Work Session Meeting August 11, 2025 MINUTES Work Session Monday, August 11, 2025 @ 1:00 PM City Council Chambers, City Hall PRESENT: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace ABSENT: 1. PETS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Carol Nielson, Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley presented Pets of the Week. 2. AGENDA ITEM 2.1 ANNUAL UPDATES FROM ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS: DOWNTOWN LAS CRUCES PARTNERSHIP, THE FARMERS AND CRAFT MARKET OF LAS CRUCES, FILM LAS CRUCES, AND MESILLA VALLEY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE. Celina Morales, Deputy Director of Economic Development introduced the topic. Jeffrey Stewart, Downtown Las Cruces Partnership gave the overhead presentation. Councilor Bencomo said I appreciate you talking about the diversification funding. I think that’s really important as a nonprofit to not rely just on one source of funding. So, I appreciate you noting that and that you all have a commitment to that. I do have a couple of questions for the businesses either leaving the district, closing permanently, or even the ones coming in, do you have surveys on that information that you’re gathering for the people leaving, but even the people coming in. Like why did they choose downtown as their location? That kind of information. Jeffrey Stewart said so we don’t have a standardized process as of yet, but one thing we do an important job trying to do is call the businesses specifically who leave and basically kind of run an audit like hey what did we do wrong? Is there something we could do better as an organization to help you out in the future or anything that we can do that might help any other organization that you can think about that might still be in our district or interested in relocating to our district. But no, not having a standardized process to do so, no, not yet, but I think that’s a good idea. Councilor Bencomo asked Celina, do we have anything from the city? Celina Morales said so previously when Susan, she’s no longer the director, now it’s Lyanna, but she did do a lot of surveys for us when it comes to issues that arised. We as a city had our own surveys that she would go out and fill out and get questions on. So, we do have those on some of the businesses. I know we’re trying to figure out a new process with the new leadership and see if we’re going to continue the same surveys or tweak them a little better so that we can quantify that data. Councilor Bencomo said I understand that maybe someone who’s closing a business, the last thing they want to do is fill out a survey, but I think it’s important feedback for you all, for us as a city. How do we support businesses better? Similarly to the ones moving out of district, that’s really interesting to me, but also the ones coming in, what made you choose downtown? I think I would encourage us to think about something like that in partnership with you all. Obviously, you all are there and have those connections, so I think that would be really important. My other question was, do you have sort of an audit on the buildings currently empty downtown? Jeffrey Stewart said yeah, so we have a business inventory list is what we call it, but essentially it includes vacant buildings, buildings that could use storefront help or placemaking or signage, things like that, but it’s an encompassing list that incorporates vacant buildings, but that’s part of our service contract. We have a list, but update that list quarterly, make sure it is good to go so we can give it to you whenever you need it. Councilor Bencomo said awesome, and I think in coordination with even the TIDD, right how are we marketing those storefronts that are available and ready to use. Obviously, we don’t want to sit them empty for a long time. One example I can think of is the Sun News building, that’s been empty for a little longer than I would have loved to see it empty. I understand it’s huge, but I would love for us to sort of how do we market that and stay ahead of that? Lastly, obviously something I would love to see and hopefully with Realize and all of these things, it’ll make it easier for us to have more mixed use in the downtown, especially with living spaces. I’m curious, I know that there’s at least the one apartment complex, if that is a business that you all communicate with, I would love to understand what residents of the downtown area, people who live downtown, how they see the area as well as consumers. Mayor Enriquez said I appreciate your passion and your drive and the commitment that you have for downtown. As you can see, the city of Las Cruces throughout history is always an improvement and revitalizing the downtown, and since the investment of the plaza, we want to make sure that we continue that and we work with that. Yes, it’s sad about the Amador Live, but that’s something that we want to make sure that gets up and going and we’re all concerned about that as well. Karin Bradshaw, Farmers & Craft Market gave the overhead presentation. Mayor Enriquez said I just want to say congratulations on all the awards, it’s always great to see and it’s always jam-packed at the downtown, especially on Saturdays. I was there this past Saturday, I guess there was a car show going on as well. Karin Bradshaw said it was a normal summer market. Mayor Enriquez said yeah, very busy, so thank you for all that. Karin Bradshaw said hey we have fun, we enjoy what we do. We’re definitely there for the community in the downtown. We like the fact that we’re a steppingstone for small businesses in the community. I know some of our vendors have moved on to brick and mortars, so that’s always a plus. So, yeah, we have fun. Andrew Jara, Film Las Cruces gave the overhead presentation. Davin Lopez, MVEDA gave the overhead presentation. Eric Montgomery, member of the public said I am currently the serving chair of MVEDA. