Work Session Meeting October 27, 2025

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, October 27, 2025 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

PRESENT: Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric

Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace

ABSENT: Councilor Johana Bencomo

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

Week.

2. AGENDA ITEM 2.1 PRESENTATION OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN FOR THE THOMAS

BRANIGAN MEMORIAL LIBRARY RENOVATION AND EXPANSION. Sarah Booth, Library Deputy Director introduced the topic.

Joseph Fuemmeler, Desert Peaks Architects gave the overhead presentation.

Ruben Contreras, Desert Peaks Architects continued the presentation.

Joseph Fuemmeler continued the overhead presentation.

Ruben Contreras continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure said I love the concept, I think it is great. I was thinking about when

I was a kiddo in Utah and some of those designs of walking into what felt like a cathedral of knowledge, right? I think that is something that would be a great blessing not to be sort of cheesy about it but a blessing for our community, so I really appreciate your work on this.

Councilor Mattiace said again I just want to express I am very happy with the architectural design, but the Organ Mountains has always been a great asset for me coming from New York City and landing in Las Cruces and I love the aerial view of those Organ Mountains. You have taken a great part of Las Cruces, why many people come here and accented it, thank you very much.

Councilor Flores said I support this endeavor. It is going to be a few years before, I think a lot of children who are not even born yet will be the beneficiaries of this project and what I like so much about it is going to create a space for teens. When kids are little, they go to the library, and they look forward to it. They love their little bag, they get their little books, and they feel like they are really big time and that stays with them through the years. I did that with my children and to this day they are avid readers. It was a very good environment. The presentation was beautiful and thank you for this endeavor.

Mayor Enriquez said I just want to say great design. I have always said, long overdue and looking forward to it. What is the space again when we talk the total square footage of the library? What is it and what will some of this new space, I must have missed the number?

Joseph Fuemmeler said the total square footage is 60,000 square feet and a little bit more. What kind of spaces are going to be in there? There is going to be the adult spaces area.

Mayor Enriquez said not exactly the space, just talking about area. What kind of total area are we looking at in the library?

Joseph Fuemmeler said total end is 60,000 square feet.

Sarah Booth said we have about 45,000 right now. So, the expansion will be up to 60.

Maryanne Hendrickson, Member of the Public said I am a Friend of the Library, just a few things I wanted to say. I think you already know how great libraries are. They are spaces for innovation and productivity, they are places to gather in person. You don’t have to spend a penny, but you are welcome. We have computers, internet, we are

adding a library of things, people can get jobs, connections with others. You can do research. It is amazing the things that you can do at the library. The return on investment, when you put $1 into a library, communities get $7 to $8 back into the community. It is return on investment for public libraries, and this is essentially a regional library because there are no other libraries in the county. We serve over

200,000 residents of Dona Ana County and Las Cruces. This expansion and update is quite overdue as you all have mentioned. A lot has changed since we built the original library, including population, the type of population, the things we want to do, the things we are doing and as you said this is long overdue and I am extremely grateful that you all are doing this, so from my heart thank you very much.

2.2 ARPA SUB-RECIPIENT FUNDING AND PROGRAMMATIC STATUS

UPDATE. Brian Kraft, Grant Development and Compliance Specialist gave the overhead presentation.

Ashley Echavarria, Boys and Girls Club continued the overhead presentation.

Stephanie Martinez, Catholic Charities of Southern New Mexico continued the overhead presentation.

Dawn Hummer, Community Action Agency of Southern New Mexico continued overhead presentation.

Sandy Smith, Cruces Creatives continued the overhead presentation.

Michelle Adames, Jardin de Los Ninos continued the overhead presentation.

Nicole Martinez, Mesilla Valley Community of Hope continued the overhead presentation.

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

Jessica Robles, Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance continued the overhead presentation.

Gentry Roberts, Southern New Mexico Independent Electrical Contractors continued the overhead presentation.

