State of the City Address

Good afternoon, everyone.  Bienvenidos todos.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

I want to welcome this afternoon my fellow councilors, our city staff, and all who are watching on Las Cruces TV or our city YouTube channel.  I especially want to welcome my wife and first lady, Rosie Miyagishima, who is watching at home.

It’s notable today, two years after COVID cases first appeared in our city, how prominently the pandemic still figures in our thinking.  While conditions have improved, we now know how much we all depend on our essential workers, our public safety personnel, and one another to keep our community safe. We’ve created health protocols to protect our residents.  We have delivered and continue to deliver millions of dollars of support to local families, businesses, nonprofits, and vulnerable populations.  The pandemic is still with us, but we hope to have come through the worst of it, and that successively better days lie ahead.

It would take the rest of my address to cover the extraordinary work done by our city staff over the past two years: all the extra hours; the uncertainty and creative problem-solving; the many who put their own health and safety at risk.  Words cannot express my gratitude to each one of you for your service during this difficult time. 

What stands out to me just as powerfully, though, as we move gradually toward normal lives, is the level at which so much of our city’s life went on just like always, even when conditions were at their very worst. 

Fires and other emergencies were responded to, clean water still flowed from our taps, sidewalks were put in and parks were maintained.   We hired a new city manager and had a local election.  We attracted new businesses and better jobs for our residents, and helped existing businesses adapt and expand. We redoubled our efforts for those in need.  We took care of one another and the tasks before us, and in thousands of quiet ways got important work done.

In short, this year you don’t have to take my word for it.  As proven by an exhaustive two-year stress test, the state of our city is strong.

Clearly COVID was a challenge to manage.  The virus and how to respond to it were moving targets.  Our response happened in real time, without rehearsal or script, where our commitment and adaptability were constantly tested.  It’s easy to overlook now how quickly we as a world community responded, and what a remarkable achievement that response has been.

A brand-new virus moving at great speed through an interconnected world.  Millions of deaths worldwide, with nearly a million in the United States alone.  An economy in disarray but our scientists were hard at work, and in less than a year – through the combined efforts of tens of thousands of scientists around the world – a virus of dazzling complexity had been decoded. A highly effective vaccine was created.  Developed under one president and implemented under another, that vaccine has been administered over the past year to over 200 million Americans.  Over ten billion doses have been administered around the world.  Millions of lives have been saved.

And yet we live in a strange time when even this great accomplishment has been politicized.  We find ourselves at odds with one another over almost everything, in a national dialogue that confuses and degrades.  Anger and suspicion now threaten to upend us, in ways that the even a worldwide pandemic was unable to do.

That’s why I want to draw our attention first today not just to the human capacity for innovation, but to the simple fact of good government, providing us service every day.  A city government established and directed by the people of our community: real-life human beings in charge of ourselves. It’s as miraculous in its own way as our technological achievements.  We may disagree at times on the best path to take, but I’m grateful every day for the process and shared commitment that create and sustain us, and how seriously our residents, council members, and staff take the roles that we play.

It’s been interesting that our current national clash of perspectives is often framed as a tradeoff between individual freedom and community well-being.  I don’t think this framing is accurate. In my experience, freedom and well-being are not in opposition but closely related, if not ultimately one and the same thing.

I’m informed in this view by the evolution of our own city over the past dozen years, and the vision that our residents have created through the councilors they elect.  We have come to see freedom and well-being much more broadly than whether someone wears a mask or gets a vaccination.  Those questions are more about balancing the freedom to act as we please with the ability to live securely among our neighbors, a tradeoff that has been argued out since our republic began. 

What I would like to talk about today is a much wider and still evolving understanding of freedom; one that will continue to guide us as a city, long after the COVID virus and current controversies have passed away.

All of us defend the freedom to speak, worship and live our lives openly without fear or intimidation.  We insist on the freedom to manage own affairs and move freely through our lives.  These rights were self-evident to our nation’s founders and continue as central tenets for us all. 

What we have come to recognize ever more keenly, though, in recent years, is that the freedom to exercise those rights differs greatly from person to person. Some people enjoy more freedom than others. Others face clear obstacles to their own self agency, and ability to make progress through the world.   

I’ve talked about this before in these addresses, but the basic principle has become increasingly clear.  Much of it is just common sense.

If a person is sick and can’t receive treatment, his or her freedom to work, have relationships and enjoy life is drastically reduced in comparison to someone who is healthy.

If we’re unsafe in our neighborhood and afraid to go out, we’re no freer than if someone had come by and locked us in.

If we’re unable to receive a good education, our choices are limited. Without access to transportation, our range of movement is small.  If we don’t earn a living wage or can’t secure adequate housing, we live at the margins of our own community, isolated from its social and economic life.

Obviously, there are many differences between us; none of our situations is the same.  What we have shared is a commitment to build a city that works for all of us, a structure that allows us lead lives that are meaningful and free.

