The Albuquerque City Council held a Committee of the Whole meeting on Thursday, May 1, 2025, from 5:00 PM to 11:57 PM, to review the proposed Fiscal Year 2026 operating budget for social goal departments. The total proposed budget across all funds is $1.5 billion, with a general fund of $810 million. The meeting included public testimony, detailed departmental presentations, and extensive council questioning. A motion to suspend rules to extend the meeting to 12:00 AM passed 8-1 (Councilor Rogers opposed).
All counselors are present this evening. We will start with a moment of silence, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty of justice for all. Today is the first of three public hearings the council is required to hold on the city's operating budget. Today's meeting will focus on the social goals, goal departments budgets, which include police, Albuquerque Fire Rescue, Civilian Police Oversight Agency, Community Safety, Health, Housing, and Homelessness, Youth and Family Services, Parks and Recreation, City Clerk, Economic Development, Arts and Culture, and Senior Affairs on May 8th, the council will hold a second hearing to discuss the city's physical goal department budgets, which includes municipal development, planning, general services, environmental health, transit, animal welfare, aviation, legal, solid waste, internal audit, inspector general, human resources, technology and innovation, finance and administration, and city support. The council will hold a third committee of the whole meeting on Thursday, May 15th, to consider amendments and or substitutes. No public comment will be taken. Whoops. No public comment will be taken on that day. Um, but we will take written comments as will be accepted. At the end of the May 15th meeting, the budget as amended and or substituted will be sent to the Monday, May 19th City Council meeting for adoption. Live public comment and written comments will be accepted at the May 19th council meeting. 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 meeting will also 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 from 8 to 5. Members of the public have the opportunity to address the committee if they have signed up for public comment for the rules published on the agenda and on our website on Friday. We will now move to public comment. Here are the public comment ground rules. Each participant has two minutes to present. Comments are to be addressed to the counselors only. Any disrupt disruptive conduct will result in removal from the meeting. Mr. Cornelius, please call the name of the first speaker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Our first speaker this evening is Janet Sayers, followed by Marie Zenny. All righty. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the council, and thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'm Janet Sayers, a resident of Councilor Grout's District 9 since 1986, but I actually grew up near Carlisle and Candelaria in District 7. So the library advisory board has existed in some form for over a hundred years. Uh the library is part of city government and the city government family, and in a perfect world, our economy would just be gangbusters and there would be enough gross receipts to pay for everything, but it's not so request is to restore the minimum of 49,000 to the budget so that we're even with where we were this year, but also to make the recurring line item of uh technology back to $500,000, which is what it was for years and years before COVID, and something got all fouled up right around the 2020, 2021 budget, and it was taken out as being a recurring line item. So 27 seconds, okay. So, what I want to promise you um, we we're reading people back in the board. You there was only four people on the board a year ago. So we're getting people back in the board. We want to serve you. We want to be your link to the community. So I would just pledge that with new members of the board, we're gonna meet at least six times a year. Oh and it's gonna be go ahead and finish your comment. Okay, so thank you. We we will be gathering input by visiting library branches, talking to friends, neighbors, colleagues. We want to be an active board that can provide input back to you, which is what our library ordinance tells us to do. Thank you. Thank you. Marie Esseni, followed by Julia Clark. I think Maria is still trying to find how to get into the building. We'll come back.