OPINION: Keller deserves a third term

Three things about life in Albuquerque grate on me. I think they grate on most of us: high crime, soaring rents and mortgages and homeless people camping out in front of our businesses.

It’s fair to judge Mayor Tim Keller’s record on these three serious problems. Let’s do that after first looking at his economic record.

During Keller’s eight years as mayor, Albuquerque’s economy has soared by 43%, according to the Fed. More than 53,000 jobs have been added since the pandemic low — including 31,000 jobs in the past three years. And pay (in wages and salaries) is up nearly $8 per hour, from $22.31 in 2017 to $30.17 in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Zillow now ranks Albuquerque the No. 1 city in America for college grads to live and work in.

The Keller jobs boom, the Keller wages boom: Keller’s visionary-futurist bent is paying off for all of us. During his first five years as mayor, research and development businesses in Albuquerque grew by 23%, our bioscience manufacturing jobs by 34% and our film and video production jobs by 26%.

We are the No. 4 American city for solar photovoltaic capacity per person. We’re a top five film city, and year after year MovieMaker magazine ranks Albuquerque as the No. 1 American city to live in and work in as a moviemaker.

Maxeon Solar is investing $4 billion here. G.E. and Pattern Energy are building the largest wind project in the Western hemisphere here. Keller brought both Netflix Studios and NBCUniversal here, and they are spending $1 billion and $500 million, respectively, to produce films and TV shows.

For economic leadership, we can’t do better than Keller. But what about those three problems that grate on us?

Yes, crime is sky-high. But Keller has taken the arresting of murder suspects from 50% — with a killer having a 50-50 chance of getting away with murder — to 98% today. He’s boosted police department funding by 71% — from $171 million to $283 million, a $122 million per year increase — and hired 20% more cops and nearly 400 more total APD employees.

He’s put a program in place in four high schools that has reduced repeat crimes by youth, and in a third term he’d extend that program to every high school, which would slash our juvenile crime rate. And he’s invested $50 million to build a technology-intensive safety shield over 20% of our city, bringing our crime rates down over the past year or two, and with another $10 million he’ll extend the shield to our whole city and crime will drop like a rock.

Yes, housing affordability is a serious problem. But Keller has granted permits for 6,900 multi-family housing units in the past seven and a half years — duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and larger apartment complexes — and 15,700 single-family housing units.

This sounds like enough, yes? So what happened? Well, Alex Uballez, who’s running against Keller for mayor, puts it well on his campaign’s website: “Although Albuquerque has added 31,400 jobs in the past three years, the city has permitted fewer than 9,000 units of housing over the same period.” Uballez is absolutely correct: The Keller jobs boom has created Albuquerque’s housing shortage. The Keller jobs boom has given us higher rent and costlier mortgages.

From here forward, Keller informs us, it’s all about funding. Who’s going to put up the cash to construct far more than 3,000 new houses and apartments in the Albuquerque area each year? I trust Keller to scale up to meet our staggering need for new homes.

Last but not least, homeless people continue to camp out in front of our businesses and to smoke meth and fentanyl openly on our streets. Yes, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque has increased under Keller, according to Point-in-Time surveys. But each week, Keller enables city employees to clear and clean up 200 camps while also enabling police to arrest hundreds of drug users.

At the same time, we all know about Keller’s compassion. He has increased spending on services for the homeless seven-fold — from $3.6 million a year to $25 million a year. Counting his doubling of funding for mental health services, his affordable housing spending and rental vouchers, we’re spending closer to $50 million.

And so when I imagine a third Keller term, I imagine this: Far fewer crimes. More youth who commit crimes getting turned around and back on track in life. The Rail Trail expanding beautifully, becoming a spectacular addition to our lives, and more jobs. Our wages and salaries up another $4 per hour. More housing units. Stable or lower rent and mortgages. And Albuquerque’s economy booming bigger and better than ever.