Work Session Meeting November 10, 2025

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, November 10, 2025 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

PRESENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie

McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace

ABSENT: Councilor Johana Bencomo and Councilor Becki Graham

1. JOBS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Sarah Raney, Americas Job Centers of New Mexico presented Jobs of the Week.

2. PETS OF THE WEEK 2.1 Carol Nielson, Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley presented Pets of the

Week.

3. READ CLOSED MEETING STATEMENT 3.1 The Las Cruces City Council met in closed and only discussed those limited items as stated in the posted notice:

To discuss threatened or pending litigation in the matter of Memorial Medical Center-

Notice of Breach sent on August 29, 2024.

4. AGENDA ITEM 4.1 2026 STATE AND FEDERAL LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES. Christine Rivera, City Clerk gave the overhead presentation.

Larry Horan, Lobbyist continued the overhead presentation.

Cynthia Alamillo, CIP Manager continued the overhead presentation.

Christine Rivera continued the overhead presentation.

John O’Donnell, Lobbyist continued the overhead presentation.

Kyriakos Pagonis, Lobbyist continued the overhead presentation.

John O'Donnell continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure said specifically on South Fork Moreno, I am going to advocate for that. Just to clarify a little bit on how I wandered into this, you have a constituent that reached out and said we have our road flood all the time off of Hatfield. What can you do? Well, that seems relatively straight forward. It was not. A lot of it is we don’t own all the utilities under it. We don’t own all the land specifically all the right-of-ways. So, it became this whole conversation about drainage. What was encouraging is to talk to some of the federal lobbyists to say there are all these other options. So, a lot of the things that I learned out of this process was boy it doesn’t seem like we can do some of these larger things but when we look at it in a sort of holistic way of what that drainage looks like that might be a priority. I am always going to advocate for the library. I love the library. Let’s do the thing. It has been kind of historically put to the side because that is easy to do but I would like to look at that as well. I would also like to say the East Mesa Recreation Center. If we were focused on our kiddos and as I am taking my kiddos up there to play soccer this is a really hard one to kind of put on the wayside because I have grandparents coming up to me, recognizing me and saying I would like to have handicap parking, but that is Phase II. So, I would like to see how we can do that more meaningfully.

Councilor Mattiace said I think my number one priority because that is basically what I campaigned on is public safety. And then number two I would like to see the septic tanks, I would like to see removal of the septic tanks in the city of Las Cruces just because of the environmental advantages and protecting our water systems. Then thirdly of course the library. Carol Brey and I go back 300 years and so I would like to support the library.

Councilor Flores said in terms of my district, soon to be the district of John Munoz but

I am really interested in my district, and it makes me very happy to see that it wasn’t overlooked because sometimes it is. People think District 6, it’s new and everything is perfect and wonderful and in some kind of a world it is perfect, and it is always wonderful, but I would just really like to see the development or whatever improvements for the East Mesa Recreation Complex. It is used a lot and it makes me really happy to see so many families out there and when I see all these people, kids, especially youth, having a wonderful time I think geez, it was worth the wait, and I didn’t believe it till I saw it. Some of these things seem to take forever but then when they get done it is like wow. And then as far as Young Park goes, it is a legacy park,

and it is unfortunate that we have some situations there that less than whatever, but we really need to keep an eye on that. Then the Rural Western Water Project, can you tell me what that is and it is only in New Mexico?

Christine Rivera asked are you talking about the policy item from the League or are you talking about the septic?

John O’Donnell said I think it is about the Corps of Engineers. This goes to something that was just mentioned a moment ago. The drainage on the Moreno Arroyo. So, when we were there what we mentioned was that this is a title of a section of federal legislation, Rural Western Water which authorizes spending. I think the total amount of authorized spending in excess of $535 million but a local non-federal sponsor like the city would have to talk with the Corps of Engineers about we have a project. We would like to fund it under that authority from that Water Resources Development Act of 2014 and our project will do drainage improvements, stormwater management, wastewater. So it is an authority, you can call it a program but if you were talking to a lot of federal officials they would not say that this is a program it is an authorization in law which you can draw down against that money, that over $500 million that I talked about you can draw down on that in appropriations. You would have a project, it would have to be something that fits within in the eligibility criteria and you deal with the Corps of Engineers District in Albuquerque to get it funded.

Councilor Flores asked is all of that in process at this point?

John O’Donnell said we would help the city pursue a project with the Corps if one is identified and we could work on that to be a project in the FY27 appropriations bill.

What the city would have to do as a step towards that we mentioned this to city staff is that you have to get in touch with the Albuquerque Corps District and tell them that you are interested in a program and we have to submit a letter of intent about the project which we can help with. This is the right time to be doing such a thing.

