I pledge an agency via the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands on individual liberty and justice for all.

They were emailed to everyone.

Has everyone had a chance to look at them?

Any changes, additions, or corrections?

May I have a motion to accept them?

I make a motion to accept the minutes.

Second.

Roll call.

Commissioner Romero, do you approve?

Commissioner Herrera.

Commissioner Herrera, do you approve the minutes?

I thought she was on.

Oh, yeah.

Commissioner French Barger.

Yes.

Commissioner Leading.

Yes.

Commissioner Marsh.

Yes.

Commissioner.

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

Do you approve the minutes?

Connie, yes.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Minutes for July 21st have been approved.

Thank you.

Next, we'll have the staff presentations, reports, and comments.

First is projects update from Diane Sony, Projects Division Manager.

Good evening, Ms.

Chairwoman, Commissioners.

I'm not telling you anything new.

This is going to be very similar to our last two updates.

We're just still going through the process of hopefully wrapping up campus park phase two.

We've had some warranty type items and some changes as we saw some of the original design elements as it related to drainage and a couple of ADA ramp sections that we've needed to go back and modify.

And so we're in the process of doing the change orders for that and all of the rest of our procurement and actual implementation of that.

So my hope is that by the end of September we will see everything complete and in campus park phase two will be officially done.

Pretty extensive.

They have really deep footers and they're pretty robust, so that'll be interesting.

Once those get put in, they'll be able to do much more quickly on the site.

And our hope is to still have it substantially complete by the end of this calendar year.

That means that it should be at final completion within 45 calendar days of substantial completion.

So certainly by February of 2026, hopefully everything will be done, open, and ready for the public to use.

But that takes even more time, and so we're going to see if there's an existing larger contract that we can piggyback off of and utilize that previous IFB that other agencies have done.

We're looking at what's called an omnia contract, also a state contract at this time, possibly CES, but because it's state funds, there's a little bit of problems with that.

So probably a different or agency.

This was the second of our 2024 bond money.

So the first project that we completed were the basketball courts at Star Heights.

That was a great replacement.

We replaced the asphalt courts that were cracked and just constantly needing repair.

We had repaired them multiple times, replaced them with concrete, so those should last a long time.

And then the second one was to add this structure and we'll place the playground at Vista Sandia.

It's one of our older structures.

And we have all of the materials delivered.

And so right now they're still trying to finish up projects that were going to be done before the end of the school year or the summer before the start of the school year.

So they're trying to get those completed as they need to be because school's back in session, and as soon as they're done with that, they will start on our project.

We also have the metal star heights shade structure.

This is really old COVID CDBG money, community development block grant money.

And we have encumbered the funds, we've receded the materials, and now we just need to get an installation.

It is a metal structure intended to match the other metal gazebo at Star Heights.

It will be adjacent to the updated basketball courts that I was just describing, and there will be a sidewalk going to that.

There will be some picnic tables and benches, and so the COVID money could be used for outdoor programming and outdoor gathering spaces.

And it was an area that was not really actively being used, and it was a great opportunity to add some more shade to that park.

So that project we are awaiting the receipt of that equipment or materials, and again, it's the same contractor who's doing the Vista Sandia project.

So as soon as one project ends, we're hoping he will just roll into the next one and we can get those done before school is out next summer.

So that's our hope with that.

I also wanted to give a quick update on the sports complex, the Rio Rancho High, the high resort Rio Rancho Sports Complex lighting project that we had concluded this spring, early summer for the little league fields.

Since those were turned on and made available, little league has been using them definitely on a regular basis.

And now as we start to go into fall ball and we're gonna see some of these time changes, they're asking to use those lights, and it's a great improvement to that facility because it's extending the playing time.

Where before, you know, at dusk they had to stop playing and had to try and shoehorn in a lot of games and practices and things, and now they have more latitude because we can extend the play not just on weekdays but also on some of the weekends.

And we do have some of our other groups like U Triple SA and other tournament holders utilizing at least the field seven lighting, but as far as the little league fields go, um, it's been a really good benefit, I think, to the community.

Then I wanted to give you if there's no questions about that, of course.

As new projects come up, we're still going through procurement on quite a few other projects.

As we get further along, I'll give you some updates on those.

But if there's no questions about kind of these construction projects at this time, I was gonna go into the Boski and then into a little bit about Keeper Rancho Beautiful.

Okay.

So we were able to work with our Bernalillo Forestry District, State Forestry District.