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I know it’s been a long presentation, I just want to keep this brief, on behalf of the board. The past 30 years of MVEDA’s focused mission growing economic based industries and job opportunities in our region were marked by this last years’ worth of work, 30 years of results. Companies like Electronic Caregiver in the Downtown TIDD, X2nSat in the Innovation and Industrial park, Big Tuna Pipe in District 4, MCI mass markets in district 2, Palladium Diagnostics at Arrowhead Centers, Saputo Cheese and we had a list earlier of many more. I think what matters most as much as what MVEDA has worked and brought into this community is how MVEDA has shown up as a partner. MVEDA was there when Las Cruces went to Mojave and spoke to Virgin Galactic employees about making this community their home. MVEDA was there when the city stood up its Economic Development department all the way from an economic development division of three and a half FTE’s under Community Development. MVEDA has been there with Elevate Las Cruces, Realize Las Cruces, and every plan, committee, and initiative that ever asked, “How can we move this community forward?” MVEDA has been a partner in helping you drive growth for your citizens. As a private sector investor, I could go out and I could recreate MVEDA’s impact in house, but it would cost me 10 times more than what I give, 10 years longer to build and I’d still not deliver the reach, the insight or the credibility that this organization brings economic development. MVEDA isn’t just efficient, it’s essential. From the advanced manufacturing workforce report that you received copies of last year to the award-winning Automate Up program, which I’ll just highlight when Gen Z is moving toward quick, consumable skills training comes out at the perfect time. MVEDA is not only responding to today’s needs but building for tomorrow. At our recent board retreat, we sharpened our focus to really focus on growth, sustainability, and education. It’s our commitment as we have restructured our board to go deeper in strategy and engagement that we will bring each of those items back to our partners including the City of Las Cruces and we invite you to become more deeply involved, to come to our board meetings, to attend our committee meetings, to see that level of engagement. We commit to you to keep building this momentum together. For 30 years, MVEDA has worked to strengthen our community’s economic base. The very things that fund better schools, safer neighborhoods, and more parks and services for all is a win for all of us. On behalf of the MVEDA Board, thank you for this partnership. We’ve accomplished an incredible amount together and we all look forward to the next plus one, a year of growth, of action and of shared success. Councilor Flores asked how long have you had contracts with the city to deliver? Davin Lopez said we’re probably about seven years now that we’ve had a contract. Before that, we operated just under a memorandum of understanding with the city. Councilor Flores said okay, and how many businesses have you been able to negotiate on behalf of the city? Davin Lopez said I’d have to go back and pull those numbers for you. I don’t have that right off the top of my head. This goes back 30 years, I’ve been here about 16 years now. As I mentioned in the report, I showed you 10 years of opportunities that we brought to the city, but going back that far, I don’t have that off the top of my head, but I can get that for you. Councilor Flores said okay, in the eight years I’ve been on city council, I have heard you say that there are businesses that you have tapped, but we don’t have what it takes to bring those businesses to Las Cruces, and that concerns me, very much. I think you mentioned Franco or something and that was an extension and there’s a couple of other things out at the industrial park that may have come in. I don’t know if they were here because of MVEDA, I think they were here before that, I might be wrong. My concern, Davin, is how many other clients do you have in the area? El Paso’s a big one, right? Davin Lopez said we have two stakeholders; that’s City of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County, and of course the communities within it. But in terms of contracts, we have it with City of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County, and then of course we try to look for other funding channels