Councilor Flores asked so that LOI would be, you would be leading us through the process on that?

John O’Donnell said yes, we can help with that.

Councilor Flores asked how soon do we have to start that process or is it in process now?

John O’Donnell said it is not in process now and it should start as soon as we can identify a project.

Councilor Flores said it is wonderful to have all these things going because we have stuff and this is my eighth year on the city council and there are things that are still in the making and it just seems like time just goes by so fast and I just feel like the sooner we start on things, the sooner they will materialize.

Councilor Corran said thank you for preparing all of this, all of you who have

contributed to it. I know it is a lot. To John and Kyriakos as well and I know this involves a lot of conversations with people who have wildly disparate ideas of what we should be doing so thank you for having those conversations and sifting it into some kind of thing and thanks to John and Kyriakos to giving those inputs that the city gave to some of those transit funding things. I think that is really important that we also keep track of where our voice matters are or where we have an opportunity to give input to federal policy as well so thank you both for helping on those fronts. I echo a lot of what my colleagues have said. I think we have a lot of success and support for affordable housing initiatives in the city and I think that our legislators really see the investment and return on that investment happening all the time so I think for me that is always going to be a priority and I think our library, we are on a wave of support and readiness to modernize and to beautify our libraries. So, I am with my colleagues in hoping that we can include that in every place where we can to cobble together more than enough funding, I hope. The other thing that I think I have heard a lot of the fire station improvements. I think that I really don’t want us to overlook that. I know it sounds boring but also it is directly related to the safety and health of folks there and I hope that we can find again a number of places where we can help in funding that.

Those are the things that I really hope that we can include as priorities, but I will go to work for whatever you all tell me to as it comes to lobbying or writing things or contributing to whatever conversations that need to happen, so I appreciate this process.

Councilor Bencomo said I am curious about strategy this year. Obviously, we have the new GRT. For the new GRT how are we thinking about approaching some of these projects? Are we just saying like as much as possible for some of them? I guess I just want to try to like maximize you know the amount of funds to actually get projects completed and not little by little. So, I am curious if you all have had conversations about that?

Sonya Delgado, Assistant City Manager said with regard to the GRT as you know we have a lot of different pots of funding coming available to us and so currently we are trying to get our projects in line for the state because that deadline is coming up very quickly. We have been discussing, we have a long list of projects and so we want to get your take and want to see where you are sitting with regards to the state and then we are going to continue to take one at a time and I will let Christine chime in in just a moment but that is what we were doing. One, get the state done first and then make our way through but yes, we still want to have those pots of money. We want you to keep thinking about them and what is the best way to put them into play.

Councilor Bencomo said thank you. I appreciate that, mostly because it was clear that the public was very supportive of the library when we did our GRT conversations. So, to me that should be a priority as we move forward in that conversation. Does that mean then when we go to the legislator that allows us an opportunity to then ask for the other very big projects, right? Because I do think about Mesa Grande and the huge investment from the federal government. I believe that $50 million is necessary, right? It is some sort of match? If we want it to, it is such an important project and it would be such a big loss if we couldn’t get that but for me that feels like an important priority and so I guess that is just sort of what I am trying to get at, right in terms of like how we are prioritizing some things so just maybe some food for thought for

everybody. My next question, again in terms of strategy, Larry maybe this is for you. I am curious about as we approach this should we be thinking about, what are the legislators thinking in terms of like the budget concerns, the federal restrictions? Are we in the same playing field that we have been in previous years regarding capital outlay asks? Like should we be considering anything?

Larry Horan said I think that landscape is changing. So, this year they are anticipating $450 million in new money. So, it is still growing but I will talk about Medicaid specifically. We are seeing a trend over the last, starting in July after the continuum resolution passed at the federal level increased utilization of Medicaid, increased acuity meaning more sick people are getting treatment and as we see the folks are going to drop off based on federal changes. We are going to leave the sicker people on Medicaid and so the acuity is going to get worse. It is not a New Mexico trend it is a national trend, and we are seeing that and so that $450 million pretty quickly gets eaten up. We still do have a significant amount of non-occurring revenue coming in.