Lori Martinez, NGAGE New Mexico continued the overhead presentation.

Kay Lilley, Dona Ana Community College continued the overhead presentation.

Mary Alrich, Dona Ana Community College continued the overhead presentation.

Brian Kraft continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Flores said I have a question for the presenter from Cruces Creatives. I was just wondering if there was Jardin de Los Ninos or Community of Hope, Nicole indicated that there are people who are being job trained but what I wanted to ask was whether you still have programs for adults? I know it started out several years ago so are there programs for adults and there is a lot of usable, a lot of, what’s the word, not crafts but actual skills that can produce an income?

Sandy Smith said Cruces Creatives is still a maker’s space open to the community, meaning that members are able to come in and use the tools that are there.

Membership can happen either through an actual paid monthly membership or through volunteer hours. In terms of our ability to offer extensive training for adults specifically related to job skills we have not secured funding to be able to do that. We did actually have a little bit of a conversation about whether or not there was a partnership that could be developed, and it is something that we are interested in pursuing further, it is just a question of funding. With the ARPA funds coming to a close and those being so focused on the youth we are actually looking at how do we stay alive as an organization in terms of what we can offer the community and we are trying to find the ways that we can find partnerships or additional grant opportunies or contracts or whatever it takes to keep our staff that knows so much. Like we have accumulated some really amazing people who have deep skills who could be useful in that kind of partnership we have just got to find the funding for it.

Councilor Flores said I am sure Nicole is well aware of all the opportunities for the people that they service.

Sandy Smith said that quilt donation that we dropped off, when we took that over we did start having some conversations about what could potentially be useful there. I was speaking to El Jardin. I am thinking of an earlier presenter, El Jardin and Cruces

Creatives, started talking about some potential training for the parents of their kids.

Councilor McClure asked I know there were discussions on being able to aid the Boys and Girls Club with additional funding that the county might be willing to do a match now? I was wondering if there any update on that?

Mayor Enriquez said at this time I don’t think there is any updates. I know that was one that we talked about because they fall in our MRAs and different things like that so there are some options, and those discussions will come in the future I believe.

Councilor McClure asked the Family Prosperity, is there a way for that to continue or are we looking for something beyond ARPA?

Dawn Hummer said where there is a will there is a way. Right now, we are looking at a variety of different ways. I have talked to I think several of you regarding at just looking at some of the options that the city may have to just help us to continue it. I keep telling everyone that when we do a program like this even one family is better than zero families so whatever we can kind of hodge podge pull together which is

what we did to start this program to begin with and so right now we are looking at potentially cannabis tax revenue. We are in discussions with DACC, hopefully maybe they can help us identify some funding to help with some of their students. We are obviously always looking at the state level. These types of programs work when they are a public and a private partnership, so we are certainly still looking at private donations, foundations, and a lot of other things. So currently we do not have the funding.

Councilor Flores said I love your energy, and I love the work you do. Everybody who presented today, you are all miracles. You are changing people’s lives and all of that.

Dawn Hummer said thank you for the compliment. I will speak on behalf of my colleagues. We need that because we are just so tired right now. Our hearts and our souls and our minds and our bodies are so tired so yes, thank you for saying that.

Councilor Flores said everyone who presented, every organization who is here has made life just a little bit better for many and probably life courses have changed as well. I think the people who are benefiting the most, are the children who can have that hope.

Mayor Enriquez said thank you for this update, for the status update. It shows what improvement can be done with just a little bit of increase in funding from economic development, childcare, healthcare, mental education and housing, workforce. It all came together as a community, you are absolutely right Brian, that we could not do it without the members that are behind you. Tremendous kudos to our community and what you have done with that, and we will continue to look in the future. This is a great update, so we start doing our strategic planning we can look at some of these things that have taken place in our community and how we can move forward with it and that is what I would like to do. I do have one question for Michelle, and it was mentioned earlier about the free universal childcare that is going to come next week. So how is that going to affect you if there is any effect or any benefits for you?