to support it. I didn’t mention it this time, but in the past, I’ve mentioned we have about 100 private sector partners that fund our mission and they’re funding the support you know of this mission to be accomplished for the city and for Dona Ana County. Last three years we’ve been looking for grants as well. Their grants are very hard to come by. Some of these grants, as you may know, it pushes us into having staff to create a program and then we don’t have staff to really do those things. Then it’s hard for us to really concentrate on the core aspect of what our contract is, and that is industry attraction and that becomes a very expensive proposition. That’s why we go, and we have diversified funding to the tune of about 1.1 million. About 550 of that comes from public sector, county and city and then the rest comes from the private sector. Councilor Flores said okay, so when you go to these different shows, industrial type shows throughout the country, how does that work? Because I’ve gathered that you do that and I think there was even a trip to Asia or something and maybe other countries as well. I just want to know what the return is on all of that. I think there was that one company that came in and it turned out to be fraudulent. They were out of Fresno, California and I’m just so curious, Mr. Lopez, exactly what it is you’ve delivered to the City of Las Cruces. I am impressed with everything that you’ve reached out, how you network, but how have we, the City of Las Cruces benefited and how many businesses have you been able to land for us? Davin Lopez said so let me talk about when you ask about trade shows. We go to industry targeted trade shows across the country, and we do it in two ways. Where we have funding available, we will actually do an exhibit there, but that becomes very costly. We don’t have a lot of money to do exhibits. So, what we do otherwise then is we’ll go to these trade shows, and we walk them aggressively. What that basically means if you have 300 vendors there, we’re going to each vendor introducing ourselves, talking to them about the benefits of being in Las Cruces, asking them, do they have projections for growth? Are they going to be expanding? If they’re not the right person to speak to, is there someone that we can get a hold of? We come back then and then we scour through, and we try to reach out again to those individuals, try to find the proper people to begin communications with. That’s just one show. That one show can turn into a process, a timetable process because of second, third, fourth, fifth interactions that not only takes a lot of time, energy and dollars to do so in terms of personnel costs but also the rewards aren’t immediate. I’ve mentioned this before in the past, we did a study on our own projects a couple years ago where from the time a company contacts us about making a decision, it takes them about 15, 16 months before they actually begin operations. That’s not even talking about the time period in between or before that to establish the relationship to even put the trust to come to our area and take a look at what we have to offer. You mentioned what is the return, I guess for going to an international show like Taiwan, and I maybe I’m going to jump in front of your question. No, we don’t go to a lot of countries. Mexico is a target area for us and the United States is a target area for us. Other states, other communities from all over the country, they scour internationally from India to Germany to Taiwan, China, our state included. We don’t have the luxury to do that. So, when we did the Taiwan tour about two years ago, that was paid for completely by the Taiwanese delegation. Flights as well as hotels, paid for meals, I might have picked up a couple of meals for myself at the airport, that’s about it. Myself along with three other states, were able to present at Taiwan business at US days in Taiwan. It’s a conference trade show. We’re able to present to over 100 companies at that trade show. We were able to highlight the Las Cruces Innovation and Industrial Park. Because the governor went on that trip, we were able to leverage her ability to get in front of more companies. We got in front of three or four different industry associations as well. Each of those had about 60 to 80 members that we got to pitch the same too. So, when we go back to earn media, you look at that Taiwan trip that did not cost the City of Las Cruces nothing. When as a follow up to that, we were able to get in front of a Taiwanese delegation coming to Albuquerque where we went with the mayor and your staff where the mayor had keynote speaking at that in order to talk about the benefits of living in Las Cruces, growing in Las Cruces, as well as our Las Cruces Innovation and Industrial park. I don’t know what the value of that earned media is, I would say it’s quite a bit and it didn’t cost the taxpayers anything. Councilor Flores said well, that wasn’t my ultimate concern. My concern is that we’re not getting any returns and I’m not privy to everything that you do. I just question and doubt how successful your organization can be, and I understand this is Las Cruces, it’s not El