The challenge now becomes how do they fund use non-occurring and try not to put it in recurring programs like Medicaid. So, we will see less available for projects. The last few years it has been $2.5 million per house member in capital outlay and just over $4 million for a Senator. We don’t know yet. It is too early to tell how much they are going to have available and again they haven’t bonded so the bonding capacity is how they will determine what is available for capital. So, we do need to start thinking about it in terms of our requests but there is also additional pots of money. We saw it last year when we were working on affordable housing particularly with Chairman

Small and his real focus on affordable housing. We have got some general fund money available for housing and so it is not just capital outlay we should look at those other projects. The other thing Municipal League is looking at is Water Trust Board funding. Christine talked a little bit about it. Big water projects now some members of the legislature are trying to funnel all of those projects into the Water Trust Board allocation and not use traditional capital outlay. That is an effort that is underway. I don’t think it is probably going to work because I have heard one legislator that as soon as the idea was floated shot it down pretty quickly. Because they want to be able to fund their water projects so that is a long way to say other pots of money available that we can tap into so what we have done pretty well in the past is that we have tried to hit every one of those priorities and then again with Governor Lujan Grisham in her last term for the last few years we have been successful in tapping into her capital outlay pot which is bigger and so I think we would continue those advocacy efforts.

That is why we have seen a pretty significant jump in what we have gotten in capital outlay.

Councilor Bencomo said I also had the Governor’s fund here. I think especially this last legislative session we were tremendously successful, and I do think it is because we took that strategy and you know we had affordable housing projects on our capital outlay and we ended up getting $11 million from a totally different pot of funds, right?

So how are we leveraging other opportunities more strategically so that we can get as many other projects because they are all important, right? Like we could sit here and rate them one through ten but at the end of the day they really all are important and so I hope that is the take away for staff as we move forward especially in conversations with Chairman Small in terms of do we think more affordable housing money will be available to us especially because we are going to spend the heck out

of that $11 million, right Natalie and they are going to say oh, we trust Las Cruces to be good stewards of that money and so we are going to give them more and that is what we should be advocating for. So those were like my big strategy questions, and I think I had a similar one with our federal lobbyist in terms of what do we expect?

Obviously, the federal landscape has also changed and I think we should just try to go after money that we know will get funded. I just have one specific question regarding the Real Time Crime Center. This is my first time hearing about an additional $3 million request on the Real Time Crime Center. I think we have been very committed to that and have funded that I am just curious about like how this came about. We recently had a tour and we didn’t hear anything about additional funding so I am just curious about.

Joshua Savage, Lt Police Department said I am unfamiliar with the $3 million request but more than happy to let Chief Story know and have him get back to you.

Kyle Arend, Interim Public Works Director said what I can tell you about the new ask for the Real Time Crime Center is that the first batch of money created the center itself and some of the cameras but the infrastructure to get everything communicating together was dependent upon kind of an antiquated system for traffic signals. So, it all needs to be reinforced quite a bit in order to get all the communication back and forth to the center itself.

Councilor Bencomo said that was news to me. I guess I do feel as if we want it to fully function then I guess that is an important investment for us to make. We don’t want to do it halfway. I guess my last plug would be for our wastewater system. I think anytime whether I am with our federal lobbyist or Larry or anybody I do feel like I need to plug in utilities here because our wastewater system is old and it needs a lot of support so that is one of the last specific things I will add.

Councilor Corran said I have one other thing that is related to these handouts that you have. This is sort of an added thing to not necessarily add to our official list but to put on folks’ radar that will come up on the state legislature. These are two items, the affordable spay and neuter money which we just got $50,000. This went into place I think four years ago a system for paying for spay and neuter. It is like an obscure tax on dog food I think, and it is set to automatically repeal so they are advocating for us to continue to do this and this would be $50,000. Like at least $50,000 that would be going into our ASCMV for spay and neuter that I hope that we can add to something just so you know that if it comes up it doesn’t necessarily have to be on our call to pass but as radar of things that have an impact on our community that will be up for consideration and the other one is related to a program that I knew nothing about so I am really just here to sort of talk about this that is also up for continuing funding, the

CARE Program for which provides support for people who are leaving domestic violence to not have to leave their pets. They have helped hundreds of people in

Dona Ana County who are experiencing domestic violence to either shelter their pets or find a place, a temporary or permanent shelter for themselves and their pets. In either case they have been doing this for a number of years and they support community organizations in doing this. So, I just wanted to say it is on folks’ radar so if you hear anyone talking about it I hope we can think about these things too because

they are definitely concrete for things that will be up for refunding in this session and so I just want to put them on our radar.

Mayor Enriquez said thank you John and Kyriakos for being on. On the federal level it is always looking for flood mitigation, you know anytime we get a new building or anything new we always talk about what about the maintenance, what about the repairs, and a lot of that happens with flood mitigations with new developments and things that take place. So, anything that we could do on that end we can help our community and also at the Innovation and Industrial Park with water and waste treatment as well. Those are the things I would be looking for with the federal request.

On the state like we said we have to have a strategy, and we also have to be realistic.

