Work Session Meeting July 14, 2025

MINUTES

Work Session

Monday, July 14, 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. JOBS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Sarah Raney, Southwest Region Job Center 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

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

1. To discuss pending or threatened litigation regarding Margarita Ruiz and Mercedes

Ruiz v. City of Las Cruces, No. D-307-CV-202500689, which is closed pursuant to

NMSA 1978, Section 10-15-1H(7).

4. AGENDA ITEM 4.1 NEIGHBORWOODS TREE PROGRAM.

Jennifer Kleitz, Dona Ana Soil and Water Conservation District gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran said this is such a cool program and I appreciate you sharing. I know those heat maps and I don’t anticipate my district is necessarily represented on those heat maps as far as places that are targeted for this grant, but I do think that some of us, I just want to put in a request, not just the councilors who have these schools in their district, I would ask if you could share it with everyone, some of us have broader networks that we can share these to that might reach to expand volunteer opportunities and also potentially people who want to have trees that would be in the targeted area so please when you have events coming up, please share it with all of us. I’d be happy to elevate it in the ways that we have places to share that information and maybe gather some volunteers to help support you.

Jennifer Kleitz said most definitely, we have a QR Code and a website just for our

NeighborWoods program, people can sign up to be volunteers or they can sign up if they want a tree in their area, that helps us designate. According to the grant restrictions, it has to be a acedious neighborhood, however most of the City of Las

Cruces and Dona Ana County is in a acedious area so we are really not having too much trouble with that and then we do use GIS mapping to look at the canopy and find the neighborhoods and areas that need to be addressed. So, we certainly will do that.

Councilor Bencomo said I agree, I love this project, whatever we can do to continue supporting you, whether in our individual capacities as councilors or as citywide, I’d love to continue supporting this program. I did want to just add a little, perhaps, potential partnership. I recently saw online that planting more trees in some streets can be traffic calming measures actually and I wonder if there is an opportunity for you all to be able to talk to our traffic department at Public Works and see if there is any opportunity, there’s so many folks in our community who are constantly reaching out to us about people speeding in their neighborhoods and what do we do and what can we do and this, honestly these processes take a really long time and the other day I saw that, planting more trees can help calm traffic and so I wonder if there’s an opportunity for you to do that kind of partnership. I think that would be cool.

Jennifer Kleitz said certainly! Yeah, so just reach out to the director of Public Works?

Alright, we will do that, we love partnering with you all.

Councilor McClure said I just want to say that I also think it’s a great program, I also think we should use trees as traffic calming and as a way to say hey, we created shade just for people walking one area to another. Just curious, last time I was vaguely involved, were you able to find enough homes for all of the trees, or is there any way that we can help with that this time as well?

Cathi Buckman, NeighborWoods Program Coordinator said starting with the one neighborhood for October 4th planting, around the Lynn neighborhood, it’s a very big neighborhood, so we have split it into sections so we will be canvassing starting tonight in those areas.

Councilor McClure said If you need any help canvassing, let us know.

Cathi Buckman said if you would like to canvas with us, we would absolutely love your help. We’ve got a training coming up, I will be having a training coming up, but I will get an email coming out to everybody with all the information for all that. I know I emailed you before, but I’ll get an email out to everybody I’ll let you know when our next canvassing training is and when we will be canvassing.

Councilor Mattiace said I was going to ask Catrina have you worked with, you have her card. I was going to say, we have neighborhood captains, neighborhood associations, watch groups and that would be great if Catrina, Scott and your organization can work together. Great program.

Mayor Enriquez said I want to add another group to this program and that would be the Mayor’s Top Teens. I think that would be great for the youth in our community and kind of somewhat have control over that group, so they’ll be voluntold. Now part of the thing they do clean ups, they do other things like that for the community, I think this is a great opportunity we’ll definitely reach out to you and get the Mayor’s Top Teens involved.

