foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] the 17th meeting at the 25th Council will come to order all counselors are present this evening we will get started with a moment of silence and I ask that we keep in mind the family of herb Dennis long time active person in the city and and very much involved with the planning of our city over the years we lost herb this week and please keep him in mind and his family as we have a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance in English by counselor Jones and in Spanish by counselor bassan thank you America thank you thank you thank you counselors um Civic Plaza parking passes are provided for members of the public you can obtain a parking pass from Council staff at the table near the chambers entrance members of the public city staff in the media have the ability to view this meeting in person and on live streams through four different platforms gov TV on on Comcast channel 16. the gov TV website YouTube and zoom webinar the live streams can also be accessed from most smartphones tablets and computers this meeting is closed captioned and you may enable your closed captioning services at this time the video recording of this and all past Council meetings remain available for viewing at any time on the council's website staff is available via telephone if you need help finding the videos please call 768-3100 for assistance during business hours Monday through Friday 8 to 5 PM Council will take a break at 7 pm this evening if necessary with regard to decorum we went tonight's proceedings to be a civil and respectful as possible please do not make any personal attacks and please no applause or other outbursts during the meeting the meeting will go a lot smoother if we are respectful one of one another we have a couple of uh proclamations and presentations tonight two of each so we'll get started with counselor feeblekorn thank you Mr President I'd like to invite director Charlie from the coalition to stop violence against native women to come on down we have an issue tonight that is so important that we're not going to have one but two proclamations on this issue for National Domestic Violence month um I think most folks know that I founded an organization that works on the link between animal abuse and human violence and really works to reduce domestic violence in our community and it's it's a huge issue and we're really so thrilled to have the work of the coalition to stop violence against native women so I'm going to read the proclamation and then I'll let you speak if you'd like whereas October is declared as National Domestic Violence awareness month as a time to acknowledge domestic violence survivors providing a way to connect and unite individuals and organizations working on domestic violence issues while raising awareness for those issues and whereas domestic violence is the willful intimidation physical assault battery sexual assault and our other abusive Behavior as part of a systemic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intermittent partner against another including physical violence sexual violence threats economic and emotional and psychological abuse and whereas on average nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States which equates to more than 10 million women and men in one year and whereas physical mental and sexual and reproductive health effects have been linked with an intimate partner violence including Adolescent and unintended pregnancy miscarriage nutritional deficiency neurological disorders chronic pain disability anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder while also having a higher risk for developing addictions to Alcohol Tobacco and drugs and whereas 37.6 percent of New Mexico women and 33.3 percent of New Mexico men experience intimate partner physical violence intimate partner sexual violence and our intimate partner stalking in their lifetime and whereas more than four in five native women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime whereas these behaviors by those who call I'm Sorry by those who cause harm are learned behaviors and have been intensified by acts of colonization and the imposition of patriarchy and foreign belief systems on Native people whereas the coalition to stop violence against native women is committed to the ongoing healing of ourselves our communities and our lands and whereas indigenous women and girls face complex and intersectional forms of violence linked to patriarchal structures racial and ethnic discrimination in mutually connected types of human rights violations at times perpetuated by state agents including Force sterilization disproportionately High rates of trafficking sexual violence forced labor forced disappearance and other forms of violence and whereas the Coalition the stop of violence against native women strives to end domestic violence so that we will honor natural life-supporting power that includes economic partnership negotiations and fairness non-threatening Behavior respect trust and support honesty and accountability responsible parenting shared responsibility sexual respect partnership cultural respect and spiritual Reflections and whereas the city of Albuquerque's increased awareness of domestic violence will support critical services for prevention and assistance and encourage citizens to report abuse and seek out help be it proclaimed that the council the governing body of the City of Albuquerque hereby recognizes October as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the City of Albuquerque and encourages citizen advocacy for survivors director Charlie thank you counselor does this turn on no oh it is oh there we go thank you on the behalf of the coalition to stop violence against native women our members our board and our staff councilor Tammy Bieber corn thank you for honoring our work uplifting our mission and joining us in ending violence in Native communities the Coalition is a survivor-led organization focused on freeing our communities from violence we believe that the that days of healing are ahead of us that our best days as indigenous survivors lie in front of us and that begins with with advocacy and good advocacy begins with visibility and we are honored to be seen today and the entire month of October for domestic violence awareness month thank you thank you so much director we really appreciate all the work you do thank you Mr President thank you Mr Charlie the second Proclamation with regard to um domestic violence Awareness Month may have Miss Teresa Garcia and Iris War please come up there both with New Mexico Coalition against the domestic violence and they will be accepting the proclamation today and I'll be reading the proclamation whereas domestic violence is a significant social problem and directly impacts individuals and systems in every Community across New Mexico the United States and the world whereas in the state of New Mexico alone 37.6 percent of women and 33.3 percent of men have experienced violence perpetrated by an intimate partner in their lifetimes and whereas in the state of New Mexico a child is present at one out of every four domestic violence incidents and the majority of these children are under the age of 12. and whereas children who grow up in violent homes are believed to be abused and neglected at a higher rate than the Nationwide average average and these children develop in these children's development and ability to function while in school can be negatively impacted throughout their lifetime and whereas household pets are more likely to experience neglect and abuse in homes or domestic violence is present and as many as 48 percent of domestic violence survivors will delay leaving their abusive Partners out of concern for their pets welfare and whereas domestic violence service providers play a critical role in mitigating both the short and long-term impacts of trauma while building resilience in families and whereas New Mexico has prioritized a focus to develop train coordinate and oversee a coordinated Community response teams within the New Mexico CA DV to assist assist in developing and enhancing coordinated Community response to bring together efforts to promote safety for victims and to hold offenders accountable and whereas New Mexico's battering intervention programs work to continuously develop and improve and their ability to best work with those who cause harm and whereas domestic violence Awareness Month provides an excellent opportunity at both the city and state level for citizens to learn more about preventing domestic violence and raise prevention awareness and whereas domestic violence Awareness Month provides an excellent opportunity to reach victims and provide crucial information on how they can seek help and support and whereas domestic violence Awareness Month provides an opportunity to show support and recognition for the organizations that provide critical advocacy advocacy and services to victims and survivors of domestic violence including in lace um um Domestic Violence Resource Center and Safe House New Mexico um since I am a retired law enforcement officer many many times had to deal with domestic violence and all different kinds of fashion and form and to tell you the truth this really is something that is very very near and dear to my heart we need to really really be aware and talk to each other your friends your families to make sure that domestic violence is not happening close to you and more than likely it is so this is a all-out call out to make sure that we are very much aware of domestic violence and I'd like I'd like um Theresa and uh and Iris to go ahead and say a few words thank you thank you thanks so much counselor Luis Sanchez at an mcadv coordinated local to domestic violence through collaborative work network of members programs and consists of domestic violence service providers and other Allied organizations individuals such as safe house New Mexico which is one of the largest shelters here in New Mexico as well as Domestic Violence Resource Center our Coalition currently has 32 direct service domestic violence organizations who support survivors and their families with resources when they are ready the Coalition also provides trainings across the state of New Mexico and currently expanding Nationwide several of our programs also offer battering intervention programs for offenders up to 52 weeks we understand that domestic violence is a social problem bigger than just the behavior of individuals therefore our work occurs on two levels simultaneously we help individuals recover and we work to change the conditions that promote violence we believe in individual and Community accountability to create safer communities it is known that in communities who speak against domestic violence the less violence occurs so we must continue educating our communities and working collaboratively thank you thank you so much counselor Clarissa Pena for your unwavering support as well as Luis Sanchez we really appreciate in every counselor thank you so much for your support um in light of domestic violence Awareness Month thank you next we have a presentation regarding the mortgage Finance Authority's New Mexico housing strategy Isadora Hernandez executive director and CEO MFA and Rebecca velarde senior director of policy and planning MFA Sonia Monroe research and development manager MFA will present good afternoon uh councilor president and council members thank you for having us here today to talk to you about the New Mexico housing strategy I'd like to introduce our Rebecca velarde who is uh right next to me here she's our senior director of policy and planning and she's actually uh has a couple more weeks with us and she's going on to pursue another opportunity so uh she is the most well-versed in her housing strategy so some of the detailed questions you may have later I may uh punt her way before I tell you start on the housing strategy for those of you that may not know I'll tell you a little bit about MFA I'll just take a quick minute to do that MFA is a private quasi-governmental agency each state in our nation has a agency similar to ours although they may be structured a little bit differently we have a seven-member board on that board we have three ex-official members which is the lieutenant governor the attorney general and the state treasurer the other four members are appointed by the governor and a four-year rotating basis we also have a legislative oversight committee composed of 20 members uh representing the Albuquerque area we have uh representative Dixon Senator Padilla representative Lewis Senator Moore's representative Herndon uh Cinder ortizi Pino and representative Roybal Caballero we have over 36 different programs at MFA spending the full spectrum of affordable housing and we have 300 plus partners that we work with to deliver the services at the local level in uh this last year 2021 we were able to assist over 25 000 families