What have we gotten in the past? What are legislators looking for and it is usually finishing things that have already been started, and you know it is just so hard to turn away from a $60 million grant that we received. It is huge and it captures a lot of things. So many things as far as safety, when we are looking at travel and also the addition of housing that will occur and economic development, maybe some industrial improvements in that area. So that Mesa Grande extension if we are looking for that matching funds to be able to complete that. We already have $60 million, and we don’t want to turn that back. We want to make sure that we move forward and it captures so many things, quality of life, economic development, everything else that we can do for our community. I think that is huge. I am also an advocate for the library. I want to push forward and anything we can do to get for our library, get that going. The other thing is the police track. That is huge. It is already far enough to travel almost all the way to Deming to train and then that is going to go and then the travel will be to Santa Fe. You can only train when it is available to the state for us to be there and then the other thing is weather providing. So, you know there is several months of the year we can just say we are not going to be able to train, and it is so important when we start looking at liability issues, when we start looking at accidents, when we start looking at how can we prevent some of those things? Training is a huge thing. So that police track is something that we really need to advocate for public safety. Young Park of course, there are so many. We could go down the list, the quality of life and what we need for our youth and making Las Cruces thrive. I will just stop at those and add Young Park.

George Pearson, Member of the Public said I was really happy to hear the words protected bike lane in the description of the Mesa Grande extension. Also want to make sure that you talk about protected intersections because that is a key component to the new national standards of the bike lane design as there is some very good work on that. We need to build a twenty-first century road there. There was promises of developer contributions to the match so I want to make sure that is still going to happen. On the Surface Transportation Bill Reauthorization, I am glad to hear that the city is putting their words in. Recently it has been said from the

Republican leadership that there is going to be emphasis only on vehicle traffic so that is going to be at the expense of transit, and bicycle and pedestrian safety and so anything that we can do to retain bicycle and pedestrian as part of the surface transportation and reauthorization is very important. The other thing I want to talk about as the neighborhood association Alameda Neighborhood Association, we have been advocating with our state senator and representative for the WIA Building. The city has already identified $700,000 as the need and so I would hope that would be

part of your ask and that it is available so we as a neighborhood association will still be asking for that to get that so that it is on the ICIP so that we can get that money successfully hopefully and anything that the city can do to help with that would be great.

Mayor Enriquez said I will let you know George that it is on the list, we will make sure it is on there, the WIA Building.

Steven Chavira, Member of the public said I am the Executive Director of the El

Caldito Soup Kitchen. I just want to thank you for listing the priorities today but for the record I just want to make two quick clarifications, and one is that the Kitchens at the

Mesilla Valley Community of Hope is actually a partnership between El Caldito and

Casa de Peregrinos and the city. We are an active participant in that process and so I want to make sure that is reflected on the record nand as we talk about the priorities and the justification for moving forward with that that project it was great to hear the statistics of the amount of poundage that Casa de Peregrinos put out and they do a lot of great work. I also want to clarify that El Caldito Soup Kitchen in the calendar year of 2024, we served 155,000 meals and our capacity only needs to get bigger and bigger. But for the record I just wanted to make sure that it was part of the process.

Lorenzo Alba, Member of the Public said I am the Director of Casa de Peregrinos and

I also want to echo what Steve said. I want to thank you for prioritizing our project. It is important given these are very difficult times for a lot of families that are missing out on meals, that are definitely feeling the pinch when it comes to their budgets at home.

This is a priority. Feeding people is definitely a priority. Getting the soup kitchen up and running and allowing them to being able to serve more during the day is going to be a priority for everybody in this community. The uptick is the inevitable moving forward. Even if the government opens back up, guess what? The residual effects of what is happening right now is going to happen for a little while longer. Families are already coming in and probably about 1,000 families more than we have seen at Casa de Peregrinos a month. I don’t know what Steve is seeing right now but it is definitely having a major effect on the people that we serve. So, this should be a priority. I think you should put us on your federal priorities too because we can always take advantage of those dollars with the states matching programs. So, I think that is something that you should take into consideration. Christine, I should have mentioned that before. I do want to thank Christine and her team for all the planning that they have done because they met with all of us. We got to meet with your lobbyist, both the state and the federal lobbyist, and that helps us at least try to find out what is going on there and how we go about our ask. We are actually planning also to get together with all your team so we can all prioritize how we can hit up the state legislature this year.

So, our schedules will coincide with each other, and I will see you guys in February for your big event, thank you so much.

John O’Donnell said I should have mentioned this before because Mesa Grande has been mentioned several times and Kyriakos and I want to thank the city staff for the

fine work they did on that grant application and we worked with them in a congressional delegation and our transportation associates in Washington to make sure that project in fact its review over in headquarters and I think that was awarded in

January but I wanted for certain to congratulate the city for the work that it did. That was fifth largest grant that they made in that program so congratulations to you folks and thanks for your work with us on that.

