Village of Los Lunas Council Agendas\Minutes

MINUTES VILLAGE OF LOS LUNAS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26,2026 The Board of Trustees of the Village of Los Lunas, County of Valencia, and State of New Mexico met Thursday, February 26, 2026 in regular session at 6:00PM. Roll call was taken, and the following were present: Mayor Charles Griego, Councilor Gino Romero, Councilor Christopher Ortiz, Councilor James Runyon& Councilor Matthew Chavez. The meeting was conducted in person and recorded through TEAMs. Mayor: Charles Griego Mayor Pro Tem: Christopher Ortiz Council: Matthew Chavez James Runyon Gino Romero Also present were: Gregory D. Martin, Nancy Jo Gonzales, Debra Sanchez, Craig Donohue, and Luis Brown. In accordance with Ordinance 114A, the following agenda was prepared and circulated as required: 1. RESOLUTION 26-03: L300354 MAP FUNDING EXTENSION NM 6 & NM 263. 2. RESOLUTION 26-04: NMDOT MAP FUNDING REQUEST 2026/202. 3. RESOLUTION 26-05: LOCAL GOVERNMENT ROAD FUND (LGRF) REQUEST. 4. EASEMENT AGREEMENT BETWEEN VILLAGE OF LOS LUNAS AND WESTWAY SIX BESS, LLC. 5. COMPENSSATION AND CLASSIFICATION STUDY. 6. EXECUTIVE SESSION: a. Hire Transfer Station Truck Driver – Public Works Department. b. Hire Fire�ighter/EMT – Fire Department. c. Hire Certi�ied Polic Of�icer – Police Department. 7. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: a. Minutes from February 12, 2026, Council Meeting 8. ADJOURNMENT. • CALL MEETING TO ORDER. At 6:00PM, Mayor Griego brought the meeting to order and welcomed the audience. • PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. Mayor Griego asked Jim Ricky to lead the Council and TEAMS participants in the Pledge of Allegiance. • PUBLIC INPUT FORUM. None. 1. RESOLUTION 26-03: L300354 MAP FUNDING EXTENSION NM 6 & NM 263. Mr. Michael Jaramillo presented item one. This would be the second time that I bring this item. We've had some delays in our design work for this project, which is our MAP funding for New Mexico 6 and New Mexico 263. I come before you because the agreements expire in June and in order for us to meet the time frames, it's best for us to plan ahead just in case. So I'm here before you asking for an extension through this resolution of the funding for the design and construction of those improvements for New Mexico 6 and 263. Mayor Griego asked Council if there were any questions. Councilor Runyon asked when he anticipated this project to be completed. Michale replied, this is our third time that we've been in 100% review with the Department of Transportation. When I say that when we get to 100%, that means we're done. However, every time we go to get the �inal, they come back and say hey, we might need a little bit of an adjustment. The council was asked if they had any additional questions, there were none. Mayor Griego asked for a recommendation. APPROVAL: Motion to approve resolution 26-03. MOVED: Councilor Ortiz SECONDED: Councilor Romero CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4 (Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. 2. RESOLUTION 26-04: NMDOT MAP FUNDING REQUEST 2026/2027.  Mr. Michael Jaramillo presented item two. I do pretty much every year when we apply for any type of funding for any roads in the in the village. This particular funding is what we call MAP funding, which is Municipal Arterial Program funding. It's for any municipal artillery road that we've categorized that would need some type of improvement, these are all kind of mostly all the DOT roads and a few of our major roads like north and south Los Lentes. This one here is actually for a segment for North Los Lentis. This would be for Taylor to Trujillo Rd. We just �inished a project, our �irst phase on north Los Lentes and our goal is to get all the way to Griego and Hwy 314 at some point. So I’m asking council to give me permission to submit an application on the village's behalf for funding for this project. If we are awarded this project, I will be coming back with another resolution saying that the Council did approve that funding in the budget for FY2027. Mayor Griego asked council if they had any questions. Councilor Runyon thanked Michael for all his good work. The council was asked if they had any additional questions, there were none. Mayor Griego asked for a recommendation. APPROVAL: Motion to approve resolution 26-04. MOVED: Councilor Romero SECONDED: Councilor Runyon CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4 (Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. 3. RESOLUTION 26-05: LOCAL GOVERNMENT ROAD FUND (LGRF) REQUEST. Mr. Michael Jaramillo presented item three. We have a lot of roads in this Community that would qualify for this. It's a smaller pot of money; it can go anywhere to about $100,000 to maybe $300,000. Basically, as you know, we have a pavement condition index that we use to kind of keep track of the condition of our roads and basically all the Co-op applications that we have submitted are based on those roads that are in what we call our red zone that need to be replaced. We've been tackling for the past six years the Artistic Home neighborhood area. Those roads are a little bit better shape, but this is pretty much one of the last roads in that artistic neighborhood that needs to be done, and we will be caught up. The council was asked if they had any additional questions, there were none. Mayor Griego asked for a recommendation. APPROVAL: Motion to approve resolution 26-05. MOVED: Councilor Ortiz SECONDED: Councilor Chavez CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4 (Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. 