Work Session Meeting March 23, 2026

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, March 23, 2026 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

PRESENT: City Councilor Johana Bencomo, City Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, City

Councilor Cassie McClure, City Councilor William Mattiace, City Councilor John Munoz, and

City Councilor Michael Harris

ABSENT:

1. AGENDA ITEM 1.1 FISCAL YEAR 2026-2027 BUDGET REVIEW. Lesley Doyle, Finance Director gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Mattiace said if you go back to page 4, you made a comment right after looking at Youth Out of School Time Program, that it is quite expensive. Sometimes I like to see how many people are reached based on the expenses. Sometimes it looks expensive but if you are reaching 15,000/20,000 children, then you do a little bit of division then it doesn’t become too expensive. Maybe if you could just give me a breakdown if you have time? The impact, how many people are we serving when we spend so many millions.

Lesley Doyle said absolutely that is information that we will get for you. Maybe it won’t look quite as expensive in that way.

Councilor Harris asked I had a question on slide 6, so the gross receipts tax here this amount includes the increase that we are seeing that we have been talking about or is that somehow accounted for separately?

Lesley Doyle said no, this is accounted for separately. This is general fund only. That

GRT is actually a special revenue fund so it is in a completely different fund that we will be bringing detail for which I believe on the 6th.

Councilor Harris said on 7, just because debt service is on here, I think something that came up at Budget Retreat is not rolling the next set of bonds. Does that impact things for 27 or for 28?

Lesley Doyle said it does not have a huge increase this year because again we have to roll those bonds off. Once the debt is paid for, we will see a larger increase, but it is not something that you would see really an impact of in fiscal 27.

Councilor Corran asked I think the JPAs are in other also or clarify, I guess?

Lesley Doyle said the operating, that is actually included in the $52 million.

Councilor Bencomo asked just for the public so that folks are clear can you talk a little bit more about why the new GRT funding that the voters approved lives outside of this?

Lesley Doyle said the GRT that was just recently passed, has a very specific use that we can use and so we do isolate it as a special revenue fund so that we can ensure that that is used for what the voters intended it for.

Christine Rivera, City Clerk continued the overhead presentation.

Mandy Leatherwood, Communications Director continued the overhead presentation.

Michael Daniels, Fire Chief continued the overhead presentation.

Natalie Green, Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Administrator continued the overhead presentation.

Steve Bingham, Parks & Recreation Director continued the overhead presentation.

Jimmy Moreno, Interim Assistant Director Public Works continued the overhead presentation.

Carol Brey, Quality of Life Director continued the overhead presentation.

Adrienne Widmer, Utilities Director continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Harris said the first question since you are already up and I guess it is the elephant in the room our general fund incomes are less than our general fund expenditures by quite a bit. So, what more of that should we be concerned about?

Lesley Doyle said yes, that is definitely the elephant in the room and something that I have been working close with my team as well as the City Manager on what that will look like going forward. So, we have done budget reductions both this year in fiscal

2026 as well as people submitted budgets for draft for proposed 27. We did go back and ask them to reduce those. We are continuing to look at transfers and where we

can reduce those you mentioned debt. That is a huge part of our transfers and unfortunately until that debt pays off, we aren’t going to reap the benefits of that.

There are lots of things that we are looking to do in fiscal 27. We don’t fully have those flushed out yet and when we do sooner rather than later because I hear you when you say it is definitely the elephant in the room but there are a lot of different avenues that we are working on. I will say that we have made a lot of progress in that line that we talked about at the Budget Retreat. That is kind of crossed where revenue did not match expense. We are much better in this budget as well as in this fiscal year. So, when I bring that to you next time, God willing that line will look much different. All of that to say I promise we are addressing that.

Councilor Harris said that is good and I just want to make sure that everyone understands that we all know that those lines are crossing and we are trying to not have that situation because that is not good. My next question I think is for Christine, we will just go in order. You said the major thing is for police body cam footage and I have personally seen starting to cross my Instagram and YouTube feeds channels that are kind of slop that are kind of gawk at this body cam footage that we got from random police department. Are we seeing a bunch of that from us?