Paso, and it’s not Houston or whatever. I guess I would like to see, Mr. Lopez, more returns on this investment. It doesn’t seem to be a very profitable investment for the City of Las Cruces. Davin Lopez said so, I’ll go back to the 10-year chart I showed you. This has to do with our Las Cruces contract, 3,000 jobs, 125 million capital investment over that 10- year period of time, again we go back to implant analysis to try to understand whether there’s an ROI. I get it, we try to be very cautious and good stewards of the taxpayer dollars. We do at MVEDA. We try very hard to. That’s why every single year we show you what the ROI is in our final reporting. Every single year we do this. I mean I guess we can agree to disagree, but our numbers show that based on the resources you provide to MVEDA, we’re providing a very strong return on investment. Do I want more? Do I want to achieve more? Absolutely! Councilor Flores asked is the ROI exclusively representative of the ROI in Las Cruces? Davin Lopez said that is correct, we have a separate ROI that we show to the county based on their investment in us as well. Again, this utilizes expected GRT and I’m not going to say that implant data is perfect because we’ll never know unless the state reports to you and you report back to us every tax dollar that comes in. We don’t have that luxury. Implant data is nationally recognized, and it tries to estimate what that ROI impact analysis is to a community on a result of bringing a company to the region. Councilor Flores said it seems like at this point you would have pivoted because there’s a lot of things Las Cruces doesn’t have and that’s what we hear when you report we don’t have this, we don’t have that, yada yada, I’m just concerned that’s not going to change, it hasn’t changed in eight years as far as I could see. So, I just want to lay that out to you, Mr. Lopez, and I just hope that my colleagues and the departments in the city who are keener on this, I’m not an economist, but I am a lawyer, and I question a lot. Davin Lopez said I appreciate that you’re questioning because we do the same thing. I can show you the data we have. Would I like more resources to accomplish more? Absolutely. But the pivoting we have done is try to make ourselves more competitive. That is why we went out and started that private sector incentive. I’ve been saying for years we needed one, a local incentive so we can close deals and do more than what the state provides to us. We went and did that. It’s not a lot of dollars, but it’s something we went out to get. Same thing with skill set development, trying to understand the gaps that were taking place that we needed to prepare for technology jobs of the future for our residents. We went and created that program. Same thing with the development program I was mentioning. You know I’ve been saying it for years. When we have the PRC, we need developers to see Las Cruces, want to invest in Las Cruces, but we never had a pathway to get there. We’re pivoting to put these tools in place so that hopefully we can become a better platform and be able to attract more and more companies. Believe me, I want it. But I also think we need to have strong conversations about what investment is needed and I think we need to have conversations about the willingness to make those investments. I’ve been asking for years for resources and a lot of times I’m asking not for resources to go to MVEDA, I’m asking for resources like the incentives and things like that to help us close deals. But I think we need to have an honest conversation together about, do we want to go after industry attraction? Councilor Flores said that’s exactly the conversation I’d like to have and that’s why I’m asking the questions I’m asking, and I think we have a lot of talent in this city, in our staff here at City Hall. In fact, we have people who are absolutely brilliant and we’re very fortunate to have them as part of our staff and it seems to me that that would be something you would have been working on and not wait 10 years or whatever it is and see that there’s very little returns. So, I don’t know, I think I’ve expressed my dismay and my disappointment, and I secede to my colleagues. Ikani Taumoepeau, City Manager said I just wanted to share something, and have it returned to the council for comments, but just something to bring to the attention. These are discussions as we’ve brought up with MVEDA before. They are a community partner, and I appreciate the presentation. One thing I do want to bring to the forefront I was impressed with Davin a few months back or maybe a year ago, you had brought some creativity. I think it was good because you had mentioned the word incentives. Incentives is something that is critical to attract any type of industry to Las Cruces as our council knows and I thought it was impressive, and I wanted to share the opportunity that Davin brought. Remind me, Davin, when it was, was it the foundation? Was it the board where we were talking about bringing more money to the pot? So it was a matching grant. You found incentives with the foundation. I thought I’ll turn it over to Davin, but I just wanted to bring that forward