City at the Crossroads: The Pandemic, Protests, and Public Service in Albuquerque

By Joline Gutierrez Krueger

As COVID-19 jammed Albuquerque's famous Route 66, businesses adapted or closed; as case numbers rose, public health needs changed and tensions flared. Add to the long haul of COVID-19 a summer of political unrest, the murder of George Floyd, and protests about historic statues and memorials, and 2020 was one for the books. City at the Crossroads

• Language: English
• Publisher: City of Albuquerque Foundation
• Release date: Nov 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781737197621

Joline Gutierrez Krueger

Joline Gutierrez Krueger is a longtime journalist based out of Albuquerque. She worked previouslyfor the Albuquerque Tribune and has recently retired from her bi-weekly "UpFront" column she wrote for The Albuquerque Journal. Raised in Albuquerque, Gutierrez Krueger lived on both coasts and a few mountain ranges, attended three universities and a number of fellowships and internships, and finally returned home to complete her creative writing degree at the University of New Mexico. City at the Crossroads is her first book.

Book preview

First Edition published 2022 by the City of Albuquerque Arts & Culture Department

Printed by LightningSource/IngramSpark.

Publication One Albuquerque of this book Fund, is with made proceeds possible from through the book a collaboration being donated with to the the fund.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK

Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number 2021923001

Krueger, Joline Gutierrez, 1957-

City

Includes at the appendices Crossroads: and Joline index. Gutierrez Krueger

978-1-7371976-0-7

ISBN: 978-1-7371976-2-1 (e-book)

1. HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX)

Copyright c. 2022 by Joline Gutierrez Krueger, 2022, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Published All rights by reserved. the City No of part Albuquerque of this publication Arts & Culture, may be reproduced, Albuquerque, stored New in Mexico. a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act—without the prior written permission of the author or publisher.

Designed by Robin Hesse

Cover art by Kate Coucke

To my sons, who never complained about having a mother glued to her laptop at all hours of the day, night, and weekends; and to all of those whose lives have been forever changed or lost to COVID-19 and the violence of our times.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Sunny Days, Neon Lights

The Metal Mayor

The Tin Hat Guy

The Disaster Men

Going Dark

Pulling Together

Learning Curve

The Cavalry Arrives

Cruel Months

Summer of Rage

Oñate

Toward Healing

The Good, the Bad, and the Autumn

Saving Joy

One Albuquerque, Many Shifts

Afterword

Epilogue: Lost and Found

Acknowledgments

Appendices

Index of Names

About the Author

The Keller family dons masks, one of the symbols of the pandemic. Photo courtesy Mayor’s Office, City of Albuquerque.

FOREWORD

The Essential and Entangled Nature of Stories and Service

by Elizabeth J. Kistin Keller, First Lady of Albuquerque January 2022, Albuquerque, New Mexico

In the fall of 2020, we were putting our daughter, Maya, to bed after what felt like a particularly exhausting day for everyone, and I said, You know what kiddo?! I am so proud of you. You know neither daddy nor I ever did second grade in a pandemic. She stopped what she was doing and looked back at me. Really? she asked, But did you do kindergarten or fifth grade in one? While we’ve joked since that this may have been her subtle way of asking just how old Tim and I were back in 1918, I believe her question also reflected a familiarity with the kind of resilience she was seeing from her teachers, from her family, and from the wider Albuquerque community. It reflected her sense that we are a community that knows how to do hard things, that knows how to adapt, and that knows how to take care of each other.

Key to Albuquerque’s resilience, we’ve realized, are our stories and our service. When COVID-19 hit home in March 2020, we found ourselves—as families and as a city—in an era of unprecedented uncertainty, an era where there were no easy answers, only hard decisions. As we grappled with the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism, our schedules, roles, and routines shifted rapidly. After bedtime with the kids, Tim and I would catch up on the day, return work calls and emails, and pour over stories that educated and guided and inspired us, stories that shaped the hard decisions the leadership team at the City was making every day. We listened and learned from stories of past and present pandemic responses and stories about what our future might be; stories in books and articles, and stories in text messages, voicemails, and video clips; stories from around the nation and across the globe and stories from families and communities here at home; stories of grief, anger, exhaustion, fear, hope, pride, optimism, and love; stories of where the team made big impacts and stories of where and how we fell short.

Together, these stories shaped the services the City of Albuquerque and community partners have mobilized and adapted over and over again to meet evolving needs. Stories from our community influenced the hundreds of thousands of meals city workers delivered to seniors and the multiple ways neighbors stepped up to buy groceries and share critical supplies as well. Stories enabled city government to tailor wellness hotels for families experiencing homelessness and the childcare provided for essential workers at community centers across town.

And the many stories of service, strength, and resilience inspired others to engage, as well. First responders came in between shifts to donate blood and public servants cancelled Valentine’s Day plans to instead pour their hearts into setting up and staffing emergency shelters around town. Volunteers stepped up to pack food, sew masks, and assist with testing sites. Local distilleries made hand sanitizer, textile manufacturers made masks, and business associations helped distribute free PPE to stores and restaurants to help protect frontline workers and customers alike. As these stories spread, individuals and organizations navigating challenges of their own were quick to ask What can I do? How can I help?