4. EASEMENT AGREEMENT BETWEEN VILLAGE OF LOS LUNAS AND WESTWAY SIX BESS, LLC. Mr. Michael Jaramillo presented item �ive. In your packet you have a little map and basically if you look at the map, there is property that's highlighted (page 19) is basically the old land�ill and we have a request from a company who wants to develop a battery storage facility just to the east of this parcel. There is another company who was wanting to do the same thing on the parcel that is just north of that, and that company isn't working with them to get access to be able to provide a transmission line or a battery storage line to the PNM substation. So they came to us asking if that we would assign them an easement through the land�ill. We went through the regulations of what our permit allows us to do and we had told them that there is very limited work that you can actually do in the permitted land�ill area, the section that you see in the map is not the land�ill that is a buffer, so there is the ability for us to use it. We came up with several ideas on how we may get compensated for it. Overall we're here because we feel that we have worked out an understanding. This is not something that happened overnight. We've been working on it for about six months and we've looked at a lot of different options and we've done appraisals. This company is not a public utility company, so they have no franchise agreement. It's an overhead easement. So just like any other power line that's out there, there'll be two poles, though on the site that will be permanently put into the buffer area that's in the highlighted. Mayor Griego commented, but it's no different than the other power lines that are there. Michael replied, that's correct - it's about 100 feet tall. It’s a controlled overheard easement. Councilor Chavez asked if they would be able to operate below the lines. Michael replied, yes. Mr. Larry Guggino approached the podium – he proceeded to talk about the appraisal. We took the appraisals that we had on the rail part for the tank site that we did that we paid. We used that as an example of what it the value would be worth for the land, and then we took some appraisals that we had done along I-25, we didn't use those to determine value, we used those to determine the percentage of value. It was about $6/ft. more or less. Then we reduced it as our appraisers had done on some of the easements based on that percentage. So they are going to pay $202.32 a square foot. They are going to pay us $5000 a year for the period of time they are not building anything on it. Then once they start building it is $2.32 a square foot for the entirety of the easement area. So, instead of paying us at one time, they are going to pay it over 25 years with �ive years escalations. Councilman Chavez commented, what these transmission lines are doing or these battery storage lines they're getting these easements and then once they secure an easement, they're going out there and selling it to the next highest bidder. This company has the right to sell/assign. Larry responded, they can sell it and assign it only to people using their property. So, if they sell the company the easement goes with the property. They don’t have to ask our permission to do that. If this is approved, they'll pay us the $5000 just to hold the place and the other the next agreement  will be them Crossing Pioneer Trail and we're working with the Hunings to �igure out how we can what will eventually be a road, and so we want to make sure that any agreements to cross that road we are a party to those agreements. Michael commented, I know that I probably have some concerns myself, especially with the assignment of that easement, because my understanding was, that I don't want to lose it. I think I'm going to have to go back and look this over to the point that I don't think that it can be sold. I think it has to stay within the village because it's part of my permit and the last thing I need to do is if it's sold, even though it's associated with the battery company and it stays with the battery company because I can sell it another battery Company, I’d hate for us to be in a situation where we did not do our homework and then �ind out that we lost that piece that is essential to my permit. The council was asked if they had any additional questions, there were none. Mayor Griego asked for a recommendation. APPROVAL: Motion to table easement agreement. MOVED: Councilor Romero SECONDED: Councilor Chavez CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4 (Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. 