The Las Cruces City Council held their first meeting of the month and voted on a variety of resolutions ranging from pedestrian crossing infrastructure to contracts that help the city receive reimbursements for ambulance services.
The city council voted to approve a contract with a Boston based company called Public Consulting Group in an effort to get supplemental Medicaid reimbursements for ambulance transportation.
In 2024, the Las Cruces Fire Department provided 3,852 ambulance transports that qualified for possible reimbursement.
These transports were estimated to cost the city over $13 million, but to get some of the money reimbursed, the city has to submit records such as transport data and cost reports. To help with this, the city voted to approve a contract with Public Consulting Group to manage these demands.
The group will be paid 15 percent of the revenues collected up to $600,000.
When asked about having the services moved in-house, Las Cruces Fire Chief Michael Daniels said that the city probably does not have the staff or experience to not contract these services out.
“Every one of the providers in New Mexico is contracting with PCG. I think we are up to 13 providers. This is what the specialize in is NMEGAS and rural healthcare transformation funding opportunities,” Fire Chief Daniels said.
City council also voted to approve a $10,000 spending limit increase for their contract with Film Las Cruces.
The increase in budget will go toward an advertisement campaign to attract more film productions to Las Cruces. The money will also go towards attending an event in California to speak to more people in the industry.
Andrew Jara with Film Las Cruces says that this would be money well spent.
“The return that we are trying to get is to get productions to come here. We already had success at similar events. We went to an Albuquerque media event and we were able to bring to production. The AFM event that we want to attend is a collection of producers and industry makers that can make those decisions to come to Las Cruces so we are trying to make sure that we can be in those meetings and have those conversations,” Jara said.
The council also voted to approve a grant submission for a HAWK pedestrian crossing signal on Amador across from the Community of Hope campus. The total cost for the signal is projected to be a little less than $1 million and is projected to be done in early 2027.