First Lady Keller gives blood during the pandemic. Photo courtesy Mayor’s Office, City of Albuquerque.

Brewers and distilleries made hand sanitizer, which was in shortage at the beginning of the pandemic. An employee of Cantero Brewing (now Lizard Tail Brewing) donated hand sanitizer they’d manufactured. Photo courtesy Mayor’s Office, City of Albuquerque.

First Lady Liz Keller and Mayor Tim Keller at the Albuquerque International SunPort runway to greet First Lady Dr. Jill Biden. Photo courtesy Mayor’s Office, City of Albuquerque.

As we continue this journey together we are reminded of the essential and entangled nature of stories and service and are so grateful that Joline has captured some of our community stories here. May these stories and others inform and inspire the work to come. May these stories and others, defined by Albuquerque’s remarkable resilience and deep love of place, carry our diverse community through whatever comes our way.

Mayor Keller gets take-out from a local restaurant, Red Rock Deli. Tim’s Take-Out became a regular shout-out to local restaurateurs during the pandemic. Photo courtesy Mayor’s Office, City of Albuquerque.

INTRODUCTION

City Government in Albuquerque during COVID-19

by Timothy M. Keller, Mayor of Albuquerque January 2022, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Just a couple of years later, it’s hard to put 2020 into perspective. It’s one of those well, where to start … type answers. For many, even thinking in depth about that year is painful. It’s the year a lot of us just wanted to end. Fortunately, this book will offer generations to come an at-the-time chronicle of a dozen or so Albuquerque residents, or Burqueños, during a year that is undeniably one of the hardest our city has faced in its 312-year history. In any crisis, the individuals involved ultimately are the best storytellers, but it takes a visionary creative mind to weave those personal stories into a broader picture of the shared journey of a community. Joline has accomplished just that with this book—a straight-forward, primary-sourced depiction of public service during a pandemic and the protests gripping a country, but also uniquely affecting the Duke City in some of our darkest hours and brightest moments.

During 2020, people would write, email, or ask me in line at the grocery store, Mayor, how are you doing? As Mayor, I’m typically feeling about as good, or as bad, as the broader city is feeling. In this job, you can’t help but internalize the state of the city, because you hear it speak to you almost every minute of the day. Whether it’s individual conversations, social media, newspapers and TV, neighbors or fellow parents picking up kids at an APS school, your soul inevitably gets intermingled with the collective soul of the city. But in 2020, my answer to that question was different. During 2020, I felt more tragedy, more pain, and more anxiety than ever before, but I was also more driven, more focused, and oddly more energized than ever before. 2020 transformed at least a generation in Albuquerque, and it transformed me.

To be clear, like most people, I was physically exhausted pretty much the entire year, falling asleep in my car in the garage on three hours of sleep, consuming four giant caffeinated drinks a day, and downing an evolving mix of over-the-counter cold medicines trying to shake a months-long nasty cold. In the spring, I missed significant portions of my young children’s lives, and like everyone, I missed my parents, my siblings, in-laws, and my friends. The summer of protests layered in countless nights of phones ringing, buzzing with text messages, midnight meetings preparing for 6 a.m. internal briefings, and adapting minute-by-minute to avoid the deaths and chaos we were witnessing in other cities. It was a maxed out like never before. Then, in the fall, spring just repeated itself again, but this time with more bitterness and public frustration. So why did I feel different?

The year 2020 was a once-in-a-lifetime experience where the confluence of public need intersected with the mayor’s position in a way that changed everything about typical mayoral leadership. During 2020, one of the biggest issues of the past few years, the much maligned ART (Albuquerque Rapid Transit) project was all but forgotten. Standard issues like planning and zoning, potholes, climate change, trash pickup, weeds, animal welfare, and dozens of other bread- and-butter city issues were no longer front-of-mind for residents. It was all about the pandemic, public safety, and public health, and then it was all about social justice and racial reckoning with our own history. Hopefully, we will never again see that kind of stark crisis reality again, but in some ways it was extremely clarifying for public leadership.

As a washed up St. Pius X High School quarterback, I often use football analogies with our city leadership team and with the public. In football, there are game plans made in advance, and during the game, the coach calls plays, and sometimes the quarterback calls audibles to different plays. But when you are in the two-minute drill, the final two minutes of a game, all of that is out the window. As quarterback, you call all the shots, no time to plan, no time to huddle, no time to discuss, to set goals, you just bark out the play, trust each other, and snap the ball. In the football arena, there is nothing more exhilarating. Being Mayor of Albuquerque in 2020 was like being quarterback during a two-minute drill, but for the entire year.

