Budget Priorities
- Universal Basic Needs
Rather than relying on businesses to fulfill the basic needs of our community, our government should equitably ensure access to basic needs like food, shelter, clean water, sanitation, and medical care.
2. Local Funding: Community Resilience
To protect Albuquerque from the federal funding cuts that we're seeing in the new administration, our city needs to spend our own money on community supports like Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS), the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), Health, Housing, & Homelessness (HHH), Office of Consumer Protection (OCP). Without those and other services
As a bonus, by localizing the funding source in these areas, they can avoid undue influence from politics outside of the city.
3. State Funding: Infrastructure Restoration
While we localize the community services, our state government has been investing heavily into infrastructure, and we should utilize GO bonds and capital outlay that go into the structural support system that our city needs to function consistently.
Further, by localizing our own community supports and focusing our state funding to infrastructure, we wouldn't have to trust the federal government for our essentials as much.
4. Invest in Coordinated Public Safety (Not Just Law Enforcement)
Public safety, which includes the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS), the Fire Department (AFR), and the police (APD), makes up the largest segment of the city budget, with Police and Fire budgets making up the overwhelming majority.
Our state and our federal government are continuing their investments into law enforcement (APD), but infrastructure (OEM & AFR) and community services (ACS) are on shakier ground in terms of federal funding. By shifting the local funding that was going to APD into community services and using federal funds and state funds to an extent take on the weight of APD's budget, we can ensure that our community has the resources it needs first.
HOWEVER, by increasing federal funding to police, we need to be extremely cautious that federal influence doesn't take over our local police department. This process would be slow and cautious with heavy consideration each time we accept any funding from Washington DC.
5. Employment Practices
Our city cannot function without humans doing the work, and with a massive segment of our city struggling to find employment, our city government needs to start hiring again. We have federal employees with years of experience suddenly without jobs, and we have entire departments that are unstaffed such as the Office of Civil Rights. The city's budget is massive, and yet every department is nearly unstaffed or perpetually understaffed, often relying on under-regulated contractors to fill in the gaps the hiring freeze has created.
Certain things need to be effective more than they need to be efficient. The parts of the government that ensure that human rights and human dignity are available to everyone cannot function like a business. Government should protect people from exploitation, not establish means of our oppression.