Jennifer Kleitz said because the other thing is another program of ours that we want to get up and running I told you about the Envirothon team that’s in the city in Truth or

Consequences and we have four high schools and we have a lot of kids, we should have five Envirothon teams in the city of Las Cruces, and we don’t even have one. I’m not sure who to start, we’re looking for leaders they just help the kids study and do all of that work and then a group of six kids.

Mayor Enriquez said ok, with that I’ll bring it to Superintendent Ruiz’s attention, and he usually meets with his team of leaders, and we can bring this program up to him as well. 4.2 DELEGATION TO NIENBURG, GERMANY. Catrina Godinez, Community Outreach Manager introduced the topic.

Elaine McKinney, President of Sister Cities Foundation gave the overhead presentation.

Allison Smith, Chair of the Nienburg Affiliation Committee, continued the overhead presentation.

Elaine McKinney continued the overhead presentation.

Mayor Enriquez said I want to start off by just saying thank you, it was a great experience I can speak for Yvette as well, my wife, she’s in attendance today to support. You know it’s not only about the diplomacy, the trip, the events, the work, there was another aspect, and it was being hosted by a family, a couple there and ours was Armut and Anka and they were wonderful, they were beautiful the way they treated us, they opened up their home to us, and just learning about their culture and

everything it was just wonderful. It was a great experience and when we went to the school and they said they want to bring back the exchange, I’m all for it, I’ve already spoken to the Superintendent, he’s talking to his team about getting the teachers and getting everything going so that we can do that. I’ve spoken to members of Rotary already that said they used to sponsor, they want to continue, they want to look at doing the leg work on this side. I think it would be a great experience for a 16, 17- year-old to experience that and for them to come over here and experience it and we want to extend that invite to them. Next year our the United States 250 years so that could be a celebration there that we could share with them, not a thousand, but 250. I just wanted to say thank you for that great experience, it was truly a wonderful time for us.

Allison Smith said one of the things that I neglected to mention on the front side of this every member of this delegation had a slightly different experience based on who they stayed with, based on some of the free time that we had when we weren’t working, our hosts took us to various things that weren’t official and so each member please reach out to them if you have questions about their independent journey because everybody was touched slightly differently on this trip.

Councilor Flores said I’ve spoken with Catrina, and she came back with her eyes as big as the moon. She was telling me how lovely her host was and how she invited her

I think to go to Paris, she turned it down, She invited her to go to London, she turned it down and I said, you know it’s like when you go to Europe it’s like you are in

Disneyland, you just hop on a train and there you are a few hours later in a totally different country. The city I grew up in in California the high school had its sister city in

Munich. Freda Schmitt, I’ll never forget her, was actually half Columbian so she was fluent in Spanish, fluent in English, fluent in German and she wasn’t our guest, she stayed with a family that had a high school student, my sister and I were already in college, so she invited us to go and my mom said you can’t go and my brother said they can, mom. Because he’d been stationed in Germany and he said mom, it’s

Disneyland everybody is so kind, and I think, apropos of what the Mayor mentioned and you too the whole idea is to have people see people as human beings and not representatives of some governmental whatever, but certain leaders aren’t people that we care for, they don’t care for us, but in terms of people to people, that’s what makes all the difference in the world so I want to thank you all for being there. I’m so glad Catrina went because it is good for them to see who we are as people and we are really a nation of immigrants and maybe, one day, we will have a Native American join the group and that would be wow!

Elaine McKinney said Sister Cities is apolitical, we are not a member of any particular party when we are visiting with them and they with us. We are learning about them as a people, and they are learning about us as a people. We are learning from their experience and the things that they do that may be somewhat different from ours. It may or may not work for us, and vice versa, so we are all working together and we want to continue to be here as a foundation to support Las Cruces and the Sister

Cities Program and again I would request your help and support being able to do this, it’s very valuable for our community.

