Los Alamos County Manager Anne Laurent addresses County Council Tuesday (November 19) during their regular session. Screenshot by Los Alamos Reporter
BY MAIRE O’NEILL
maire@losalamosreporter.com
The Los Alamos community is very data driven. Residents may not be in Council Chambers during Council meetings or on Zoom for the Planning and Zoning or Parks & Rec meetings, but that doesn’t mean they won’t look for more information when there are decisions to be made on spending millions of dollars during one meeting. When Tuesday’s County Council meeting convened at 6 p.m., there was tension in the air that lasted until the meeting ended until close to 11:30 p.m. The agenda, which was distributed very late Friday night, had two issues that bothered many people in the community over the weekend and made some people pretty angry before and during Tuesday’s meeting.
Those issues were:
Contract for General Services, Agreement No. AGR 24-46b with Bonfire Fiber LLC in the Amount of $15,900,000, plus Applicable Gross Receipts Tax, for the Purpose of Managing the
Fiber-to-the-Premise Open Access Network
Contract for General Services, Agreement No. AGR24-46a with Bonfire Engineering & Construction LLC in the Amount of $35,000,000, plus Applicable Gross Receipts Tax, for the Purpose of Designing and Building a County-Owned Fiber-to-the-Premise Open Access Network
Consideration of Purchase Agreement for Real Property Located at 1183, 1377, and 1399 Diamond Drive in the Amount $9,850,000.
The County’s Public Information Office followed up Saturday with press releases about both the broadband project and the proposed property purchase issues. However, with more than $60 million on the table for just those two agenda items and more on the consent agenda for approval, understandably some members of the community were shocked by the amount of money the Council was spending in one evening and many were concerned that Council appeared to be in such a rush to spend the funds. Perhaps things would have been smoother if Council had placed the most controversial item first on the agenda instead of last, which meant there was a room full or very tired and testy councilors and members of the public especially after 10 p.m.
Obviously the best way to capture the tone and atmosphere of the meeting is to watch the online video where the demeanor of all those present can be observed.
To view the video of the meeting, go to the link below:
https://losalamos.granicus.com/player/clip/3940?view_id=2&redirect=true
To view the video of the broadband discussion go to the 58.33 point in the video and 3.56 for the proposed property purchase.
It should be noted that the Reporter had no outreach from the County on either of the two issues and was as surprised as others to see what was on the agenda. In fact, if the comments below made by County Manager Anne Laurent had been included in the agenda packet it would have given the community a better understanding of what was actually happening.
Laurent noted that the broadband project is the culmination of many years of work.
“The project actually goes back decades where have been discussions about how we can have access to high-speed, high-quality service for broadband and internet. What this project is really about is bringing fiber to each premise – business or home. We do have some areas in town where fiber is available but most of this community does not have fiber available. The service people have now is not able to use the options and range of speed that a new fiber infrastructure would be.” she said. “The other thing I would like to point out is the $35 million is for the design/build.”
Laurent said that from the get-go, it will be a County-owned infrastructure, which means the County will maintain ownership of it into the future.
“The reason there’s a separate operating agreement is because there are people out there who are better equipped and knowledgeable on how to run an open access fiber to the whole system as a third party, so rather than step up and create a new department or program within the County the idea is that we provide this service through a third party contract to operate this system,” she said. “And the operation itself will pay for itself through fees to the customer.”
Laurent said the reason there is an amount sitting there associated with the operating is because when the initial design/build is done, it has a time frame and when that ends there may still be the need for connections to homes.
“Without that amount in the operating agreement, the County wouldn’t be able to cover the costs. We wouldn’t have a method for procurement. Those would get passed on to rates and we wanted them to continue to pay for the connection from the road into the home and have that not be a barrier once construction is complete. So there’s a lot of details here. We all understand that it’s been under procurement for a long time and before that it was a lot of authoring of the RFP, she said.
Suggested continuing the item to the next agenda.
On the proposed purchase of the property on Diamond Drive, Laurent said that understandably there are a lot of questions about “why this is arising and why it is out of the blue”.
“It was during the end of August when the owner of the Diamond Drive properties, Russell Ross, reached out to staff and asked if the County was interested in purchasing the 1183 Diamond Drive property and that’s the property where the Social Services Division is currently. It also has the Health Commons which is the lease that the County pays. When I had that conversation at the end of August, I asked about the other two parcels and what his plans were, just out of curiosity, because as many of you do, but I know we as staff get asked what’s happening on vacant land and what are the plans and what’s the status,” she said.
She noted that even though it’s private property, the County may not have entitlement to that information.
“But we do try to ask just because of public interest. I did ask if he was interested in selling those in addition to 1183, primarily because we have this Social Services Hub project that I know was communicated to me as the new County Manager as a priority to figure out a way to be able to move, forward. It’s been sitting as a capital project for many years, funded, and what we’ve been really lacking there are a few things, one is an identified parcel to evaluate, plus the completion of the Comprehensive Health Plan and evaluating what the scope of that plan is,” Laurent said.
She noted that at the Dec. 17 Council meeting the final version of the Comprehensive Health Plan which has been years in the works as well, will be presented.