5. COMPENSATION AND CLASSIFICATION STUDY. (Informational presentation) Mr. Marcos Castillo presented item �ive. So tonight and before you to present the results of our compensation and classi�ication study from our personnel ordinance under pay plan provisions, the pay plan is intended to provide equitable compensation for all position classi�ications in relation to pay for other position classes. General rates of pay for similar employment. The village administrator shall regularly, but not less than every four years, perform or cause to be performed comparative compensation and classi�ication studies of all the factors affecting level of pay and recommend such changes as may be justi�ied. Such adjustments shall be made by increasing or decreasing the pay ranges provided in the basic pay schedule as approved by the Village council. Our last study was completed in 2023, out of this study, as some of you may recall came some pretty drastic adjustments and changes to our pay plan as part of a three-year plan which was approved by Council in the subsequent years Council did approve funding in �iscal year 2026 to complete the study a year earlier than is required by ordinance, as our current plan ends at the end of this �iscal year and I wanted to come into this budget season with some fresh data to ensure that we're still remain competitive in our market. As you've seen in the packet and you'll see shortly in case presentation, the village is in a very strong position in our market with our salaries and bene�its and the recommendations that are being made are relatively minor in scope and �iscal impact. I want to thank the mayor and Council for their continued support in providing competitive salaries and bene�its as we are able to recruit and retain employ. I'd like to introduce Kate Tisler, Vice president of PSPC. I'm pleased to be able to present this the �indings and recommendations. So the scope of the project was to get a grasp of what the jobs are that exist here at the village and then to identify the number, type and distinct levels of jobs that exist. So as the village grows, sometimes more levels emerge, more occupations emerge. the salary survey kind of tells us where you are in the marketplace, but the next step is we’ll know what we want to do with that data so the project goals would be to look at that market data and then determine what needs to happen to the village's existing salary administration practices. Do we need to make changes somewhere? Are things working? Are things not working? So looking at it holistically to identify what the market does and identify if there's things that need to be changed to help develop a better salary administrative policy. So our �indings were that 98% of the village's positions. So we look at occupational job classes and whether somebody was working out of class or in class, 98% of the village's occupations were appropriately classi�ied. We didn't have any classi�ication issues within the titling or the placement of employees there externally. Our market data showed that we had about 59% of the village's jobs are competitive with the prevailing rate, so they were either at market ±5% or ahead of the market. A handful of jobs were a little behind the market. It would cost the village $595,000 or about 3.8% of payroll in order to get market competitive with the external prevailing rates. Also, we looked at bene�its to make sure that the villages bene�it offerings are still on par with where they want to be and competitive with others and had really no �indings in the bene�it area. I believe the village already has a goal of tying to the prevailing rates in the market and wanting to be competitive with that. So af�irming that and that relationship being 100% of the market and then adopting the salary ranges which we have developed and are included in the package and then identifying how employees will be landing on a step gap. So there's some options there and the plan that we went with was to try and keep employees on their current steps. Within the village we found that 95.8% of the job classes required no change or a minor title modi�ication. We do like to give a more descriptive title to the occupation, and so we feel widget worker senior widget worker lead widget worker, is more descriptive of the complexity that goes with each job class. So we kind of clean those up and that's sort of the basis. So we're not looking to get fancy with titles, but we do want to be descriptive and normally if it's not broke, we don't want to �ix it. So within the survey, the objectives were to obtain information about salaries that are being paid to occupations in the marketplace and then also gather information about bene�it data to make sure the villages bene�its are still where they believe they should be. We looked at medical and dental and some other things that are going on. Additional compensation for things like education certi�ication. Councilor Romero commented, we're being compared against a market that's in�lated like severely in�lated. And you know when you look at a tax base in Las Cruces versus a tax base in Los Lunas, it's night and day. Same thing with Alamogordo, Albuquerque, Carlsbad, Clovis, Farmington. I don't understand how we're being asked to be competitive with that high of a scale. It’s not that high of a scale necessarily because so there's a couple of factors that come into this. So as we're looking at surveying all of the titles that are on the screen in front of you now are all included and so as we as we. know, mathematically speaking, you're going to have a high payer and a low payer. And when you run averages, they tend to balance themselves out. So there's that part of the equation you've got some high we got some low. We're looking at the occupation, how it's being paid. So just what's their salary structure look like in the highs and the lows you're going to in, in theory, balance themselves out? We're going to look at that survey data and that's where that competitiveness policy comes in. And when we look at, we say we've got a bunch of Albuquerque's and Alamogordo's that have a lot of money and that's where