City cuts ties with PAL; program director Olguin not giving up

The city of Albuquerque has terminated its decade-long partnership with the New Mexico Sheriffs and Police Athletic League and has evicted PAL from the city-owned Northeast Heights building that has housed it since 2016.

PAL director Florencio “Flory” Olguin said he and his program for youths — boxing, wrestling, martial arts, mentorship — aren’t going down without a fight, contending — despite the city’s statements to the contrary — that PAL has been treated unfairly.

The city’s withdrawal from the agreement did not stop Olguin from holding a news conference on Thursday while having several dozen amateur and professional boxers, lookers-on and supporters come to the gym.

Mixed messages he’s gotten from the city the past four years, Olguin said, have left him unsure where to go, what to do or who to turn to. His attempts to reach Mayor Tim Keller, he said, have been rebuffed.

The city on Thursday provided this response:

“The City has worked with the Police Athletic League to provide space for sports programs, but the group has not provided proof of programming required by their agreement and the building is in disrepair.

“The agreement was terminated in 2019, and we have been working with PAL since then to find a new location.”

Neither Ava Montoya, a public information officer in the mayor’s office, nor Dan Mayfield, PIO in the Municipal Development Department, responded when asked if Keller — who’d played a role in preventing PAL from being evicted in 2020 — knew or approved of the decision to terminate the agreement.

COVID-19, combined with the city’s repeated attempts to evict PAL from the ramshackle building in which the program was placed by the city during the administration of former Mayor Richard Berry, have caused PAL to lose funding.

The PAL program, Olguin said, now is facing the possibility of a permanent shutdown.

“We’ve utilized all our resources, everything, during this time that the city’s shut us down,” he said. “… If we’re not getting support from them, we have nowhere to go.”

In a Jan. 5 letter to Olguin from Samantha Sengel, the city’s chief administrative officer, Sengel gave PAL 45 days to remove all PAL materials from the building at 2117 Osuna NE.

In the letter, Sengel wrote that Olguin had been informed in October that PAL would be required to vacate the building after the city chose to terminate a memorandum of understanding with PAL. Olguin had agreed to do so, she wrote.

“… The City has has worked in good faith with you to find an alternative reasonable property that meets your specific requirements and needs, while still being cost effective to the tax payer for the in-kind services being provided,” Sengel wrote. “Unfortunately, you have not agreed to any of the alternate locations that were suggested by the City of Albuquerque.

“… The City has been abundantly patient with you on this matter, but the time for patience has ended.”

On Jan. 25, Olguin said, Matthew Whelan, the city’s deputy chief administrative officer, informed him by phone that the city’s support of PAL was being terminated.

Regarding Sengel’s letter, Olguin said he was not told in October that the MOU had been terminated and had not promised to vacate the building. He said that at that time city employees Patrick Montoya, director of municipal development, and deputy director Jess Martinez were still working with him in an attempt to find another location and told him he could stay at the Osuna location in the interim.

Olguin said he walked away from his conversation with Montoya and Martinez believing PAL would be allowed to stay in the Osuna property through the end of the year. He was optimistic, he said, that the MOU might then be renewed.

Dana Kouri, a Sheriffs and Police Athletic League board member, said he sat in on the meeting with Montoya and Martinez and was left with the same impression as Olguin.

“They said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re gonna fix this,’ and it was great,” Kouri said, and ‘Hey, let’s get it done’.

“Then we get (Sengel’s) letter. Wow.”

Olguin had recently moved to restart his program, which had been idle for long stretches of the past four years due to COVID and restrictions placed by the city on use of the Osuna property.

On Thursday, the city submitted to the Journal a list of 18 properties it had offered PAL as an alternative to the Osuna property.

Olguin said he had been shown only six, only one of which — a 15,000-square-foot building on Princeton NE — was suitable. Negotiations between the city and the property management company for that property, he said, fell through.

Others, he said, were too small — the Osuna property is listed on a state website at 11,405 square feet, but Olguin said he believes it’s a bit larger — or configured in a way that wouldn’t accommodate the PAL program.

Among the alternate locations the city suggested, Olguin said, were two Albuquerque community centers. Those centers had their own programs, he said, and neither their floor space nor the hours in a day would accommodate both his program and theirs.

One proposed location, he said, was adjacent to a Downtown-area homeless shelter and was not suitable.

Regarding the “proof of programming” cited by the city as one reason for its move to terminate the agreement, Olguin said that closures due to COVID and shutdowns by the city made compliance next to impossible.

Olrguin said that while the building is not in great shape — there’s a leak in the ceiling and a hole in an inner wall — he has had city inspectors tell him it is not unsafe.

“I’ve had my own daughter in here,” he said. “I would never bring kids in here if I thought it was unsafe.

“It was the city that put us in here.”

Thursday evening, a few dozen amateur and professional boxers worked out at the facility. This was in defiance of Sengel’s letter, in which she wrote that “neither you nor any other non-City employee has had authorization to enter the Premises for any purpose beyond the limited license to remove your property.”

Before COVID and before his difficulties with the city, Olguin said, some 70 kids — many of them at risk — regularly participated in the PAL program.

Eric Gonzalez, who boxed as an amateur and a professional, said the PAL program helped him stay out of trouble as a teenager.

“I was 15, getting in trouble at school, so I decided to come here,” he said.

In 2013, the city — under the direction of then-Mayor Berry — entered into a partnership with PAL. The organization moved from a privately owned, 15,000-square-foot building on Girard NE, the use of which Olguin said had been donated, to a spacious, city-owned building on Wyoming NE.

Olguin said the city, under conditions of the agreement, required PAL to make significant upgrades to the building on Wyoming. That was done, he said.

Three years later, still during the Berry administration, the city found other uses for the building on Wyoming and moved PAL to the current location.

In March 2020, Olguin was informed that the building was being condemned and that PAL would have to vacate the premises.

Then, Keller, responding to a story aired on KRQE-TV Channel 13, visited the facility. PAL was allowed to remain in the building, though the program was on hiatus at the time due to COVID.

Olguin said he was told steps would be taken to bring the building up to code.

“The city right now is working with us,” Olguin said at the time. “They haven’t kicked us out.”

Now, they have.