Much of this platform for enacting those lives, in a well-run city like our own, we take for granted, from responsive emergency services to weekly waste pickup to functioning traffic lights as we drive across town.  We may not notice these things, but we would notice their absence.  It helps to remember again that none of this happens by accident.  Infrastructure comes into being through a democratic process, where an active and engaged city council, chosen in regular elections, works with a city manager and dedicated professional staff to enact the wishes of our community.

Through that democratic process we ensure city services, plan, and seek to build opportunity and agency for all of our residents. We identify and address barriers our neighbors might be facing, so that all may prosper and live freely in our midst.

I mentioned earlier that we hired a new city manager during the pandemic, Ifo Pili.  It has been helpful, Ifo, to have your insights and experience, and to see our vision for the city through new eyes, especially as you’ve come to know who we are and the challenges we face.

One of the first things I’m sure you recognized is that this is a community where people care deeply about one another, whatever our varied backgrounds or status.  It couldn’t have taken long to see that we have an alert and proactive city council, that wants to get important things done. We’re grateful that we share with you not just caring hearts, but a strong commitment to financial stewardship, and to spending wisely those resources we have. Congratulations to you and our entire staff on the recent independent audit that found city finances in excellent shape, with key administrative safeguards in place.  

Ifo came to us with a strong background in economic development.  He has been open about how his own approach has changed as he’s come to know our city. He’s made clear that the purpose of economic development for Las Cruces is to lift everyone up. It calls for us to develop a local workforce with highly marketable skills.  It means that we will actively recruit those new businesses that seem committed to our community, and only those that pay a living wage.  It was Ifo’s insight to identify access to housing as a component of economic development, moving our Housing and Community Resources division into the Economic Development Department itself.

One of our most forward-thinking initiatives over the last year has been to address a rapidly changing climate, one of the greatest threats to freedom and well-being our species has ever known.  It’s not just the increasingly desperate warnings of our scientific community. We have all witnessed the alarming rise in our own summer temperatures; skies hazy from wildfires in neighboring states; the rapid reduction in annual snowpack that threatens our water. This is a challenge that we can’t ignore as a city or human community, burying our heads in the sand while we hope it goes away. 

That’s why the proactivity of our councilors has been so admirable. In the past year we have enacted an Electric Vehicle Policy for our city fleet and a requirement for zero carbon energy for new buildings owned or subsidized by the city.  We are at work on new code that will require all new buildings in our city to be electric-ready, including wiring to support electric vehicle chargers.  We are confident that these new technologies will make our lives increasingly safer, more economical, and healthier in the years to come.

We have already had the benefit of an a very successful water conservation program developed by our city-owned Las Cruces Utilities.  Now we are asking them to move as quickly as possible away from the burning of natural gas to heat buildings and water. Obviously, this will take time, so there’s little time to lose, as we seek to avoid new gas furnaces and other appliances that will lock in carbon emissions for decades.  It’s difficult to overstate how much things will change in response to climate in coming years, and we want our city and residents well positioned to take advantage of those changes as they come.

To our colleagues in Utilities, please accept our gratitude for decades of low cost, dependable gas service to the people of our city. Please know that we appreciate your patience and forbearance as the goal posts continue to move.  Ultimately, we have no choice but to move away from fossil fuels: the livability of our desert city depends on it.  We will be counting on you to take us as quickly as possible through this great transformation, both learning from and leading other communities that face the same task.

Climate change is only one of many systemic challenges that have moved us toward new initiatives in our own community.  It was only a few months into the pandemic that the image of George Floyd’s final minutes was seared into our memories, bringing into collective consciousness not just the sharp horror of that event but the imposing weight of our nation’s racial history, along with deep questions about the role of policing in a free society. 

Inevitably, given the climate of our national discourse, this shared moment of heightened awareness gave way quickly to angry recriminations, defensiveness, and shame.  For a nation conceived in liberty and convinced of our righteousness, self-reflection can be a hard pill to swallow, but underneath all the shouting, real change has begun.

That change is related to what I mentioned earlier: our differential access to the freedoms and benefits of a shared society.  Our expectations in moments of crisis may be very different as well. On some level we have always known this, but recent events have brought that understanding to a head.  And because we are human beings, we are always learning; once we become aware of something that’s not functioning as it could, we feel compelled to make it right. 

None of us on this council underestimates the need for policing in our community.  We know the courage and sacrifices of our officers, and the vital importance of what they do.  At the same time, we know that the personal experiences of each of us, and those of our families and loved ones, can make our expectations in a policing incident vastly different.  Many of our police officers already feel under siege.  Many of our residents’ fear mistreatment or worse.  Hundreds of years of painful personal and familial experience – on all sides and of all kinds – are already fully present in times of crisis, long before the first 911 call is made, and an officer responds.

Our police officers know this, and they would like for it to be different.  In a city like Las Cruces, our police force isn’t an occupying force – our officers live among us as neighbors and friends.  The path to optimal policing lies along the path we’ve just been talking about – considering our different backgrounds, fears, and expectations, and how life is experienced by all those involved.

