Those who’ve ventured to Albuquerque City Council meetings know the drill: After proclamations, presentations and the (frequent) grilling of city officials — called administrative Q&A — a select number of residents have 60 seconds to comment about what’s on their mind. Once that’s done, with any luck, only a couple hours will have passed.
A dinner break typically comes next before the meat of the meeting begins — deliberation, debate and votes on a packed agenda of proposed ordinances. It’s not uncommon for meetings to extend deep into the night or the wee hours of the morning.
For those who want to stay civically engaged, the process can be a long haul to say the least. People have jobs they’ve come from — meetings start at 5 p.m. — and need to go to the next morning. Some have kids or elderly parents at home. Frustration sometimes comes from city councilors themselves.
After a particularly long and contentious administrative Q&A on Monday night, newly minted City Council President Brook Bassan — who prefers to keep things humming along — had choice words for Chief Administrative Officer Samantha Sengel.
“No one here tonight, I think — in this room or beyond — enjoys that Councilor Grout just asked questions that should be handled in day-to-day business when we have a very full agenda of actual legislation and policy making to be done,” Bassan said.
Councilors were upset about valuable meeting time being used to air constituent concerns that weren’t already being addressed in a timely manner by the city. (Monday’s meeting exceeded seven hours; the average is five and one of the longest last year was close to nine).
‘I feel like I have to kind of be a watchdog’
Ian Gates is one of the brave Albuquerque residents who goes to meetings after work to give public comment, particularly when there’s an issue of importance to him on the docket, such as education, homelessness or housing. At the Jan. 22 meeting, he spoke out about the process of the meetings themselves.
“We read news stories about agenda items and we come out to these meetings,” Gates said. “We’re very excited to give a public comment and then we’re told that we only have a minute to speak, and it happens at the meetings with the most controversial ordinances — when it matters the most and the most is at stake.”
Gates, 23, moved to Albuquerque in 2024 from Tulsa, Oklahoma — he’s originally from Atlanta — to work for the after-school education nonprofit New Mexico Out-of-School Time. In addition to City Council, he also attends Albuquerque Public Schools board meetings when he can.
“Sometimes I feel like I have to kind of be a watchdog as the only young Black man in the room,” Gates said. “I just want to remind them that policies don’t affect everybody the same.”
Education is the topic that first connected him to civic engagement. Oklahoma was passing laws that restricted how race and gender could be taught in public schools — it was aimed at doing away with critical race theory.
Gates said he’d like to see the City Council consider adding a third monthly meeting to its schedule and to lift the 30-person cap on general public comment, which was implemented in 2014. While there’s no limit to how many people can comment on specific legislation, that opportunity doesn’t come until many hours into the meeting.
“We have to wait five or six hours till our agenda item is heard,” Gates said.
Bassan, meanwhile, said that while adding a third meeting is something that has been previously discussed, she’s hesitant about it.
“I do not believe it would shorten the length of each meeting by an even distribution of legislation and time,” Bassan said. “Instead, I believe we would find more items for discussion [and] debate that would fill the meeting each time.”
One solution she sees, however, is a more effective use of Council committees, such as the Finance and Government Operations Committee and the Land Use, Planning and Zoning Committee. Committees are the first stop for proposed ordinances to be hashed out.
“Should councilors take more time with bills in committee, it will allow for full Council meetings to organically be shortened because debate, evaluation, amendments and comments will have primarily already occurred before coming before the full City Council,” Bassan said.
Committee meetings are also open to the public and are generally much shorter than those at City Council. In addition, by the time a proposed ordinance is heard before the full City Council, many councilors have already decided on how they will vote.
“[Engagement in committees would] include the ability for residents to engage and speak on amendments to be offered, deferrals to occur, and [give] more time to vet bills before coming to the full Council for final approval,” Bassan said.
She also suggested that residents consider using the online “Contact Your City Councilor” page where written comments can be sent to all councilors simultaneously.
‘Where it goes down’
Gates said when he started paying attention to politics, he realized local meetings were the more direct way to influence policy, to address a lack of diversity and representation and to add more young voices into the decision-making process. Influence at the state and national level is possible, too, he said, but with generally less success.
“I started to realize these local meetings are really where it goes down,” Gates said. “They’re kind of accountable to us in a way that the state and Congress is not. It’s one of our few opportunities to actually make our voices heard.”
He recently reached out to New Mexico lawmakers on a domestic violence bill, which is another issue that’s important to him.
“I definitely feel like the D.C. politicians are kind of bought out,” Gates said. “They raise so much money and get so heavily lobbied that I just don’t even know how much power we have.”
Gates also has a message for Mayor Tim Keller.
“I feel like it would be great if he attended Council meetings. I don’t know why he doesn’t,” he said. “I just feel like mayors should do that. I know a lot of mayors don’t, but it’s just weird that somebody has to speak for the mayor.”
More information about the City Council is here. Those who can’t attend meetings in person have the option to watch via livestream through One Albuquerque Media.