On Monday, the Las Cruces City Council held its first regular session meeting for the month of May.
During Monday’s meeting, a resolution originally set to pass as part of the consent agenda was instead opened up for discussion. The resolution was to rescind a 2009 resolution re-designating the old Post Office and current Municipal Court building on East Griggs Street as the future home of the Las Cruces Museum of Art. Following up on a March 10th work session, Garland Courts, Deputy Director of the Museum, proposed expansion of the existing location downtown. He told the Council that after weighing the option of moving the art museum over to the Municipal Court building and expanding where they are, expanding the current location would give it a synergy.
“You could get a bus that comes with students and they can take a tour and do three museums at once,” Courts said. “It’s not that far to the Municipal Court, but it is a little bit of a walk. Our attendance has been going up, every year it goes up, so we kind of like the idea of staying in place.”
After the presentation by Courts and Quality of Life Director Carol Brey, the City Council voted unanimously to rescind the earlier resolution, allowing the museum to stay in its current downtown location.
The council also passed a resolution amending a 2023 resolution for the small business storefront repair program. The amendments passed by the Council on Monday increased the maximum grant amount for small businesses affected by property damage from $2,500 to $5,000, and to remove the restriction on the number of times a business may apply, allowing businesses to submit multiple applications for separate incidents of damages, provided all eligibility requirements are met.
District 3 Councilor Becki Graham, who before the vote said that she would be voting in favor of it, noted some of the pushback she had received from the public regarding the resolution.
“I want to point out that these are not the only solutions the city is offering to deal with these ongoing issues,” said Graham. “We’re doing a myriad of things to address root causes, to address better services and resources. So when people say this is the council slapping a band-aid on a huge laceration, this is not all that we’re doing.”
Another resolution passed Monday by the Council adopted funding priorities and allocations to various Las Cruces non-profit organizations for fiscal year 2026 to provide health-0related public service needs. The next City Council meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 19th.