Michelle Adames said for Jardin de Los Ninos we serve families who fall in the extremely low to moderate low level so for our families one of the biggest challenges is when a family faces homelessness it takes our team approximately three to six months to just help support them when they for example fled domestic violence and left everything behind, birth certificates, social security cards, any records, it takes our team and I have our wonderful Director of Family Services Alma Ketcherside and her team actually spends quite a bit of time helping the families just to gather all of those documents. So for us I think for us one of the biggest ways that we are going to benefit from the universal childcare is that amount of documentation that is going to go into just getting families qualified it is going to help us to be able to maybe circumvent some of that time but the reality is that we are still going to face some challenges I think because of the families that we serve they don’t necessarily have, there was a survey that ECCD sent us to see how many families who are paying would now qualify because we serve extremely low poverty level families the reality is that we are going to continue as normal, operations but we also recognize that there is really not a whole lot of space to take on new. We are at full capacity in our center. I

know that on the campus we do have a master plan in place where Jardin is expected to grow. Possibly double in size but that will be down the road. At that point I still hope that they will still have universal childcare. That is going to be a benefit for families because I do know that it is going to benefit families. I am not too sure that as an organization we are going to be able to help support because we are at full capacity.

2.3 IMPROVE LAS CRUCES: COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENTS BOND UPDATE. Sara Gonzales, Interim Deputy Director Community Development gave the overhead presentations.

Councilor Flores asked the last comment you made, the funding part that certain projects are prioritized?

Sara Gonzales said we would be using the GRT funding for the projects that we had listed. The way that we can actually tackle a lot more of these is if there is other funding sources that are also available.

Councilor Flores asked for those same GRTs?

Sara Gonzales said exactly. Some of these we could be using at the same time.

Councilor Flores asked for that particular project or focus on others that don’t have any funding?

Sara Gonzales said to kind of give you an example, if we were to go back and take the number one priority that we received was the Branigan Library. If we were to go and say let’s put it on the GO Bond for next year as our bond cycle that would eliminate it from having to go through the GRT process, so we have eliminated a project to actually put into a project list. We will have a different funding source if it were to go in November and be approved only because it will give it a different option, so we don’t have to use GRT funding. That means now we go to something else on that list and we kind of go through just to see where those projects lay out based on the funding sources we have. If we are able to get any funding from the state, if we are able to get any capital outlay. All of those funding sources play into tackling this list that staff put together to say that these are a lot of the priorities now that we heard from the public.

Councilor Flores asked how do you do it?

Sara Gonzales said when we heard from the public, I think a lot of it was to rely on maintenance, rely on existing infrastructure, rely on existing buildings and focus on redevelopment of these sites that people are currently using and going to right now.

When you take these numbers and look at them even with it being 100 people or so, the 100 people that showed up to say that this is what mattered were those existing facilities. They wanted safer living spaces for our Police and Fire Departments if they were living in conditions that needed to be, you know, safer. They wanted areas where maintenance and recreation and play were going to be improved because they

wanted to see their area grow in the areas that they are in as opposed to just creating some of the new projects that are coming in. Newer projects always take additional funding but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work towards designing them and then reaching out to state for that funding. A lot of times the department doesn’t have the funding to actually design some of these projects so we have to work towards to get them the design which is 8% of the total value and then be able to take that to legislation and say hey we have the design, can we get funded? Sometimes that is an opportunity.

Councilor Flores said it is probably a good way to go too because there is already something in the works.

Councilor Corran said I know the residents in my district were very excited to be given the stickers and apply them as they did. There is a couple of things I wanted to follow up with, a little bit of what Councilor Flores was saying and a little bit of what you were saying but first at the thing you told me if we just had a big check what would it be for all of these projects? Can you share that? It is actually not that big, shockingly.