because incentives are tough, especially when they come from our general fund. So, we’re always looking for other additional funds. So, I thought it was great for Davin reaching out to the community and looking out for additional incentives where we could match that. So, could you talk about that again? Davin Lopez said so, that had to do with the El Paso Electric, New Mexico Economic Development fund that came out as a result from the merger that took place with El Paso Electric a few years back and one of the things we we’re thinking of doing with that is having a private/public partnership in terms of bringing value to a company to close the deal, especially on the developer side because right now in the state of New Mexico, there are no incentives that attract a speculative developer. So, one of the things we were thinking of is we are somewhat land rich I guess is what I’d say with our Las Cruces industrial park, but maybe we don’t have the cash value whereas though this program, we could leverage the cash value of incentives combined with perhaps putting land on the table as part of the package to get the developer to make the commitment, get past the hurdles so that they would take the risk in going vertical into our community and build speculative development. Councilor Bencomo said of course I’ve already expressed this to the city manager. I of course wish this would have happened before the budget session in May, because I do know that at least two of you in this list asked for increases to your contract. I just wanted to have this conversation and Mayor I do have more general conversations. I’ll ask my specific MVEDA conversations but then get it back to my colleagues, but I do have general conversations for staff after regarding that process. Anyway just so that I’m clear, Davin, I want to finish really with this like willingness to invest conversation, but before I get there, I have some questions. On this page 10, just so I’m understanding it clear, year to date from recruitment to signing the dot, there’s a new business here that has been five total projects, correct? Am I reading that incorrect? Davin Lopez said that is correct. Councilor Bencomo said okay and Councilor Flores has brought a good clarification, that is five projects in the City of Las Cruces. Councilor Bencomo said okay and similarly to the 275 new jobs, those are all Las Cruces jobs. Davin Lopez said yes, that is correct. Councilor Bencomo said okay, awesome, I wasn’t sure if the data was Dona Ana County in terms of the 20 projects that have, I don’t remember what slide this was on the 20 projects that you said there was about a 55% of projects saying they had potential growth and desire to increase. What numbers are these for? Is that Las Cruces or is that total? Davin Lopez said this entire presentation is broken out by just our contract, which is the City of Las Cruces. So, the 36 consultations were with 36 companies in Las Cruces. I think Brian can correct me, but I think our total number for the entire county might be around 65 or 76. So this 36 are attributed just to city of Las Cruces companies. Councilor Bencomo asked can you give us just a little preview of what these 20 projects, what industry they’re in? Oh, is this the graph right here? Davin Lopez said yes. Councilor Bencomo said okay, thank you. Sorry about that, I missed that earlier. I appreciate the clarification. Then in terms of the challenges that you presented, I think we have honestly been having this conversation for several years now in terms of what is not readily available. I’m curious what kind of industries you’re hearing this feedback from. I think ultimately, right, like we’re never going to be Dallas, Houston, Phoenix. We’re not going to be, right? So, I’m curious if that’s our competition, then I’m wondering if we’ll lose next to every time. So, what are the kinds of conversations we’re having with industry that makes sense to our region and to Las Cruces? Davin Lopez said we will lose projects to larger municipalities, especially when you have very high numbers of employees that are needed. That’s going to be the first thing that weeds us out more than anything. You’re talking about a thousand, 1,500 employees, but we have to when we get those requests for information, we do take the effort to try to go after them. I’ve always been a big believer we can, for lack of a better word, we can hunt the elephants, right? But we are in New Mexico, we have to make sure to eat the rabbits along the way. I’ve always believed in that. That’s why when I talked earlier about one, five, ten jobs at a time, we’re very happy with those successes. Now it takes a lot longer to get to them. So, everybody seems to want the big projects, but I always say that our niche for employment is usually between 250 and 500. With those types of companies, you’re looking at where maybe there’s too much labor competition in a given market. So, I think those are very realistic target or companies and target industries that we go after in order to try to lure them to the area. Are they the big splash? You know, are they going to be the big Fortune 500 all the time? No. Maybe we’ll get