with a little over 750 million dollars some examples here in Albuquerque of some of the developments that we've helped fund is Highland Plaza by the great greater Albuquerque Housing Partnership we have nuevoir trisco by yes housing and we have the Broadway McKnight by the Albuquerque housing authority and I believe you might have had a Linda Bridge present to you last week they all do a great job and that's just an example of some of our partners uh as far as our housing strategy let me tell you a little bit about that so we are on uh I'm not sure if you have it in front of you but this would be slide three so I mentioned that we have Partners throughout the state uh they range from uh non-profits that uh help individuals who are experiencing homelessness lenders and Realtors to help some of the first time home buyers achieve the dream of home ownership local governments that support the building of affordable housing across the state these Partners all do an excellent job at establishing that foundation for uh having that roof over our heads and creating that strong communities and Families uh through this interest rate we have all these partners that do a great job and a lot of them with various different funding sources uh it has been uh MFA goal to bring those Partners together as we tend to function or sometimes uh have programs that function in The Silo and so with that in mind uh we had this vision of developing a comprehensive look at affordable housing what are the needs Statewide what are the resources and that helps us identify all of the gaps that existed out there and then developing a uh a strategy to identify all of that or to help mitigate all of the gaps that may be out there between the needs and the resources available so in the fall of 2021 we began the development of the New Mexico housing strategy we brought together 20 different leaders throughout the full housing Spectrum from across the state to help us develop that strategy look at the challenges and help us put together strategies that would help cover those so those strategies as you see in front of you there uh include or the it gives us a road map for the partners to follow it's a common source of communication across the state as practical Solutions and it brings together those big ideas to help solve those problems with that I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca that'll go over some of the data that we found in the housing needs study no applause please council president Benton City councilors good evening it is not meant for short people can you guys hear me okay good so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our research methodology so is he kind of great gave the groundwork of how we decided to put this together and we really wanted to define the problem well so on the slide that you see we talk about the data that we looked into so we pulled data and analyzed it from a array of sources everything from the Census Data American Community survey data to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Finance Protection Bureau data as well as HUD and we took this data and created three different uh research briefs for the First on housing production and preservation another on affordability wealth building and economic mobility and finally homelessness special needs and Human Services and these research briefs really took the data and analyzed these issues Statewide by County if next slide please oh that's the right one thank you but we also wanted to hear from New Mexicans themselves so we conducted a survey which had nearly 1400 responses and we distributed via the partnership model we worked with our partners to get it out to the people that we serve overall we had a very strong response from typically underrepresented people very low income people people that are precariously house houses of people of color people with disabilities large households and single parents um so this is not statistically representative of New Mexico but it really gives an idea of these uh populations that we usually do not have much data on and what their housing needs are next slide so let's talk a little bit about the challenges go the next slide please so this graph shows the historic building permit production by unit type between 1980 and 2020. the orange bars show single-family units and the blue red and the darker blue show multi-family units everything more than a single family home New Mexico generally had very strong population growth in the 1980s and 1990s and early 2000s it's kind of reflected here right so in 1980s despite some recessionary periods we had a lot of growth especially in the multi-family unit sector that growth continued in terms of building in the 1990s and then you can kind of see where that Great Recession started right around 2007 and 2008 and it significantly dropped off now this graph is actually similar in a lot of other states New Mexico was not alone in how housing production dropped off what is different between New Mexico and other states is in the last couple of years other states have picked up the housing production a lot whereas we are just starting to see the that go up in fact housing production was so strong in the 80s that production of multi-family units permitted during the 80s makes up nearly half of our multi-family housing stock in New Mexico next slide please let's talk about rent growth versus change in income this graph shows you by County rent growth which is in the orange bars between 2010 and 2019 and the blue stripes are Ami growth as you can see on nearly every County Grant growth has vastly outpaced income growth and this really puts a burden on New Mexico households the only the exceptions are Lee County San Juan Los Alamos Sierra Rio riba Kauai and Union counties this is also reflected in the home ownership Market I don't have a graph here for that but between December 2019 and April 2022 so right before the pandemic to a more recent date the price of a median single-family home in New Mexico went up by 40 percent whereas annually we're only seeing income household income increases by two to three percent next slide please New Mexico has also housing condition issues New Mexico has 40 000 units that lack complete kitchens forty thousand that lack complete plumbing and these are not evenly distributed you're more likely to live in a substandard home with pers if you're a person with disability Native American or a renter and you know a lot of substandard housing in some ways is naturally occurring affordable housing so it's affecting lower income households much more than other types of households 22 percent of our survey respondents said that their home was in Fair or poor condition and 25 percent of households with a member that had a had a disability said their home does not meet their accessibility needs next slide please when we think about housing in the future we have to think about population Trends as I said earlier we had really strong growth in New Mexico in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s it slowed significantly but we need to know what kind of housing we need to build build and when so this graph the gray bar show the proportion of our population that are 65 years of age and older whereas the colorful line show different age groups and the number of people in our state from those age groups so right now seniors make up about 18 uh of wait so we we're gonna in 2020 seniors made up about 18 of our population by 2035 they will grow to about 21 of our populations also at the same time we're going to actually see uh increase in residents that are young young residents will go from about from about um I don't have it here but they'll account for 31 of our total population uh by 2035. so it is good for New Mexico that we have some younger people coming in but with the older individuals becoming a larger portion of our population and younger individuals also the number of Working Families working age families is going to decrease in the meantime next slide please so what does that mean for housing so if we we already have affordability challenges right but if we just want to prevent it from getting worse I'm not saying that we get it better we want to prevent it from getting worse we need to build an average of 5100 housing units per year Statewide so right now the last 10 years our average in growth counties which is places like Bernalillo Sandoval Los Lunas Dona Ana we're building about 3 300 units a year Statewide we're about just under 4 800. so no matter what we have to increase production in order to prevent affordability from getting worse next slide please let's talk about rental gaps so the federal government says that you are housing cost burdent which mean means that you pay more than 30 percent of your income on your housing costs your housing costs burdened you are paying too much so we use this data to look at the Gap of households so this map shows the rental gap for extremely low income households Statewide we're short about 32 000 units and there's nearly about 18 000 of these are in Bernalillo County if we can go the next slide cost burden is also getting worse so the light blue bars show you uh the cost burden rates by income level uh in 2010 and the darker blue shows in 2019. so if you make less than twenty thousand dollars a year you're most likely cost burned but what's interesting about this graph is for Middle income people if you make between twenty thousand and fifty thousand dollars a year between 2010 and 2019 the proportion of households that are cost burdened has gone up significantly next slide please let's talk about individuals experiencing homelessness each year there's an estimated 15 to 20 000 individuals that experience homeless homelessness including nine thousand children and again this is not equal Native American and black or African-American residents are over represented additionally there are about 65 100 people who experience homelessness annually that do not receive adequate services and housing to help them exit homelessness next slide please and with that uh overview I'm going to turn it back over to Izzy Hernandez to go through some of the strategies to help solve this problem council president I'll wrap it up here uh you'll see that there's still quite a few slides left but I'm not going to read those in detail I'm just going to hit some highlights and definitely we'll be prepared to take any questions that you may have so if you go on to the well actually you have the slide up these are the five elements of the strategy uh that we'll be covering if you go on to the next slide this is a one picture here that kind of shows you uh the strategies in more detail that I'll be covering and this is by the type of a housing that we'll be looking at so if you go on to this uh next slide here you'll see that we have a strategies and goals here so in this particular strategy it's to create more housing you'll see several goals under this this one here addresses increasing production so part of the that is prioritizing uh existing resources to develop more housing and more affordable housing across the state if you go on to the next slide you'll see similar uh goal here but this uh this one here addresses the boosting the uh the residential construction Workforce and maybe talking to some of the institutions out there to do more training there and also streamlining some of the licensing requirements that are out there uh and potentially some tax exemptions for affordable housing across the state the next slide this goal here has to do with creating some flexibility to respond to housing needs and the market in the market fluctuations so in this one here reducing the regulatory barriers for the Housing Development and also researching some examples that may exist Across the Nation or what other states may be doing this next slide is with the similar goal here and the creating flexibility but this is to streamline the inspection process we found that it's very varied across the state in the different time frames that it takes a second bullet on here you'll see that uh seek funding resources for down payment assistance that's something that we're doing directly there at MFA the next slide uh similar goal on the flexibility but this one is to explore Innovative uh home ownership programs which include extending uh maybe the amortization of loans or maybe accelerating in some cases to gain more Equity up front uh than exploring programs that are aimed at maintaining home ownership that could include say maybe some housing counseling or financial counseling for those that may need it the next slide has to do with manufactured housing as Rebecca mentioned the price of a housing has really skyrocketed and this could be a vehicle especially in the rural areas for some homeownership opportunities some challenges there is that we are also very varied across the state on the various counties and how they convert cattle loans over to a real