Councilor McClure said I also wanted to give a shout out specifically to Allison for her leadership and coordination. This is not an easy thing to pull together getting a bunch of herded cats in one group. I know a lot of times we were like where did McClure go, where did Enriquez go? This is hard to do so I want to thank you very much for your leadership on that. I want to riff off a little bit while that group is not political, I see this as a very political experience too because you want to demystify what people think about us as Americans and a lot of times they are going to have preconceived notions and misinformation that they’ve had or things that they’ve experienced in other ways, that is our role, to make sure that they understand who we are as people. I think watching, not to steal your thunder here, but watching our Mayor interact with the

Belarus delegation who were just plum happy to meet with him because they were also firefighters which he did, I don’t think anyone mentioned that yet, and they were just so excited to share the bond of brothership just across the world and still having the same experiences so and then I got very excited because when we went there, a firefighter’s wife had made the cake and that is when you know it’s going to be good, somebody’s wife that is making the cake, amazing! Yes, of course, our experiences were different I think, I am a German, it was nice to visit my Aunt Gutwein there and have her tag along on some of the experiences. For me it was coming home and it was seeing what it was like and comparing it to my present home because a lot of people don’t understand, you can have two places that call to your heart in the same way and I think we can show that to also looking forward to Lerdo and I think that in these times where we are, there’s misinformation, there’s animosity between countries, it I up to us to make them realize that there is not hate from all ends here.

Elaine McKinney said let me emphasize that Nienburg have five sister cities. They’re a population of just a little over 33,000. They can do it. We can do it. And the more that we learn from more people, whether it is from the Belarus area, from Mexico, from Nienburg, Germany, or wherever, it’s important. It’s very important for all of us.

Councilor Flores asked so when is the next delegation from Lerdo and when is the next delegation from Nienburg? I’m sure it is already scheduled.

Allison Smith said the plan for Nienburg is to invite them over to Las Cruces for a delegation trip from their side to come here. At that point, we’ll be asking members of the community to host some of them, become those hosts and learn from them. The plan is to hopefully have them here next fall. They don’t want to travel for Fourth of

July, they said that’s a little hot for them, and so we think maybe October, November might be a really fabulous time of next year. So, it will coincide with our 250, we are the much younger sister, and so it’ll be that 250 and hopefully we’ll have a nice delegation coming from Nienburg at that time. That’s our current plan.

Elaine McKinney said and regarding Lerdo, we have not had an exchange with Lerdo for quite a while. There has been a recent change of leadership down there and so we are working now to get together with our committee down there and discuss how we’re going to move forward and I think that 2026 would be a great opportunity to have both Lerdo and Nienburg here if that works, if it doesn’t, we’ll find something else but we did have both of our sister cities here for the year that we celebrated our

150th anniversary as a city, so, we’ll see.

4.3 AMR UPDATE. Fire Chief Michael Daniels gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Bencomo said thank you so much Chief Daniels, again it has been quite the year for you as your first few months of you being as Chief. So deeply grateful for all of you and for us being here. I know it been a long time obviously. I do just have some questions. I’m curious if you can talk a little bit about the billing needs, obviously right now the department already does some billing right with an external contractor. I’m curious if you can talk about just continued billing needs we will have in this new model.

Chief Daniels said yes, currently we have a contract with EMS/MC who is our billing company and they take a percentage, I believe it is 4%, 4 ¼% which is actually a very reasonable rate for billing, and I don’t believe we are going to need any new infrastructure for billing. They’re designed and they are perfectly capable of managing the demand that we are going to see when it comes to increased billing. The nice thing for what I think for our public when it comes to billing is now they’re receiving a bill from one person. They can expect to receive it from one organization and the members of our public aren’t going to be treated differently depending on who’s sending them the bill.

Councilor Bencomo said yeah absolutely, I do think that’s an additional plus honestly.