one. I hope we get one, but 250 to 500 employees is really our niche. Then we compete against primarily Arizona and a lot of Texas communities. There’s the difference with Texas communities is they have a way of funding economic development that is just hard to compare with. Right now, let me explain. We have that project I mentioned where I feel we’re 95% there. We’re competing against Midland for that. I happen to know that. I think we’re 95% there because they want to be here because we offer a little bit extra in terms of what they’re not going to get over there. A university, having a university in our backyard is important. It shows that there is a future talent pool for long-term growth. These are things that companies look at that may not be the first decision-making choice of where they locate, but when we’re tied with someone else, it becomes that benefit. I would say we have better quality of life than a lot of these Texas communities with more money than we can complete against. We leverage all of those factors in our discussions with companies when we’re trying to bring them to the area. So, no, we’re not going to be a Dallas, at least not probably in my lifetime, but we can compete for projects. One of the challenges I mentioned, and I hate to be repeating it, is that we need to just be, I think, a little bit stronger in terms of what package we can bring to the table. Of course, developing or having readily available facilities, however we get there, I think is crucial as well. Councilor Bencomo said look, you’re talking about that willingness to have conversations about investments. I’m willing to, I don’t know at least since I’ve been here, I don’t know that there hasn’t been a willingness, at least from this side of the dais to have those conversations. I think for me the important factor to sort of highlight is that I want to make sure that we’re talking to folks that make sense to the region that are sustainable that are responsible. Our neighbors in Tucson just voted down a very water intensive contract for their community and I thought that was really powerful, we don’t want to sell our souls to the highest bidder just for that contract. We also want to be responsible with the resources that we have. For me, when we talk about incentives and these kinds of things for bigger companies, I want to make sure that we’re saying please come here and we have a negotiating tool, but I also want folks to come here and invest back into our community. Often for people we call these handouts, but for organizations and businesses we call them incentives. So, I want to make sure that the conversation we continue to have is one that uplifts the kind of work that we wish our people to have here in our community. I have concerns too, but I want to continue to have these conversations publicly with you all because you are partners, it’s not just a contract. So that’s ultimately these were the conversations that I wanted to have. Again, I have more general questions about all of these contracts, but those are for staff. So, I’ll just wait, Mayor, til everyone asks their MVEDA specific questions. Oh, and then I’m sorry, one last question for you Davin. You mentioned the breakup of your budget and I missed it. You said what percentage is public dollars versus private? Davin Lopez said we’re about 500,000 in private and 550 in public. Councilor Bencomo said so about 50-50. Councilor Mattiace said hello there, Mr. Lopez, little different questioning and maybe you could just wrap it up and concise of all the questions I have or comments. You know, I worked with you many ribbon cuttings in Santa Teresa over the eight years that I was down at the border authority. I’m asking a little different question for challenging. I really support your organization and you know that as long as I was mayor and council and a public person. I think without your organization, Las Cruces wouldn’t be doing as well as it is, as well as the county because you operate in both city and the county. In your negotiations, what I would like to know is some of the challenges you have and sometimes you won’t bring it forward because it might be negative and it may be negative on this particular council, but in the last couple of years I think under the direction of Chief Story, we’re seeing things in the crime statistics actually they’re getting better. Where were the challenges in the last eight years when the City of Las Cruces had a high crime record, had some blight, had some El Paseo, things turning bad, kind of describe those with me. I’m interested in that. When you’re sitting with CEOs like we did in Santa Teresa, they have many questions like one of the questions that always comes up is we’re 50th in education. Mention these challenges and how you’ve actually overcome them because you actually produced results with, I think a lot of challenges. Is that a tough question or do you want to handle it? Davin Lopez said it is a tough question and I’ll try to kind of give some examples. Let me talk about taxes for a second as an example and then I’ll try to talk more about some of the other things like crime and how they impact economic development. But