4.2 PUBLIC INPUT NEEDED: METROPOLITAN REDEVELOPMENT AREA

PLAN OVERVIEW FOR WEST PICACHO AND MOTEL BOULEVARD. Celina Morales, Deputy Director Economic Development introduced the topic.

Rhonda Bell, Stantec gave the overhead presentation.

Celina Morales continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran said I am excited about transforming the West Picacho corridor. I support the extension out to the river as alluded to. I did have one sort of feedback point as I feel as if the catalyst project seemed not exactly as transformative as I imagined and I realized I’m asking that all these things cost money and they all have things related to them. I think I was thinking about when you were talking about the section of the road right, that to me is like a transformative idea and the catalyst projects feel like they are not even approaching that kind of transformation. So for me that feels like a little bit like oh, I wish we could do more or think of a way to dramatically do that and the question that I really have related to that is I think it took years of work to get one pedestrian safety measure on Picacho in part because of the fact that it is not exactly ours, right?

Celina Morales said correct.

Councilor Corran said I am wondering if you can sort of give an assessment of the capacity of us to actually do the kinds of transformative things that I am imagining.

Like is there a conflict here and I would like to hear a little bit more about that conflict and understand it so that I can frame my expectations of what is possible and what really isn’t necessarily possible, and I think you were kind of talking about this, but I would love to hear more.

Celina Morales said speaking to what Rhonda said, we did meet with Public Works and NMDOT, I don’t know if you want to give more information on those meetings as far as to what led to the recommendation or Kyle as far as it being not our roads and also the level of staff capacity and the amount that would be required if we took over.

That was an option that they provided that we can take over that street but the cost to do that and the amount of money that it would take for the maintenance and taking it over completely just didn’t seem feasible at the time. Not to say that we can’t ever do it in the future but just being realistic about that specific question. It seemed it was really hard to make it a catalytic project. Not to mention that these are not the only catalytic projects that we are thinking of course. We have that seven or eight that are in mind but as we have stated the MRA projects it takes one or two just to get the ball

rolling to get interest going in the area and so these were the ones that we felt were the very doable, were aligned with other comments that we have gotten from the public and community feedback and it was really what the community asked for although they may not seem as grand as you were hoping. It is a really small area to work with in comparison to El Paseo/South Solano so that was some of the deciding factor with these catalytic projects.

Councilor Bencomo said as I am so excited for the potential of MRAs, obviously fought really hard for West Picacho to be one our top priorities as I always say I think what happens on West Picacho impacts the rest of the city, so I am very, very excited about what you presented here today. Thank you very much for the work that you all have done. I think having this MRA committee has been really excellent in how things are moving forward. So again, thank you. I do want to say that the catalyst project number one on Tashiro, I have been part of those meetings with that owner and developer and honestly this is really exciting and I think for me what has been most exciting is the communication between the city and the owner and the developer and their willingness to accept feedback and their willingness to say this is our vision and how can you support us and one of the things that has very clearly come out of this is that they are like full force, full on the pedal moving forward with some of the projects they want to do. Very multi use, the types of housing, commercial. That is going to be really exciting for the school, all the activities that take place here during after school, weekends and for Legends West neighborhood, and for the McClure/Hoagland neighborhood. It is going to be very exciting and I think one of the barriers that we have discovered through that conversation is that there are some kind of expensive barriers that have to get crossed that I really hope that the MRA can be supportive with and perhaps other funding sources so that if this is a catalyst much like we have talked about like the Boys and Girls Club being a catalyst for El Paseo I think this can be that for West Picacho and I really do hope that we try to find every possible solution to support them and investing in this part of town because I do think it is important to reward those that want to stay here number one, they don’t want to leave this area but also who want to come. I hadn’t seen the work up of Camunez Park and so this is really beautiful. Right now, it is a really sad park honestly, so this rendition is really beautiful and aspirational so I am very excited about that. Just in terms of the conversation with NMDOT, I know you have heard this all before. That median really between Second and Valley has hindered a lot of economic support for the businesses along that corridor and I think for us if we can continue to advocate for the state to think about that differently is really important. Like it is one of the number one thing I hear from business owners from that area and so I really think we need to continue to push them to just think about what that median does for that community.

Other than that, I do want to thank you especially for the kind of community engagement that you have done with businesses and just general users and people who live in the area, and I can’t wait to vote on the project. I also think the expansion is very important, so I do think that I hope we see that in the December resolution to approve the expansion.

Councilor Mattiace said I would like to just give support to the extension to the river.

Mayor Enriquez said I agree as Mayor Pro Tem said it is very exciting for an area of

Las Cruces that has been long overdue needing an uplift and so looking forward to it.