Sara Gonzales said the number would be $180 million. Now you have to subtract it from all road improvements because we all learned based on this meeting that one mile of local roadway is $9 million, that is very difficult when you start looking at those numbers. But you take all those other projects, and yes, we are at $180 million but that is what we have to look at what we have today. Every year that we increase we change that number by even if you give it 10% contingency that is where we are at.

But yes, it is not as bad as we think they could be.

Councilor Corran said yes, it’s not a billion with B. One of the things that I wanted to ask was timing and the bond sale seeking and the unknown variables, right? All of those things that you mentioned, state funding, the GO Bond, etcetera, those are all completely unknown. Do we have to and I say we as a city, we as a council, we as an entity that is seeking money, what level of details of specificity do we have if we go for the bond sale on the shorter term in terms of the things that we will be including versus the longer term, how much flexibility or inflexibility is there in that process in terms of the timing because I know the bond decision I think is next August, right?

Next July is when the Go Bond decision-making happens and that is slightly asynchronous from this timeline. So I am just curious if you can talk about what, how specific do we have to be in the short term versus the medium term versus the GO

Bond conversation time like if we said oh, we will wait and put the library on the Go

Bond and then the GO Bond doesn’t pass and then the library wasn’t part of this getting this initial bond, right? That would be a bad series of events. So, can you talk a little more about that?

Sara Gonzales said I think the part that we have to be mindful would be is every two years we are bonding $20 million. So, when we are looking at the funding necessary even just for the Branigan Library if it were not to be approved then we would be looking at that for two bond cycles because every year we are increasing it but we are only getting $20 million for the two years. That would take the full amount to basically fund the one project and so I think that even if we look at short term I think we have to

come up with a solution or an option that is going to give us flexibility whether it becomes we have maintenance projects and we want to tackle a piece of some of these and know that we want to get them completed so we put so much funding into each bucket essentially or maybe we say if this doesn’t go through this becomes our priority and then have the backups that go with them, right? So necessarily maybe you don’t use funding saying we sell the bond and we are going to use the funding right now and no we wait to see what happens with the GO Bond cycle, if it doesn’t work and then we say that is our priority and then we move that up to the top and I think that is where this has to be moved to next year so we can have further discussions of understanding where we prioritize, how many projects we want to put into that list, where do we want to set the bar for each year as this is something new that is coming on board for the city. So, we don’t want to set this out for 20 years. We probably want to do something within the first four. What can we tackle and accomplish within four years and still be amenable to if all of these happen okay let’s come back in and bring in something else. We can always do that through the budget cycle through CIP and say hey, these all got tackled through legislative funds lets come in with some more projects. So, I think that we would be looking at four years.

Councilor Corran asked if we go to say we are going up for the bond do we have to say how much do we have to have or do we just give them this big list and say it might be any of these? We will see when you send in the information for the bond I think that is before February that we have to do that? Do we have to make a very short-term decision, is sort of what I am asking you right now or not?

Laura Holguin, Assistant Director Finance said the question that would be proposed on the bond ordinance can be very broad. So, you can say for public facilities, public infrastructure to include roadways. It is not going to be narrow scoped to a specific project so that way there is some flexibility within the funding to be able to apply it to those projects that are needed.

Councilor Corran said the GO Bond is very, much more specific and narrow so I just wanted to get clarity around this type of other bond that this is so that helps.

Councilor McClure asked how much do you sort of balance projects based on sort of all kinds of different factories? I am thinking of yeah I am a library supporter but a lot of people are and so that kind of comes a little bit more naturally that that is going to grow and people are going to be interested in it but I think of South Fork Moreno where there are only a couple of people who are interested but that area kind of got swallowed by the city and to sell that to folks is a hard one. That said, at one of the meetings I had a youngen who was like, no I definitely understand detention ponds and I was like wow I love that. It makes it way easier. So how do you kind of balance, for example that area hasn’t seen improvements for at least 20 years and from what I am gathering and asking some of former councilors/legislators to say now it’s time to do this to kind of balance what we can do in the time that we have. Seems like a very philosophical question so role with it as you can.