We are a public interest right, we don’t have private interest attached to our services and so I do think that’ll be an additional plus I imagine that additionally folks in the county can have access to the indigent fund through the county if they’re not able to pay for ambulance service as they would as they do now correct? Yes, I wanted to really appreciate that you did note the current legislation that passed in Congress a couple of weeks ago. I was going to mention it if you didn’t. So, I’m very glad that you are sort of tracking that. I do feel like that’s almost like terrible timing of we’re shifting to this model knowing that our population highly rely on Medicaid. So, I do think, city manager, that this is yet another one of those things that we have to be very clear about what the big betrayal bill will be doing to our communities. And you don’t have to frame it that way, I will, but I do just want to note that it’s important. I think it’s really important that you added it on here as a potential risk to be aware of in the future.

Then I’m curious in terms of the fines that you talked about that were accumulated, are those going to be paid? Have they been paid? What will happen with those?

Chief Daniels said so, we were in discussion for I would say quite some time. I look at

Brad just to see what his reaction was going to be, but we were in discussion. We have been able to reconcile that amicably with AMR. So, they did bill us for the remainder of their year one. We’ve processed that we had a PO in place. We’ve processed what that payment would be to them. Total for the year one it was pretty I want to say just over $180,000. Oh, 133, that has been processed, and they should be receiving that payment and we’ll be able to close it out and whatever money in remaining goes back to the county because that was that initial 3 million they provided was part of their indigent fund reserves. So, we want to work to get them their that funding back as quick as possible. Under the current agreement, the contract will end

September 20th. We will at that point be able to completely close out with AMR and every bit of money that the county has paid for out of the indigent fund should be able to go back minus whatever AMR receives in the form of their billing.

Councilor Bencomo said you talked about two additional providers that are seeking certificates. Can you talk about who they are or that’s ok if not, I’m just curious.

Chief Daniels said yes, I can. One of them is a local company called EP Medical

Transport and the other is Elite Medical Transport who already operates interfacility throughout the state. They have several bases and all of this is public record on the

DOT. With regard to some of these specific I will have to defer to Brad, but those are the two providers who I believe we will see awarded by the DOT certificates and the capacity to transport.

Councilor Bencomo asked and they are private providers?

Chief Daniels said they are private providers.

Councilor Bencomo asked how does that work in the 911 system then? So, in the new model, how will that work? You tell me.

Chief Daniels said yes, so right now in the 911 system, they would not be a part of the

911 system. We would call upon them if we had a mass casualty incident or through whatever agreed upon mutual aid process that we have for those two providers and we’ve been very specific with them that we believe anybody who is a private provider in Dona Ana County should be a part of a mass casualty agreement if we have that and they’ve both been very willing to be a part of that. So, to the point one of them’s even sent us a draft MOU of what they use in other areas. So, they’re working with us to create a model that has that. And also, AMR has agreed that they would continue to be part of the 911 backup system since they already have the infrastructure within that. So, every one of the private providers is on board with continuing to be or to be a partner with our local response entities as well.

Councilor Bencomo said I understand. So, the backup, they’re part of the backup only if you call them. So, 911 wouldn’t dispatch them?

Chief Daniels said that’s correct, 911 would not dispatch them. If we ran into a situation where we just had a really rough series of calls that has all of our units and our immediate backup tied up, then we would contact them as our next in response entity.

Councilor Bencomo asked do we have any maybe this for the city manager, if there are any additional budget requests or needs at this moment as we shift and transition? Either one, I guess you can answer it too, yes.

Chief Daniels said I expect that there is going to be. We’re currently finalizing what those numbers would look like in the form of we have an idea of how many positions we’re expecting that we would need twelve positions for the peak hour units which are single role providers. We’re like I said we’re working with our union and our labor

management on what that looks like where I believe we are in agreement on what that would look like. We just have to go through the formality or the formal process of getting that situated and going through the position request forms and then the additional resources. We know we need four ambulances. We expect to receive some funding for up to two of those ambulances and we will likely be requesting either through ICIP or through other avenues to get the other two to see what we can do with regard to that.

