New Mexico in Focus; 2011; Mayor Baca's 1st Year

You A year ago, Jambaka was elected mayor of Albuquerque. One of his goals then, as it is now, is to have mass transit. If we don't use mass transit, this will not be a livable city in the future. A conversation with Mayor Jambaka next on in focus.

Hello and welcome to in focus. During his campaign, Mayor Jambaka pledged to lead aggressively and energetically to bring good things to Albuquerque and this region. His goals then were to fight crime, support education and plan growth to ensure a sustainable future for Albuquerque. Has he gotten closer to reaching those goals? Over the past year, he has faced many challenges and made several tough decisions.

But he says he's made a lot of progress. He is with us here this evening to review his 1998 accomplishments and to talk about what lies ahead. Mayor, thank you so much for joining us. It's hard to believe a year went by since we did this the first time. And then you had lots of plans. Have you been able to at least address some of the issues that we talked about? First off, let me say I've worked in all levels of government. I was a appointee in Washington around the Federal Bureau of Land Management. I was State Land Commissioner twice. I worked for the city back in the mid-70s and now I'm back as mayor. And working with the city is really gratifying. Being a mayor is really gratifying because you see results of your efforts almost immediately within a very short time. The City Council will pass a bill and you can actually see things happen. And so it's really gratifying for me as a public servant to see that you can get things done. I always tell people the story when I was in the Federal Government. I had a billion dollar budget and 15,000 employees and it took eight months to hire a receptionist.

In eight months in Albuquerque, we've made real progress on other things because I think we just have to because we're so much closer to the people. So I feel very, very happy about the stuff that we've done. And I think there's five or six major things that we can point to and say that we've made progress on that is both in the short range but especially in the long range. Things that will make our quality of life better, essentially make a better city for our kids. Last year you talked about trying to manage growth in Albuquerque. We talked about that extensively. Have you been able to with your planning manager been able to accomplish some of those goals? Well what we've done on growth in Albuquerque is a couple of things. I think first off that people are much more aware of the cost of sprawl in a city like Albuquerque. Western cities have been sprawling for 30 years. I often go out and speak just about every day to some group or another and I always ask people to raise their hand. If they think that our quality of life will be as good or better if we continue to do things the way we have, nobody has ever raised their hands.

They know that the way that Albuquerque has been growing is not a sustainable way of growing, that we have to do things differently. I took a bill to the city council, it's called R-70, a quality growth bill and it was passed unanimously on September 21st. That bill really is a watershed for the history of Albuquerque. It's a mile post because what it says is that we are going to do things a lot differently in the way we grow. For various reasons, one, to protect our limited natural resources, our air shed and our water, and two, to make sure that our quality of life remains good in this area. What this bill is going to envision, what it does envision is that we are going to stop spending money to the fringe of the city, infrastructure money, water sewer, all these other things. We are going to concentrate now on filling in within the city but also fixing up what needs fixing. Albuquerque, parts of Albuquerque streets were laid down 50-70 years ago, water sewer lines, these kinds of things need to be fixed in the old parts of the city instead of sending this money to the fringe.

That's what this bill envisions, that we are going to start taking care of the existing city limits in which we have about a 20 year supply of land, which we can give incentives to fill in. Now, as we fill in and become a denser city, good things happen. One, you save on natural resources, and two, you can start making a transit system work. As we identify corridors that will become denser, then your transit system will start working and it will start being effective. And so, there's any number of reasons for doing this. The way we accomplish it now is that we have to rewrite our comprehensive plan and rewrite our zoning. This is going to be about a two-year process, and we're going to do innovative things like start allowing loft housing in the downtown area over commercial enterprises. Well, this is done all over the country, but our zoning didn't allow it. And it fits right in with all the work that we're doing on downtown revitalization. Because we know that we are not going to have a healthy city all the way around, unless we have a healthy downtown, and I'm really excited about the things that we're doing downtown, and we can talk more later about it.

