The 21st meeting of the 26th City Council was called to order at 5:00 PM with eight members present; Councilor Sanchez was excused. The agenda included presentations, an administration question-and-answer period, a consent agenda, public comments, and multiple legislative actions including amendments to the City Council's state legislative program.
While you're either away or while they're secured in that room. Be sure to secure your trash cans, our push food away from the edge of the counters. Our furry friends really like to get the 21st meeting of the 26th council will come to order. Councilor Sanchez is excused this evening. All other counselors are present. I believe Councilor Brasan will be joining us on Zoom this evening. I will start with a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance. We'll have somebody officially lead that next time. Council Grub. Thank you, Mr. President. Civic Plaza parking passes are provided for the public. You can obtain a parking pass from council staff at the table near the chamber's entrance. Members of the public city staff and the media have the ability to view this meeting in person and on live streams through four different platforms, Gov TV on Comcast Channel 16, the Gov TV website, YouTube, and Zoom webinar. The live streams can be accessed from most smartphones, tablets, or computers. Also, this meeting is closed captioned, and you may enable the closed captioning services on your television or device at this time. The video recording of this and all past council meetings will remain available for viewing at any time on the city council's website. Council staff is available via telephone if members of the public need assistance finding the videos online. Please call 50573100 for assistance during business hours Monday through Friday, 8 to 5 p.m. The council will take a break at approximately 7 p.m. this evening. With regard to decorum in the chambers, we want tonight's proceedings to be as 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 all respectful of one another. Mr. President. We have two brief presentations tonight. Thank you, Mr. President. There's going to be a brief presentation from Valerie Martinez, the chair of the Metropolitan Parks and Recreation Board regarding the 2024 board report. Good evening, thank you, and happy holidays. And I'd like to thank you, Councilor Champine and your staff for facilitating this presentation. So we also exist in part to recommend to the city council and to the mayor policy recommendations for the parks and recreation department. And so I wanted to start with a glimpse of parks and recreation, which most of you know about and uh residents of Albuquerque know about, um, but the depth and breadth of what the parks and recreation department does, and that's what we take up in our meetings of the board. So and I'm gonna read through not everything but most of this for those who can't visually see it. So park management, uh PRD oversees 289 city parks, that's 2800 acres, 147 miles of multi-use trails, 173 play areas, 21 dog parks, a greenhouse, urban forestry, there's an aquatics part of the department with 15 silk facilities that includes pools and spray pads, also swim lessons, water exercise classes, polo teams and swim teams, lifeguarding, scuba, and more. The recreation part of PRD, youth and adult sports, balloon fiesta park and the golf and event center, the Esperanza Bicycle Safety and Education Centers, there are two, adventure sports, we have a BMX track, an indoor track, 17 softball fields, four skate parks, 136 tennis courts, 41 pickleball courts and more on the way, model airplane and model airplane parks. The department also includes golf, that's four courses, 543 acres, and in 2023, 257,931 golf rounds. The department also oversees open space, 30,596 acres of open space, conservation of natural and cultural resources, education programs, a visitor center, shooting range, and a horseman's complex. The budget for the parks and recreation department for the fiscal year 2025 is 50,901,000. So I'm here to talk about our 2024 report. The board hasn't issued a report for a few years, so we're very proud of this report, and it covers the time from October 2022 to June 28th, 2024. The duties and responsibilities of our advisory board are the following. We recommend policies to the mayor for overall development of the park system. We meet at least quarterly, we actually meet almost every month, and we hold additional meetings at our discretion. We encourage people to attend our board meetings if they have anything that they would like to present or concerns about the park system. We conduct open public meetings, we conduct subcommittees, we review the design and plan for a project or a park or a recreation facility, the system inventory of parks and recreation, the master plan for park and recreation system, and we are responsible for preparing and submitting an annual report. Our board consists of 11 members, all of whom shall reside in the city of Albuquerque. You can see the list there as well as the vacancies, which I'm gonna talk about in a little bit. There is an application process for board on the board, and I'll talk a little bit about more in that.