Sara Gonzales said I think the way that, one staff is going to have to approach this is to see if there is additional funding sources to start with just because I know within

that project it came in at a project scope of about $15 million which is a lot when you are looking at some of these projects are going to tie in and be multiple years that we are going to have to tackle them based on the GRT funding availability. So, I think first it would be, what are the opportunities we have for funding and then second going in and saying all of these are priorities. I think we would get the same concern from anybody living off East Mesa who has been tied to a septic tank and I think that we have to be cognize of where those areas are knowing that we annexed them in 87, we need to do these improvements, we need to make these modifications and so whether it is we start doing some of those funding projects and see where we can take bits and pieces and start accomplishing more to make headway. Not necessarily maybe doing all of the improvements at once but at least putting dents into them. That is where I think staff is going to have to get together in order to prioritize what some of those needs are knowing that the impacts are becoming greater.

Mayor Enriquez said I totally agree with the timeline that you have presented that you think about the pavement management index and there is already projects that are in line there and once the staff kind of absorbs all of the data from the input from the residents they can start looking at what projects are duplicated or would be removed but that way we have that funding available and the initial question I believe was public safety, critical infrastructure and parks. Is that correct? So letting staff come back in the budget retreat with what the residents have provided and then looking at the basic question and outline and making decisions and I think at that time in

February we can pretty much then identify what we want for the GO Bond because that will have to be in the spring because then it will be next November?

Sara Gonzales said that is correct. Yes, we would be taking that for a vote in

November. We would be identifying early on which ones would actually be going for the bond.

Linda St. Claire, Member of the Public said I am the President of the Friends of the

Branigan Memorial Library so you can guess that I would like you to give all of your money to us except I actually kind of wouldn’t. I really appreciated the priority meetings that you had for all the different communities and was extraordinarily impressed with the staff and everyone answering questions of the people who were there about the different projects and it would be impossible to walk away from that without feeling like all of these things are so incredibly important so I really commend you all and your staff in particular how to balance these things and Councilor

McClure’s question about the library is important to a lot of people but if we have an environmental spill because the sewer lines go, that is more catastrophic potentially.

So, while I think that the library is really important and I am sure it is critical that we get it funded the Friends of the Library will continue our work as well to try and come up with additional funding both through petitioning you and petitioning at the state level and our own fundraising activities but I just wanted to thank you for starting this process off by passing the master plan for the library a year ago and I think the amount of work done by the architects and planners and the library staff to make sure that we have something that can truly be a heartbeat for our community is really important. We have an amazing library staff who has done a lot to keep that beating heart of our community working despite the fact that we have had so much growth in the community relative to the number of people that we were serving when it was first

built. So, while I hope that we can make a progress in less than 10 years on your timeline Councilor Flores, I do commend you all for working very hard to balance these things.

Lucas Herndon, Member of the Public said I am a resident of District 2. I want to echo the statements just made about the staff and conducting the surveys, the open meetings. It was really well done. I felt very involved in my community and I just wanted to commend all of the staff that took part and council for putting that on. I have a couple of questions and comments I suppose. I am curious about the funding, you mentioned something about $180 million. Our estimates based on the numbers that were on all the boards and all the projects puts the total close to half a billion dollars for everything so maybe we are not understanding but as presented at the presentations this would be half a billion dollars worth of funding we would need for all of these projects. If I could get clarity there that would be wonderful? Two, I just want to flag because we did, we hand counted all of the votes at every single meeting, we took pictures, so we could keep a record ourself, our numbers thankfully match what the city has presented which is wonderful to see but one quick thing is when you went through your project your X axis changes wildly. So, when you say support for certain projects, yes that is true on your X axis but if you keep that X axis at 60 it is very clear of what the community does and does not support. So, I just want to flag that for you all as you are making decisions. Please keep in mind as the data is being presented to you as to what that X axis looks like and when we talk about overall support. Just for instance the public funding for Public Works is vastly more supported than for instance funding more infrastructure for the police, as an example. Nothing related to the police was in the top eight and if you actually use the ranking system that the city provided with one through four, they drop out of the top ten, so just keep that in mind.