Well, the city is excited about focusing on the infrastructure and the core city, but can you get developers to feel the same way you do? Well, you do that by giving incentives for them to fill in, okay? Now, the fact of matter is that the city has grown not in the way it has, not because it was planned that way, well, it's because the public works department put water and sewer lines in a different parts of the city, and that's where the city grew, and those water and sewer lines were put out there because the developers wanted them. Well, we're not going to do that anymore. We're going to try and take a much more comprehensive look at the way the city grows, and yet we can do things that will make it very attractive for developers to want to build within this existing city limits. We can give incentives lower the hook-up fees for utilities, things like that. This is something that we just simply have to do, or Albuquerque's quality of life will not remain the same. You know, I appointed early last year, early this year, something called the Indicators Progress Commission, and they are charged with measuring the city's ability to be a sustainable community.

Can we sustain the quality of life we have? And they're going to be looking at all sorts of interesting indicators, such as how long do you spend in your car getting back and forth to work every day? How many teenage pregnancies have occurred in the last four, five, one year? You know, all these kinds of things sort of lead to a quality of life and a sustainability. They're going to be doing that full-time every year as a voluntary board. And so we're taking a look at how we keep the city sustainable, of how we can get the developers to start thinking in different ways. But also our neighborhoods are going to have to understand that if the quality of life is to remain the same, from a standpoint of water supply, air, commute time, and just general having a good community, that they're going to have to give up some things, too. Well, how do you get the people to understand this? So we could talk about it until we're blue in the face about how important it is to start focusing on the core and the infrastructure within the city. How are you going to get the message across the developers to people that this is something and to other areas around them?

Well, I'll tell you. I really think that the people understand it. And I take that test like I say, ask people to raise their hands. And nobody ever raises their hands because they know instinctively that we can't continue to grow the way we have. I'm not talking about growth for economic terms. I think I'm talking about sprawl, of spreading the city out, of not making good use of resources, of having to spend extra money to run further and further to the fringe of the city of annexing more and more, people understand that. And so one of the things, and I think we'll get a good idea of just how much they understand it when we go to the voters in March of 1999, where they vote to do a quarter cent tax. And this quarter cent tax, gross receipts tax, will be used to start rebuilding the city's transportation systems. This is going to provide about $24 million a year. And we hope people will vote for it. It is going to a vote where the city council has had two town halls on it so far. What we envision is that this money will be used in various ways over a 10 year period. First off, it will fix our roads. We need work on our roads and the existing parts of the city, the Northwest Mesa, reverbishing all the streets on the east side of the city.

Every quarter of the city has great transportation needs when it comes to fixing the roads, getting them up to par where they should be. But also part of this money will be used for pedestrian trails and bikeways. And a part of it will be used to improve our transit system. And so in the beginning of the 10 year period, the bulk of the money will be used for roads. But every year, we envision a little bit more of the money going to transit so that when we get caught up on the road work, that you'll have buses running around the city that really provide a service that will really work because we don't have a transit system that works very well right now. And most western cities don't. And so this is a big initiative. It will not raise taxes because we have a quarter cent coming off from the open space acquisitions that we've done. And this would replace it if the voters vote that way. And honestly, taxes won't go down either. We'll stay about where we are. But this is sort of a pay as you go kind of attitude that we're going to fix our streets, get them up to where they should be, fix a transit system, bike trails, pedestrian ways.

And I'll tell you, if we don't do it, all we're doing is saying to our kids, well, we're in deficit financing mode here. You kids pay for it when you grow up. That's unfair. Why not extend the open space cent tax, the quarter cent tax? Well, there's a possibility that could be extended for a short time. That's raised about $45 million for acquisition of open space. This city has always been very, very forward looking in its open space program. We've acquired very important properties in the 70s. When I was a reporter, there were big fights over how high up the mountain on the San Dias that they would put housing. Well, the city really bit the bullet. They said, no, we're going to protect those mountains. We're going to buy open space. We're going to do what we need to. And we continue that kind of philosophy. I think we've been very generous. And I don't think we need to continue the open space tax because we don't see that there's going to be a whole lot more that needs to be bought in the near future.

