The Las Cruces City Council held a work session on Monday, March 23, 2026, at approximately 1 p.m., presided over by Mayor Eric Enriquez. The session focused on the preliminary Fiscal Year 2026-2027 budget review and the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) update. Council heard presentations from multiple department heads on how council priorities—including youth engagement, affordable housing, traffic safety, mental health expansion, and IPRA—are being addressed. No formal votes were taken except adjournment.
Your life well, good afternoon. Welcome to the work session. Today is Monday, March 23rd, 2026. It's approximately 1 p.m. I am Mayor Eric Enriquez. We will start with a moment of silence for the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces as they protect our interests around the globe as well as the courageous men and women of the Las Cruces Police and Fire Department. If you join me in the pledge, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. So first on the agenda, we got item one point one fiscal year twenty twenty-sixth uh twenty twenty-seven budget review. Before you get started, listening, I just want to acknowledge uh the NMSU students that are here in the audience today with Sabina Hirschhauer and her students. Thank you for being here. Always Yeah, always glad to have you. Okay, Les. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, Leslie Doyle for the record. Today I want to talk about the budget budget priorities that you guys have given us over the course of the last couple months. I also am going to be speaking to you with some very preliminary numbers on both budget and or both revenue and expense. And then we're going to have the departments actually come up and share with you specifically how the budget budget priorities that you guys have given to us are incorporated in the budget. Wanted to make sure everybody is aware that we still have you know some time before we finalize. So these are the things that we have identified that have been mentioned across the board by different counselors, as well as uh in the budget retreat. We heard multiple times as we started to evaluate the data that we got. So we've got youth engagement, affordable housing, traffic safety, pedestrian safety, infrastructure improvements, Muni Court improvements, animal welfare, partnerships with the public schools, utility preparedness, communications, IPRA, and mental health expansion. So these are the things that we saw that we wanted to make sure that were addressed today because these are the priorities that we heard multiple times. Also just some highlights that are currently in the budget. The transit transfer, this is the required transfer that we have for our match for our transit grant, and then uh a hundred thousand dollars to address gun violence. Also, Sia Valley Community of Hope outreach, Monoe Mono, Healthcare Services, Fire Station Repairs. This is not the only money that is allocated to fire station repairs, but this is one specific uh area that was specific to those repairs, facility maintenance, various projects across the board, traffic calming, and fix it fares. So these are things that are currently already in the budget, and we'll do address some of those priorities. So what you have before you is our preliminary general fund revenue projection. You can see it's about 185 million for context. It was adopted in fiscal 26 at 166 million, and then recently you guys did a budget adjustment because we wanted to bring it into more actual, and it is now a revised budget of 178 million. For gross receipts tax, we looked at you know a couple of different things across the board, but ultimately what we settled on was a 3% increase year over year for gross receipts tax. Fees and charges are actually those revenues that are budgeted by the departments for their uh programs, and then property tax is about a million dollars more this year than it was last year, keeping in mind that we do not yet know the effect of the veterans' exemption. So I'm a little conservative there, but as the year goes on, we may adjust that. Uh franchise fees of 4.1 and then cannabis of 5.08. So that is our revenue projection, preliminary for the fiscal year 27 budget. So now I want to talk about expenditures. You can see here we have personnel operating capital and net transfers, personnel at 130 million operating at 52, and capital at 477. One of the things that I do want to point out is that net transfers is we budgeted it last year about 37 million, and this year it has been brought down pretty significantly. So that is something that we did talk about at the budget retreat as one of the priorities that we wanted to do. And then just because uh transfers is such a big area, we wanted to show the bulk of it is debt service, then we have transit, which is the $4 million that I just mentioned, capital, and other, and other is inclusive of like our prisoner care, um what else? I know my budget team told me, but uh prisoner care and liability insurance, things like that. So total expenses about 205 million, and that is actually all that I have for you, but I'm happy to stand for any questions. Yes, Councilor Batista. Um if you go back to page uh I think it was page four. Um you made a comment right after looking at the uh youth out of school time program, you know, that it's quite expensive. Um sometimes I like to see how many people are reached based on the expenses. You know, sometimes it looks expensive, but if you're reaching 15,000, 20,000 children, and you do a little bit of division, you know, that it doesn't become too expensive. Maybe if you could just give me a breakdown if you have time. Yes, yeah, you know, the impact, how many people are we serving when we spend so many millions? Mayor Counselor Matisse, absolutely. That's information that we will get for you.