Sara Gonzales said based on the numbers that were provided during the public meetings, we did have to adjust those numbers based on reroofs. We had started out with were around $300,000 and it went to $9 million. So, the numbers are still within $180 million, what we would attempt to tackle I would say so necessarily if you had all the reroofs there, we are not going to accomplish every reroof within those projects.

We had listed some of them as locations and so those priorities would change. And so, if we go and add in every building with every facility that is where you would be looking at those higher numbers. When we first brought these forward to council, we did have a limited number of either public facilities, parking lots, or any of the improvements that were there. As we further scoped them per request after city council we did get better numbers that were going to identify those and so they are still within those range based on the projects that we actually list and want to actually accomplish.

Councilor Graham asked I think you said in your presentation though that maybe the disparity that we are looking at is the $180 million we took out anything road related?

Is that what you said? I am wondering if that is the disparity, if we put roads into this and we would be looking at that half a bill?

Sara Gonzales said we would probably be looking at a lot more. We did not include that as part of those numbers as those came in right after city council when our

meeting took place and that is where Councilor Bencomo had mentioned to add in, where is the dent for the road infrastructure. Our numbers increased only in the sense of the increase of either reroof projects. We had a limited number that we put on and we rescoped those and increased the amount that would be necessary. Any of our parking or paving projects that were going to be necessary. We did not include essentially the Municipal Court as that was going to be a new building that would essentially have to be taken place as opposed to a remodel. So, some of those factors were modified and changed.

Erin Quevedo, Member of the Public said the clarifying point on the budget is very helpful. Thank you because all we did literally was add up every single number provided in the community meetings to get the, well it is more than half a billion total and you are right the roads wasn’t included whatsoever so we were figuring that was a low estimate. The way staff is choosing projects I would just really love some more clarity. We weren’t sure obviously how everything was going to be weighted. There were votes 1 through 4. So, if we look at votes by weight that is including first place votes, counting for four points through 3rd place vote, first place counting for four, 2nd place counting for three, etcetera. We can see the top ten projects don’t include any police funding whatsoever, so if you look across 6 city meetings we get Branigan

Library, we got the Rec Center, we got the WIA Center, the new Wastewater

Treatment Water Well 23, sewer source replacement on Highway 292, the legacy park replacements, East Side Senior Center purchase, Paseo Verde Phase I and II, and the medical transport unit funding. So that is the top ten if you look just again votes by weight across the meetings and then if you look at just the first place ranking again, we have Branigan Library, we have the Rec Center, Paseo Verdes, sewer source main replacement, road maintenance, new Waste Water Treatment, again top eight don’t include any police budget whatsoever increase that it is now broken down into categories that include one just specifically for cops is a little bit odd to me and I am just a little bit concerned and would love some clarity around that and if anybody would like to meet with me and look at spreadsheets on the city council, I would love to do that.

Sara Gonzales said just to clarify as to why the public safety was separated out. We did separate them all out based on the project types of where GRT was approved. So, we did have where it was maintenance projects, parks, public safety which included

Fire and Police and then you would have any critical infrastructure improvements. So that is why they were separated out into those categories. 2.4 GO BOND QUARTERLY UPDATE. Kyle Arend, Interim Public Works Director gave the overhead presentation.

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

Mayor Enriquez asked on Fire Station 9, who is the Project Manager?

Kyle Arend said Chuck I believe.

3. ADJOURNMENT 3.1 Councilor Yvonne Flores moved, seconded by Councilor Becki Graham, to adjourn at 3:19 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Yvonne Flores

SECONDER: Councilor Becki Graham

AYES: Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran,

Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William

Mattiace

Mayor

City Clerk