Councilor Flores said I have lived in different cities, it is not like I lived in this part of the world or that part of the world, but I have lived in San Francisco, I grew up in Los

Angeles. I got my BA in Sacramento, California. I have to say that when I came to Las

Cruces, I fell in love with it. There is just something so wonderful about the people here and I want to thank you for the presentation, and I think you have really captured in the diagrams that we saw the future in your work, just the entire team and it is just so beautiful. It does take a while. Sacramento, it took about ten years for it to really get everything going and we are not in the best economy to boot, and you know governmental how should I say environment at least nationwide isn’t very friendly right now to the human being. So, I just really want to thank you for capturing the beauty of this city and the design is absolutely beautiful. I just wanted to express my thank you and my gratitude.

Joan Woodward, Member of the Public said I fully support this plan and I am glad that the city prioritized its preparation. I have been involved with other earlier visioning processes with the city and one effort that always comes forward is to identify gateways to Las Cruces and in several of the other planning efforts we looked at a natural west gateway as being at the river. The bridge is dramatic, it appears in surfer movies. It is an asset for the community, and it was always around La Llorona Park that it was determined to be the gateway to Las Cruces and so I clearly support the extension and also I would just like to bring up since it is a park along the river that connects the Rio Grande Trail and is perhaps eligible for funding and support from the

National Park Service Rivers and Trails Conservation Assistance Program and the state’s Outdoor Recreation Trails Plus Grant I am just curious why the gateway which

I think was number one in the plan was placed at what I consider to be a very hazardous intersection at Roadrunner and why is that the west gateway instead of the bridge and the river park? I would have liked to have seen traffic and accident analysis in the plan. I did see demographics. I saw income but I did not see that. That is my first question. As I understand it Picacho under this plan would remain a principal arterial which allows truck traffic through the area that hopefully will become calmed by the features that will be implemented on Picacho with more intersections and more friendliness to the pedestrian. I support and I want all of these improvements that you proposed but I noticed in suggesting that Picacho be transferred from DOT and federal highways to the city, I wonder what will become of that truck traffic? Will that increased pressure on other east/west arterials or will that trigger something that I would not like to see which has been on the MPO plan for many years which is a bypass from Engler Miles to the 10 and so that is a larger scale question I have as an implication of this very good plan and I would just be interested of know more of changes, especially with regards to truck traffic, I believe it is approved for transporting hazardous materials as a principal arterial, I am not sure about that though and to see what other pressure might be in our future on other east/west arterials. I love the motel conversions. I love the invocation of OPTED and l love that if you have ever tried to drive west on Picacho at 5 p.m. that so many of these improvement will overcome the glare issue which is so dangerous in both directions during the day so I think this rigorous plan is very highly appreciated and I thank you for prioritizing that. If we could address those two questions, thank you very much.

Rhonda Bell said the location of the gateway, I believe we were looking at more of the land use concept of when you feel like you have arrived because there is more of a concentration of built structures. I will say that this is a draft plan. We are not opposed, and we are looking for input like that. That says, we really think that it should be at the river for all the reasons that were listed. If you like I can also respond to the second question regarding the truck traffic. So, when we talked to NMDOT and

Public Works all together the question was on the table should the city take over control of West Picacho so that they can control the public realm to create more of the experience we are looking for? What came out of those meetings is the sole single thing that would necessarily change if the city took possession is they could prohibit truck traffic. On the other hand, the cost of taking over the roadway would be very high and so my apologies if we are unclear on the plan and we can update it to be clear. We are not recommending that the City of Las Cruces take control of West

Picacho for the cost implications and so to answer the question it will remain until some point in future the context would change and the city would decide that they want to take control it would remain a state and federal roadway and truck traffic would remain on it so I think directly answering the question, no it wouldn’t trigger a bypass because the intention is that truck traffic remains.

Councilor Mattiace said it would be interesting from Public Works, other departments to give us an idea of the future of east/west corridors that are going to built in the city of Las Cruces. I would be interested in knowing that. I think that is really important for the traffic control, particularly Telshor and other streets that are getting pretty crowded.

Jason Silva, Member of the Public said I have lived and/or worked in the area for 30 plus years. I went to both Picacho and Mayfield and care about the area greatly. I agree that the area has been neglected for far too long and investment is needed as well. I like a lot of what Picacho MRA is trying to do. Bruce Apartments do need help.

They do need to be brought into code. Camunez Park needs to look like the pictures that they showed. It needs to be safe and fun. I agree with bringing in housing and businesses here as well. Two things that I have. I also hope that there would be more down Picacho. I hope there would be the main focus. I went to all of the meetings that all of the MRA planners put on. They had asked us for our thoughts and ideas. Ideas such as better lighting, walking paths, new types of businesses, different places to eat, doctors, law offices, things to do at night were all amongst the mentioned ideas.