And we have these real pressing needs on fixing our streets. Are you already discussing light rail and improving the bus system? As you know, we got a sort of a windfall of money from the United States government in which they've already given us $10 million to start initial planning for a light rail system. With the promise of another 90 million after that, and up to 200 million more on top of that. And so our planning processes are underway for figuring out what do we do with light rail. I think it's going to fit in heavily to what happens downtown on our revitalization and connecting certain parts of town together. Light rail is extremely expensive. I think that we can do a mixture of light rail and buses that will really serve this city well. Have you seen light rail work in other cities? Is this consistent with what other cities are trying to do? Yeah, I've seen it work. I've seen it work in Portland. I saw it work in Istanbul last summer when I was in Istanbul. And yeah, it works. But it is expensive.

Let's talk about the downtown. Last year you talked about wanting 1,000 units of housing in the downtown area. Have you gotten close to that goal? Well, I wanted it within the next year or two. And I think that we're going to reach close to that goal. You know, the city has been trying to revitalize downtown for many years. And there's been some great work done down there. It looks very nice. I invite everybody to go down there. It's just a wonderful place to be. It's going to get even better. There's a lot of people living downtown now, more than in most downtowns. But we need even more housing so that we can make it a 24 hour arts and entertainment center, a place where everybody comes together, vibrant, alive place that you want to be. We envision having an arena there. There's no arena within 350 miles of this city that can do the kinds of things that a city this size should be doing. Now, we put together a really good team of private sector people to lead this charge on downtown revitalization. Pat Bryan, a former city attorney, Chris Lienberger, a nationally renowned planner and developer, is working with the downtown action team and the city to get this plan underway.

We raised $100,000 at one meeting from businessmen who are willing to invest in this project. And since then, another 100,000 has come in. And so, as being private sector driven, the city has tried to do this over the years, but never really got it to the point that it should be. Now, there's a real synergy between the city and the private sector. You're going to see some exciting things downtown. And I can't impress upon people enough that they have to come down and start looking around because it's really going to be a neat place. Why do you have such a strong commitment to the downtown? Why is it so important to revitalize it? Well, it really fits in with everything and anything that you say about infill and changing the way we grow. First off, downtowns are the hearts of a city. It's the financial district. It's sort of the judicial district. Right now, we're ready to spend about $220 million in the downtown area on new structures for the courthouses, the district attorney's office, Metropolitan Court, District Court. There's a lot of investment going in downtown.

But downtowns really are the core of a city and the core means heart. And if you don't have a healthy heart, you can't have a healthy community. And so, downtown, we envision as a place where everybody comes together. Now, you sort of don't envision that happening maybe up at Wantable and Montgomery, but that could be a great center of community up in that area. But everybody should come downtown to have a good time. And that's what we want to turn it into. A lot of people watching the show are from cities that have vibrant, alive downtowns. And they know what a great thing it is. That's all we want to do is make it the center of arts and entertainment. And really have a lot of fun there that everybody will come to it. And it gives a good sense of community. What kind of timeline do you? Well, I think you're going to see in the downtown area things happening very rapidly. More rapidly than I would ever suspected. This effort got underway probably in about June of this year. And here it is December 6 months later. And we're further along than ever thought. We have real interest, housing is starting to go in.

A developer has been chosen to do the arts and entertainment district and the retail district. And I think that probably within two years downtown is going to be a very different vibrant place. It's nice now. There are things to do downtown. We're going to add restaurants. We're going to put grocery stores in. We want all sorts of housing. It's going to be a great place. That sounds wonderful, I know, to a lot of people. But at the same time, we still need to remember that as we talked about last year, we have the problem of our limited water resources. How are you keeping that in mind with all these exciting plans also for the cities? Well, the city is still being very successful in its water conservation program. The people and citizens of Albuquerque and Bernalio County have cut back on their water per capita usage by about 19% over the last two years. That's very dramatic. That's why you see zero escaping appearing. And all this, I mean, people have really signed on to this effort. The city is undergoing a lot of changes right now on how it's going to provide water to people. You know, we've been pumping this aquifer for many, many years that sits under our city.