Christine Rivera said yes, we are seeing a huge uptick in requests from YouTubers and TikTokers requesting video. We have a huge amount of requests for that right now and it is becoming difficult to balance those requests over a citizen requesting a police report for an accident. So, it is becoming very difficult for us to manage.

Councilor Harris said the public has a right to get documents and there are important requests and there are other kinds of requests too so that is unfortunately we are in an unfortunate position because of the state law on that. You mentioned that PD does some of the redacting? Are they able to do most of the redacting? Is it shared by you?

Christine Rivera said PD does redactions for their documents and their videos. Then we receive them and we kind of make sure that all of the correct exemptions were applied and if there is any correctios that need to be made then my team does that.

My team focuses on just all the other city requests so they are redacting all of the other city requests.

Councilor Harris asked do we have many duplicates? And does that result in duplicate work and half duplicates, or if somebody says give me all the body cam footage from

2025 and someone says give me this specific case, do we have a portal? How do people go and maybe find some of that stuff that is already been released?

Christine Rivera said we don’t have a portal really where we make that available for everyone to go view. What we do is get their request and we will get for example multiple requests for an officer involved shooting and then we have to reply to every single request, and we have to provide the exact same stuff that they are requesting to every single request. So, if they are requesting thirty body cam videos we have to go through every single request and send them a link for each of those videos.

Councilor Harris asked you can handle them all the same it is just copy and paste to

all the people that are requesting that?

Christine Rivera said correct.

Councilor Harris said the amount of hours and the work that is to be done, I think that is like 5 FTEs worth of time and we are kind of required by state law to do that lest we incur financial penalties.

Christine Rivera said I only have right now 3 FTEs in my department working on IPRA requests and PD has I believe 5. So, we are down a little bit.

Councilor Harris said Mandy on slide 9. Are we paying for a lot of ads to push our stuff on Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube? And the other part of the question is are we seeing that those ads are worthwhile? Because personally in the industry I am in and things I follow the ads seem maybe like an expense that could be cut.

Mandy Leatherwood said yes, we do have funding behind, not all of our social media posts and a lot of things are organic, but we do certain things that we want attention on we will put money behind. I would say it is probably one of the least expensive types of advertising that we do and we do get good return on investment. Often times when I pull analytics, when I pull the top posts or videos the ones that we put money behind consistently come at the top because they have more views because we have paid for them to be there.

Councilor Harris asked are we tracking conversion from post to whether it was boosted or not to something actually occurred, like a person showed up for a thing? I know that is a very difficult thing to track but.

Mandy Leatherwood said yes, we are and I will just anecdotally tell a story of the

Neighborhood Leadership Academy. We have seen a dwindling number of applicants.

This year we did a video, we paid money, which we had 50 applicants, which was the most we have had as long as I have been working with it. It is working when we are targeting those types of projects.

Councilor Harris said Chief Daniels, I think you mentioned all of us are very pro

LIGHT and MIH, that is a huge problem in the community, and I am glad we are working to solve it. You mentioned that we were kind of dependent on a facility but that is the main barrier to expanding the number of calls that can be addressed and I know we have been talking about that facility and accepting grants for it. So, I just wanted to make sure that is really the kind of the main barrier?

Chief Michael Daniels said that is correct. The facility right now and when we did our tours at the station, we have our entire MIH and LIGHT team crammed in a classroom that has some cubicles built into it and a couple of offices that were transformed. So, space is a very, very big issue right now for us so expanding the program wouldn’t be pragmatic until we have that facility in place which is fully funded. We are just going through finishing up historic preservation. That just got done and now we are in the waiting period, but we are actually at a point now where Public Works is going to be

moving forward with trying to get a contractor for demolition and to build the station.

That should align well with our hopeful projected growth.

Councilor Harris asked something else you said was trying to do more integration with between 988 and 911 and I have actually been sort of on the other end of one of those calls where somebody called 988 and then 988 was like we need to help this person and they reached out and eventually got back to me in my private capacity trying to locate this person to find them which is quite a desperation from just being able to call police and they said that they tried to contact police and work with them and it just wasn’t working out so they were trying all of these other avenues. So, I would be interested to know what a little more about that?

