Candidates discuss construction, home building issues

Six of the seven candidates running for mayor of Las Cruces participated in an Oct. 5 forum hosted by the Las Cruces Home Builders Association.

Present were Mike Tellez, Eric Enriquez, Alexander Paige Baca Fresquez, Kasandra Gandara, Isabella Solis and Gina Ortega. The one candidate absent was Mariah Hernandez.

The questions presented to the candidates were based in topics relevant to home builders and construction professionals, such as building costs, affordable housing and economic development.

Here are some of the candidates’ comments on building costs and how city policies might affect them.

Enriquez: In Hobbs, I oversaw codes enforcement. What we need to do is look at the valuation of builders and what we can do about time, we need to expedite our procedures on permitting. Time is money. We need to look at impact fees and review where is it going and why is it being used.

Tellez: We need to look at places like Phoenix, that works with contractors. Here, we run off contractors. Our high minimum wage is another thing driving up costs for contractors.

Fresquez: (addressing the builders) We need you to put together a list of increased costs, and learn which policies are specifically affecting you.

Gandara: There are lots of different factors. I’ll get involved with schools, The city has purchased very costly software that should be making it easier to reduce time frames. We have a one-stop shop and I know there are still some issues with that and the city needs to work on that. We have to build consensus to ensure we have good policy for you. I would leverage the relationships I have at a state level, to address construction industry issues. I would also like to  streamline and standardize. inspection process.

Solis: We need to make sure when a policy is implemented, if it is inhibiting to what we are doing in our community, we need to review it. Building codes need to be reviewed to make sure that they are current and provide safety for all.

Ortega: We know it’s an issue. We need to review the policy. Why is the policy hindering them from doing what they have to do. Can that policy be changed? Looking at the policies and saying what can we do? What can we do in order to help?

Here are some of the candidates’ comments regarding affordable housing, and what a mayor might be able to do to address it:

Solis: We need to create incentives and work on the policies we have in place right now as far as the delays. I think affordable housing has its purposes and as a mayor I think I could help in that process to be able to change some of those things. I want to see what we can be able to do.

Fresquez: Let the open market, the free market, solve the problem by building more houses that are the size and cost that meet the needs.

Gandara: I think we need a variety of housing stock, and that means looking at our continuum, ensuring that we have the proper transitional housing, permanent housing, missing middle, those are the things that are really important to all of us. Being able to have robust communication with the homebuilders and the like is extremely important. I’ll have my door open.

Enriquez: In Hobbs, we kept it simple. We got rid of a lot of regulation that hinders us here. Above all, mindset of people in the city needs to be that it’s more important to us. We’ve got to show that what you’re doing for us is so important that we need to get it out and we need to get it done quickly.

Tellez: Is it government housing we’re looking at? What are we looking at? I’m amazed at how we keep on lowering everything to meet people who do not want to go out and work hard and do what we all did to go out and buy a home. So what is an affordable house? Is it a government house or is it just a house that anyone can buy?

Montoya: It goes back to reviewing policy. What in the policy is hindering us from being able to get these homes built? As a city council, what can we do to streamline that process? Affordable housing is important and I know city council does talk about that. But we need to take steps to change it.

On the subject of economic development, LCHBA representative Steve Montanez asked this question of candidates: “What can you do to make our community more welcoming to business?”

Enriquez: I feel we have all the ingredients here to really thrive on economic development and get some good paying jobs, especially for our graduates at NMSU. We have White Sands Missile Range, NASA, we have Raytheon, we have spaceport now. What I feel as your mayor, I would establish relationships and go shopping for these economic opportunities. But if we don’t clean up our house to make it safe, no one’s going to come.

Tellez: There’s three things you have to do to encourage economic development here. One is workforce. The workforce is easy. I’ve talked to the colleges. Number two is safety. Our crime index is 5, with 100 being best and zero being worst. Santa Teresa’s crime index is 89. We’re at 5, Santa Teresa’s at 89 and … El Paso is at a 32. What we need to do is take care of the issue of safety.

Ortega: We started our business in 2006 and it took almost two years to open it. That doesn’t work. We’re not a business-friendly city. We didn’t realize our city council didn’t recognize that until about 2019, and then all of a sudden they had a program that actually streamlined it. Well, obviously, unfortunately, it has not been streamlined. So what we need to do is look at that process.

Solis: I believe in economic development. But first we need to address safety, with humanitarian issue that can be easily addressed. I believe we need to develop the West Mesa industrial park.

Gandara: Eight years ago, the city didn’t have an economic development department, well we helped build that. We now have flights going to Albuquerque and we have been able to draw our first Fortune 500 company and four in the queue. We have a lot of leakage that’s leaving our community in the area of healthcare. We need to focus our attention on healthcare. We need to focus on how to keep and retain our physicians especially in the area of specialties.

Frequez: We know that we create our own problems in our community by not investing in our youth. We need to put skills-based training int