The 23rd meeting of the 26th City Council convened at 5:00 PM and adjourned at 12:15 AM on January 7, 2025, with all nine councilors present. The meeting included the election of new officers, adoption of consent agenda items, passage of multiple ordinances and resolutions, and a line‑item veto override. Key actions focused on economic development (SolAero Technologies), housing reforms (amendments to the Integrated Development Ordinance, Downtown Vacant Premises Ordinance, and housing voucher efficiency), and a memorial seeking state support for a behavioral health dashboard.
The 23rd meeting of the 26th Council will come to order. All counselors are present this evening. We're gonna uh have a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance in English and then uh Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish led by Councilor Sanchez. Civic closet parking passes are provided for members of 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 on live streams through four different platforms. The gov TV website, YouTube, and Zoom webinar. The live streams, 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 at this time or your device. 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 505 768-3100 for assistance during business hours Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. 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 respectful of one another. Mr. President. Thank you. So for our uh presentations tonight, uh, we're gonna uh take this time to present some uh gifts and say some thank yous to the committee chairs in 2024. Uh and so we'll start by uh uh uh first of all counselor pinha who chaired uh the committee of the whole this last year. The committee of the whole is our budget committee. Uh and councillor pinya uh led through uh significant amount of meetings this last year and led us through the largest budget than that we've ever had as a city and and uh uh so uh navigating through that uh certainly is a is a challenge and it takes a lot of great leadership to do that, and we appreciate Councilor Pinya's leadership on the committee of the whole. So thank you very much, Councilor Pinya. Thank you, Mr. President, and I really appreciate it, and thanks to all the counselors who really um you know worked with me to construct the the budget and we put forth uh uh balanced budget, and I think we we did good on behalf of this council, um the administration and the city of Albuquerque. So thank you. All right, and then our finance and government operations committee uh was led by counselor Sanchez this last year. Uh that committee is uh just about all the bills uh that are introduced go through finance and uh oftentimes those meetings are well those meetings are on the ninth floor, and um and and so counselor chance Sanchez has led us led through those meetings, and oftentimes would go on uh hours into the evening uh with a lot of our staff uh and members of the public. And uh so we we appreciate Councilor Sanchez and his leadership in guiding us uh through the the finance meeting, very very important committee uh meeting that uh that he's led throughout this last year, and so thank you very much, Councilor Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President. And I also like to thank fellow counselors because there's been there's been meetings in uh FGO finance and government operations that were really close to a full-blown council meeting. And um, I'm telling you, when you're working that hard on these committee meeting meetings, I think it makes a big difference here in the council chambers when we're uh when we're doing the people's business and we're very very active. And I can't tell you how many times we actually had meetings over the last year where all nine counselors were actually at the at the FGO meeting, and there's only a committee of five of us. Um so I'd really like to thank my committee. Um on that committee was um was Councillor Pena, Counselor Lewis, um, councillor um Champagne and Councillor Feeblecorn served with me on that committee. So I just want to say thank you to those counselors for putting in that extra effort, that extra time. One other thing I'd like to really talk about is the staff. Um the staff has to come through on those committee meetings. Um that's an extra day where you're working as long as city council works sometimes, and I just want to say thank you so much to our city council staff for being right there with me. Um we go through a quick briefing right before each meeting, and without that briefing, it would make this that FGO meeting of a lot harder. So thanks everybody for their continued commitment and involvement in reference to FGO, and thank you, staff for helping us get through it every single or every other Monday. Thank you. Great, thank you, Councillor Sancho, for serving. And then um our our the last committee there um is Councilor Basson, who chaired the land use and planning uh committee.