Chief Michael Daniels said 988 doesn’t integrate necessarily with the 911 system.

They can transfer to 911 but we don’t really see good communication through the two and what that leads to is communication breakdowns between the crisis response teams that are in the community. So, I know FYI and Allison have talked and the goal is to get them together and go what truly is our capacity and where do we have gaps in these response times? Whether it is 911 or 988 and really what we have to figure out is through the MVRDA system. If our LIGHT team is out of service and it is non- urgent, right, the person is not actively harming themselves or others but they are in a variation of crisis and they need services, is it appropriate for us to try to get that call into the 988 system as opposed to sending PD officers, a fire truck and transporting them to an ER where they are likely not going to get the care or services that they need when we could have gotten. Crisis Triage is beneficial in that. We are somewhat destination agnostic in that on the private ambulance model what we would have experienced is this reluctancy to maybe transport to a facility like that because it is non-reimbursable. For us that is not the important thing. The important thing for us is ensuring that a person gets to the appropriate level of care so we will transport directly to the Crisis Triage when we can and that is an available service in the community that is really just starting to pick back up because of how it has ebbed and flowed in its service capacity.

Councilor Harris said Natalie, I am hugely in favor of the Emergency Handyman and the Home Rehab programs and would definitely be interested in, I know this is another thing that is hard to quantify but kind of our ROI on that. Like if we are able to help somebody fix the problem, what is our best guess on how much that has saved the system as a whole? Have we kept them out of needing other services you know because we helped them fix some problem?

Natalie Green said I believe we are about 45 people that we have helped. Some of them have fixed an immediate issue so it was an ADA or a water heater issue. We have done patching of a roof coating and that helped a permanent issue. Many of the things that we are seeing is like a life safety issue. We are able to provide temporary air conditioner in partnership with MIH so they identify clients who are at risk of heat related incidents so we see that as the win that we are preventing potential heat related death, but we can start looking at some of those data points to quantify in the future.

Councilor Harris said I know that we have started doing that in response to actual deaths and so I think that it is important to keep in mind for the community that like this isn’t something where we are like oh, this would be fun to provide. It’s like no, people really need these services and the little bit of money that we put to it is actually like saving people’s lives. So, Parks, you mentioned that of our after-school programs we have like an 80% fill rate?

Steven Bingham said yes, 81.

Councilor Harris said what do you see as the barrier as to getting to 100%? Where could we put resources to get there?

Steven Bingham said I am going to let Robert specifically speak to that. While he is coming down, I will give you some information. The typical afterschool program nationally costs between $3,500 and $5,500 a year per child. Our current cost per child is $3,588. So, we are on the low end. What you do see is our fee for services is at the very bottom compared to what you see nationally. We charge very little for that service.

Robert Nunez, Deputy Director Parks & Recreation said I think what we see in some of our locations, we have four locations that are at capacity right now. The other three locations, there is a community schools in two of them as well as Century 21 and some other afterschool programs that the schools host but traditionally it has been

Alameda, Loma Heights, Ceasar Chavez that have had the lowest rates.

Councilor Harris asked is that a transit issue that people have a hard time getting to the schools or is it fees or just people aren’t participating in the community?

Robert Nunez said again our locations are at the schools so there is no need for any transportation. Prior to Covid our fees were about $400 per semester. During Covid of course we eliminated our fees. We are currently at $100 per semester. We have scholarships available that can assist families. I hope that they are going to other activities, maybe privately or whatnot, but we try to accommodate as many families and youth as possible.

Councilor Harris asked since they are at the schools, are those limited to just students who are in those schools or if there is another location that is full and somebody can get their child to Alameda from wherever, Conlee say, would they be able to participate in that program? Is that a way to start filling up those programs?

Robert Nunez said we do allow families to transport their kids to other locations. We have about four or five families that transport their kids to various locations. I am not sure of specifics, but we do allow that.

Steven Bingham said one of the things that is important is part of the piece of the puzzle isn’t just afterschool programing but it may be a tumbling class or a dance class or aquatic class at another site where the youth may be involved in programing, but it is not an afterschool programing per term.

