Abq Mayor Berry on Crime: I didn’t Do it

If the time spent on a topic during a speech measures the priority of the speaker, then outgoing Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry, the priority has been homelessness. Berry gave what was billed as his Last State of the City report today to NAIOPNM, the commercial developers group.
NAIOPNM has provided Berry a receptive venue. The developers stood to applaud a number of times during his speech. NAIOPNM meeting at the Marriott in Uptown Albuquerque.
Crime finished second. “I didn’t do it” sums Berry’s explanation of the increased crime on his watch.
Berry skated on the ART project, the more than controversial destroying of miles of mostly Central Ave. for fancy buses. (Through the core of downtown ART jogs to a block north of Central.) ART got perhaps five minutes of soothing words claiming that all will be fine eventually. Berry thanked Central Avenue businesses for hanging in there during ART construction, an amazing statement. Berry further claimed that ART will persuade some families to go from two cars to one because of being able to ride ART to work. Sure. Right.
The crime increase during Berry’s second term comes from two system factors, Berry said. The first is the roughly 50% drop in the number of people in the county jail, a result of national movement to let less troubling criminals out of jail.
The jail was overcrowded, Berry said. Reducing the number of people in jail is “laudable,” but “it has gone too far too fast.”
The big reduction in the number of police officers came from changes in public employee retirement programs that induced employees to take the money and retire.
Two questions: First, I can’t imagine that Berry’s administration had nothing to do with developing the policies that reduced the number of people in jail or that changed the retirement programs. Second, it would be interesting to connect the jail policies with the fact that Albuquerque as a cadre of people for whom their job, as in an 8-to-5 job, is stealing cars. These people score a half-dozen or so cars each day they “work,” the cops tell us.
Much of the celebration of homeless program “success” came during a lengthy separate segment before Berry talked.
Post homeless and pre-Berry it was family time. Berry’s wife Maria Medina went on about the glories of being first lady and of serving Albuquerque. Mayoral parents were introduced. I’m not sure which set. All very chummy.
Berry gave the expected list of accomplishments. The economy is growing (well, sort of). Government is more efficient. There has been $33 million in “efficiency” savings. New companies have come. The spending increase has been kept “right at the rate of inflation.”
“Downtown is fast becoming” an arts and entrepreneurial community. Of course Berry didn’t mention that downtown remains pretty much empty due to the departure of banks and PNM administrative staff.
During Berry’s administration the city has “completed / initiated” 901 “projects” costing $1.27 billion, a Berry handout said. This is an exaggeration. For example, for what I presume to be the biggest project, the $93 million rebuilding of the Interstate 25 and Paseo del Norte interchange, the city may have initiated the project, but fuzzy memory suggest that came long before Berry was mayor. The feds provided $8 million and $29.7 million came from the state, according to a December 14, 2014 Albuquerque Journal story.
Albuquerque’s basic services are among the best in the country Berry said. Wallethub.com, a website, rates Albuquerque as one of the three best run cities in the country, he said, according to my notes. I checked Wallethub. A July 17 report there puts Albuquerque as 23rd for the quality of city services and Las Cruces as 6th. Maybe I heard wrong.
Two videos provided a break from the talking. One was a FoxNews story about the awful consequences of California letting people out of jail. The other celebrated new light around Albuquerque.