September 30, 2008

Dear Albuquerque Citizen:

The Vision Statement for our city, adopted by the Mayor and City Council in 2006, states:

It is in the spirit of this vision that the Indicators Progress Commission (IPC) is pleased to present the Albuquerque Progress Report (APR) 2008. The APR describes indicators which measure the progress our community is making toward realizing the City of Albuquerque’s Desired Community Conditions, organized into Goals. The IPC, a citizen body appointed by the Mayor with advice and consent of the City Council, has the statutory responsibility for developing these indicators.

As a result of a community Goals Forums held in the summer of 2006, Goals and resulting Desired Community Conditions were developed by several hundred citizens. These goals and desired conditions were formally adopted by the City Council and approved by the Mayor, pursuant to the City Charter and Budget Ordinance. The Desired Community Conditions flesh out in more detail what the realization of each one of the Five-year Goals would mean. The IPC identified one or more measures of these conditions —Goal Progress Indicators. The indicators are the heart of this volume. They measure trends, and where no trend data is available, establish baselines for future comparison. Trends will continue to be tracked, as appropriate, and reported in future editions of the Albuquerque Progress Report.

We adopted the following criteria for evaluating the indicators:

• We favored indicators that directly measured Desired Community Conditions. In some cases, where direct measures were simply not available, we used appropriate surrogate measures.
• The data had to be available to us. We looked for assurance that it would be updated on a fairly regular basis to facilitate long-term trend analyses. In cases in which historical data were not obtainable, we sought assurance that future updates of current data would occur, so the indicator presented in this report serves to establish a baseline.

One purpose of the City’s Budget Ordinance is to provide guidance to policy makers in the years ahead through the Albuquerque Progress Report and to assist City government in its effort to be more responsive to the needs of the community by focusing on results. The Goals provide an important framework for the City budget. City Program Strategies are explicitly tied to the very Desired Community Conditions measured in this report.

The IPC is committed to raising the level of public policy dialogue and helping our community make progress towards achieving its goals. It is our hope the APR 2008 will provide the data that will help answer some of the questions asked by City leaders, policy makers, managers, and employees in their quest for greater program effectiveness and efficiency:

• Why does the City provide the services that it does?
• What impacts are our services having on community conditions?
• If the conditions aren’t improving, what else can we do? Can we afford it?
• How can we be even more effective?

As the reader considers the eight Goals and the wide range of Desired Community Conditions addressed in this report, one conclusion should be inescapable. Government cannot, nor should, do it alone. Positive results require the cooperative efforts of individuals, businesses, and community agencies and organizations. This report helps us measure the results of our combined efforts to meet these challenges. We hope all citizens will review this report and identify goals and measures of personal interest. In understanding the information presented in the APR, please accept this direction. All measures need context so we provide comparative information from other similar southwestern cities when data are available. We also feel strongly that when citizens have an accurate understanding of the community conditions, they are better able to influence policy developed by their governments and other important community organizations. Therefore, in this edition of the APR, we assess citizen understanding, based on community surveys we conducted in the last year.

We could not have produced this volume without the assistance of many talented individuals, both inside and outside of City government, who generously donated their time, expertise, and most importantly, data to this enterprise. To them we express our heartfelt gratitude.

Finally, we wish to thank the elected leaders of the City of Albuquerque — the Mayor and the nine members of the City Council. This report would not have been possible without their ongoing support of this process through their ideas, their openness, and their willingness to grant this Commission access to the many layers of expertise within City government.

Sincerely,

Stephen S. Baca, Chairman

Richard R. Fairbanks                           

Paul Guerin                                      

Nancy Kilpatrick                                    

Meghan Martinez                                  

Jim Morris                                               

Robert L. Poole

Lourdes Romero

Steve Seligman

Cody Stotts

Jamie Welles