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Las Cruces City Council Reviews Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Proposal

Michael Hernandez

Las Cruces City Council met to review the city’s proposed budget for the 2019 fiscal year, which totals about $394 million. Expenditures from the city’s general fund amount to $91.4 million, down 1.6 percent from last fiscal year.

Despite the reduced budget, City Manager Stuart Ed said the city is adding nearly 60 jobs, including a dozen firefighter-in-training positions and police service aides.

“We’re expanding our services by adding firefighters in training so that they can be available to the fire department and these are recruits,” Ed said. “It gives the recruits an opportunity to work with the fire department to make sure that that’s a job that they want and to develop their skills and we’re also looking at adding some police aides so that they can do additional enforcement in the community to include enforcing disabled parking among many other things and so, these are expanded services we are providing meanwhile we are reducing our costs.”

In addition to emergency services, Ed said the city is also upgrading transit, adding 19 bus driver and maintenance jobs and five new electric buses. It will extend RoadRUNNER bus service hours during weeknights from 7 to 10:30 p.m. As part of the city’s 5-year, $109.8 million capital improvement plan, Wi-Fi access will be added in the downtown plaza along with electric charging stations at city hall.

General fund reserves total nearly $21.5 million while revenues are projected to be $99.3 million, $1.2 million more than what the city brought in last fiscal year. While the bulk of general fund revenue comes gross receipts taxes, it includes money from property taxes, gas and cigarette taxes and other service fees. Ed said there’s good news for taxpayers.

“I’m pleased to report that there’s going to be no increases to the citizens of Las Cruces,” Ed said. “No increases to property taxes, no increase to sales tax. Our job is to minimize the tax burden on our community yet provide outstanding services and we’ve achieved that in this budget recommendation.”

Other budget priorities include providing mental health support, building new parks, renovating Las Cruces International Airport, upgrading museums and developing public art. But that’s not all.

“We’re also looking at adding about $200,000 to increase the number of events downtown. In terms of community development, we’re looking to relocate community development here at city hall so that economic development and community development are co-located for our one-stop shop. And we’re looking at having an entrepreneur center called Mil Gracias,” Ed said.

District 6 City Councilor Yvonne Flores said she believes the budget is very balanced. Flores said council members met separately with the city’s budget director in November and December to relay their respective district’s needs.

“The only item that I hindsightedly recognized or realized that I left out was the library. I think our library needs more funds,” Flores said. “I feel that that’s part of our infrastructure because that’s where our kids go and so I would like to see more libraries in the city.”

The City Council is scheduled to vote on approving the budget when it meets on May 21.

Michael Hernandez was a multimedia reporter for KRWG Public Media from late 2017 through early 2020. He continues to appear on KRWG-TV from time to time on our popular "EnviroMinute" segments, which feature conservation and citizen science issues in the region.