City Will Still Get Money for West Side Fire Station

Albuquerque will get to keep about $95,000 earmarked for a fire station project on the West Side after all.

City officials learned Friday that the money had been reallocated to a park project in Rio Rancho, but further research revealed that money designated for building a new Fire Station 7 on 57th NW, near Central, was spoken for under a contract signed Feb. 2.

“It means that the fire station project is still on,” said Tim Korte, spokesman for the Department of Finance Administration, the state’s executive budget agency.

Korte said the contract takes precedence over House Bill 190 signed March 7 by Gov. Susana Martinez, which reallocated the money to a project to build a park in Rio Rancho for disabled children.

“That is great news to hear that it (the fire station project) is going to be completed,” said City Councilor Ken Sanchez, who represents the area where the fire station is being built.

He and other city officials broke ground on the 9,000-square-foot station building March 1.

Sanchez had already begun looking for other sources of money after he learned about the reallocation via a Journal inquiry.

On Monday, he won support from the city board of finance to replace the funding with money from the city capital improvement projects cleanup bill.

The total cost of the fire station is expected to be about $3 million with funding coming from various sources, including severance tax bond funds allocated to the West Central Metropolitan Redevelopment Area in 2008.

Korte said the administration identified the West Central allocation and eight other projects statewide for reauthorization because, according to information provided to the DFA, a portion of the money remained unspent, Korte said.

By law, the money would revert to the state general fund if not spent by June 30 of this year, he said.

But the law also says that funds that have been committed under a signed contract can’t be treated as unspent and reassigned to a different purpose.

Korte said the latest information the DFA had received from the city of Albuquerque indicated that only about $8,000 out of the nearly $95,000 had been used.

“We weren’t hearing from the city about what they were intending to do with the funds,” Korte said, adding that no legislators had objected to the reallocations when the bill went through the legislative process.
— This article appeared on page C2 of the Albuquerque Journal