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Mesilla Valley MPO completes administrative separation from City of Las Cruces; establishes executive director role
Summary
MPO staff told the BPAC the Mesilla Valley MPO has completed an administrative separation from the City of Las Cruces, creating an executive director role, moving into a separate office, and retaining the city as fiscal agent under a memorandum of agreement that automatically renews annually.
Andrew Ray, speaking for Mesilla Valley MPO staff at the April meeting, updated the Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee on the MPO’s administrative separation from the City of Las Cruces.
Ray said the separation was driven in part by the MPO’s approaching Transportation Management Area (TMA) status, which brings programmatic funds and raises conflict-of-interest concerns if the MPO remained subordinate to a single member jurisdiction. The MPO’s governing arrangements were revised so that the former officer role is now an executive director accountable directly to the MPO governing board.
Ray said the City of Las Cruces will continue to serve as the MPO’s fiscal agent because the MPO operates under a reimbursement-entitlement grant model that requires a fiscal agent to pay upfront costs and seek federal reimbursement. The fiscal-agent relationship is governed by a memorandum of agreement (MOA) that becomes effective on signature, automatically renews annually, and can be terminated with 90 days’ notice. The city will continue to provide limited administrative support such as finance, human resources, IT and fleet services; the MPO will compensate the city with an annually calculated fiscal-agent fee that the governing board must approve. The MPO has also retained separate legal counsel and, as Ray noted, has begun procuring its own insurance packages separate from the city — general liability was already in place and workers’ compensation and professional liability coverage are being pursued.
Ray described the change as “a substantial paradigm shift” in governance but said that most day-to-day interactions with city departments will continue. He also said the MPO has moved into separate office space at 201 Trick Street and that the separation would be fully and officially complete on May 5 (as stated in his presentation). During Q&A, a committee member asked whether the separation meant the executive director would be free from city discipline; Ray confirmed the MPO executive director no longer reports to the Las Cruces city manager and said that, from a practical standpoint, many city–MPO working relationships remain the same because the city will continue to provide fiscal and administrative support.
Committee members asked about follow-up policies needed to sustain the fiscal relationship and about the logistics of acquiring insurance and setting the fiscal agent fee. Ray said MPO legal counsel and staff have been working on those policies and that the governing board must approve the fiscal-agent fee before payment.
The update was a presentation; no formal committee action was required. Committee members congratulated staff on the transition and asked that staff provide any new policies and fiscal-agent fee calculations when they are ready for governing board review.
