An Albuquerque city councilor is giving her constituents a say on how to spend money from the state Legislature for improvements in her district as a way to ensure the money is used toward what the community wants.
“This is also about building trust with the community, that they can give us their feedback and their ideas and we’re actually going to do something with it,” Councilor Nichole Rogers told City Desk ABQ. “That’s really my hope, is that it helps us build some trust.”
After she was elected in December 2023, Rogers said she wanted her community to tell her how to best use the capital outlay funds that each councilor is given to use in their districts. Each councilor has $1.5 million of discretionary funds to use toward projects, such as new buildings, building renovations, improving roads or landscaping.
Rogers then started a participatory budgeting pilot program for her district and partnered with Participatory Budgeting of Albuquerque — a group dedicated to ensuring city residents are a part of the decision making process for public fund use.
“It’s just a democratic process for how the community can be involved in where their tax dollars are spent,” Rogers said. “This is something I just learned a lot about before I was a councilor. So when I became a councilor, I thought, ‘Well why can’t we do this with the money that we have for our district?’ Instead of me making all those decisions, the community could tell us what they see in their neighborhoods that they want fixed with this money. So I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
To start the process, Rogers held training sessions to teach the community about participatory budgeting and what capital funding is and what projects it can be used for. After multiple meetings and workshops, community members submitted 243 project ideas.
Community members who volunteered to serve as a “steering team member and budget delegates,” narrowed down and combined the list to 16 projects. In another meeting, they completed a final list of 10 projects — which will be sent to residents in the district, so they can vote on which projects they want to be funded.
Rogers said a group of students from Wilson Middle School submitted a project called ‘Five Blocks for Life’ to “beautify” the area around the middle school. The project proposes to fix signs and crosswalks that are faded and add landscapes and murals.
While some residents were hesitant to allow students to vote on the projects, they decided that it made sense to allow them to vote since they submitted a project idea.
“I’m really excited about that [project], because that’s something that came directly from the students,” Rogers said. “This is a way that we can teach kids about voting and teaching them that it’s important to use their voice. To me, this is also about not just selfishly, getting my to-do list from the community. It’s also about educating, and it has to include the youth.”
Rogers said a project manager from Mayor Tim Keller’s administration met with community members and officials from different city departments to lay out the cost and feasibility of the projects.
“This has been a really great partnership between us and the administration too,” Rogers said. “They assigned a project manager from the administration side to help facilitate project development…They give them their idea, then they start getting quotes and working out an actual, detailed, flushed out project…We don’t want people voting on things that are impossible.”
One resident wanted some of the funding to go toward adding stop signs at a fourway intersection at Washington St. and Zuni Rd. After meeting with officials from the Department of Municipal Development, Rogers said the department agreed the area needed stop signs and started working on it immediately.
“They said ‘this is something we need to do right away,’ and didn’t wait for participatory budgeting or my funding…They’ve already installed the stop signs and new signage, and I think they’re looking at a light to illuminate that area,” Rogers said.
According to Rogers, the resident who brought that issue to the department’s attention is a Native woman and single mom in the community who never felt like she had a voice but now feels empowered.
“That just made me so proud, because she went from not having a voice to being able to literally see the change that she brought forward,” Rogers said. “I see myself in her, as a single mom who always felt like I didn’t have the ability to make a difference…That’s what this is about.”
Rogers said each resident in her district will have the opportunity to vote on the projects online or in person from March 22 to the end of April. Each resident will be given a specific code to log in to the voting website and they will be able to vote for three out of the 10 projects.
According to Rogers, if residents vote for multiple projects that together cost $1.5 million, that is what the funds will go to. If one project that will cost $1.5 million receives the most votes, then that will be funded. Whichever project or projects are selected are planned to be fully completed by May 2027.
“I would love to see 5,000 people in our district vote on these projects,” Rogers said. “What’s great is we’ve already done the work with the departments, they’ve already told us it’s feasible…Once it’s voted on, we announce which projects get funded and we start the projects.”