we truly draw our employees. So we need to know what they're paying, but we can't afford to pay at that rate and that's where we might be looking at not 100% of the average in the marketplace, but maybe 95% it is a low payer typically. So when you look at running the averages and that's where you start to arrive at the kind of balance each other. We did include private sector data because we know that, especially in Los Angeles, a lot more private sector companies coming in, big shops that are employing people. So we do have private sector data for those jobs that you compete with the private sector. Not all jobs are going to be competed with the private sector, but there are quite a few IT and HR �inance labor trades where that private sector is going to be a player in your competition. So again, the survey answers the question where are we in the marketplace? And then the implementation is where do we want to be and that's the big question, because the village is in complete control of the where do we want to be in relation to the market? So there was a couple things that we did. So for the general job classes, we looked at the entire salary range that is offered for a job and we use the minimum and the maximum to calculate the middle of that range. So for general job classes, we use the midpoint. The midpoint is typically representative of a journey level competent performer, so somebody who's not a brand new person and not been in their job a long time. It's also the pay range not representative of an employee salary. If we're running into using employee salaries, there's a lot of things that can be going on because those salaries are related to a person, not an occupation. So our goal is to use the salary ranges for an occupation and �ind that midpoint. Councilor Runyon commented, How in the world in two years when we just did this and everybody was aligned perfectly and it was beautiful and we were all happy. Marcos replied, so the overall data isn't showing that we're 40% behind. It's when it's all gets crunched and we'll get this into a minute. Really what the overall impact of this is really showing that we're overall as a village less than 3% behind. So really what the ask is going to be at the tail end of. This is honestly going to be less than what we've asked for the last two years to get us aligned. Councilor Runyon replied, Is that where that 3% is correct, but 40% of our employees jobs are behind? Kate replied, 40% of the survey job classes and that was the occupations. That does not represent the employees’ salaries, so it's entirely possible that 40% of your job titles were more than 5% behind the market. But the employees within those are not behind the market. So that's where we talk about comparing occupations and occupational value in our survey, then the next step is bringing that data in to see where the employees are going to lie and what's going to be the cost in order to implement. If we move these salary grades so that they're within 5% of the market, what's the cost at the employee level. So the current structure we basically are utilizing the same structure that you have been using. The current structure contains 19 grades. However, between the grades and this may be because some of the grades got dropped. Sometimes what we �ind is that we have a structure with 50 grades. We're using thirty of them, and some of those grades disappear. So when I went to analyze the structure, I saw that some grades were 18% between two grades and some were 1.3. So you have 10 steps in each grade and 2 ½ percent between the steps, so within each grade there was not any angst or heartburn. However, what we wanted to do was clean up, so that between each incremental grade. So between grade one and grade two, we had a consistent amount. So instead of between 1.3% and in some grades 18%, we wanted to see a consistent 5% between each grade so we sort of added some new grades so that we had less space between some and created a little more space between others so that when we look at between. In grade one and grade two, grade three and Grade 4, it's a 5% consecutive in uniform separation between each of the grades. the 5% grade progression gives you the ability to not only be precise with the market rates, but it helps you to evaluate your internal alignment between job classes. Because when you see a supervisor is 2 grades higher than their subordinate, you know that's 10% separation so that helps you quickly and analyze how your valuing job classes. So the process is to go through all of our benchmark job classes and �ind any, especially those that are more than 5% behind and identify the salary grade whose midpoint is as close as possible to the market's midpoint. Kate used an online slide to walk the council through this part of the presentation. Now the village has expressed interest in maintaining the step placement for all employees. So that means that if an employee is on step �ive, it doesn't matter that when we move their grades, Step 2 is actually closer and gives them a small increase. We're doing what we refer to it as step ownership, meaning that if you're on �ive, you stay on �ive. You don't fall back in your grade, regardless of the fact that you might have gotten an increase by having a lower staff. We kept them on the same. So there was 218 employees to place the keep them on their steps if they were on step three, they stay on step three. If they were on step