Error found in Albuquerque City Council law concerning city-sanctioned demolitions
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Albuquerque changed the rules earlier this year making it easier to tear down problem properties; but an error in the wording of that ordinance now has Albuquerque City Councilors scrambling to make a fix. Councilors missed one crucial line in the ordinance about how people can appeal city-sanctioned demolitions.
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“There’s a lot of problem properties in Albuquerque and a lot of them the Planning Department has spent sometimes years trying to contact the owner, trying to clean it up, trying to make sure its safer for the community and for the property owner as well,” said Brook Bassan, Albuquerque City Councilor.
Bassan says it’s a problem the Planning Department has been trying to tackle for a while; and back in March, the city passed steps to streamline demolition. “This bill allows it so that the Planning Department doesn’t always have to come through the longer part of the process of coming to council, going through committees, potentially adding another several months to a year,” Bassan said.
Part of that new ordinance changes the appeals process for property owners as well. First, they would appeal to the city’s Land Use Hearing Officer, or ‘LUHO.’
“If the LUHO, the Land Use Hearing Officer, decides to go ahead and say that the Planning Department is correct and you can demolish, then the property could then appeal the LUHO’s decision,” Bassan said, “at which point instead of it coming to the District Court, it would now come to the council.”
But, there was a typo in the law: “Somewhere in there, it got missed that later in the bill. there’s the repetition where it says that District Court is where the appeal would go,” Bassan said.
The complication nearly put a halt on a list of properties the Planning Department is ready to demolish. “Because Council’s going to recess in July, and because the Planning Department has gone through all of this process and there is no appeal in any of that, they’re ready to proceed with demolishing some properties,” Bassan said, “But, that being said, they don’t want to because there’s an inconsistent governance in the legislation.”
To fix the mistake, councilors passed a moratorium on Monday pausing the problematic language of the bill for three months. That ensures any building demolition appeal will go to city council as originally intended.
“Once we get back from break, it should be on our agenda and we should be able to correct it right away but that way it clears up the potential from misunderstanding where exactly and who exactly reviews an appeal,” Bassan said.
City Council is expected to put in a permanent fix to the problem in August when they get back from break. The Planning Department told News 13 they have 14 properties going through the city’s demolition process.
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