Councilor Harris said Public Works, on slide 13, you mentioned that we are expanding our program to include mobile and easily deployed devices. What are some of those mobile and easily deployed devices?

Jimmy Moreno said some of those devices include like speed monitoring devices that can be easily mounted let’s say to a streetlight, easily moved around to different locations depending on hot spots. Some of them collect data as well so we can see if those are empirically helping to calm some of that speed so some of those. There is different speed tables that are deployable, a little bit more mobile less permanent in nature and so that allows us to rotate between different hot spots and then we also coordinate with PD on those locations as well to do some blitzes and different speed monitoring through enforcement actions as well.

Councilor Harris said it is the speed tables and things I am highly in favor of like the rubber ones that you can just go bolt to the street and not have to do a huge project to get them in. I think there is lots of places where we can use those so looking forward to a lot more funding and maybe a shift towards more of these things. I guess the mobile speed monitors, I am personally skeptical of how well those work, especially long term. We put them up, I have heard PD speak to this to that they see the study goes in and the people slow down while the study is there and then it leaves and things are exactly back to the way they were and there has been no real change but the more permanent things that are quicker to design and deploy and the pilot programs like on Melendres, I don’t want to steal Councilor Bencomo’s spotlight.

Somebody did ask me about it the other night and they said they hated it so and they are a pedestrian, they ride their bike. I guess the point is that it is okay to put in a bunch of flex posts and have them hated or not work well then it is to put in a bunch of curbs or like permanent modifications that also don’t work well. I like that fact that we are trying. I would like for us to try the cheap things and rapidly iterate on them. So, I think that is a good direction. I also wanted to highlight that several departments have been doing a lot of in house work and I really appreciate the work that Public Works has done with the new cement truck to really try and bring our cost down and response times down too, I guess. Having that indigenous capability and wasting a little less money on overhead and contracting and I would also like to see I guess just more of that. Like we were at museums and they had some problems with a door at one of the museums and I was thinking like well could the door just be repaired by somebody in house that knows how to repair a door? So just interested in looking more at that and likewise with fleet. I know Utilities has a great fleet shop where they do all their stuff. Public Works has a fleet shop. So, I just wanted to close by highlighting that the more stuff that we can do in house and we get these full-time positions and expertise and materials and tools that save the city money in the long term so.

Councilor Munoz said on the Ask Las Cruces enhancement, I think it is important to communicate and get that out there. That is super helpful as far as engagement. I know there is a cost and I get it. There is another cost I would like the staff to consider, and our council and Mayor to consider, I would like to enhance as we are talking more about the Ask Las Cruces app and reaching other people. So, a couple of years ago I had the opportunity to have interns. They were high school age and I

was showing them, can you all give me feedback on this Facebook ad that we were doing. They were Facebook, Mr. Munoz, that is for old people. We don’t really get on

Facebook. Like wow, okay. What about Instagram? No, and then they told me about

TikTok. Obviously, I went to my PR group, and they laughed at me because I called it

TikieTok. Obviously, I need to be educated on that as well, but I think as we cast that net that is appreciated and what I would like to do is look at a 311 and have some enhancement where it will make that tool even more robust where we have a data link and we will have a stronger tool that will lay over Ask Las Cruces for our staff who want to be of service and provide timely service and it will be also a much better experience for our constituents and so maybe look at 100,000 or something to that effect that can overlay that service.

Mandy Leatherwood said I would like to say all of those things are valid about

Facebook. We actually have interns that are college interns and our college intern is who put our Ask Las Cruces advertisement together, so we are hoping to get a younger and fresher perspective on that. The other thing is I want to give a thank you to our IT team as they help us update that app so it should be easier to use but if there is additional improvements or ways, we will continue to make improvements and it is not a one-time thing. We are continuously improving that app.

Councilor Munoz said I think the 311 will be super helpful and again include that spectrum of young adults and more mature adults that range from 17 to 70/90 and all ranges. The other piece is on Parks & Rec as you all are going through this budget discussion and other budget discussions I want to ensure that all of our citizens, all our residents have access to those parks and I know Steve you and the team have been doing a great job of adding additional ADA compliant play stations and other equipment around the parks. I want to aggressively look at that. The numbers really range and I wish there was a little bit more solid numbers. There is about a range of either 9 to 15% of our residents in Las Cruces are ADA and those are great spaces.