“I remember because I was here, that the initial incentive of the Social Services Hub was to create a one-stop shop, primarily expand our pantry’s available space, we only have a small bit of space available at our community building and there was a desire to expand that but then we also were in discussions at that time about other social service contracts and expanding those and what that might look like,” Laurent said. “The other thing we talked about was why this was an important location, and the Social Services office now in the Health Commons is strategically located and does serve and have very close interactions with both the public schools and the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos. “
She said there is a strong partnership between their day to day operations already and so that that relationship in that location does facilitate the strong services and the communication of what’s available to the youth.
“The other thing that had come up over the years before this conversation took place was just in our conversations that we have had with both UNM-LA and LAPS was what a strategic location that was for ideas of expansion or moving different pieces of property or amenities around to get them in the right location. I think it’s kind of fair to share that we talked about an education hub, sort of like we have some banks in the financial area. We kind of talked about it, at least conceptually, an education zone. There was continual interest in what could be there even when it was for sale privately before,” Laurent said.
She said the reason this purchase consideration didn’t come to open session prior is that the land wasn’t advertized for sale and there isn’t an advertized price.
“After that conversation, the owner went away and thought about it, he did come back with ‘this is what I’d be looking for’. Because it’s real estate and under the Open Meetings Act, those conversations are not open for the public and that’s for purpose because it’s a private land transaction. We cannot take any action in a closed session and that’s what this conversation is. This is a conversation of what this transaction is and get imput and move forward,” Laurent said. “And I want to talk a little bit about why this was brought forward. Those topics are not new and those are topics we have been talking about as a community and in Council’s strategic goals for a long time.”
She noted that the recent National Community Survey for Los Alamos County highlighted areas that need improvement including health services, business services and housing, preventative health services and access to affordable quality health care, including mental health.
“They were rated below the national benchmark with fewer than 45 percent of respondents rating these services as excellent. And so, we can do better. Additionally, only 14 percent of the respondents rated the variety of businesses and services established in Los Alamos as good or excellent. The shopping opportunies were rated as just 9 percent, which is very low. Affordable housing was another area of concern with only 7 percent of respondents giving a positive rating. This acquisition was considered and brought forward to Council because of the relationship and the strategic role it could play in trying to move forward some of these,” Lauremt said.
She noted that under the quality of life goal, Council prioritized health and well-being and social services, emphazing the need to expand access behavioral, mental and physical health services along with the central social services to address community needs and advance personal well-being.
“With the economic vitality goal, the priorities included increasing housing capacity, providing options to meet the needs of a growing population particularly the middle and lower income households. Additionally these priorities aim to retain existing businesses, support new startups and create opportunities for business growth in the community,” Laurent said.
“I understand that there’s desire for residents to want to have a say in what private landowners develop, but I do need to highlight that there is a difference when it’s private land that’s being developed. It’ll get developed for what makes the most money and what meets the standards of what’s allowed in our code. There won’t be public debate and there won’t be a lot of influence there. It’s either allowed or its not. It’s going to be an economic decision based on who owns the land and the revenues. This land was intended by the current owner to be developed for a long-term revenue income and we don’e know exactly what that is but we do know what his business is and his business is car washes,” she said. “So from that perspective, I think its important that when we look at strategic land purchases we look at the community benefit and I think one of the reasons that I’m interested in pursuing is whatever development happens here, we can have a public process and we can have a conversation on public benefit.”
Laurent spoke at length about the prospect of increased GRY revenue from LANL.
“The purchase is actually – I want to choose my words carefully here. It is expensive. I understand that. Well noted and not taken lightly on any stretch. What we have right now going on is increased GRT revenue coming in above what was projected in our adopted 2025 budget, largely because there is money being spent on construction across the bridge that they’re trying to spend down because they need to. They have these monies and spending is still at a high level. The staffing has tapered off, so this one-time money that we’re seeing from construction spending at the Laboratory is a lot of money but you have to keep in mind that you have a public asset that has value with this investment. This money doesn’t go away once you spend it and you have an asset you can do something with. The County has a very good track record of using land and trying to put it back out into the private sector as well. We don’t necessarily hold on to land but we do strategically look at it and have a public conversation about what should happen in the future. And by this purchase that would allow us to have a conversation that won’r happen otherwise if it’s developed by the current owner,” she said.
“I do want to say for the record, the asking price was higher than is being presented to you tonight. The price is high but I think we have to think about what we’re not accomplishing if we don’t proceed in this way and what the value of not being able to move some of those forward are going to be, Those are going to be some individual judgments based on people’s values of how they view those priorities but I think that is a real value that should be considered in this decision. It really is a strategic purpose. It’s not intended for the County to be interfering. This time frame is challenging. I do understand that. The reason we brought it tonight was because of the terms – we would be closing in December, and assuming we do delay the final decision to Dec. 3, it just gives us a very tight turnaround to get to closing by the deadline,” Laurent said before moving on to her slide presentation.
Council will take up the property purchase discussion again at their Dec. 3 meeting. The broadband project funding was unanimously approved.