They secured funds to work on fuel reduction within the Rio Rancho Bosqui, and for a current work plan that we were we were addressing with forestry.

It's focusing still in the Willow Creek area simply because it is very popular.

It is a very broad area.

Much of the rest of the Rio Rancho Bosqui is kind of along almost like a cliff face.

It's very narrow, but this is a very broad area.

And there's a large amount of cottonwood forest.

In our middle boski, there's also a large amount of cottonwood forest, however, it happens to be outside of the city limits and what's called accretion land, meaning the land didn't used to be there as willows grew up and sediment was trapped by that.

It's created land where there was not a bank before, and it's created even cottonwood forest in that area.

But it's a little questionable as to who has jurisdiction there.

Obviously, if there's a fire or something, we would fight it equally regardless.

But when it comes to doing certain other activities, there has to be approvals from things like Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps of Engineers, sometimes the Sandia Pueblo.

But we're able to at least utilize these funds in the Willow Creek Boski as we are the discrete and defined owner of that property.

They've identified funds to do two approaches, actually, I should say three approaches.

The first one being utilizing the goats to graze again.

So we're very excited because again, if you recall me saying in the past, we can't just graze one year.

We need to graze in successive years to continue to remove the seed source because those seeds can last as much as eight to ten years.

So even if we were to eliminate weeds for a few years, they could still come back.

We need to keep having the goats consume them and remove that seed source and also give the an opportunity for other native plants.

And in this case, because we're seeing a fair amount of desertification in our Willow Creek area, as our water table drops and the river continues to move to the eastern bank of the river basin.

We're seeing things like salt grass, other grasses, maybe smaller shrubs and things like even New Mexico olive and things like that.

I think we will be surprised and see the type of vegetation there go back and forth as we have different types of climate responses.

As this year we thought we were going to have kosher taller than me, which is a type of invasive weed, and that's one of the main things we want the goats to consume.

And you know, it's maybe this tall if this is the ground.

And so I'm I'm pleased by that, but it also means that it's a really water-starved kind of environment.

And at this time of year, I would still expect to see a lot of birds coming through and migrating and taking advantage of even smaller seeds, and I've really seen very few birds.

Um, so that makes me a little bit sad, but I just have to be patient with nature.

And in the meantime, we still stay our course to try and remove those non-native weeds.

And so part of the forestry program is to have grazing, and then also to have a wood contractor come in and remove the dead and down wood.

Typically, you could leave that in a bosky setting, but historically, a lot of that wood would have been inundated with flooding, or it even would have been carried away into the river by flooding, and our bank is so high.

And since the Kochidi Dam was constructed, we don't see that level of flooding.

So when we do have die-off, we just have the wood sitting there.

And in a couple of the spaces, it's literally posing a fire hazard to the surrounding cottonwood forest.

Or in some instances, it's a little too close for comfort to some of the homes.

And so removing that in mass, where we will be working with that contractor.

They'll be cutting it into four foot lengths.

Some of it, if it's smaller, they will be chipping it and taking the chips to the Willow Creek parking lot.

The wood that they cut in four-foot lengths will also be taken and stacked in the Willow Creek parking lot, but it will not be available to the public until the contractor's work is completed.

Just because there's machinery, there's a lot of stacking things, and we don't want it to be unsafe.

We're hoping that they will start the wood removal sometime this week and conclude their work either by the end of this month or the very beginning of October.

As soon as that work is concluded, my understanding is then the goats will come in because the seeds are starting to ripen right now on the kosha.

And so we would like to have the seeds removed and somewhat masticated and kind of neutralized in that respect before it freely goes to seed.

And typically that's by the end of November, depending on how dry things are.

So we're hoping to get kind of a one-to-punch.

And then the third thing they're going to do is we have had some resprouts of salt cedar and Russian olive in our boski.

There is a fair amount in the accretion land, and while we can't treat that at this time, we will be working with that same wood removal contractor.

They will be cutting and spraying any resprouts that they see of the salt cedar or Russian olive again to remove that seed source.

We do try to remove that that seed source because if that does take hold again, which it did about believe it or not, almost 20, 15, 20 years ago, we had huge stands of that in that section of our bosque.

And between their work, um work from the previous nonprofit Friends Rear Ranch open space known as Foros and other activities from forestry and their then inmate crew, which no longer exists.

They removed successively year after year, resprouts of that material, so it didn't continue to reseed in that in that habitat.

So it's a pretty unique situation along the Rio Grande and a lot of other communities have been um kind of jealous.

