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After lengthy debates and public comments that spanned two meetings, along with hand wringing over a mayoral veto, the Albuquerque City Council ended where it began regarding funding for two high profile projects.
City councilors Monday night voted to override Mayor Tim Keller’s veto of the City Council’s decision to move funding from a high-profile, multi-use trail project to a planned sports complex project on the Westside. By the end of the meeting though, the council reversed its decision to transfer money from one project to the other.
“This is what our community asked for, restoring funding so the Rail Trail can keep moving forward and become a transformative landmark for Albuquerque,” Keller wrote in a statement Tuesday. “By working together, we’ve kept construction on track, without having to choose between projects or neighborhoods.”
After multiple residents pleaded with councilors to reconsider their decision during a meeting on Feb. 19, Councilor Joaquín Baca said he would work with Councilor Louie Sanchez and Keller’s administration to “figure something out.”
“This has obviously blown up into a lot,” Baca said at the time. “This is something we can work out, myself, Councilor Sanchez and the administration. I don’t think it needs to go beyond that.”
However, after that meeting, Keller vetoed the decision and said he supported the sports complex but not the money transfer. Councilors on Monday overrode the veto, but later in the evening passed a resolution that reversed the money transfer.
“I think that the way this veto occurred is completely inappropriate, disrespectful and enraging is the word I keep using,” Council President Brook Bassan said during Monday’s meeting.
The council originally approved the move during its Feb. 3 meeting. Councilors voted to transfer $500,000 from the ongoing Rail Trail project — a 7-mile multi-use trail that will connect the city’s historic destinations — to the planned Ken Sanchez Indoor Sports Complex.
Shortly after the veto, Keller held a public event at one of the sites for the Rail Trail project to celebrate progress and urge the council to uphold the veto. On Monday night, Bassan referred to the event as a “veto signing party,” and said she found it “really infuriating.”
“The process alone is not okay,” Bassan said. “Especially when I get told that I shouldn’t always go to the media or ‘let’s work together’…I hope that that is something the mayor understands and sees, because it’s not fair to us, as the legislative body, to be treated in the way we were in this veto.”
Chief Administrative Officer Samantha Sengel told the council that the Rail Trail is a multi-phase project which is not fully funded but couldn’t say which phases are funded. Sengel said two phases are underway but there is not a set timeframe for completion.
Former councilor Ken Sanchez, who died in 2020 while still in office, initially presented the idea of the sports complex and Councilor Louie Sanchez continued the plan after he was elected. Louie Sanchez said the transferred money was a miniscule amount compared to how much the Rail Trail project will cost.
“It’s up to us, this body, to make those decisions,” Sanchez said. “You’re looking at less than one half of a cent in the overall picture…I said it before, I don’t have a problem with the Rail Trail at all. It’s just going to be a project that is going to take many, many years and many, many millions of dollars. So this was something we can get going immediately, get Ken Sanchez Indoor Sports Complex built, and get the kids who need the practice facilities, the kids who need a facility to enjoy their sports. That’s what we need.”