eight, they stay on step 8. Of course, nobody's salary went lower. All of these would have been a bump to a next level step or a bump to stay on their step. It's $470,000. So the total is about 3.8% of your total payroll for all jobs to increase to the market. Councilor Runyon asked if this included a normal step increase coming in July or would it be in lieu of that. Marcos responded, this would not include the normal step increase. Councilor Romero commented, as a member of the Council, I've I do want to make sure that we're paying equitable wages and that we're competitive in the marketplace, we're not losing people, as mayor said. But as a resident that pays taxes it's concerning to me that you know, I would feel much better if we were to remove Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Las Cruces. I think we would get a better snapshot of what it is that is in our more ability to pay, you know, right now, thankfully, we are doing well. But how sustainable is this gonna be going forward when we're being compared to municipalities with that kind of population, OK. Councilor Chavez asked what would the annual cost be with the bene�its included. Kate and Marcos replied, she did not know the bene�it burden. Marcos commented, it would be relative to any increase. So with the pair of contributions, you know, of course any increase in salary comes  with an increase. Contributions as far as the medical side were wait were we're shopping our medical insurance like we do every year. So that varies year to year greatly as you'll come to �ind, we've seen some pretty signi�icant increases over the years just with our medical bene�its cause we choose. So we're, we're still awaiting this year's numbers for our medical renewal. Our brokers actually shopping those through RFP as we speak. And we'll have those for budget when we're looking at what our medical numbers will be for next year. Kate continued, we did look at a bunch of different bene�it things. This the comparator employers that we use for bene�its were the same that we used in the salary survey. We included data on medical, dental, vision. We included pay time off, the incentive pays offered. I think that was the bigger one that the village was interested in is, you know, what are the incentive pay certi�ication programs that are being offered elsewhere? And then we summarize the pair of plans and the contribution rates, and we found that overall the village's bene�it packages are right in line with where everybody else is doing. So there was nothing that would be suggestive of the village being behind the market and bene�it offerings. Longevity offered for �ire employees with �ive years, 10 years, 15 years or 20 years of service and with 20 years being $417.00 a month. So it's $5000 years. So that's a pretty nice bene�it compared to the others that offer their longevity pay and the village doesn't offer any of the other incentives. Mayor Griego asked council if there were any questions, there were none. Marcos commented, so the purpose of us being here tonight was kind of to set the stage for what we you know, to get council direction and kind of the feelings on everything before we do come to budget with any type of new recommendations. End of presentation. 6. EXECUTIVE SESSION. Mayor Griego announced that the Council would be going into executive session pursuant to NMSA 1978 Section 10-15-1(H), the following matters may be discussed in a closed session: Hiring of a Transfer Station Truck Driver, hire a Fire�ighter/EMT, and hire a Certi�ied Police Of�icer. APPROVAL: Motion to approve MOVED: Councilor Runyon SECONDED: Councilor Ortiz CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4(Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. 7:35PM At 7:56PM, Mayor Griego asked for a motion from Council to reconvene after discussion: Hiring of a Transfer Station Truck Driver, hire a Fire�ighter/EMT, and hire a Certi�ied Police Of�icer. APPROVAL: Motion to approve. MOVED: Councilor Ortiz SECONDED: Councilor Chavez CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4(Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. Regarding the Transfer Station Truck Driver – Mayor Griego recommended Narciso Martin Holguin. APPROVAL: Motion to approve. MOVED: Councilor Runyon SECONDED: Councilor Chavez CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4 (Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. Regarding the Firefighter/EMT – Mayor Griego rerecommended Issac Sanchez. APPROVAL: Motion to approve. MOVED: Councilor Romero SECONDED: Councilor Runyon CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4 (Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. Regarding the Certified Police Officer– Mayor Griego rerecommended Micah Bogue. APPROVAL: Motion to approve. MOVED: Councilor Ortiz SECONDED: Councilor Runyon CARRIED: Motion passed on a vote of 4 (Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. 7. MINUTES Mayor Griego asked if there were corrections to the Council minutes of February 12, 2026 – there were none. APPROVAL: Motion to approve. MOVED: Councilor Ortiz SECONDED: Councilor Chavez CARRIED: Motion passed on vote of 4 (Councilor Romero – yes; Councilor Ortiz – yes; Councilor Runyon – yes; Councilor Chavez – yes) FOR AND 0 AGAINST. 8. ADJOURNMENT. Council meeting adjourned at 7:59 PM. ____________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Gregory D. Martin, Village Administrator Charles Griego, Mayor