This all would be great. Most people did mention crime as a big concern as Rhonda had stated. Some people even said they would like it to resemble the downtown area.

That was their idea of how to transform it. I think that as well would be awesome.

Number two is safety, safety, safety. I know everyone is excited about that big plot of land. It is a big plot of land and you can do a lot of things. I hope that we are putting safety in mind when looking at what would be allowed here. We have Mayfield with about 1,500 kids plus staff and Picacho Middle School with about 600 to 700 kids plus staff. Plus, we have the Field of Dreams and sports complex with soccer and baseball fields. Many people who live or work or travel in this area often know how bad it gets.

The biggest example I have is Trunk or Treat. It was horrible down Tashiro. A lot of the events at the soccer fields makes everything plugged up. I know that we almost ran over two kids just sprinting across the street. Adding more homes will only add to this and that is to be expected and that is fine but the businesses that we place there I

think that we have to be very thoughtful and careful. I know that the owner had said that he had wanted to do something big and that is totally fine. I think in the area a lot of people will be happy. Is this the right place? I don’t think so. Maybe down Picacho I think that would be great. So, any commercial business that is allowed here I hope will have a small footprint and be more a low traffic type. Just some examples. If you look at the other three high schools in town, they don’t have a middle school very close by.

They don’t have high traffic big stores very close to them. Las Cruces High, you have an Albertsons give or take a mile away. Organ Mountain no, Centennial you go down about a mile and you have a grocery store. So, we all know how high school kids drive, and I hope that this will all be put into place with what kind of businesses we have. The question to planners that I have is when you guys were going through the website how many people mention safety as something very important? Having things that were low traffic compared to high traffic. I am pretty sure you got a few of those.

So, I hope that these are questions that city council would ask and hope to get before they make a vote.

Rhonda Bell said I can respond generally to Jason’s last question about what we heard on the survey. We had about thirty people respond to the survey. I am not sure if you mean the survey that was done in the community at the beginning or if more recently the draft public plan that went up. We heard quite a lot on the survey, the community survey about safety at the beginning of the project. A lot of people did mention Picacho specifically. I am going into my memory bank because that is an older one that I read. I don’t recall specific comments from the community survey done last year on Tashiro. I can say that on the most recent comments on the draft that was available last month we ask six questions. We asked for comments on each of those six categories that we went through and then we asked if there were any comments on each of the three catalytic projects. I would have to go back. We may have had one or two comments about Tashiro, the property, but they don’t stand out in my mind that it was a wave of comments from communities about that one. I do recall talking to somebody at one of the public meetings who lived in the community directly south of there. Their comment was not so much about safety, they were concerned about the drainage coming off the site. We can certainly if you would like in the interim I am sorry I don’t know your exact city process, we can supply those comments. We can look through them again and tell you if there was any about

Tashiro Drive or any other specific concern that you have.

Mayor Enriquez said as Jason mentioned it is a valid concern when you have the gathering at Field of Dreams or the soccer fields and things and the congestion and the traffic that takes place so just making sure that we do have the safety in the area and that will be vital especially on Tashiro but all aspects we have to look at that.

Rhonda Bell said it is a really good point and I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. We had noted specifically on Picacho that traffic levels and volumes should continue to be monitored, and I mentioned that relative to pedestrian activated crossings or future signalizations and I would say we should expand that recommendation to specifically note Tashiro in that as well because it is a really good point. This is a major planning tenant that as new uses come in and traffic is going to go up. Tashiro is well designed now that I can certainly see as traffic increases it might need more of those items.

Councilor Bencomo said I do feel like Tashiro and the parking situation when there are big events like we really have to coordinate better with the schools, like the Gus

Macker was kind of a disaster when it came to parking, to be honest and so I think that is a very valid concern. I also think there being a neighborhood there I do think it will help but I do think it is important we ask that we bring in LCPS for better coordinating on how some of these events happen. You know there is a giant parking lot on the other side and there is another giant empty lot on the other side of that so there is opportunity for us to do something better with some of that parking and then just lastly as Jason was speaking, can you go back to where we had some of the business response, what they wanted their priorities. I guess I would like to maybe make a pitch for like on West Picacho specifically the infrastructure of a lot of buildings though privately owned I think is struggling and I do feel for a lot of folks that just don’t have that kind of capital, right? Like they are small business owners or perhaps not. Perhaps they are out of state landlords and were currently working on something like this already, right? Like to hopefully address some of those issues and honestly the MacArthur neighborhood is in the MRA and so I am excited for like the conversion of a couple of these things, right? Like the neglected properties ordinance that is coming up, but I do hope that as we start thinking about what the funding may look like that we consider a pot of money for folks who want to improve their store fronts especially along and in prioritizing on West Picacho given that they are part of what you see first.

