City Council Biz Includes Being Connected and Kind to Students

After a nearly six hour meeting on Monday, May 1, Albuquerque City Councilors cleared a table full of city business that included slowing down speeders and joining together to be kind.

Slow Down, Speed Racer

Councilors put one more tool in the city’s hands to slow down speeders. The Council approved the Automated Speed Enforcement Ordinance and Code. This means that city officials can give a petty misdemeanor citation, and boot or impound cars parked on city streets if owners don't pay their speed-camera fines. The ordinance says that the city seeks additional enforcement to “discourage scofflaws from chronic nonpayment.” The city says a small percentage of speeders get three or more camera tickets but don’t pay them. This is meant to discourage that behavior. Stay tuned to see how many speeding scofflaws the city can catch.

Handle Us With Care

A collaboration between Albuquerque’s Public Schools, Police Department, Fire Department and Community Safety Department to mitigate the effects of exposure to trauma on school age children was approved. The notification and care program was originally started by former Bernalillo County Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins but the city’s 2017 resolution was interrupted during the COVID lockdown. In a nutshell: first responders will notify schools when they deal with traumatic situations where a student is involved or a witness. Schools then can be better equipped to help the student when they return to school.

Statistics presented by the city show that 60% of U.S. children have been exposed to violence and 40% of our children have been direct victims of two or more violent acts.

Ms. Jaramillo, a fourth grade student from a local elementary school, spoke eloquently in support of this resolution. “As a student, I know how hard it is to go to school if something stressful happens at home,” she said. “When you are having a bad day it is nice to have the adults at school know that they can check on you and make sure you are doing okay.” True words.

Rent Registry Rejected

A proposed government list of landlords, their units and other information went down in a 7-2 vote. The Residential Rental Database Ordinance said that landlords would have to provide the city with pertinent information such as fees, availability, ADA standards and more about each property. The bill’s sponsor said Arizona, Ohio and some communities in Texas have similar registries but it didn’t sway the others. It's a good idea but Albuquerque just isn’t ready to take a deep look at the bowels of what is really going on with the city’s inflated rental market.

Important Quickies

• Approved sending a message to the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board regarding Petition 2022-3. The resolution message says that the 2022-3 petition could be harmful to the welfare of the City due to the lack of stakeholder involvement that went into its submission and acceptance and due to its potentially broad impacts on the availability of air quality permits based on unclear standards. Complicated issues at play here. 

• Adopted the Menaul Metropolitan Redevelopment Plan that will spiffy up the section between I-25 and the North Diversion Channel and amended then approved the Independent Hearing Officer Ordinance, among other tasty tidbits of government sausage made at this meeting.

The next meeting of the Albuquerque City Council is set for 5pm on Monday, May 15. For more information, agenda and video meeting links go to cabq.gov.