Those are third spaces and I would love to see more access for 9-year-olds and younger to 90-year-olds and older in our parks.

Steven Bingham said I agree with you. It is something that has been at our forefront as we did the East Mesa playground. Not only did we make it a regional, but we really went after more adaptive inclusive features. It is something that we talk about all the time. There is a broad range of disabilities, and it is really hard to be able to serve all the disabilities at every location. It becomes very expensive. One of the trends in this country is going to an all-ability park. A location where you can bring a lot of things together. For an example a child with an ocular implant can’t go down a slide that is metal or plastic because it blows it out and so departments are putting in cement slides but you can’t afford to put in cement slides everywhere and so they are doing it at what they call their all abilities parks but we do want to make every park accessible.

Councilor Munoz said as we move into this budgetary discussion and other budgets that we discuss as we work on the library and museums, quality of life there is so many amazing things happening in those spaces. From guitar lessons to ceramics, just a gem in our community and as I was on the campaign trail one of the constituents you know came up to me and said John, I am glad that you are talking

about youth engagement but also talking about senior engagement. I am seventy something and I would like something to do. Her favorite thing is dancing with the Fire

Department, Chief Daniels. Please continue that program and that is absolutely something that she looks forward to and enjoys. So, as we work through that what I want to work with Public Works and the library as we expand and we grow the more aggressive that we can be to with quality and with safety, get our projects done so that we don’t displace those programs because they are a huge benefit to our community. I will close by saying thank you Lesley, thank you to the department chiefs for putting this together. I am glad you all encapsulated the youth engagement, community safety, behavioral health, library and museums, economic development, community development, all together so that we move forward. I know what the budget is, what it is but I am sure creatively and as you work your magic Lesley will make things happen.

Councilor Bencomo said thank you Lesley to you especially but your whole team. I know leading this budget starts much before the Budget Retreat, especially in a difficult year. So, thank you very much. I also just want to thank all the departments for being so intentional about connecting what you are doing, what you are planning for, with some of the things that council presented on at the retreat, I appreciate that. I am curious about Municipal Court. I know that there is a bit of an odd sort of way because the city is responsible for their budget but they are obviously the judicial branch and so that is separate, but I am always curious to hear from them and their needs. I want to understand more about how their SOS program is going and those kinds of things. Is that something we are prepared to hear from them at all before we make our final vote?

Lesley Doyle said I have not reached out to them but I absolutely can so that we can see if they can present and find out what their needs are.

Councilor Bencomo said that would be great. Obviously multiple councilors brought up Municipal Court, their actual physical building. Obviously, I know they have other needs as well. I want to make sure that we get to hear from them. Christine or Brad, I know we are not seeking guidance on anything today, I think I just wanted to put a finer point in why at least myself had IPRA on my priority list for budget. Not only because of the things that Christine just presented on about the serious increase that we are seeing year to year but to me one of the biggest consequences of not being able to meet those things are the civil liability risks. I was wondering if you could touch a little bit as that what it means for us not to meet those request?

Brad Douglas, City Attorney said that is something that I am concerned about it through no fault of our IPRA staff, we are looking at a pretty extensive backlog right now. Christine and I meet about this once a week probably and we are trying to find creative solutions as far as how to try to cut into that backlog, but I think we are going to find at the end of the day that there is no magic bullet. It is going to require and sorry for the gender term but manpower. People power, that is what it is going to require. So, my staff, we are trying to help as much as we can, but we are looking at a pretty tall task right now. So, anything and probably not my place to do this but I will, anything that the governing body can do to support the Clerk’s Office please consider

that.

Councilor Bencomo said I really do have concerns about our civil liability risk in general as a whole and I think this really feeds into that. So, I understand that we are in a tight place and I think as far as priorities go in terms of just staff, this is one of them in order to prevent any further debt in the future. My last question is for Utilities, simply because just last Monday Adrienne I brought up a couple of the things we talked about during our Utilities Board which included Walnut-Griggs and the cost allocation conversation if you could touch on both of those. I want to make sure that council hears directly from you on the importance of something like especially the

Griggs-Walnut.