4.3 AN UPDATE ON THE PLASTIC BAG FEE Jenny Hernandez, Sustainability Officer gave the overhead presentation.

Molly Carrier, Sustainability Co-op continued the overhead presentation.

Jenny Hernandez continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Flores asked is there any way you would be able to work with the school district in terms of the educational aspect and having children take bags home. It could be maybe smaller bags. I carry one in my trunk, so I never forget my bag and if I do all I have to do is put the groceries into my trunk. Just in terms, it is so important for children and I know that the school and a lot of the teachers and their classrooms do raise that awareness about recycling and all that sort of stuff but in terms of institutionalizing this with an existing organization such as the school district, is there any possibility of doing that? I don’t know if there might be legal issues or anything like that, but has it been explored?

Jenny Hernandez said so we have a really great relationship with our community schools that we work with frequently with our Plugged in for Good efforts. We haven’t specifically done anything with plastic bags, and they were recipients of several rounds of our reusable bags to hand out at schools but that is a great idea. That is I think something that we can definitely have our co-ops help lead on for the educational purposes, but I think that was a really great idea since there is an existing relationship with the community schools we can definitely look into it.

Councilor Flores said Councilor Graham and I serve on that board. I served on that board even before its inception. It seems like it would be a good way to bring it home literally and figuratively to the children in the community.

Councilor Mattiace said when you go into a grocery store, and you go to the produce department, and you get the apples you use a lot of plastic bags. I mean you have 42 plastic bags and then you get one paper bag, and you put all of those plastic bags maybe in your carryout bag, have you addressed any of that with the grocery stores?

Jenny Hernandez said it depends on which grocery store. We actually reached out to

Natural Grocers. I don’t know if you all recall that they have like a green bag. I think

Sprouts does too. Those are biodegradable and not made of plastic bags and so we were curious. We wanted to go down a rabbit hole and see how much, is it more expensive, was it cheaper so that we could propose a similar thing to all grocery stores.

Councilor Mattiace said that might be another proposed usage or some education that you could actually use the money to go into the bigger chain stores and say could you use the biodegradable? And then another proposed use is that sometimes you have a lot of the paper bags and biodegradable plastic bags on our streets, maybe we could allocate some funding for Mano y Mano because they do a great job cleaning up all the paper bags and plastic bags in our city. That would be another suggestion if we could maybe allocate another $100,000 toward Mano y Mano. Just a suggestion from

District 2 Councilor.

Councilor Bencomo said I think it is smart to think about how else to use the limited funding but nonetheless I think you have some really good options and I support that.

I wanted to ask, four years ago or whenever we adopted this there was a concession made around restaurants, their ability to continue using plastic bags. I am curious if you revisited any conversations with any restaurants about this? If you haven’t perhaps that could be the next step because I think at this point those are the only businesses that use the plastic bags.

Jenny Hernandez said yes, it has been a little bit harder with restaurants just because

I don’t know if you all have had experience when food spills in the paper bag. It is a mess, so plastic holds up a little bit better. We can revisit it though because it has been a long time since we initially had this discussion and so that is a great suggestion that we can revisit it.

Councilor McClure asked the energy audits, do you work with Utilities on that? I like the idea that you have multiple education opportunities and that is definitely one of them too.

Jenny Hernandez said we do not work with Utilities specifically currently for the energy audits that we are doing now but if the fee gets amended it is definitely something that we can explore with Utilities. Right now, our partnership is with or previously has been with the Community College. We have been working with Dona

Ana Community College to help us with the energy audits that we have been doing.

Juan Garcia, Member of the Public said before I start, I would like to congratulate

Councilor Corran for her re-election. I wish you the best over the next four years. I am glad to hear the Malpractice Act, and the Medical Compact are back on stage and hopefully it will be resolved. There is no excuse for this critical issue to still not be resolved. Hope the next council will support. One ordinance that I personally dislike is the ban of single use plastic bags. We still have plastic bags for bread, vegetables, fruit, and other items but let’s make things difficult for the population and impose a usage tax for the use of paper bags so instead of plastic bags on the road we now see an increase in trash, needles, feces, and other garbage around the city but you scored some good political points with Las Cruces having the distinction of being the only city in New Mexico imposing this additional tax. On the other hand, the good point about this ordinance is every time I go to Fiesta Foods to get my groceries, and I forget my environmentally correct grocery bag I think of our councilors.

5. ADJOURNMENT 5.1 Councilor Yvonne Flores moved, seconded by Councilor Becky Corran, to adjourn at 3:59 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Yvonne Flores

SECONDER: Councilor Becky Corran

AYES: Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez,

Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace

Mayor

City Clerk