property so maybe streamlining that process would be one of the things we'd look at and MFA has actually developed a pilot program on purchasing manufactured homes and financing those next slide has to do with uh maybe using underutilized properties and redeveloping those so the Bullet you see here is providing funding to improve the condition of existing homes next slide has to do with uh preserving existing affordable housing so supporting the preservation of units across the state and then also monitoring the qualified allocation plan which we put out to make sure that it is evenly balanced between preservation and new construction next goal has to do with building Assurance among property owners this would be to maybe enhance the loss mitigation that landlords are seeing out there we have a program that's currently being piloted with CYFD where there's a an insurance program if you will that they can come and make a claim to MFA of the security deposits that they that the landlord has does not cover all the damages and so that gives them more comfort in being able to rent their units if you will to maybe folks that they normally wouldn't next slide a similar goal but talks about creating a permanent housing stability fund to serve renters who need help in paying the rent the next slide goes into expanding successful Housing Services some pre-development grants to maybe help develop that capacity with folks that are wanting to provide permanent Supportive Housing and then increase collaboration between service providers and property managers the next slide on the similar goal is expanding funding for the linkages program this is a program which has been very successful we currently have a little over 300 vouchers funded through the state for folks that have severe mental illnesses and it's worked real well and we're working with Health and Human Services to try to get more funding in that area and then also addressing the operating subsidy that it takes to operate those permanent Supportive Housing units next light on the similar goal is evaluating the coordinated entry system which is a system used for homeless providers on how they assess somebody coming in for assistance to make sure that those that are in most need are the ones that are getting assisted next slide this goal has to do with strengthening Supportive Services and examining how Medicaid could potentially be used to pay for some of those services next slide talks a little bit about the uh the goal on strengthening support for emergency uh homelessness interventions and advocating for increased state and local Appropriations including funding to improve these shelters that are currently exist out there and we fund about 25 to 30 those around the state depending on the year at this point I know we covered this pretty quickly we're trying to stay within our time frame but we are definitely uh willing to take any questions that you may have at this point thank you uh Mr Hernandez counselors any questions for the MFA councilor bassan Mr President uh I I appreciate all of the goals there's a lot of them and I think that they're really spot on I especially recognize the need for stability and for new buildings uh what's the Strategic plan that you have and all of these goals that you want to meet how what's your plan to reevaluate how you're doing with that and and continuing to make sure that you're achieving these goals or reevaluating the progress that you're you're obtaining council president and uh Council bazan thank you for the the question uh what we plan on doing and I mentioned earlier that we have an advisory committee composed of 20 individuals from across the state I think we actually have one of them present here today in Lisa huval I think I saw her a little earlier from the city we also have somebody from a DFA from Health and Human Services some non-profits uh local governments and some other funding agencies as well tribal governments so we will be meeting on a regular basis to evaluate all of the goals and strategies and the action plans that we have and that just as needed uh invariably there'll be changes in the environment one of the big wins that we had this last year which would have been maybe at the top of our list here is uh getting some additional resources for all of these strategies here but as you may be aware Senator Nancy Rodriguez helped us pass a bailout last year earlier this year Senate Bill 134 which will provide a reoccurring funds to the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund it is estimated that that will be between 25 and 30 million this coming year so that'll help us meet a lot of these goals uh definitely won't be enough to meet all of the goals that are on here but we will evaluate on a regular basis and adjust as needed and we do a similar thing with our strategic plan with our board and they keep us on task every quarter we report to them on how we're making progress and I hope that addresses your question it does and then just to just to add to that I think that with the lofty goals that you have I just hope that the Strategic plan doesn't get adjusted too much so that the goals keep changing and moving because I would be very curious as you start achieving some of them even the small little ticks that you can knock off I would I would be happy to hear about those because I think that the way that this is laid out is the way that strategic plan should be and setting goals and I would love to see some progress and hear about it in the future thank you councilor Davis thank you Mr President and thank you all so much for coming down uh to give us an update on this I think a lot of folks don't know as much about MFA as perhaps we all should because it has his fingers and so many important issues in our community um it's an important state agency but this is a city council meeting just uh and so my question is what can we do at the city to partner more with MFA what relationships do we have now and how can we bolster some of those as we try to align those our our goals with yours I mean we share the same populations any and most of all those goals are shared amongst us but we're doing some disparate work how can we cooperate better council president and councilor uh Davis uh thank you for the the question there I will tell you that we work closely with the city's uh housing uh that'd be Linda Bridges the Albuquerque housing and also uh Lisa Lisa huvall here and Carol Pierce uh so we coordinate on this on a regular basis uh as far as how the city can uh continue to uh to support this I would think with this housing strategy anything that you can do to help us get the word out there and get some support for these uh these goals and strategies would be great and then just the continued support of the department at the city we do tend to partner together and some of those uh developments or communities that I mentioned a little bit earlier their leverage Resources with MFA funds and some City funds as well so we want to thank you for your continued support and uh just doing more of that counselor Lewis hey Mr President you mentioned one of the solutions is reducing the regulatory burden can you give some examples of that specifically in the City of Albuquerque are there some regulatory uh laws in place that you specifically see as a burden to new housing a new multi-housing councilor bitten and uh councilor or council president and counselor Lewis you know one of the things that some of the examples that came up would be the permitting process sometimes uh the developers Builders come in and they have a hard time there's not a specific time frame on where they will get their developments approved and you know time is money in their world so that would be one of the areas there sometimes when they come out and do inspections uh if they can't judge when those inspections are going to be done or there's not timeliness and that that also costs them money so those would be two examples that I that I could give at this point well and thank you I think um you know any any goals that are actually you know actionable are going to have to be you know specific like that so thanks for sharing some of those specific examples and I'd love to help tackle some of those with you um and if if you could help us with flushing some of those out as well you mentioned some members of your Advisory Board are there some builders that are part of that Advisory Board some private builders that are advising you in that way council president and uh councilor Lewis that is correct we do have uh from the Home Builders Association we have Jack malark that's on the board uh in addition to those 20 members we've also had some focus groups and some of them specific to to Home Builders out there across the state so we do have input from them you know of everything on your list as far as goals are there are there would you say top two that are going to make the biggest difference right now that is a counselor uh or council president and uh councilor Louise uh that that is a tough one uh in with the MFA and the covering the full spectrum of uh of housing from homelessness to home ownership it's hard for me to pick any uh favorites I would say that uh they are all very important uh I think uh if I had one goal would be maybe to really communicate this strategy in the various goals to as many uh of the key leaders across the state to help us support and putting these together that would be maybe the main thing in getting the word out and gaining support for the for the strategy itself that has a lot of support from uh the full spectrum of housing providers out there well thank you and I and I and I think anything any any direction you can give us as far as just just priority as well too I think when you got a long list I mean if everybody's busy doing everything then then nobody's doing anything I think and that's the danger I think of that um but if there are some ways that you can help us flesh some of those out and I think maybe I zeroed in a little bit on the regulatory burden I mean those are things that this Council does uh to be able to you know change some laws some regulatory burdens that that could just be something that we could change right now with some simple legislation and a process to be able to do that I mean I think we're looking for some ways that we can we can uh we can really help and put some things to action right now appreciate it thanks for your work counselor feeblecorn thank you Mr President um thank you Mr Adonis for being here tonight I wanted to just ask a few questions around something else that you guys do really really well and I think it fits in with this conversation that we're having we have a lot of folks in New Mexico and particularly in Albuquerque who are precariously housed because of really high energy burdens and you you are the responsible party for the weatherization program for the state of New Mexico I was just wondering if you could give a few words about how the influx of money from the iija and the IRA are going to really help bolster that program and really keep more people in their homes that are already in homes right now keep them housed council president and uh councilor uh feeble Corona thank you for the question and uh yes we do operate the uh weatherization program the Energy Efficiency program from New Mexico uh and we generally do between seven and eight hundred homes a year that get weatherized in the priority there is to elderly those that are maybe uh handicapped and very low income and have a very uh high percentage of their funds going towards uh towards energy we have three providers across the state one of them housed here in the Albuquerque area that does the northern part of the state we did uh were notified about some additional money that's coming our way from doe I think about 22 million in a five-year period which uh almost doubles what we've operated with in the past which includes doe New Mexico Gas pnm some State funding from time to time and some El Paso Electric money so this will be really be a boost and help us close to doubling the amount of production that we'll have across the state and uh huge need out there and uh really look forward to to being able to assist more families thank you I just I think it's really important that we keep an eye on both sides we want to keep people in the homes that are already in and we also need to provide additional housing as we move forward so thank you Mr President thank you councilor councilor Pena Mr President um thank you Mr Hernandez for being here um just had a question thanks um it was a two-prong question one of them was regarding weatherization so thank you for your question and then the other one was the affordable housing multi-housing units I know that in the past MFA has received dollars to potentially fund like five through across the state so it becomes very competitive can you tell me have you increased the amount of those projects or has it