part of the Hotline Committee that reviews the hotline cases that we send out is the HR Director. So, she is on the hotline committee so if anything comes up that is personnel matters, we will either refer down to one of the ACMs for them to look at it or it will go through her as well and she will appoint somebody to investigate it. So, HR is in the whole process where personnel matters should be.

Councilor Bencomo asked on Oversight I think I wanted there to be more clarity as well on the role of Oversight that they play, an advisory role, correct? The Oversight

Committee aren’t necessarily making any decisions regarding what happens after any complaints are found true.

Brad Douglas said that is correct. The Oversight Committee will act in a purely advisory role and I want to say that we added that language. It might not hurt to emphasize that language throughout this.

Councilor Corran said my sense is not that any of us are objecting to the loosening of the requirements for the Oversight Committee. I don’t think I am hearing that from

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folks so I would say if the September date is the planned date that people could be applying through the boards and committee website now I would think. It is already open. So, knowing and having heard these revised kind of open things I would suggest that if there were folks that are like now I can apply, that you can actually apply right now through our boards and committee website and so just to clarify I think we can get it up and running pretty quickly if folks want to apply now. I don’t think anyone is going to object to the changes. I don’t see any objections to those changes so it feels like you can say please apply and consider that you might be the person for the Oversight Committee now.

Mayor Enriquez said anybody interested please apply. Just want to say again thank you Brad and Viola for bringing this forward. This has been anticipated and we do want people. We do want the Oversight Committee. It is all about accountability in government and we do support it, we encourage it, and again thank you all for bringing it forward.

3. ADJOURNMENT 3.1 Councilor Johana Bencomo moved, seconded by Councilor Yvonne Flores, to

Adjourn at 2:32 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Johana Bencomo

SECONDER: Councilor Yvonne Flores

AYES: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki

Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie

McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace

Mayor

City Clerk

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