We have been informed on much of this by the work of Mayor Pro Tem Gandara, who has moved us toward an understanding of the role of previous trauma in shaping all our lives.  When coupled with our commitment to effective policing, we are learning to see not just how differently things may look to each of us, but how much more productively – through proactive recruiting, careful training, expanded awareness, and the structure of our initial approach – highly charged situations can turn out.

What we are seeking is a much more comprehensive approach to public health and safety.  One thing to consider is the vast range of situations currently handled by city police, and the possibility that not all of them are best addressed with a badge and a gun.  Many minor accidents and other traffic situations are already being handled by our Police Service Aides.  The Department is already offering large signup bonuses to recruits with advanced degrees in sociology or psychology. Our hope is that personnel trained in social intervention will soon be taking lead on calls to assist people suffering from mental illness, addiction and homelessness, and to respond for child welfare checks and threats to commit suicide.

Clearly there are situations where our officers need to protect themselves and others at the scene. We know that a crisis can ignite in an instant, but that’s why we want our first responders trained to de-escalate whenever possible, with a primary goal of avoiding harm to themselves and to all concerned.

I appreciate the regular discussions on policing that I had over the last year with Mayor Pro Tem Gandara, Councilor Abeyta, and former Councilor Vasquez.  I appreciate the support of the council and the receptiveness of Chief Dominguez to new ideas.  We are united in wanting our officers to be proud of their important role in the community, effective in their interactions with residents, and for them – as well as those they encounter in the course of their duties – to come home safe and sound to their families every night.

Another project that continued to develop during the pandemic is planning for our El Paseo corridor, to include our traditional neighborhoods bordered by Lohman, University and Triviz.  We envision the El Paseo corridor as a site for moderate income housing and new commercial activity, along a busy transportation corridor connecting NMSU with downtown. 

We look to our traditional neighborhoods for moderately priced housing as well, with new opportunities for neighborhood-level entrepreneurship, accessory dwelling housing, and other wealth-building activities. 

We want these plans to move forward and not get lost in the press of other issues.  As we move past the pandemic, there’s a pent-up energy moving through our community.  There’s a dynamism reflected in the explosion of new local businesses, the full parking lots at our restaurants and stores. There’s an eagerness to get back together and back fully to work, in ways that have too often been frustrated over the past two years. 

This eagerness and these frustrations are present for us too, as elected councilors.  We understand as well as anyone the challenges from COVID, and the additional burdens it placed on staff.  Hobbled by the pandemic’s restrictions, we spent a year and a half with acting city managers.  It has been difficult to spend time together sharing ideas and charting the path forward.  Lines of communication and responsibility haven’t always been clear.

I mentioned to you earlier the process that channels community will into action. Residents elect a mayor and council who set policy and direction, and we rely on a talented professional staff to carry them out.  Key to that implementation is our city manager, the council’s only direct hire and employee, and the person ultimately in charge of getting things done.

That city manager, in turn, in a city like our own, needs his own clear system of accountability, to manage department heads and hundreds of employees.  Ensuring accountability is one of the most important responsibilities a manager has.  The council can’t spend its time worrying, when a plan is made, if that’s the last we’ll ever hear of it. We can’t keep checking back to see if resolutions have been enacted. We can’t move forward if a department prefers its own direction to the one we’ve decided, or has been assigned tasks that never get done.

Again, this is all under the purview of the city manager.  Just as our staff is accountable to him, he is accountable to us.  And we have a council whose expectations are high.  That’s not true in every city, but it is in Las Cruces.  We’re here to expand freedom and well-being for every person who lives here. We’re going to take on each challenge to the best of our abilities, and we’re going to want to know whether and how those challenges are being met.

I don’t want to close without noting that we will miss Councilors Sorg and Vasquez, both of whom plan to continue in public service: Councilor Sorg as a commissioner for the Doña Ana Soil and Water Conservation District, and Councilor Vasquez as a candidate for Congress.  It’s reassuring to have Councilor Flores back, and Councilors Abeyta, Bencomo and Gandara continuing their terms in office.  We are privileged to welcome Councilors Corran and Graham as newly elected members of the council. In the short time we’ve worked together, it’s clear they’ll do an excellent job. 

I can promise this to all of you – my fellow councilors, Ifo and staff, and all the residents that we serve and represent – there will be plenty of accelerated learning opportunities in the months ahead. The world is changing quickly and unlikely to slow down.  Fortunately, we enjoy a commitment to one another and a vision for the city, a faith in our abilities and best intentions, and a record of shared effort and success.  That’s why the state of our city is strong.

Thank you for being here today and for sharing this great adventure. Thank you too for your friendship and trust over the years we’ve worked together, and for the opportunity to serve as your mayor. 

The Mayor’s speech is available by clicking here.

The State of the City Address also can be seen online at clctv.com and at YouTube.com/clctv20.