remained kind of the same because I know that that tends to be a big issue because it's so complex because it requires the MFA State funding federal tax credits local funding and private investment council president and councilor Pena thank you for the question the the program that I believe you're referring to is the low-income housing tax credit program it is uh I would say the most competitive program we have at MFA and we generally fund uh two to three or we get two to three times more applications than we're able to fund we fund between Florida the seven a year just depending on the size of those uh developments or those communities uh I don't see that changing that's a federal program where funding comes to us on a formula basis there is some movements at the federal level to increase the amounts by 50 percent over a time period but if uh if we're successful there we'll be able to do more um if we're not successfully in that area there are some of the thing uh things that we're going to be able to do here uh in the 2024 I mentioned earlier that Senator Rodriguez was able to get the Senate Bill 134 pass which gives us a lot more money on the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund so it'll help us do more of those developments with maybe with some additional Gap funding or financing from MFA uh that's the nine percent tax credits that you're referring to there's also a four percent that doesn't provide quite as much Equity but that program is being used more and more and actually here in the Albuquerque area as well requires more Gap financing but that's money that could become available from MFA in the near future so Mr President so so your goal is to try to increase that and identify additional resources because it seems as though that's one of the ways that you can actually secure the most housing right in those two programs they can build be built up in one single time council president and uh councilor Pena that is correct that has been a one of the most successful programs around the nation actually and where the affordable housing I forget the percentage but it's uh probably 80 percent of all affordable housing is uh as low income housing tax credits in it so we're hopeful that we're successful in increasing those amounts but uh definitely not in control at the federal level but we'll continue to advocate for that and uh in the meantime uh try to maybe push the four percent tax credits more with additional uh Gap finding or financing from MFA so Mr President just one last thing is just because I know that when we've funded projects and you know we had we had less than I think 10 million but we couldn't use the 10 million for those types of projects because there just wasn't um enough money to to put a package together if you will for a lack of a better term and now we've increased the funding for that so then it stays kind of in this pot unutilized for affordable housing um so what would be what would be your strategy to kind of try to I mean I know you already said that you're trying to seek additional resources but as a as a city I think it makes it difficult for us to like kind of continue to put money into the affordable housing when we can't utilize those dollars because of those barriers councilor president and councilor Pena I would definitely I what I would do is I maybe I'm going to get uh and maybe set up a meeting and have more conversations with uh Carol and Lisa over here to determine what funding sources you have and some of the barriers that may be there so we can collaborate a little bit more to make sure that that money is put to good use because uh I can tell you and you can see from the data that Rebecca shared with you there's a great need out there and uh there's a lot more need for for funding so we don't want to leave any funding on the table if we can work through some of the challenges or constraints that you may be seeing thank you thank you Mr President Mr Hernandez just to follow up on that that question um and and you had mentioned the Gap financing and four percent tax credit I think the city has historically done nine percent projects more often than not and I think that's kind of some of the disconnect even though we're we have robust funding now uh within the affordable housing uh budget line item but those four percent tax credits with another thing that we did which was uh creating a a 20 million dollar recurring uh voucher availability that can that's part of that uh of that Gap financing is it not uh for the four percent projects council president uh the 20 million dollars are you referring to the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund additional funding we put uh 20 million additional recurring I believe I've got that right excuse me I've got it reverse so we've got 10 million and recurring vouchers uh just as a result of recent actions by the council uh annually at least until somebody does something different we've got 10 million annually in recurring voucher funding and then uh or other it could also be used for other operating expenses and other types of Gap financing and then what councilor Pena is referring to is we have made a robust uh change within the uh or addition to the plot of the uh Workforce Housing Trust Fund which is usually the the soft local money that's used for light tech projects council president uh yeah I'm not too familiar with that I'm sure Lisa and Carol also are so I'll get with them I can tell you that uh with those four percent tax front uh and definitely if they can be used for vouchers as well I think that'll be helpful but uh we'll need to kind of determine what constraints you may have on that funding source and how they may be used yeah that there's a narrative out there about that that may or not be completely accurate but we do we know we need to build up our capacity within the department within the city to expend those funds thanks so much for coming down and uh and speaking to us telling us what MFA is up to and uh very much appreciate your partnership with the city thank you council president and we look forward to uh making some progress on this and maybe reporting back to you in the future thank you thanks so much all right next we have a presentation from CNM and our CNN president Tracy heartsler will make presentation welcome hi uh good evening uh president council president and members of the council I appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening it's nice to see some of you in person I think I've only met some of you by Zoom or WebEx or whatever medium we were using for the last two and a half years so this is a treat I just want to take a few minutes and I know my colleague here will pull up a presentation but I just wanted to take a few minutes one to thank you for your support and your strong partnership with CNM over uh over the years we're excited that we're in certainly in the city we certainly appreciate your support not only for recently for our food pantry that serves our students directly but certainly all the other agreements that we have to help our students get the transportation they need a number of wraparound supports that they need to help be successful students and certainly the support that you provide to our employers who help use our programs both in our and our Workforce Development programs so tonight what I'm here to mention is the Statewide General obligation bond election that's coming up here in November there are a number of projects affecting about 22 colleges and universities almost 300 million dollars worth of projects are on that Statewide Bond Bond three and again I think the presentation will come up but Bond three represents all of the higher education projects including some projects for our local libraries and other and senior centers importantly for the Statewide bond election in the next slide please you'll note that this obligation or what all of our institutions are going out to the state to request support for does not change the tax rate so that's what's really important for most people is that their tax rates will not change and we will also support a significant number of Institutions and local communities not only here in central New Mexico but throughout the state you'll see that this will create about 2 000 jobs across the state it will bring specifically to Central New Mexico 94 million dollars both with the project that I'll describe here for CNM and also for three projects that are for the University of New Mexico and University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center next slide please so it's most important for this project is that it supports probably the first step among quite a few here that will support the needs of our local communities in particular our skilled trades facilities so we anticipate over the next 10 years we will have at least three major investments in the skilled trades mostly replacing our oldest facilities here at the campus this project that's on bond three will replace three of our oldest buildings that were constructed in the late 1960s in 1972. uh in the in that those three buildings we have a number of our key traditional trades programs what we will do is build a new trades facility on our main campus downtown uh that will cost about 56 million dollars that I think it started at 42 back in you know 18 months ago so I mean the heart anyway it's quite stressful as you all know when you're building in construction at this time you know that you know that the challenges with supply chain inflation has really affected our projects I'm incredibly proud that the state is considering additional support certainly our local voters have already provided at least 20 million dollars for this project what we are seeking on the Statewide bond is 15 million dollars again so that's still a substantial support from the state to what will uh to a facility that will include most of our programs that I'll highlight on the next page also two other important notes uh as part of our facilities plan for the next couple of years we have entered an agreement with Rio Rancho Public Schools where we will build and take some of the programs that are currently here on our downtown campus and we'll move those two again still serve central New Mexico but move those into Sandoval County and those are our auto mechanic diesel mechanic and electric vehicle programs that will start so again how do we better use our our resources to leverage Partnerships with other entities and frankly leverage our dollars so that we can really create a center that again is LED and in both ideas and development by our employers who are saying they have this Workforce Demand by economic Trends where we see electric vehicles not surprising resulting in Greater demand for our students and our services um and also certainly growth in in our diesel mechanic program so again looking to leverage those resources we also have um are certainly strongly engaged in conversations with the city and the state uh on a Film Center of Excellence so expanding our 20-year film program that is strong results uh but really expanding that partnership with the state and a governor uh the governor's proposal to have a New Mexico Media Academy and so we're looking for a site to build that so again local voters have supported those Footprints for us but we know in the next 10 years that's where we're headed to again really meet the needs of our growing economy provide Learners with really inspiring places to learn and and learn their trades by the way learn their trades over time because we will train them once we certainly anticipate that we have our students and our Learners our employers come back to us repeatedly to really take advantage of our new facilities and help continuing education and help our Learners on their journey and their continuing education efforts so this program as you can I believe you can see uh replaces a number of our uh will be the home for our new skilled trades program so again traditional Plumbing HVAC uh we have new mechatronics lab or program and what does that really mean that means that most of our skilled trades as we've heard from our employers our Union reps certainly our school Partners state agencies and local agencies and local governments all of us know that technology electronics and Engineering have all come together to shape how we how we work and live whether it's the smart thermostat on your on your wall or it's your car we all know there's a basic literacy that's needed in any skilled trade that you're entering so our mechatronics program helps bring those Learners into into their skilled trade area where they're going to learn that basic I Information Technology again electronics and Engineering to help them navigate all the technology changes that are going on in our traditional skilled trades um so that's a highlight of our program the last slide I have is just to remind you all if you didn't know uh early voting is the Earl is in the middle