I'm just gonna say, um, saying that wow, that was really successful.

But then a lot of these other communities have different types of habitat, a different type of floodplain and other conditions that lead to recurrence of that in their boski, but we are very fortunate that um we've been able to enjoy quite a few years with that, like that being an overwhelming situation.

So again, the hope is that that can be concluded before the end of this calendar year, and that just gives us an opportunity to continue to use city funds that were allocated for the goat grazing to some other locations to do some other work a little bit further south.

So we're just gonna continue to perpetuate this kind of um fuel reduction management as we can.

If there are no questions about that, I'll then go into Keeper Rancho Beautiful.

And I apologize if I'm too monotone today.

Um so seeing no questions, um, we had this on Saturday between 8 and 11.

We had our fall community cleanup, and that's where we encourage people to help us remove litter and illegal dump sites throughout the city.

We had over 500 volunteers register.

Um I don't know if they all showed up because it ended up raining a bit.

Um, and we also had a thank you party partially supported by waste management to say thanks to all of our volunteers, um, where it was catered through a food truck from I think it was Blake's, was it not Blake's Ladderburger?

And so um they're saying that they don't have all of their numbers as of today, but again, they had about 500 volunteers show up.

They know that they had over two tons of just small bagged trash that our own staff picked up and took to the landfill, and they were weighed for that.

They're still waiting on the final numbers from the roll-offs that were filled by volunteers on that.

But overall, it seemed like a pretty successful event, and they already have some plans to do a cleanup with Boy Scouts on October 25th.

And then um, we also had our advisory board members, they came out out to help um on Saturday as well.

And they're also going to help with the Sandoval County Free Landfill Day coming up this Saturday.

So people just need to be able to show that they are Rio Rancho residency and they can go to the Sandoval County landfill for free this time for regular waste to disposal.

That's it.

That's it.

Thank you, Diane.

Any questions, comments?

All right, then we'll move on to parks and facilities update.

Charles Fernandez, superintendent who is on Zoom.

Yes, hello, commissioners.

Um, as I most of the time start um my presentation, I like to talk about our employees and kind of where we're at with staffing.

So as of now, we're uh we're down seven employees.

We had one start today, which is good, but that's not counting that still we're seven employees, and then we have four in process upstairs.

So hopefully they make it through that whole process, and we can get some more on board because we desperately need them.

Um as far as out in the parks.

Well, as you know, we're about one week left of summer.

So as we head towards fall, we we've started to turn down our irrigation um watering times.

The nights are a little bit cooler now, and uh the days aren't getting as high, so we can turn down those times and and slowly just prepare for the fall season.

Um we're still fighting weeds though throughout the city.

Uh it looks like to me like we've done a much better job this year than last year.

Uh we haven't really hardly gotten any calls on weeds.

So we did get some parks to have some uh pre-emergent spray, but other places we're still having to manually just try to our best to keep with the weeds, especially with all the rain that we've been getting.

So uh as we've talked before, that's a good and bad thing, I guess.

Um as far as uh couple projects we've done.

We've painted three pickleball courts, two over at Mariposa and one at Leon Grande Park.

We repainted just the whole basketball court at Leon and then restriped it for basketball as well as the pickleball.

We've also cut a large cottonwood tree over at Enchanted Hills Park that was just completely dry, and so when it gets windy, we were losing branches, and it just was time to I kind of like to wait for that stuff in the winter, but with um that wood being softer on cottonwoods, I just wanted to go ahead and get it taken down, and so we did that.

As far as some of those good rains that we had, we did manage to turn off our watering clocks during that time period, which is good because then we can always uh save some money and save some water.

So I'll all in all I am happy when we get the rings.

So um that's really all I about I had this time, but I'd be happy to try and answer any questions if you have any.

Any questions?

No.

Thank you, Charles.

Thank you.

Next, we have the deputy director's report, Noah Trujillo, Deputy Director.

Yep, good evening, commissioners.

Um, I'm gonna give you an update, uh, a major update on our aquatics division.

Also update you with some of our events and then uh program update.

Um, starting with aquatic or the aquatics update.

Um I'm just gonna read you this description.

I have that this is the verbiage that went out to the community.

Uh the Ru Ranch Aquatic Center will undergo a major innovation to improve the comfort efficiency and appearance of the facility.

The project will include the installation of new heating, ventilation, air conditioning, HVAC, and dehumidification systems throughout the building.

