Work Session Meeting February 9, 2026

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, February 9, 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 John Munoz, and City Councilor Michael Harris

ABSENT: City Councilor William Mattiace

1. ALLOW REMOTE PARTICIPATION 1.1 City Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by City Councilor Michael

Harris, to allow Councilor Bencomo to attend the meeting via Zoom.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: City Councilor Becky Corran

SECONDER: City Councilor Michael Harris

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

Enriquez, City Councilor Cassie McClure, City Councilor John Munoz, and City

Councilor Michael Harris

2. JOBS OF THE WEEK 2.1 Sarah Raney, America's Job Centers presented the Jobs of the Week.

3. PETS OF THE WEEK 3.1 None.

4. AGENDA ITEM 4.1 PROPOSED GRT PRIORITY PROJECTS. Chris Faivre, Community Development Director gave an overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure said I know at the budget retreat we talked a little bit about traffic calming and I felt like there were a couple of places where that might go if that is in new projects under road reconstruction or under streets maintenance but I think all of us kind of spoke to the need for traffic calming and where we can kind of enable that with either new funding. I think the muni court is important. I think parks design is important, and I also think closing out some of the current CIP things where we have projects where we can kind of do quickly kind of goes a long way with what I was saying at the budget retreat.

Councilor Harris said I would also like to make sure that we get something for parks on it. I think that was in the language of the measure to approve the GRT, and I'm also in favor of closing CIP gaps and also wanted to remind about traffic calming because that's a big important thing to me as well. And actually I guess if you could maybe remind us all and members of the public kind of what the language was when we approved this GRT increase.

Chris Faivre said I believe it was funds dedicated to capital improvements specific to parks, street improvements, public safety and other public facilities as well. So it was new capital and maintenance that kind of covered that broad range, not exactly the language but those were the major milestones within the verbiage.

Councilor Harris said I just want to make sure we're hitting all of those things, parks, public safety, street improvements, since that's what we asked people for that's what we said we'd get.

Councilor Corran said I also want to speak to the Bruins/Motel Road. I know that rec centers were a large overwhelmingly supported component of the public input sessions that we did as well as our commitment to focusing on things with youth. So for me, I really want to speak to the Bruins/Motel specific road improvements as they gesture toward the future of a rec center or significant park build up in that area, which

I think is historically underserved with parks and recreation opportunities. I would also add the Engler extension I think is somewhat specific to my district but also a huge kind of demand and corresponding investment that the New Mexico Department of

Transportation will be making related to the Engler interchange is supposed to start in

2027, and people in my district the single biggest thing aside from neighborhood traffic calming, which I would also say is the thing that folks are looking for the increasing danger of having a large population that has only one ingress and egress, and I think I've heard this from the fire department as well and they're thinking about the East Mesa specifically. So I just wanted to speak to that Engler gesture toward a large project that I think we should be investing in that we can magnify the money related to that. Other than that, I echo what a lot of my colleagues say but I do want to elevate rec centers as the thing that many, many people in the public mentioned and I think the Bruins and Motel Road improvements is where that appears in this new funding so I hope we can consider that public input.

Councilor Bencomo said are you asking for further guidance at this point because I can also share some thoughts. I just wanted to clarify what the ask if right now.

Chris Faivre said we're looking for further direction. If you have other items you would like to discuss as well, by all means. These were just recommendations based on some of the information we've pulled together during this process.

Councilor Bencomo said I've really appreciated that staff has taken from the budget retreat being open to the 60/40 switch for maintenance and existing infrastructure versus new infrastructure. I think from what I see certainly in the city I've said this before that there's a clear infrastructure emergency and so that needs to really be taken seriously and so I think I want to make sure that municipal court is on that list, that our road conditions are on that list, and that we're addressing the issues in parks and to me that's really critical and so I think the other part when we went to the public and said public safety. I also think that means traffic calming. We've seen the number of pedestrian accidents where our people have been injured or at least killed and so to me that also means public safety. Public safety also means our fire houses and I think those are really important pieces for us to continue to highlight. When it comes to some of the new infrastructure, for me it was very clear that actually back in the 60% of maintenance, the library obviously. That is a very clear ask from the community. In terms of new infrastructure, as Councilor Corran said, recreational centers were a really big ask and that was a very popular ask for our constituents, especially our constituents who don't have access to as many parks in their communities as potentially other neighborhoods in the city do. So yes, I'm going to continue to advocate for rec center on the west part of town and to make sure that moves forward. I think what I'm about to say now might be a little controversial and again I want to caveat that. I also want to note that the public safety building/complex that only one councilor during the budget session had that on their priority list and now