of October again election day is November 5th we certainly encourage you and members of the public to consider Bond three and certainly to continue your support to seek your support for CNM as you've supported us in the past with that I'd be glad to answer any questions any questions for the president counselors thanks so much for coming down and speaking thank you I appreciate your time thank you so much all right we have no Economic Development discussion tonight uh we'll move to General Public comments members of the public can provide live public comment to the council in person or virtually if they've signed up for the instructions published on our agenda here are the public comment ground rules each participant has up to two minutes to present comments are to be addressed to the counselors only through the council president any disruptive conduct will result in removal from the meeting and the light on the podium will be green for the first minute and a half then the light will turn yellow indicating you have 30 seconds to wrap up your comments at two minutes the light will turn red and a Bellow ring indicating your time is up Mr Cornelius please call the name of the first speaker thank you Mr President our first Speaker this evening is Bex Hampton followed by Ben imbus hello good evening my name is Bex I'm a tenant in District One um I know that Council you all Care About Us Albuquerque residents and 40 percent of us are actually tenants that's almost half the city um and right now rent has skyrocketed an unprecedented amount harming people from all walks of life and not just tenants alone but small businesses that pay rent are also affected and with Rising rents small business owners who rent a space away from home face the risk of losing so much income that they could end up shutting down their business or losing their livelihood and risk being forced into poverty or homelessness ending the prohibition on rent control I think really fits well into the MFA strategic plan to provide affordable housing I'm here to encourage you all to vote Yes next city council meeting on the memorial to stand with us as we urge the state legislator to end the prohibition on rent control this Democratic prohibition is infringing on local communities freedom to make decisions about their own housing needs we need the Democratic right to make these types of decisions as a community thank you and see you next meeting then in this followed by Patty Garrett Patty Garrett followed by Anna Lee hi so I'm a property owner in District Two And since August 2nd our my next-door neighbor has been terrorizing literally our neighborhood he apparently is diagnosed schizophrenic and has been off of his medical medication and in these last two months there are three of us who in this town home share a foundation with him he's a destructed property torn up a free little Library vandalized cars destroyed trees vandalized a trash can in addition he's been flooding his backyard with a garden hose for eight plus weeks which is eroding the retaining wall behind her homes Water Authority says they're monitoring it but the owner pays the fines there isn't much they can do they even told one neighbor that they needed that he was dangerous and that they weren't going to send people out anymore a police officer told us to call code enforcement but when they were called they said to call the police or the mosquito police every call that we've made for we've had threats he was actually arrested in a SWAT standoff in my neighborhood um for chasing a teenager with a metal rebar and telling him who's going to kill him he was declared incompetent and the charges were dropped he's told us he was going to burn the effing place down and then when we smelled smoke and called 9-1-1 no one came he's screamed at my 18 year old daughter I'm gonna rape and kill all the women here we called 9-1-1 we've asked we've called 3-1-1 we've called 242 cops we've asked for the crisis intervention to be sent um he said the other day I know how this ends it ends with me killing you mother effers he when I I also teach I'm a public school teacher and teach right in the neighborhood and when I was walking home from work the other day he told me he was going to punch me in my effing face he Rings doorbells he Jiggles doorknobs your time is up but but we would direct you to the police officers in the back and speak directly okay the issue though is that police are not responding I understand your time is up thank you Mr President I have a question for the police Administration and reference to this and I'd like to address it Mr President and councilor Sanchez um I would um be happy to visit with um this individual and get information and get APD to look into what's happening with this situation and report back to you okay well the question that I have Mr Royale is I have the same exact issue going on with a homeowner in my district where we're not getting any kind of response from the police department the police department have been called numerous times we've had this same individual in my district make threats I've reached out to the to the police Administration numerous times and these individuals who are causing the threats in the neighborhood they need to really be addressed so I want to make sure that not only this incident is taken care of and addressed but also the one in my neighborhood as well and I just wanted to ask them questions as to what they're doing right now out to help this the uh this neighbor here Mr president presidential Sanchez um be happy to get the information from your constituents as well and uh I will uh make sure that um APD Administration contacts you and has a conversation with you about both of these situations and what they're doing um as uh on these issues okay thank you ma'am um we're gonna do everything we can to try to address the situation I've emailed all of the news stations and so I'm doing everything I can because it's not going to end well and it's a crisis so I would hope you would all want to know I agree we need to make sure that no one is hurt in your in your neighborhood as well as the the neighborhood in my area as well thank you next speaker there's no applause a lot in the chambers please our next speaker is Anna Lee desangier followed by Cynthia Rodriguez hello uh my name is Anna Lee and I am an organizer with the people's housing project as well as a resident of District 2. and the spirit of the Proclamation for domestic awareness month and as a survivor of domestic violence myself I would just like to mention that the lack of affordable housing can trap a person in a dangerous situation when rents are unaffordable many are forced to stay in an abusive relationship so that they don't become homeless um uh while we have a number of Demands that we've come um you know that you all know a few of those um and those demands We Believe would drastically increase Albuquerque's residence access to Safe clean affordable housing right now we're feeling very encouraged by the memorial set forth by councilor feeblekorn that will urge the state to repeal the prohibition on rent control uh you know we've had a chance to look at the memorial urging the New Mexico State Legislature to repeal the New Mexico okay it sounds funny to me um to uh okay we've had a chance to look at the memorial uh urging the New Mexico State Legislature to repeal the New Mexico rent control prohibition and we feel like it's written really well and we feel like once you know if you all have had a chance to look at it um you will feel the same as it stands right now the prohibition on rent control is preventing the Democratic process local governing bodies need to have the freedom to make their own decisions about housing that suits their needs um and you know we've come here and expressed our needs and our frustrations and we're very thankful that this Council has decided to take action in the form of the memorial and please vote Yes and stand with us thank you Cynthia Rodriguez followed by Zoe Johnson thank you uh my name is Cynthia Rodriguez I'm an organizer with the people's housing project and I also live in District 9 which is represented by Miss grout um today I'm here to ask that at the next city council meeting that uh Miss grout and all other counselors here vote Yes to the memorial urging the state to end the prohibition on rent control right now rents are skyrocketing and they're forcing renters into disparity workers and small business owners alike are having to choose what costs they must must cut to afford a roof over their head passing this remote Memorial would show that the council stands with the residents of Albuquerque and cares about taking action to address the housing crisis we know that you all see the crisis our beloved city is facing and that you want to do everything possible to solve it please vote Yes to the memorial urging the state legislator to repeal the poor the prohibition on rent control so that we can make rent affordable for all Albuquerque residents and we also invite everybody here and all the residents in Albuquerque to join us at the next city council meeting on October 17th where you guys will be voting for this Memorial on this Memorial hopefully for it so thank you all so much Zoe Johnson followed by Joe Garcia Joe Garcia followed by Francesco artist yeah yes sir council members and mayor my name is Joe Garcia I'm a Vietnam veteran in Vietnam veteran did tutors in Vietnam but the thing is I have a plan or we have a plan our church does we need fifteen hundred dollars to support the building and it's a psychological warfare we're having with the homeless we keep calling them homeless people but they need psychological help and the information that we can get we can congregate them in some area like our church reach them the idea of motivation and exactly where their goals are not when their their goals being now their goals when they were young vibrant they were educated you know who knows what happened in between but this is like a virus we have to fight it in a psychological way and um we're doing a good job we're trying to figure out that we don't have phds we have overlooked at the University of New Mexico to uh see if some of their class students would come and just fall in place with the homeless that gather there and look at their actions analyze their degrees of psychological reflections of what they see do maybe somehow or another we can find out what the element of that disease is doing to our I call them Abba kirkians not homeless people there's a psychological warfare happening and we need to fix it so if we can have your permission to or application for a funding of support for three months and if it comes out where you could brainstorm the ideas that come out of here maybe we can do something about the homeless thank you Francesco artists followed by Ted Minsky council president uh City councilors I want to give a shout out to the redistricting committee they did amazing work uh I misplaced my notes I don't remember the name I think it's Petra Morris uh she's amazing not only super professional very knowledgeable but she did it all with good humor and Grace amazing and as an artist I try to keep myself sharp by trying to do something I normally don't do so I was inspired by the fact that this only happens once every 10 years so I created a map and apologies to district one because I started with district one if you flip it to the back I want to put you all I noticed that I started numerically but For Better or Worse the plan is to do one for each district and I feel this is a great way for maybe fresh start you know moving forward you know one for all all for one so thank you all right Mr President thank you I think it's really this is really cool but I want everyone to know that counselor Sanchez just said is that me I recognize myself believe me I just had to ask thank you Tad nimisky followed by Alan lasek and well let me begin if citizens destroy city property end up in jail right yeah absolutely all in Penitentiary here is city of Agriculture under management mayor Keller City councils all and park management destroy Coronado Park comparing to beautiful place used to be as Roosevelt Park was well that is crime against citizens of the United also takes out X money well no they're not stupid they are smart they know how to get loaded on pocket now speaking about taxes going to back to Texas at the national level prices gas more than double up this Administration compared to the other 80 to Trump well abiding blaming Oil Company oil companies I'm sorry they all playing same game tax money and they have to have profit or your company it's higher tax prices also percentage is income for the speaking about tax region well people worry about social security don't worry about it what we paying this government found that way to collect same way what's going on right now with rosary and yes thank you Alan lasek followed by Anthony Aragon all right Mr