The Albuquerque City Council convened on Monday, May 19, 2025, at 5:00 PM in the Vincent E. Griego Chambers. The meeting included proclamations, reports, public comments, and final actions on several resolutions, including the FY2026 budget, a fiber internet installation moratorium, a police gas card pilot program, and a senior housing development. Council President Brook Bassan was excused; eight councilors were present.
A next item on the agenda is we have a moment of silence, and we'll start with the Pledge Allegiance in English and then uh in Spanish. Please join me in the pledge. Congratulations to the United States of America and to the report for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. 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 chamber's entrance. Members of the public, city staff, and the media have the ability to view this meeting in person and live streams throughout different four different platforms GovTV, Comcast Channel 16, the Gov TV website, YouTube, and Zoob webinar. The live streams can be accessed from access from most smartphones, tablets, and 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. City Council staff is available via telephone if members of the public need assistance, finding videos online. Please call 505768-3100 for assistance during business hours, Monday through Friday, um 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The council will take a break at approximately 7 p.m. this evening if needed 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, snapping, or other outbursts during the meeting. The meeting will go a lot smoother if we are all respectful of one another. So we are now on to proclamations and presentations. Um we have a presentation by um Miss Casey. She is a president and CEO of the Albuquerque Regional Economic Alliance area who will provide an update. Very good. That's that one's much closer because I'm not very tall. Uh good evening, Council, Vice President and Counselors. It is an honor and a privilege to give you a very brief update tonight on the work that the Albuquerque Regional Economic Alliance has been doing for the last year on contract with the city. Um so I'll first start. I think uh they can see my slide. Perfect. Um, so just as a refresher, area is a 501c3 nonprofit, and it's very important to us that uh our mission statement uh is uh is pretty widely recognized that we lead and execute strategic uh strategies that are designed to grow and diversify the economic base and really raise the quality of life for all. And I know that we have that in common. We're also celebrating our 65th anniversary year, which is pretty exciting as an organization in this community in different forms. Well, tonight is a very brief update. I did want to offer, um, I'm always happy to, and and we'll be uh hopefully reaching out to maybe do some more in-depth briefings and updates throughout the year with all of you as your as your schedules and interests permit. Um, based on the quarterly updates that we provide as part of our RFP contract with the city, these are some very high-level highlights and some of the deliverables in that contract that we've been honored to uh to provide in the past year. We do deliver monthly briefings with the City of Albuquerque economic development staff where we walk through all of our activity in depth. Um, we have hosted two site consultant visits. We've actually got memorandums of understanding with seven different brokerage firms in the region for partnership and commercial real estate. Um, we have provided custom industry data reports, research reports, and material like that for the contract in the city's branding for use by the economic development department, as well as presentations and other materials. We have represented the community and the region at numerous trade shows and conferences. Um, and you can see there's a lot of other information in here that I won't read the entire list for you, but there's some examples of the material. If anyone in the community ever wants to see what we've been up to, we also publish quarterly reports publicly on our website and annual reports for everyone to see. If you look at the bottom of the slide, this is just a tally of the economic impacts of the projects we've worked on for announcement since last July 1, just since last July 1, and if they all come to fruition, what would happen in the first three years of that outcome? And if they all come to fruition, what would happen in the first three years of that outcome? One of the things I wanted to share is we also do business retention and expansion outreach on behalf of the city and the region. And in since July 1, we've actually done an online outreach with 70 responses, and we've actually done 41 calls, meeting with businesses individually to understand what their challenges are. And as you can see on the slides, probably not a shock to everyone, but the biggest challenges are workforce challenges, community challenges such as quality of life, crime public safety, taxes and regulatory burdens, and then obviously infrastructure and logistics constraints. We use this information to inform the work that we're going to do and how we drive our strategic plan forward and how we prioritize the work we're doing. So this is just a very high-level summary of their responses that we'll be spending a lot of time working on. I'm really excited to report that we had great success working in lockstep with all of our regional partners, also the state economic development department in providing data and education as to the need for site readiness. We are, it is really amazing the bills that were passed this year around this issue.