I mean I know that if you ask for the consensus today you could potentially get a majority support for that but I did want to note that because I noticed that only one councilor had that on their list and obviously this is very much a staff priority but it was also not a priority largely by the public when we went out to the public and asked them to name their support systems. And then the last thing I'll say is that I think we want to make sure that whatever we can do to ensure our water, our utilities infrastructure, is taken care of. To me that is all very important. So I don't know if that's any more guidance. I just wanted to note that and I think if you say well, public safety we have to address something and we are. Like the racetrack. That has been clearly an urgent request that has been made and we have been making it to a legislator and we're making it through this process and that to me felt like the most clear. It has a plan. It's needed now. That can move forward and to me the public safety complex was just not there and again, I'm just one voice though naming that during the budget retreat that was not something highlighted by most folks. And thank you, Chris, and the whole staff for getting us here.

Councilor Munoz said I'm glad that the Engler Road extension is on there. I'm very close to Councilor Corran's district and so I travel out and about and we need some help there. Also happy to see the parks projects, road construction, road calming, and road repair on the list as well. For Chief Daniels and Chief Story, I know we talked about design along with training track for the joint public safety training facility.

One thought that I do have in mind is could we, if it makes sense overall, and I would like my colleagues to weigh in as well, would it make sense to build now? And rather

than design and take that further down years, does it make sense just to have a building now that is a training facility that would make sense to get to fruition sooner rather than later and probably save us some money in the long term. And Chris, you can weigh in as well if you want to but I really want to talk to the subject matter experts.

Chief Jeremy Story said I think that's a very good point. We have been dealing with a dilapidated doublewide for a long, long time. We're used to kind of begging and borrowing anything we can to accomplish training for so long that what we really want is a place to actually do the training. It doesn't have to be fancy. We don't need a Taj

Mahal. It doesn't have to be bougie. We just want to get the training done. So, Chief

Daniels and I were actually talking about this last weekend trying to find a way to take $3 million for design, which is a lot of money just for design. I admit that. I'd rather put that money into getting something that achieves a purpose now like a metal building, a modular building or prefabricated metal building that does what we need to do without all the bells and whistles, and I think I'll let Chief Daniels speak to it but fire has been leasing for a lot of money for a few years is essentially a metal building.

And it's important the training building is not just meant to be a training building. It's meant to accomplish logistics piece especially for fire that they are using the other building for right now. So I would support that. I think that's a really good idea.

Chief Michael Daniels said I just wanted to echo Chief Story. I think naturally what we've seen and what we're learning with even our regular facilities, the cost of construction doesn't get any less and it seems to increase quite rapidly. Just the difference between Station 3 and Station 9 a few years apart, is in the millions in construction increases for a station that's not much bigger. So I think the more we continue to push it down, one we're continuing to invest $18,000 a month in a facility that we don't own that's our lease amount, which is up in July for renewal but we've been in the same boat. We've been picked out of some facilities that have other plans and we've been forced to lease buildings over the years. The first one was significantly smaller but still quite expensive and then we moved to Valley Drive as we were growing and our facility needs were growing and our fleet wasn't able to work on our vehicles in their facility so we look at it as very much not just police and fire but it is also solving a fleet problem and I agree that there is a mechanism that we can look at some fabricated buildings and maybe reduce the cost and get something functional, understanding that we may be able to add on the design side. Once we get it designed, it positions us well for being able to request capital outlay because we continue to be told shovel ready projects. So this may also be augmented by our ability to get legislative appropriations.

Councilor Munoz said so it sounds like it's doable since you're leasing the building now rather than the city owning it. Chris, Lesley, from your perspective, is that doable?