President and Council thank you very much my name is Alan lasek and I'm the executive director of the apartment association my comments are directed at the memorial regarding lifting the prohibition on rent control I've wanted to provide some facts about rent control rent control negative impacts the housing market by discouraging the construction of new housing Expediting the deterioration and loss of existing housing and diminishing the value and investment in properties rent control is not only adversely impact many different Industries it affects its effects also Place burdens on State and local governments the reduction in property values that result from rent control lead to a decline in property tax revenue as we know property taxes pay for schools public safety and so on according to a poll of economists by the American Economic Review 93 percent agree that a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available just this last year in St Paul Minnesota they passed rent control three months into it multi-family building permits were down 80 percent year over year and that includes affordable housing meanwhile Minneapolis across the river with no rent control overall construction was up turning off to supply to new housing would be disastrous for us as a community as we just heard from the MFA we need housing the solution to higher cost of housing is not price controls the answer is to increase the supply of housing it's the law of supply and demand streamline the permitting process make it easier to build and encourage investment in New Mexico thank you Anthony Aragon followed by Christopher Hurley council president distinguished members of my city council I come to you with a heavy heart I say it's the highest respect intent and at this present time as a disabled veteran at 100 disability I want to thank Clarissa Pena and what she has done for my cruising culture that I belonged to since 1975. and what she's done on the west side with the grand opening of the Route 66 Event Center is totally awesome I want to thank her morally from my heart and from my ancestry that my family's been here since 1542. thank you ma'am for what you're doing for the City of Albuquerque I appreciate you very much and most of all above all council president and Mr Rael if possible sir if I could make appointment through your offices and unfortunately I have to do it in public comment because the matter at hand at this present time become life-threatening for myself and my family so if possible Mr Royale as well as you chamber president or should I say council president I'd highly appreciate it if we could get together and talk about the problem at hand at this present time and once again councilor Pena thank you very much for what you've done for the City of Albuquerque I appreciate you ma'am thank you Christopher Hurley followed by Steve Grant hello uh some Christopher Hurley head of research at Excalibur research and development and part-time Rideshare driver we're having several issues with Rideshare within the city um currently issuing uh with the ride share drivers a boycott on Central Avenue and the Balloon Fiesta our current issues are that with Balloon Fiesta we are losing money picking up because of the huge diversion where we used to have a route for taxi and ride share to come in uh Central we have uh some of our female drivers getting sexually assaulted because we're forced to go down uh the uh Alleyways behind Central instead of having a ride share like say using the art line where there's street lights and people to see what's going on uh not to mention trying to tell a drunk Drive someone drunk know your other left gets annoying after a while um we're having issues at the sun Port as well uh TNC Zone that we're supposed to pick up at which is covered under city ordinance that no one is allowed to park in the taxi TNC or rtnc is not being enforced by the police are by airport security this leads to currently a 40 increase in pickup time and usually waste on average for each driver about 500 worth of rides a day um other than that uh outside of Rideshare uh I would you know ask a question on the uh that brain referendum on the uh rent uh there's currently such a disparity that you can earn enough to not qualify for low-income housing but not earn enough to qualify for regular housing and I currently house one person every three months trying to get them help with this at my house and uh I would like to know if there went companies would like to pay me rent for that thank you Steve Grant followed by Danger varos hello council president and fellow counselors my name is Steve Grant I'm a small multi-family owner here in Albuquerque I've been so for many years hold a monthly rental property meet up for investors and I'm also the president of the apartment association and also one of the members of the Housing Council for Mr Hernandez that just spoke a company tonight in response to um to those that wants to repeal the housing rental law control law I represent thousands of small independent operators throughout the city in New Mexico and believe me when I say we all want the best for both the property owner and the tenant yes we all realize that homelessness in our streets is a huge problem big time number one can we attribute the monthly rent as the number one reason why we have this homeless homelessness problem and number two is it taking such severe action such as repealing the rent control law really the answer there are solutions that we can work towards towards a betterment of this for future housing I believe in my opinion many smaller property owners have huge concerns surrounding this proposed change and there will be unattended consequences supported the Nashville housing the national Apartment Association has found substantial evidence that when you make rent control law the current overall Housing Development that you see literally will disappear Additionally the small local independent Omer is really having a hard time keeping up with repairs for example a security door that I used to buy at Home Depot for 75 dollars is now 152. evaporative cooler that used to be 375 is now 575. lastly we all know that we're in the middle of this housing shortage more than ever before we need to work together and make what neces what is necessary to make it attractive for investors in current property owners to make it happen with what we need to have done in this city thank you danger vitals followed by a good citizen hello uh president and counselors my name is danger varros you see me up here before I am Albuquerque Alibi's 2019 best comic in the City thrillist magazine uh best Comics to look out for around the country but I'm not here to tell you any jokes uh this is a serious matter I'm concerned about the country I'm concerned about our city right now but there's really really really good news uh president and councilor feeblecorn have introduced this amazing Memorial that you can vote on next time you meet that suggests to the state legislature that you repeal the ban on rent control I'm here as a volunteer as are my friends and I appreciate to hear from people who are paid to ask you not to repeal the banana health rent control but we are volunteers and uh we're citizens I'm a dad I'm a student I'm a business owner and I'm really really excited about this morning thank you for introducing it I hope that you will all vote for it next time you meet it's uh opportunity to give some democracy into the city uh president and uh councilor Dan Lewis you were asking the MFA president about some regulatory measures that can help with the city and I really think that uh the prohibition on rent control is is really over burdensome State mechanism that's preventing this body from making Democratic decisions for itself which I think would be best for Albuquerque it'd be best for me and be best for my family and I would really appreciate your vote whenever this comes around so thank you for your support and thank you for your time listening to public comment something good citizen followed by Damon Maddox good evening everyone I I just want to reiterate on uh maybe what this woman that uh was being terrorized was saying earlier today and the counselor was saying as well about uh citizens being safe and I like to maybe let all the citizens remind them that the police cannot always be there to protect us we need to be able to protect ourselves and that's what the Second Amendment is for to be able to protect ourselves because the cops are not always going to be there when we need him we need to take advantage of that to make ourselves better to make our communities better the the Second Amendment is there for for us to be able to protect ourselves from uh foreign and domestic enemies just just as well as foreign domestic too though the people that are in back houses the peoples that are willing to train us the uh our neighbors that are gonna that are gonna hurt us or are the people that aren't in their right minds or or have bad intentions but um I just wanted to remind everybody here that uh you know that's what the Second Amendment is for so we can protect ourselves that's what we need to do we can depend on the police to do that I also uh let them know that uh I also want to reiterate on uh on our constitution about uh it's the supreme law it's the supreme law and anything contrary to the Constitution is um is uh notwithstanding so remember our first amendments our second amendments all our amendments are important to us and when the councils are are uh litigating or making uh ordinances or or I mean not litigating but legislating making rules ordinances and stuff like that keep in mind our rights those should be protected first before you try to make a law that goes against the people or for the people for their safety thank you Damon Maddox followed by commissioner debris O'Malley on Zoom commissioner Debbie O'Malley followed by Nancy arenas thank you Mr President counselors I did sign up to speak to ec22-145 libido message is it appropriate to speak now or do I need to speak then you may speak now okay thank you first of all I want to thank you all for the two uh proclamations on uh domestic violence population especially young women have children but also women who are experiencing homelessness the proposed site that son and all for the first just one of the first safe outdoor spaces is in my district I'm very I've been working with Mr President but I'm having a hard time understanding what uh commissioner yeah we have a hard time with your own you know can you hear me now is this better yes okay thank you very much so um I I just want to say that uh you know the the first of all as I said I wanted to thank you both thank you violence and that you know very vulnerable population of course our maniculous this and the site on the null one of the SOS is that did um a pass or it has an application and for permitting is in my district um I am supportive of that I'm working with the group that is that a fact I have committed some of my DDF funds that's District directive funding for infrastructure for that particular site um this is again a very vulnerable popular that needs a safe place to stay with support services I don't believe we can help people if they don't have a safe place to stay example of folks who are wanting to drug rehab or other services we have to be able to find these folks and ability is very very important that you uh uphold the mayor's veto on the on the funding uh you know putting one group against or you know that doesn't make any sense I mean there's a lot of funding available for veterans of course and it's important to support uh to homelessness who are veterans uh they're also there should be funding available for particularly women in this case vulnerable women who need those caucuses as well so I just wanted to say uh that I would appreciate that uh we need to have the operational funding for this particular project for SOS is if we want to make sure that they're secure and safe thank you very much for your time thank you Nancy Arenas followed by Mia Augustine you muted them try again can you hear me now we can hear you thank you Mr President and counselors my name is Nancy Arenas on the city council website is a letter of introduction for this meeting today and you will be presented with r2273 directing the Animal Welfare Department to work with the University of New Mexico to collect otherwise disposed of animal tissues um in city owns and sponsored spay neuter clinics and I hope that you will all support this as it will help to reduce and hopefully at some point and the use of animals in a laboratory set setting thank you Mia Augustine followed by Rihanna and Samuel I don't see Mia in the waiting room so Rhiannon Samuel thank you Mr President to members of the council my name is Rhiannon Samuel and I represent neop the commercial real estate Development Association I am here to speak on the rent control Memorial contained within