The city owns a lot of surface water that comes down the river. You're seeing a series of water rate hikes every year for the last couple of years and on for another three or four years, in which we're hiking the water rates really for several reasons. One, it promotes conservation. But two, it's really meant to pay for taking the surface water off the river, designing a whole new system for taking that water purifying it and getting into the system. That way, we can take a good portion of our water needs on an annual basis off the surface of the river and preserve some of our aquifer for the drought years. It's a very dramatic thing. I think Albuquerque is in fairly good shape on its water supply. We have to be ever diligent because somebody is always going to want some of it. And that's just the way it's going to be in the West. But I think we're in good shape. I think when the new San Juan Chama diversion water is used for our domestic water supply, that guarantees us even more. Well, let's change the subject now to fighting crime.

That was one of your goals for the beginning of the year. Crime rates have fallen. What do you attribute this to? Well, crime rates are falling all over the country. And I would like to say, well, I stopped crime, but nobody can take that complete. And a bunch of things going on, I think the economy helps it, you know, because more people have jobs than not prone to go out and get in trouble. But I also think one thing in Albuquerque that's making a big difference is one, our new police chief. And two, really starting community policing in a big way. And three, sort of remaking the police department and making it much more efficient. Now, community policing is a specialty of Chief Gerald Galvin. This is the chief that I hired last June to come in and start running the city police department. I have full confidence in him. He's doing a great job. He's saving a lot of money. He's redeploying the troops in such a way that we have a 20% increase in the number of officers on the streets. And we didn't have to hire any more officers. He did that through good management, getting people sort of out behind the desk and special units and getting them onto the streets.

He redeployed the strength at certain times a day, because sometimes, you know, certain times a day, you need more police officers than other times a day. So we're doing some real innovative things. And his work in this year has already saved us close to three quarters of a million dollars in overtime costs. So we're getting a lot more bang for the buck. But also the police officers themselves are getting into community policing. They know that they're part of a community, they're learning that community. And I think that really makes a big difference. Thirdly, I got to say that the citizens of Albuquerque have a big role to play in this, too. The neighborhood watches, the block captains, the systems that have been set up by the neighborhoods have been very successful in rooting out crime. And so there's a lot of things going on that's very exciting at the police department. And I fully support Chief Galvin and what he's doing. What about government efficiencies? What have you been able to do in the last year? Well, as you know, when we took office last year, we had a little bit of a budget problem.

And we've really stepped up to the plate and done some very strong things in a way that has not cut services to people. Now let me explain this a little bit. When I took office last December, we were facing an immediate $12 million shortfall for the rest of the year. This is out of our $300 million general fund budget. So that was a good amount, you know, three or four percent. And so we immediately went to the city council to de-appropriate a lot of items out of the budget and say, listen, we're not going to be able to do these less admitted, less de-appropriated. The city council really bit down and did it. At the same time, we know in the next physical year, which started last July, we were going to be another $22 million short. And that's a lot. I mean, that's a lot of money. And so what we did was we got a lot more efficient. We cut that money out of the budget. We did it for various reasons. One, we have to have good reserves in case of emergencies, 5 percent reserve. Two, the bond rating companies were very upset with the city only having about a 2 percent reserve.

And that was threatening the city's credit rating, which is a very important thing. We went back to New York. We told them exactly what we're going to do. We did it and our bond rating is stronger than ever. And so we did it in a way, too. I'm proud of it, that it didn't really affect services to the people. A lot of inner inside efficiencies this next year. I've told the city department heads that we're going to hold a line on the budget. Now, our city employees did not get a raise last year. So we're going to have to look at that very carefully here over the next month or so to see if there's anything that we can do. And it's my intention to try and do something. We're going to have our revenues to see how they're coming in. We're going to be responsible. Right, and you were criticized for freezing salaries within giving Lawrence Riala a raise. And I wanted to ask you about that. How did you respond to that? Well, you know, I thought Lawrence Rial, I have to look at the city as a whole and figure out how we're doing from a managerial point of view. Lawrence Rial has been CAO through part of Mayor Savedra's term, part of all of Mayor Chavis's term, and now one year in demand.