Chris Faivre said if one of the recommendations is for funding to go to that, we can certainly include that on the list here. We did discuss it as design specifically before but if there's conversations to do something different, staff direction would be all we would really need.

Mayor Enriquez said again something that I wanted to share was a thank you to the voters who voted for the GRT increase. It may seem like a list that seems picking and choosing can be problematic at times, difficult, but the truth of the matter is we have added value. We can add value to our community and that is something that speaks volumes, and again I thank the voters that said yes to this increase. It's not so much the projects; it's the value. I know there's bottlenecks at Engler and if we get a new rec there's going to be bottlenecks. I understand the traffic calming, so all those things need to take place. The library has been long overdue for being rehabilitated, fire station 1. But the training facility that to me has been something that was talked about back in 2007 that was going to get done, giving us as fire fighters and police officers there was this hope that someday we will get that training facility and here we are 2026 still talking about it. I think this is a great opportunity. As both chiefs have said, we get kicked around. We get moved around. Chief Story, I think we did our defensive tactics at Sisbarro's in a vacant building that they had available. So the fire department had Tea Time. We were booted out of that so that it could be sold. We still have that so I think it's very important that we look at this public safety training facility. However, we can get it started so that we can start looking at external funding, whether it's federal dollars, state dollars, any way that we can get some funding, some grants, anything that we can get to start building on once we get it started. All those other things I say they are priorities, they are important. That would be my priority and again to add value to our community.

Councilor Harris said I also really like the thought of maybe down scoping the training facility. I think the training facility itself is very important. Coming out of our budget retreat, it sounds like it's going to help a lot more departments than just the police department. They need the track urgently. Like the chiefs are saying, they need space and instead of spending $3 million to do a design and then waiting another couple of years to put together tens of millions of dollars to actually build some super fancy thing. And if you can throw a million bucks at it and get a giant steel building that's roughly equivalent to a little better than what they've got now, that sounds like excellent value for the money if that's something that would help on that one. So I guess I was just penciling things out here. I'm kind of seeing consensus on Bruins improvements because of the rec center, parks. Engler Road, I had a question about that. How much does a million bucks actually get us on that project?

Chris Faivre said I don't know specifically. I think it was more to show commitment from the city and try and advocate for funds for that project from the state level so if it was something that council wanted to put money towards and it didn't pan out, maybe we could redirect those funds. I think it was to kind of show them it is a high priority for the city.

Councilor Harris said so there's no concrete ask we're just saying we're willing to budget a million bucks of this towards this project and to match whatever. With those things and filling gaps in other CIP projects, which we're all for pushing things over the finish line. That is about eight million bucks. To that end, we're talking about traffic calming, those kind of projects probably would fit under maintenance or maintaining streets and traffic calming measures.

Chris Faivre said correct.

Councilor Corran said I just want to go back to the public safety training facility. I hear the idea of getting things done but I think on our CIP this has been somewhere between $40 and $60 million in its ultimate cost in the original draft of what this looked like. That's about the area, and I think the 20 was 2007 prices so I think the last I saw was somewhere in the realm of $40 to $60 million. And while I think thinking about it differently would be welcome, I think we should neither short it in a way that makes it not as useful as it's meant to be so for me the fact that we're not sure what exactly we need and what role that's filling sort of speaks to the need to have a robust planning component to it because I wouldn't want us to say oh can you get something for $3 million. I know we can't. That is not going to fill what the projected needs are that you're alluding to so I think generally what seemed to come out was a question of this seemed like a lot of money for planning, which is an abstract idea, but I do think that planning things is something that is best done thoughtfully and with a lot of input and communication in terms of it's not something that I think we could adequately do so I just want to sort of speak to when I look at this and I think about a $60 million project,

I think we need to invest in planning and making sure we're serving the needs we say we were going to serve. My sense is it is north of $1 million and south of $60 million but we're not really sure what this will look like. From my perspective having seen this and seeing it on the CIP is about $40 million. I think I really would like to know more concretely what we're really talking about building and where there is room to change or do something different.