Councilor Flores said thank you so much for your fast work on this, just really moved beautifully. I was pleasantly surprised to see that AMR would no longer be working with our fire department I read it in the Las Cruces, you know, the newspaper. Was it the Bulletin? It was the Bulletin. Okay whatever, but I read it and I was very pleased because I remember how contentious it was when the and he’s still the head of,

Joanquin something, the head of AMR and it wasn’t nice. So, I really, I want to congratulate you for doing this so smoothly and I just hope though that it really materializes. It just somehow it was difficult for me to follow how the funding would be coming in to support prompt service for our community. I want to thank you very much for all of that and thank you Brad for working with the chief to finalize all this and thank you.

Councilor Corran said I just wanted to thank you and echo a lot of what my colleagues have said. Thank you all for the long work that I know you have put into it. I remember the conversations about this back in the day when we were talking about the certificates in the TSI committee. So, I know that you all have been working on this really diligently and I just wanted to echo, you know, as new budget needs come up, I hope that you’ll, you know, really make sure that we know about them and understand the content, like this gives us a lot of really powerful context to make sure that those things are included in our budget conversations. I am going to get a little nerdy public health for a minute. This is my field in public health and also I really appreciate your extraordinary diplomacy, Chief Daniels, in talking about these things, again that’s I know that you all are really extraordinary collaborators with the community, but I’m just going to talk a little bit about the triangle of healthcare in America that we have cost, access and quality and those are the three things. Any change to one of those variables can dramatically affect the other two. This is my nerdy public health pitch, when everything is focused on cost, and I think I’m just going to lay this out there, as I think is known, AMR is part of a private equity owned corporate entity, I think the things that I’ve heard are not that the folks who work for AMR aren’t great, but that it’s really that they’re like being paid wages that are inappropriate, asked to work hours that are also inappropriate. I just want to point out that in our system the fire department provides extraordinarily high-quality service, and it is the single thing that I hear most commonly about in my position that the city does so well that residents trust enormously. I’m so proud that you all are seeing that you’re the best at this and taking that on. Also, I want to acknowledge that this is a function, and you didn’t necessarily mention it but part of this is also has a lot to do with I would argue the fire department doing healthcare is taking away from some of your other essential duties.

I think fire being one of those and I just want to sort of articulate what it means when a system that is focused on keeping costs as low as possible and I would add to this things like nursing homes, things like well in particular nursing homes, assisted living facilities that are also oriented toward keeping costs at a minimum. They

disproportionately impact public benefits, public systems like the 911 system, like the transport system of how do people get from one place to another and so I just want to sort of appreciate you and the city for thinking about this as our focus is quality and access and, in that triangle, we’re going to do those things the best. I think I just really want to appreciate that I have absolute faith that you will do this. I commit to us making sure that we do everything we can to enable it. So, cost, access, quality in case you guys wonder, it’s a triangle. Public health lesson ended. I do think just talking about, you alluded to it very briefly 2026 I would guess it’s estimated that between 12 and probably 25% of people in our community will immediately lose at that time people will lose health care completely and that will make us mean that we’re struggling to fill that gap as far as reimbursement goes. So I would also like to ask that we really consider because a 12 to 25% hit to $3 million in terms of reimbursements is a substantial amount of money and so I hope that we can keep that in our conversation and not affect the access component that we’re providing fundamentally at this but acknowledging that that’s going to be a definite at best 12% but again potentially up to 25% of people will not be able to have that reimbursement anymore. So, sorry I just wanted to elevate that part too.

Mayor Enriquez said You know it was asked about the 911 with the private, what about the interfacility transports? How are those going to be handled?