the letter of introduction as you are already have already heard from my colleagues this is not the appropriate or correct answer to the housing challenges that we all face in our city and across the state to put it plainly this is a Band-Aid for something that really only has one solution increasing the supply of all housing and in fact you heard from the mortgage Finance Authority at the top of this meeting that the solution to housing affordability is to build the development community that I represent wants to do more business in New Mexico and proposals like these scare away any investment in our city now along with our partner groups stand ready to work with a council and the administration to reduce the hurdles that are in the way of creating more housing opportunities for everyone a more viable Housing Solutions include but are not limited to less restrictive zoning that prioritizes housing and walkability quicker turnaround times for development and residential conversions thank you for your time today and I urge you to consider alternative long-term solutions to our systematic housing issues rather than headline grabbing propositions like rent control thank you up next is Tina kitchen good evening counselors thank you for your time I'm here just with a quick comment at the moment asking that the council work with this mayor's office and family community services and other Community Partners schools and community centers and churches to begin to plan for inclement weather that will be coming pretty much right around the corner for warming centers this fall and winter we've had several incidents of the last few years of really bad cold snaps that come in suddenly and people that are experiencing homelessness living outside are left wanting for adequate shelter so I'm just here asking you to begin planning and working with those departments and other community sponsors now so that um adequate warm shelter and overnight accommodations can be made available and can be communicated to the public and to people living outside in a timely and effective way thank you very much Mr President that concludes general public comment all right thank you thanks thank you to your all for your comments Mr President uh councilor Sanchez thank you Mr President I just wanted to make a quick comment into in reference to what has gone on today in reference to the uh affordable housing and um the rent control as we were listening to everything today um I take notes and I've taken notes every single day and today I took notes from Mrs Max I took notes from Annalee from Mrs Cindy Mr Allen Mr Grant um Mr danger varos and I've taken notes from you every single time I've been here and when you get right down to it I appreciate everything that you're doing and I understand kind of in a nutshell what we need to do as a city council and I would like to sit down and have major discussions about this but where I'm at right now is the City of Albuquerque the state reflects with cash right now and I would say let's wave the flag we need to actually get more housing out there I think it's important that we open the flood Lake gate um deal with the MFA get really release the regulatory burdens get these projects moving forward I think it's really really important I think that if we get these projects moving forward we're going to have a win-win for all because if we move these projects forward then we're going to have affordable housing and and I think it'd be nice to have affordable housing and let's say let's have families live in a nice thought out committee where they have the best of the best where it's safe maybe Parks swimming pools community centers so I think we need to increase the building as quick as we possibly can so that we can get to where we need to be to me that sounds like a very very natural progression in reference to stable realizing the market so that the folks that don't have enough money to to compete if we make more housing then you'll be able to compete it'll cause the other folks who are who are charging the higher rent to be stabilized so they won't be able to raise their rent and then maybe those folks can be able to add and make renovations to their house so I think when I heard counselor um the other counselors talk about it I think it really makes sense that we immediately do something as a council to get rid of those regulatory burdens so that we can start building enough affordable housing so that we can get uh to where we need to be and like I said that sounds like a win-win for everyone and it sounds like a natural progression to move forward so that was my comment and I totally appreciate everything that you guys are doing and I totally understand um and understand what we what we need to do to actually help the situation so thank you so much for everyone's cooperation and reference that all right we're now on Administration question and answer period councilors any questions for the administration councilor grout Mr President thank you I have a quick question for APD hey there good evening um it's been brought to my attention that sometimes when people have um they have issues with crime or theft or anything of you know all of these things where they need police support sometimes they're instructed to um write an incident report and sometimes they're instructed to write a police report I'd like to know the difference between the two and how are they how do you gather that information and record it Mr President and counselor grout deputy chief Barker with Albuquerque Police Department there's not a difference between an incident and a police report however there is a difference between an incident and an offense report both of those reports are considered police reports what that means is that they're entered into the same computer system in the same manner the difference on these reports is what's being written about so when an officer is writing a report if they select a crime it is considered an offense report if the reporting officer selects a category that is not a crime it's an incident report some of the categories for incident reports includes an apparent natural death a suicide found property and informational reports or Behavioral Health reports since these reports are not crimes they do not fall within a crime category however we still have the availability and the access to withdraw data from that meaning that if we wanted to look at how many suicides had been committed during the year we would be able to pull that data what's also important to note is that after after an officer writes a report it is approved and reviewed by a supervisor after that the process is that report review will review that report and make sure that it is categorized correctly so if it's written as an incident report but a crime was committed it would be sent back to the officer to be Rewritten thank you thanks for clarification that's it thank you councilman Mr President I have a question for Transit please foreign good evening I I can't wait to meet you I heard about you today um so my question is you know we've been getting some emails and I wanted to make sure to follow up uh regarding bus routes there's a few of them probably more than I know about that are not running as consistently as advertised so people are counting on being able to get a ride from these buses and they're waiting and either they show up extremely late or they don't show up at all and I'm wondering I can imagine it's probably to do a staffing so that aside what are we doing about it and is there a way to change the advertising on it so that people don't start continue they don't continue to count on this as a method of transportation in their day council president councilor bassan I'm Leslie Keener I'm the new director of transit for ABQ Ride so yes this does have a lot to do with our driver shortages that we're currently being faced with and it's not just here in Albuquerque it's a nationwide shortage that we are dealing with as well so we do have several vacancies that are out there for both our motor coach operators and our sun van chauffeurs so this is causing us some issues obviously with Staffing some of the runs unfortunately um you know there's lots of mornings or even mid shift that we don't know whether we're going to have a driver available or not a lot of this has to do with unplanned layoffs that we can't plan for and we just don't have the extra Personnel around to provide protector service like we used to have where we would have someone sitting there to be able to put on a run so unfortunately a lot of that has is is unplanned where we don't know in advance that we're not going to be able to fill a run and make that trip what we are doing right now is trying to increase our communication with the citizens and the public when we are not going to be able to fill a run um we don't have that real-time information available right now to our citizens so like you said it's it's I can understand the frustration and then convenience that is felt when you have a planned trip and you're waiting for the bus and it doesn't show up um what we are working on right now is a patch with our transit app that will provide that real-time communication however in the meantime right now we are asking for citizens to either call 311 or 243 ride they can give you that updated information real time at that point but this patch is basically a feed from our operational system that will then go into the transit app and provide that real-time information um on top of that you know we are actively hiring trying to recruit as actively as we can doing um a lot of unorthodox types of events I know we did have the car show earlier this year we are working with the Union to try and have some job fairs and just really you know trying to um entice as many drivers as we can to fill those vacancies thank you director I think that I mean all of that is very reasonable and and I understand where we're coming from with that so I guess in addition to what you're doing Mr Royale if you could I I don't know let me know how to help let me know how we can get DTI involved how do we make sure that while we're telling Albuquerque to ride city buses with zero fares and seemingly avoid some catastrophe is more more or less what I've been hearing and also that's if you happen to get picked up how do we find a way to allow the writers that are committed to writing and depending on it make sure that they have consistency and that they too will know when they're going to get home or if they're going to get to work on time so I'll help where I can um you know I'm I think that that's but I have two emails here that I'm looking at where it's a consistent problem literally one one constituent here says 25 of and they ride the same lines and one out of every four times they go to ride that line it's not going to show up and so they can count on that which is a huge problem when we're trying to say let's be more more environmentally friendly let's really advocate for all of this and yet we can't be Dependable either and I I'm not blaming like I totally respect the Staffing shortages but we have to quit advertising those routes if we know that they're consistently being a problem in my opinion Mr President and counselor bassan thanks for the offer to help and obviously if you know anyone who wants to be a motor coach operator please Liz no um but more importantly on a more accurate discussion we are looking at the entire service for ABQ Ride and looking at this very issue unfortunately as as our director just mentioned we're in a really acute position as if you will for hiring drivers we just cannot hire enough drivers and so we're looking at all the routes across the city and making some decisions about how do we manage service because to your point if someone's relying on that bus at a certain time and we're having to guess whether or not we're going to be able to deliver a bus at that certain time it's it's not fair to the citizen using the service and quite frankly creates issues for us uh internally so we're looking at that to make sure we can review the routes that we cannot make and make some decisions about about those particular routes additionally as our director mentioned we're also looking at using smaller buses where we don't have to have CDL qualifications that's really the issue across not just Albuquerque or the industries the CDL qualifications so if we're able to use smaller buses if you will that don't require a CDL we might be able to provide better service to some of those routes where normally you would get a 40-foot bus and maybe only have a portion of that bus filled we might be able to use smaller buses that don't require a CDL and provide the service at the same time so all of those options are on the table right now we're reviewing those and and we'll be making some changes and and obviously informing all of you of those changes because they affect each and one of your districts in some way or another