Councilor McClure said just to clarify a little bit on the public safety. Would this be on land we own? I keep getting confused about the driving track and the public safety building. Those are kind of adjacent to each other, am I correct about that? And then we would own that land and currently the training facility for fire we don't own? Is that right? So I would say scaling down would be a good one because we're already losing money by leasing so if we can put it on land we already own makes more sense to me.

Councilor Munoz said I think these are all valid points and my suggestion is not to short change the departments. I definitely believe that you should get what you deserve and what works well, right? If this is a start and we can start with a good strong solid foundation and a shell and it's still workable, then definitely I have consensus and I agree this is the route that we should take. So if it's land that we own and it's something that we can start with or even a shell with the knowledge that maybe we might need to upgrade in the future, I think it makes sense to go ahead and start that up now. So that would be my thought.

Mayor Enriquez said for some clarity on the land and what's already there, fire station

7 already has the training tower or things like that. Chief Story, do you have anything else to add on that?

Chief Story said the lot that's identified for the driving track would be the same lot that we would intend to put the training building on and that's just south of where fire

station 7 and the training tower are so it's very convenient for both fire and us to have a training building out there. And just on the concept of the metal building, it definitely would be more than $3 million to Councilor Corran's point and it should definitely be less than what we're talking about with the traditional brick and mortar at $30 million plus. I think the goal would be if we could do it for $8 million or $10 million instead of $30 million that's a win for everybody, it could probably be done faster. One of the other reasons we're asking for the training building, and this is prior to 2007 that we've also been working on this I was talking to one of the retired lieutenants this week and he said I was working on that project since 2006. So it's been a long time coming.

We are bursting at the seams of a station. A new station if we're trying to tackle that project is $60 to $80 million or maybe more. If we're able to build this facility where we can move our academy over there, that would free up space at the East Mesa station, which maybe buy us a couple of more years so we don't exceed the growth.

We're just bursting at the seams already but that would relieve some of the pressure.

And the metal building also can be expanded. So one of the things is we can get the bare, make it nice, make it useable but we're not trying to cut the corners. We want to be able to do the training but you can always add on to the metal building, which is a benefit to the future for other things that are needed but maybe not the things we need right this second. Hope that helps.

Mayor Enriquez asked Chief Daniels, what is the cost right now for the leasing of the facility on Valley Drive?

Chief Daniels said the current is $18,000 a month is what we're paying plus utilities.

Mayor Enriquez asked and is that scheduled to increase or is there tier rental?

Chief Daniels said we are getting ready to start having those conversations with the owner because the lease expires in six months. So we're in the process of getting that renegotiated. We would expect that it's going to increase though.

Councilor Harris said I wanted to clarify my position is basically exactly what Chief

Story was saying. I am looking for an iterative approach to this project that gets us something now and then in the future we can add on to it to get us new things rather than saying we're going to spend $60 million on this great gleaming facility and it will be ready in 10 years. And in the meantime, we're stuck with what we've got. So, it sounds like the departments have a good idea of what they need right this second and direction on where they might upgrade in the future. So obviously building those into the plans seems very prudent. If we're going to get a metal building, we design it and put it on the land in such a way that it can be added onto later and get classrooms or put in plumbing fixtures and things where they can be added. So I just wanted to clarify that.

Councilor Munoz said on the parks projects, one of the themes or comments that I had at the budget retreat, and I know the team is doing a great job and I just want you to continue doing that, of making sure that those parks are accessible especially to our ADA residents. Roughly 9.8 to 11% of our kids in Las Cruces are ADA and would love to see more kids in the park regardless of their abilities and also grandparents

and great grandparents that are able to traverse through parks would be my hope.

Steve Bingham, Parks and Rec Director said yes, every design we do, everything we look at complies with ADA law and accessibility and if anything we look to go to go above and beyond to make it accessible to all individuals.

Councilor Munoz said Chris mentioned wanting consensus. Is it a simple consensus?

It's a work session so we don't necessarily vote on this so with the context that the councilors have provided and the staff goes forward and starts this up.

Chris Faivre said we can wrap up conversation on these new projects but I thought maybe we go back to the beginning and just make sure we're good on pay as you go recommendations, then the 60% and then we can kind of lock in final direction on the

40. So if you don't mind I'll take you guys back to pay as you go. If we're all good with this slide, then I will move on to the next slide.