I woke up every single day in 2020 with zero doubt as to what to do. There were decisions to make—big ones—to adapt, to be courageous and compassionate, and to truly lead our workforce of nearly six thousand employees and our metro area of nearly 900,000 people. Instead of adhering to the roadmap of strategic planning we did when we first came into office, we knew we had to get into pure crisis management mode. That meant problem solving in real time, getting some things right, some things wrong, and learning as we go. I leaned on every little bit of knowledge I could glean from others, from my past, and from other mayors. Being fully engaged and fully immersed in work I hoped would make a difference and gave me a clear sense of purpose. It was an opportunity to truly help a community, not in a typical elected official way, but in our time of need, and that kept my adrenaline going for months. Regardless of how it went, or how it will be remembered, 2020 was a year I was rabidly determined, laser focused, and doggedly empowered to spend every hour of my day, every ounce of my energy, my every power and talent to carry our city safely through.

During those early months, many partners in the community were equally driven by this thirst to make a real difference for our hometown in times of crisis. One of our true partners was Michelle Lujan Grisham, Governor of the State of New Mexico. When she was elected, we pledged to be the first New Mexico governor and Albuquerque mayor that would truly work together. The pandemic was a catalyst for problem solving together for our community. We came to agreement a lot, not always, but in general unifying our city’s efforts with the state’s orders, rather than falling into divisiveness, saved countless lives and livelihoods. We must have talked on the phone almost daily for several months in addition to our teams working through issues at multiple levels. All across America, states had to set health policy, but cities were the epicenter of the pandemic and where the policies either became reality or just a press release.

A Department of Senior Affairs employee drives a van for senior during the pandemic, providing valuable free rides.

At the City of Albuquerque, where we provide mostly essential services, and mostly all work in just a few locations, the first question of where should we be became how should we function? How do we continue to operate safely while encouraging people to stay apart? Our administration knew we wanted to preserve jobs in city government so instead of facing furloughs and layoffs, our employees did something amazing that we will never forget—they kept the city running by continuing, and even ramping up, as many of our services as possible, and tackling the public health emergency at hand. We had to figure out how to mobilize community resources so that everyone could stay safe, realizing that not everyone had the luxury to stay home. Fortunately, Albuquerque City Council took, on March 15th, one of the most important and unnoticed acts by amending city government’s emergency powers to incorporate public health. This important debate, deftly managed by the city council president, passed on a 6-to-3 vote. This courageous act of sheer political selflessness and unabashed action for what was in the best interest of our community during an emergency, stands out as one of the most critical moments for the city, and by extension the state, in 2020.

Our city’s frontline workers didn’t miss a beat, and some didn’t miss a day of work, despite their increased risks of contracting COVID-19. For some essential workers, like delivery drivers, sanitation workers, and healthcare workers, their workloads increased exponentially during the pandemic. Unlike many other city, county, and even state governments, all of the City of Albuquerque directors got together early on in the pandemic and decided to do everything possible not to shut down. The administration sought to strengthen the safety net the city provides, rather than cut holes in it, even if city employees had to change roles or workspaces.

The executive team that served in 2020 (Lawrence Rael, Sarita Nair, Mike Puelle, Sanjay Bhakta and Justine Freeman) with Electric Playground representatives. Photo courtesy Mayor’s Office, City of Albuquerque.

So everyone shifted. Lifeguards and swim coaches handed out PPE. Librarians redeployed to wellness hotels. Community centers provided daycare pods for thousands of kids whose parents were essential workers, even our own children. The City of Albuquerque focused on safely keeping open—or reopening—the public spaces that our residents rely on. Unlike other cities, we kept our zoo, open spaces, libraries, museums, playgrounds, pools, and kids programs open as much as we could under the state public health order. The City of Albuquerque leaned into a continuation of services that focused on complying with public health orders, instead of closing down all together—a decision that would have hung countless families out to dry.

City hourly workers, who don’t get paid or get benefits if they are not working, did construction projects while our streets were empty. Over one hundred city workers acted as inspectors in helping restaurants reopen as health orders changed and new outdoor dining configurations became necessary. City government literally paid small local businesses to not close forever, cutting $10,000 checks to stave off evictions and bankruptcies. Albuquerque approached things differently than many cities did, trying to provide ongoing city services when folks needed it the most. These were all very deliberate decisions made during an emergency, and that continuation of public services saved people’s jobs, housing, and maybe even lives.

In addition to service, another way we reacted to and processed the pandemic is through how we have told its story. Early on, the administration had to tell the story of coronavirus to our constituents. Information was changing by the minute, and sharing accurate information in different formats, languages, and with ADA accessibility was more critical than ever. We said, we are here for you, our service to you will go on. We had to tell people—99% of whom had never been through a pandemic before—to stay safe and to stay distant. We had to bust myths that were quickly spreading dangerous, even deadly, misinformation. We had to make sure people knew where to get resources, and who could help. Our message was not simply stay home, because not everyone could stay home.

Our early pandemic public health tenets revolved around ensuring compliance with the State of New Mexico’s orders by Albuquerque residents; after all, the city and the state knew that a state public health order is irrelevant if Albuquerque, the largest city in the state, doesn’t comply. So when state health orders came down, we took a path of education versus punishment to achieve compliance. We deputized planners, health inspectors, and fire marshals to help businesses keep up with changing occupancy limits, enforced special hours at stores for seniors and