Republican Richard J. Berry has been a member of the New Mexico State House of Representatives since 2007.
Be sure to read the interview with Berry’s opponent Richard Romero tomorrow and with Mayor Martin Chávez online at dailylobo.com. The candidates were each asked about the University’s place in the city, water, sustainability, crime, and the immediate changes they would make upon taking office.
Daily Lobo: A big part of your campaign includes spending the 100 million unused tax dollars that are available from the city. How do you plan to use (this money) to create jobs?
Richard J. Berry Even the mayor himself has said there is $100 million or so that he’d like to get out on the street, but it hasn’t happened yet. Those are tax dollars we’ve already sent into the city. (The money) should be used to put projects together, to create jobs, to improve public safety and improve quality of life issues around the city. So it’s a real win-win thing for everybody if we can get those dollars out the door.
DL: Do you think jobs are going to be created through the use of more tax money?
RB: I think if we can get the taxes that have already been sent in, those would be construction projects, median landscapes, senior centers, youth soccer fields, road improvements, and those kinds of capital-type improvements. I have other job creation ideas about buying more of our goods and services at the city level from local vendors, if we can get that done at a competitive price.
DL: You have talked about ending the “sanctuary city” policy. How will that affect people in Albuquerque?
RB: Twelve years ago, (Mayor Martin Chávez) changed the policy to where he prohibits his police officers — when they have a criminal in their custody — from running a complete background check to include not just their previous criminal activity but their immigration status. What I’m asking to do is take that policy back to what it was before. If you are a criminal in police custody, then your entire background will be checked including immigration status. If it’s a way to get a criminal off the street, that’s the point of the policy change.
DL: Do you have a plan for sustainability around the city?
RB: I think that it’s building codes, conservation efforts in the city structures and city buildings. It deals with water, electrical, it deals with how we design public buildings, and it is putting in reasonable sustainability requirements for local builders — not always going to the very nth degree all the time where it becomes unaffordable.
DL: How will you make sure that water is always available in Albuquerque?
RB: Put things in place that will get us to the next sustainability level for water, once our cushion from the San Juan-Chama is gone. That’s going to be water transfers into the middle Rio Grande and working with our brackish water supplies to get them to where they’re potable. Just looking towards those things we can do 30, 40 or 50 years down the road so that somebody in those days can then sit there and say, “Well, thank goodness someone several generations ago had the foresight to plan for our water future.”
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DL: What do you think the role of UNM will be in the community if you become mayor?
RB: Well, this is our flagship University, and in the Legislature I spend a great deal of time advocating on behalf of UNM. I think what a mayor needs to do is extend a hand to Dr. Schmidly, extend a hand to faculty at UNM and say, “How can we work together to build our city, to give our city a brighter future, to team our resources together so we can provide opportunities to our citizens?” I look very much forward to doing that. This is a great University.
The full transcript of this interview is available at See the full interview version