Adrienne Widmer said the budget for Griggs-Walnut has been cut to $200,000 instead of $400,000 from the GRT and based on our discussions I did get with Domonique and reviewed how much the general fund has actually been used over the last few years. So, the nice thing is that there has been enough funds when we settled with the United States that we can use that money for anything above and beyond what our operational needs are that is not paid for by selling the reclaimed water back into the systems. So that part is good. There does need though to be the complete and total understanding that if there is going to be budget changes moving forward in

Griggs-Walnut it needs to be coordinated with me as the project director for Griggs-

Walnut for the City of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County and one of the things that I had thought about is perhaps I need to refresh because I really think that there is only one of you which would be Councilor Mattiace that is fully aware of what occurred with

Griggs-Walnut Superfund. So that is a joint powers agreement between the City of

Las Cruces and Dona Ana County for the superfund project because the federal government EPA said that the probable responsible parties were the City of Las

Cruces due to the proffered airport and Dona Ana County because of their vehicle maintenance that occurred nearby. So, with that the county and the city joined together for the Joint Superfund Project and the city is the fiscal agent. Utilities offered to operate and maintain it because we have level 4 operators that can do the work and that we would cost share 50/50 and so throughout the years prior to us settling and us being able to get money from actually another responsible party that we brought to their attention which happened to be the National Guard, the city and the county were splitting everything, EGRT which is the Environment Gross Receipts Tax and the general fund or put in together to actually pay for those so after our settlement and we did get some money we have been using that particular money but any changes in the budget really do need to be brought to the attention and get the concurrence of the County without actually having discussions. So moving forward

Lesley and I have agreed that we will have those types of conversations with Dona

Ana County and make sure that is very clear and understood. The other is the allocation plan, the draft MOU is with legal and with finance that we need to finalize.

We have been going back and forth, and we need to sit down and have serious discussions. Currently Utilities’ budget does not include specific things within the cost allocation as I am holding those back because I want the MOU.

Councilor Bencomo asked the MOU should be done before we vote on the budget, yes?

Adrienne Widmer said theoretically that would be nice, but I don’t know that we are going to be able to get through that based on other timing issues. I think if our budget gets recommended by the Utility Board and brought to you all and you say ok to it. If we get the allocation MOU agreed upon and any changes, we can bring that back as the budget adjustment. It is not going to kill the budget either way.

Councilor Bencomo said I have a couple of notes, these aren’t necessarily questions.

I just wanted to make sure I shouted out the brand new Ask Las Cruces app. Good job. It is just updated to the 21st century so I really want to appreciate that. I really want to thank Public Works for the traffic calming, the ongoing priority on that. Part of the stuff on Melendres, the pilot. So, folks don’t like this one, they didn’t like the previous pilot either, so I think one of the things I have learned is that there is never a win win we just have to try our best and I do think this pilot program, I think it looks nice and I hope that it yields the data for us to be able to do something more permanent there so thank you very much Public Works. Just a slight note because it just happens to be on my heart. Councilor McClure and I met with YDD staff a couple of weeks ago. Don’t panic Lesley, this isn’t my request for this year, but I do want to put this out for you all for the future that YDD staff deserves higher salaries. I think it is really important that when we talk about salaries for people, that when we talk about the biggest assets that we have in the city is people power and we should just be taking better care of our folks all across the city of course and that was just heavy for me because we recently met with them and given the conversations we are having about young people and juveniles they are the ones on the frontline doing a lot of that work with especially “at risk youth”. That just feels like an important conversation for us to have in the future. 1.2 CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS PROGRAM (CIP) FY27 REVIEW Cynthia Alamillo gave the overhead presentation.

2. ADJOURNMENT 2.1 City Councilor John Munoz moved, seconded by City Councilor Michael Harris, to adjourn at 2:47 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: City Councilor John Munoz

SECONDER: City Councilor Michael Harris

AYES: City Councilor Johana Bencomo, City Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric

Enriquez, City Councilor Cassie McClure, City Councilor William Mattiace, City

Councilor John Munoz, and City Councilor Michael Harris

Mayor

City Clerk