He was being heavily recruited by other cities. He was being paid way below par for a city of this size. I thought it was in the best interest of this city to give him a raise. And I stand by that decision. I don't regret it. I would do it again. It's the right thing to do. Well, and I think that it falls in line with something that you've kept saying all along is that we are no longer a small city and that we need to start thinking like a big city. You're right. I'm glad you brought that up because I grew up sort of into Mexico politics and we always had a tendency to be sort of nitpicking in New Mexico. I don't know what it is, just our peculiar brand. But you know, Albuquerque is the 38th largest city in the country. We are not small change anymore. We're an important economic center for the Southwestern United States. And when you start getting politically attacked for giving somebody a $20,000 raise in view of a general fund and enterprise fund budget of $700 million, getting close to a billion, that's just petty politics. And I did that because it was for the good of the city. It certainly wasn't good for the politics, but I was willing to bite that off.

And I'm willing to do those kinds of things. I think you have to make those decisions for the good of the... get a big picture sort of view of things. Well, I was reading the tribute not to long ago and it gave you an a rating for a lot of things. And also said, well, there are a few things that you could do to improve your... they said you could be a little more charming. I mean about that. And that you're pretty blunt. How do you feel about some of these criticisms that you're kind of... Well, you know, I probably got that reputation from when I was state liquor director and we had to reform the liquor laws. And also when I had to take on some of the entities that dealt with the land office, the livestock industry and the mining industry and the timber industry. And you have to be strong sometimes. And I probably could have done it nicer. I'm a lot nicer guy now. I can assure you I just life's too short, you know. But I do believe that you have to tell people what you're thinking. You have to be honest with them. If some people think that's bluntness, well, I apologize, but I think you have to know where the mayor's coming from. And I like to know where other people are coming from.

I don't mind being talk straight to. Now, you can do it in a nice way, which I try to do. Now, you're a committed regionalist. And you said last year that you were saddened to see the regional transportation authority go down and that you were sad to see that Rio Rancho had opposed it. Have you gone to talk to the mayor there? Yes. In fact, he and I are getting to be pretty good buddies. In fact, I talked to him when he came over to take the show today on an issue. What we've done is we traveled to a few places together. And then mayor Jennings and I and the mayor of Bolin after going on one trip up to Denver came back and said, you know, we've got to get much more regional approach. And we formed a regional mayor's caucus. And there's eight mayors in the mayor's caucus from the area in Valencia County, San Deval County and Bernalillo County. And we're meeting once a month just by ourselves to have lunch to get to know each other to agree on certain things that we can work towards in the legislature. We already found some of those like DWI problems and things like that.

But also just to get to know each other and make friendships is really important for how this region is going to function. And I got to tell you it's kind of funny because we meet alone. We don't let our staff come. And you just almost always expect to see your staffs peeking in the window because they don't know what we're up to. But it's been very, very productive. And we really have a lot of fun at those lunches. We're doing it on a monthly basis. So we just have time for you to just make one final comment about it. And it's about 10 seconds though. You're optimistic about the future and being able to accomplish some of your goals. I'm very optimistic about the future. I want to really concentrate on the dropout rate along with the educational institutions in this region. That is a problem that we have to tackle. I think it's something that can be done if we put our minds to it. Economically, Albuquerque is in good shape. I worry a little bit about how much money is coming into the city coffers from a very unstable kind of revenue source. But I think all in all, we're in very good shape here. And I think that we're preparing this city to be a great place to live in the future as well as it is now. Thank you so much, Mayor, for joining us today.

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