Councilor Corran asked I'm not objecting to this but I'm hoping for the sake of people who weren't at the budget retreat, people who are listening, can you explain what you mean as pay as you go, please and sort of talk about what this means in the bigger context of how this is going and then also when will we have pay as you go this year, next year, what is the sort of cyclical nature of these too? If you could talk a little bit about that.

Lesley Doyle said there's really two pots of money that we're looking at because we have begun to collect before we had bonded. So the first pay as you go is going to be significantly more because we have and will continue to collect about 1.1 a month. So once that is spent and accounted for, then going forward beginning in 28, we will have

13.1 but 8.8 of that has to go to debt service so anything beyond that will be the pay as you go.

Councilor Corran said I don't know that I understood this prior to you explaining it so well at the budget meeting, exactly how this money is being divided and how some of it goes to debt and some of it goes to bonds and some of it we can spend as we're going along and we've been collecting it for a little while in the meantime so thank you for just making that a little bit more explicit.

Councilor Harris asked what you're looking for direction on today is direction for that $15 million pay as you go that is available right now because we've already got some that we have been collecting and haven't spent? So we have 15 now and next year we're going to have 4.

Lesley Doyle said yes, estimated.

Councilor McClure asked could you give us a little bit more on the deferred maintenance? Give us some project ideas so that people just basically know. I know it's going to be roofs.

Chris Faivre said it doesn't just have to be all roofs. There are a variety of things and

there's a lot of things on the CIP. I don't want to put Cynthia on the spot but if she wants to come down and speak specifically to the wide range of projects on the CIP that would be under deferred maintenance she would probably be sort of the expert on that. Way more money needed than we have right now but it would be a good start.

Cynthia Alamillo, CIP Manager said we do have a vast number of projects that need funding, specifically talking about deferred maintenance we have a wide range of projects. As Chris mentioned, we have several reroofs that we need. We also have a couple of building infrastructure improvements that are needed but it goes from basic security improvements like fencing through actual improvements to some of the structural elements of the building. We know that fire stations are some of those elements. Bigger projects that go to the other extreme are municipal court but some of our utilities buildings also need improvements and I believe some internal city hall improvements in general. Then we also have the other end, parking lots that need repairs and then we have replacement of generators that it's just one element but it's quite costly and it's a significant project that we want to be considered.

Chris Faivre said moving into the 60% category, we're recommending improvements to fire station 1, putting money into the street maintenance, the fleet upkeep, and specific facility maintenance to ADA compliance.

Councilor Harris said it seems like there's a little less than 12 on these two slides?

Chris Faivre said right about 12. Lesley and I were trying to do some math while we were keeping up with the discussion. I think what we were seeing was Bruins Lane seemed to be high priority, the funding for gaps in current CIP projects seem to have some support, Engler Road, then the municipal court, and then if there was a conversation about putting a certain amount of money towards the public safety facility. So those were kind of the ones that we keyed in on. We can sort of work with staff to kind of finalize exactly what those amounts should be for each of those. Some of these were kind of just more estimates but if that's the consensus there we can take from there, refine that as we come back with budget adjustments and the ordinance for the bonding we'll have more specific numbers. So if that's the direction I will take that as a win.

Councilor McClure said I just want to say on the record that traffic calming is one of those things.

Councilor Bencomo said I completely agree with Councilor McClure, traffic calming.

And Chris, I'm sorry if I missed this before but I know that it had been previously on the list, but is the traffic calming potentially a traffic light at Alameda and Hoagland.

Has that been scrubbed? Because if it has I want to advocate to talk about one of those things that has been 20 years in the making that is one of them.

Chris Faivre said we have that as one of the priority projects for the pay as you go.

Councilor Harris said I also feel very strongly about making sure that we have traffic

calming projects in there and some kind of way to make sure that those are able to be expended quickly on smaller projects to get good return.

5. ADJOURNMENT 5.1 City Councilor Michael Harris moved, seconded by City Councilor John Munoz, to Adjourn at 1:52 p.m.

MOVER: City Councilor Michael Harris

SECONDER: City Councilor John Munoz

Mayor

City Clerk