Mr President thank you Mr real I think that um and director I'd love to have coffee with you and me you um but at the same time so I appreciate all that I'm on board with it let me know again how I can help with it because the consistency I think and the dependability when we're trying to offer this city services is Paramount so I would be remiss if I also didn't make sure to add in there that I've also had many emails come in about the condition of bus stops and the posed danger shall I say at some of the bus stops so there were people avoiding that as well and I think that we need to make sure and I know that that's another department as well that we work with to make sure that that's there but we have to keep people safe while they wait we have to make sure they can get on the ride that they want to get on either that or we should just shouldn't be offering it at this point we might just need to say sorry today we can't this month we can't on this this line please that's my and Mr President I do have one more question so thank you uh and Mr rail thank you director Mr rail this one's for you as well um going off of what public comment we heard earlier regarding um Rideshare and Balloon Fiesta who's who's the one that actually um who makes that map of how to go down West on Paseo North on 2nd East on Alameda in order to access Balloon Fiesta Park I'm Mr President and uh councilor Busan first and foremost it really is the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in terms of how they manage the Rideshare program however there is involvement with APD and with DMD as it relates to the routes that that would be the most effective to get vehicles in and out um this has been a bit of a challenge I'm just being candid with all of you for some number of fiestas because this route right share spot has changed and we've been working with the Balloon Fiesta to find a way to get folks to that event the challenge quite frankly is as you all know is just getting cars in and out of the fiesta is is even more of a challenge and so we're working through that um we're not happy where it is right now in terms of How It's operating and I'm meeting with our folks in transit excuse me at DMD and police tomorrow to see if we can find a better solution or a better way to get folks in the park but keep in mind it's really an interesting Dynamic we have people taking park and ride from Coronado and Cottonwood waiting in line to get on buses and then we have folks who are willing to use private transportation to get in Faster into the into the or leave the uh the park so it's really an interesting Dynamic that we have to work through and now all in all we're not happy about how that's working out so we'll be looking to see if we can't modify the rod or create a better way to get in and out of the park Mr rail is it that but the overall pattern is that APD or Balloon Fiesta that makes that overall for all of us I mean even when I go it's Paseo to second to Alameda I'm not just talking about Rideshare is it because I've heard this is one of those I've heard APD says it's Balloon Fiesta Balloon Fiesta says it's APD so I want to know from you who do you say it is Mr President and counselor APD obviously does the logistics on the routes working with DMD however for the most part it's been our conversation with the Balloon Fiesta that they designate where they'd like to have the ride share located and so to some extent it's a little of both uh we try and accommodate where Balloon Fiesta would like the right share to be uh through the routes that we're planning and unfortunately sometimes they don't work as well as we like and Mr President Mr rail I just I'm happy to help on this one too I know that I think that what I was talking about earlier and learning about earlier actually when I was listening is I think that it sounds like there's a way to to make this work and I was talking to president Smith with Balloon Fiesta so he He was unaware of some of the challenges so I think that if we this is one of those maybe the lack of communication or miscommunication and if there's some way to make it work it sounds to me like Rideshare is starting to just boycott doing any kind of driving to and from Balloon Fiesta which is a problem for those people who want to get Transportation there whether they you know whether they have to or want to choose that private transportation they're not able to get it and then apparently they're waiting 12 15 times they're getting declined repeatedly so it's really not faster it's actually leaving them out in the Lurch similar to the bus route so however I can help with that but I think that if we start this conversation I'm hoping that even by the end of the week we can arrange something but if not we can definitely I really hope to work to improve that for next year but I'm not gonna I'm gonna hold my breath Because by the end of the week I'm hoping or even the next day or two I'm hoping we can make it work and Mr President and counselor bassan I might just add I had I asked our folks to get the information from the young man that was here uh just to see what his experiences are and what recommendations they might have from from their perspective in terms of working on this issue as well perfect I have some of those and I've been in contact with him I'd love to for us to Loop together on that so that we can all not be doing our own individual thing but doing it together please and thank you all right we'll move on to uh the oh uh councilor Pena that's a question thank you Mr President it's Marvel comment I just wanted to um really thank um director um from ACS I know you went out to a neighborhood or your your members went out to the neighborhood to talk to people there were some gunshots for like five days in a row like 60 plus rounds and unfortunately on the the last day a young I think a young man was was murdered there um but um I appreciate you going out and talking to the neighbors because that was really important and I know APD went and picked up a bunch of casings so thank you for all your work on that and I hope that um gets you to some leads thank you all right we'll move to approval of the journal uh vice president Lewis Mr President of approval of the September 19th Journal there's a second uh and all those in favor of the September 19th Journal say yes yes opposed that passes we'll move on to Communications and introductions changes to the letter of introduction I move that the rules be suspended for the purpose of placing our 72 on tonight's agenda for Action our 72 is directing the city not approve any site plan for the low density residential development at 3525 4th Street Northwest known as the brown property that is inconsistent with what was proposed in the request for proposals process this will require two-thirds vote there's a motion and a second and all those in favor say yes and raise your hands yes opposed I just had a question I just was wondering are we going to go over this later yeah if that that's the intention okay got it okay and I'm a yes anyone opposed okay that passes we'll move to councilor Lewis Mr President I remember that the rules will be suspended for the purpose of introduction introducing o47 placing on the November 7th Council agenda for final action and there's a second from uh councilor bassan councilor fablecorn you know I have not been able to find o47 Mr President is a as a as a proposed late introduction was not included on the iPads when the iPads were uploaded uh on Friday we are in the process of getting it to you okay you're handing it to us physically right now I'm sorry you're going to hand it to us physically right now and then we're going to vote on whether we want to accept it without having a chance to read it Mr President Council people corn we do not have copies but we're currently uploading it to your iPad if you'd like to look at it there um the the motion just to clarify is is not to make any action on it tonight only to accept it onto the letter if this motion fails it can automatically be accepted to the letter of introduction on October 17th right which is the normal process for these things when things don't get into the iPad on Friday for a letter of introduction generally it would be on the next letter of introduction not an immediate action like this Mr President Council people corn that is correct I don't think the request for tonight though is for immediate action it's only for introduction and holdover thank you all right there's a motion a second any other questions uh for uh a late introduction on o47 all those in correct counselor Davis uh Mr President I just want to follow and just ask if there's a if the sponsor can tell us why this needs a late intro and uh and a holdover instead of a normal order this seems like a pretty standard thing if we have a as I understand again I don't see it either like we have a study in place we have a a pilot project in place we haven't gotten any of that data but this seems to be ending that project and and making decisions on what we do next so it sidesteps the ordinance that's in place the process in place now so Mr President uh yeah this is uh there is a there's a time uh period on it and really a few um uh and the whole idea is to give it plenty of time so that there is plenty of time to uh when the I mean the original ordinance will expire at a certain time and so and so the uh you know I guess the you know the the time period really you know by introducing it now give us some time it it really is so that we can honor that that deadline that's in place to be able to do something else with the uh with the ordinance there and I would remind us that we just voted unanimously to place our 72 on the on the you know we suspended the rules on tonight's agenda for final action um so I mean this is certainly within our ability to do so if we choose to so thanks Mr President we don't have to debate this today I just I just don't think this is in sort of normal order for us that that other bill was was published folks have a chance to look at it and can argue with it this does an awful lot it undoes some things that we worked for years some of us to work on the pilot project we haven't gotten any data from it um and then I assume by the title does at least four different things by directing and changing Transit operations that seems like a lot to do in a month um outside of the normal budget cycle and the normal the hearing cycle so I just don't think we need a late intro if the sponsor wants to push it I think we can do it through normal order and allow the administration to weigh in so Mr President we could debate this tonight our staff could talk about it we could do the whole thing and but I would again I would point out that we didn't debate the the suspension of the rules on the previous bill before we voted on that I mean it's just simply a matter of process and we're not we're not voting on this tonight we're not deciding on anything tonight we're not even it's not even up for final action tonight which the previous bill is up for final action tonight and so uh this is following a different process and if we want to have the debate we can certainly have the debate all right any other discussion there's a motion and a second to spend the rules for a late introduction on o47 all those in favor say yes and raise your hand opposed and that passes on a six to three vote we will move now to uh vice president Lewis it's president of approval the letter of introduction there's a motion a second all those favors say yes yes anyone opposed and uh we'll move on to reports of committees there are none uh any deferrals or withdrawals at this time counselors seeing none will move to the consent agenda any changes to the consent agenda seeing none vice president of approval of the consent agenda there's a motion a second from Council passant to approve the consent agenda all those in favor say yes yes yes any opposed and that passes we'll move to announcements counselor Sanchez thank you Mr President there will be a public safety committee meeting on Tuesday October 11th at 5 PM in the council committee room on the ninth floor councilor Jones Thank you Mr President there will be a land use planning and zoning committee meeting on Wednesday October 12th at 5 PM in the council committee room on the ninth floor and councilor feeble corn thank you Mr President there will be an intergovernmental Relations Committee meeting tomorrow October 4th at 3 pm via Zoom video conference thank you we have no public hearings tonight and we have nothing on the approval sections of the agenda we will move to other business and we've moved this up counselors and the public from what was published on the agenda but we know there's a lot of interest in this this is EC 145 The veto of r2265 directing the department of family community services to redesignate funds designated for safe outdoor spaces to use to support homeless near homeless or precariously housed veterans