In addition to these critical infrastructure updates, the center will receive several cosmetic improvements, including new stucco, rain gutters, and updated interior and exterior paint.

Once the renovation is complete, guests can look forward to a quieter, more comfortable and visually refreshed environment at the aquatic center.

Project costs will be 3.2 million dollars.

Um, and the project started today, so and it ends uh and it will come to completion at the end of October.

The aquatic center will not be operational during this period.

Um as an accommodation of the public, rainbow pool will be open during this time.

So that's um if if we had the public uh use the aquatic center, they are now being shifted over to uh rainbow pool for the next six weeks.

As far as our events go, we had Pooch Plunge a couple weeks ago at Haynes Pool.

We got the food truck fiesta taking place at uh Cabazon this upcoming weekend, and we're in the planning stages of fall festival, which is October 18th.

We do that in conjunction with the Real Rancho Event Center that'll take place here at Campus Park this year.

Last last year we shifted it over to the real rancho event center uh because phase two of campus park was being done.

Um and then we're also in the planning stages for winter fest, which will place take place on December 6th this year, which is a Saturday.

We're shifting that off of the Friday evening that we've done the last couple years and move into a Saturday afternoon event.

Um as far as the program update, um our biggest program right now is our basketball league, which is we are taking registrations for right now.

We're close to 300 registered.

The deadline is October 17th, and we will have approximately 475 participants in that program, and obviously we'll be um working with Real Rancho Public Schools and using their gyms for that program.

And that's all I have.

Any questions, commissioners?

Comments?

Thank you, Noah.

You're welcome.

Next, we have the director's report, Connie Peterson director.

Good evening, commissioners.

Um, I provided you a copy of my director's report, and you will see that Noah um talked to you a little bit about some of the upcoming activities.

One of the past events we did have at Cabazone back in August was the back to school roomage sale.

That was back on August 9th.

And this is just a great opportunity for our community to come together.

While we support families as they prepare for the kids to go back to school, it's an affordable way for parents and students to find gently used clothes or school supplies or backpacks and other essentials related to school and the rummage sale also encourages recycling and reusing items, promotes sustainability and reducing wage waste, which is important uh to us being that our department houses our keeper rancho beautiful program.

So that's something they're always encouraging.

Um again, it fosters a strong sense of community.

We had about 60 sellers so up this year to participate in that rummage sale.

And this is an event we've been putting on for about 15 years.

Uh again, that took place in at Cabazone back in August.

Uh again, uh Pooch Plunge.

Uh no already talked a little bit about that.

There's some information about the upcoming food fiesta.

He touched a little bit on the basketball program.

I always like to remind uh the commission and some of the public that we have a licensed preschool as part of our services.

The kids' zone preschool is facilitated by certified teachers at our Savannah Grande recenter.

And the program provides a nurturing and educational environment for children ages three to five.

So it's for the kids who go back to before they go into the kindergarten program at the schools.

It's a state license program, and like any preschool program, it's designed to help uh young learners build self-confidence and develop important uh learning skills.

The curriculum like all preschools that are um funded by uh that are certified by the state, uh covers a wide range of subjects, including math and language and literacy and science and creative arts and the the kids get to participate in activities like music and painting and drawing and uh physical but physical development as well.

Um it's a flexible schedule at Savana Grande.

Uh families can participate in a half day program or a two-day program or a full-day program, whatever's convenient for them.

And um it's also very affordable.

Uh I mentioned already that it's staffed by city staff, uh, but the teachers are licensed through the state.

Um we have a great teacher to child ratio, which ensures personalized attention and also a safe learning environment.

Uh again, the the preschool at Savannah has many brand benefits.

Um it's a structured setting where kids can develop fundamental skills that they need before they head into kindergarten.

So if parents are interested in registering their kids for the city's preschool program, they can reach out to Rachel or Lawrence at the Savannah Grande Recreation Center.

And uh Noah talked a little bit about fall festival.

Uh there's a little bit more information on the back of that, and of course, all of these programs that both Noah and I have talked about, um, and including some of the pictures that we had from our previous events that Diane was talking about are all on our Facebook page if you want to check out those photos.

And uh outside of that, I don't have any questions unless you have some for me.

Any questions, commissioners?

Comments.

Thank you, Connie.

We didn't have anyone um signed up for uh public comment, did we?

No.

Okay.

Um do we have any comments by the commissioners?

Any questions?

No?

No comments.

Okay.

So the meeting is adjourned at 6.29 p.m.