Chief Daniels said the interfacility transports right now, our first transition meeting is scheduled for this coming Wednesday and because we don’t know how the DOT is going to rule on the other two providers, generally when they’re not tied together, the facilities will have the ability to contact the individual providers and really work with those providers, the IFT providers on the private side to set up the most appropriate time for their patients transfer and when it aligns, that’s kind of the value of having multiple providers in the system. One of the issues or one of the areas, and we’ve contested to it when you only have a sole provider, and you have a mixed system where interfacility units are being also used for the 911 system or 911 system units are being used for interfacilities. One of the concerns is that you’re going to have a

911 unit, and a private provider tied up on the same interfacility transfer request and then it creates inefficiencies in the 911 system. What we believe is that we will be able to work with the providers so that they can work that out and then educate the facilities that if they have them set up, they need to call and cancel in a timely manner so they’re not burdening the rest of the interfacility system, but that’s something that in speaking with the leadership of all the providers, they’re all willing to continue to get at the table. We intend on continuing. So, for the first time in this system’s history, to my knowledge last year we started an interfacility stakeholder meeting where we invite all the facilities to just listen to any roadblocks, bottlenecks, things that are bothering them about the interfacility transfer system and we hope to continue that. We started that with AMR, we hope to continue that with any of the entities that are a part of the system because we believe we still have a responsibility to the system at large and just because we’re not enforcing that side in the form of a contract, we don’t want to lose sight of what is going on in the system at large. So, we want to maintain situational awareness because well, as I stated in my presentation, we believe that backlogs into the interfacility system will trickle down and affect the 911 systems negatively. So, we want to make sure that we have effectiveness in all areas and we’re not sacrificing one for the other.

Mayor Enriquez said and the other thing is I’m glad to hear that AMR is still willing to work, get their certificate and be of service, not being a contract position, but being of service to help with the 911 and the interfacility calls as well. So that’s good news, that’s good to hear that they’re willing to work in this community. I know you know this as well as I do and just want to share with the rest is that you know part of that two tier why we got away from that was because of the membership of Las Cruces fire that started as EMTs and then went to intermediate at the time now they’re AEMTs and then to paramedic. Individuals like DC Heck, you know DC or battalion chief

Mouchette that came into the department as paramedics and led the way and were the pioneers that others followed. I know the dilemma is they all get promoted, you know that’s the thing, all the paramedics get promoted, right? Because you aspire to that highest level and it’s a reflection and at one point in 2018 AMR had 32 paramedics, Las Cruces fire had 42 or 45. That’s why the investment, that’s why the two-tier went away. We had the resources, we had the personnel, we were providing the quality, and we had the access as Councilor Corran educated us and so that’s what it’s about and that’s what we continue to do. So, thank you and keep up the good work and we’re here to support you.

Chief Daniels said to add to your fun fact, right, in 2002 when Deputy Chief Heck got into the department, he was one of three paramedics in our department and today we are to your point the largest employer of paramedics in Dona Ana County. We have

60 plus we have three people currently in paramedic school and another three identified to start in August. So, we’re continuing to build upon that.

Councilor Mattiace asked if I may ask, Chief, just for the public to understand, could you just name a few of the stakeholders that call the ambulance services? Is that the hospitals and maybe the public would just appreciate that.

Chief Daniels said yes, so when I talk about our facilities stakeholders, I’m speaking to our urgent cares, any one of our nursing homes within the city, any of our advanced care areas. Even the hospitals are part of the transfer system, whether they’re transferring between local hospitals or they’re transferring to El Paso to a higher level of care or they’re transferring people home to discharge them from the floor so they can get to their home and either in home health care or in the care of their families.

Also, our hospice agencies in town are also part of the interfacility transfer system.

So, most of the time it’s a lot broader than one can imagine. Most of the time we think it’s these short trips, but it’s dialysis clinics. It’s any entity in our area who either transfers patients who need to be on a gurney home or in between facilities are affected by this.

5. ADJOURNMENT 5.1 Councilor Johana Bencomo moved, seconded by Councilor Yvonne Flores, to adjourn at 2:45 p.m.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: Councilor Johana Bencomo

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