on the tax side, we always have companies, we have site selectors that will say, well, but this tax is pretty high that you have here. We always have to tell them, you need to look at the entire package. You need to look at everything together. Compare that to Texas together because maybe Texas might have no income tax, but our property taxes are much lower. So, we want them to know the entire story and a lot of our dialogue is really letting them know the entire story. Now when you mention crime, it’s very similar. We have to talk about when companies are making relocation decisions, they look at crime as a bucket of decision making, that’s under quality of life to them. They’ll look at crime, they’ll look at health care and they’ll look at education. They’re going to combine those three in terms of their decision making under that quality of life category. The quality of life category comes behind other things like is there the right land, is there the right infrastructure, is there the right labor force, is it the right skill sets, are there other ancillary benefits to my industry from being here, but that is a conversation. So, we have to talk to them about a more holistic story and compare it quite frankly to other cities and communities. No one is free, no one is completely clear of all the challenges we face as well, and we have to make that comparison, so they see it through our eyes. That’s how we talk about it, that’s how we negotiate with it. We try to be honest with our clients, especially site selectors, because if we’re not honest with them, they’ll never bring another deal to us again. But letting them know the big picture as a whole and then making that comparison against other regions goes a long way. Even little things like, “wow, you’re an hour from an airport, an international airport!” We then talked to them about well, if you were in Los Angeles, where I used to live, and I was 7 miles away, it would still take me about an hour to get to the airport. When you put it in that perspective of things, they realize then they understand, oh you’re right, an hour is not too bad. So, we’re always trying to tell the entire story which when you look at the entire story, it does paint a different brush. But you know even on the local level working with companies when they bring up concerns you can see safety and security is a top concern. So, it’s a concern for companies coming in under quality of life, but it’s also a concern for local companies as well. But again, we try to talk about what are the other benefits of being in the region. Councilor, that was a tough question, I hope I answered it for you. Mayor Enriquez said I just want to say that to share with the rest of the group is like I remain optimistic with MVEDA and the work that they are doing and the things because of so many challenges that we face when you look at the industrial park whether it’s the electricity, water, waste, the airport, we’re not Dallas, we’re not Houston and then at the state level we’re not getting those incentives. The state economic development department has a budget and then they reduce it the next year and then it increases and then it reduces. So, we got to start at even from the top is like how serious are we about economic development. So, I really look at not how much it’s costing us, but how much you are really saving us because if we had to do this alone as a city it would be very costly. So, the brochures, I say that about Carlos, my production manager. It’s a lot of work that goes into these visits and these tours and everything else that we internally as a city, it would be very costly. So, I appreciate the partnership and everything you are doing. We look at costs, but then again there’s another side to that. What’s our savings? What is it really saving us to try to get businesses to come to Las Cruces? That’s why I’m very optimistic with the things that we’re doing. The last retreat especially, there’s more focus and there’s more collaboration with members of this community, NMSU, The Bridge, just seeing everybody come together. I think that’s how it all started was members of the community saying, “We need to partner up. We need to help the city. We need to help the county.” It’s one of those things that goes up and down, throughout the years, whether it’s interest rates, whatever challenges, tariffs now, whatever comes our way, there’s that curve that keeps moving. But I think right now we’re at a point where the community is coming forward and saying, “Let’s all pitch in and let’s help and let’s put our ingredients together.” So, I’m still going to stay in and make those visits and meet members of India, Taiwan, whoever you bring to the table. I appreciate it. So that we can get business here in Las Cruces. Aside from really the limitations and challenges that we do have. So, thank you for your partnership and all the work you do. 3. ADJOURNMENT 3.1 Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by Councilor Yvonne Flores, to adjourn at 3:07 p.m. RESULT: Carried MOVER: Councilor Becky Corran SECONDER: Councilor Yvonne Flores AYES: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace Mayor City Clerk