INTRODUCTION
The Office of Neighborhood Coordination (ONC) was established in 1985. The City of Albuquerque identifies and recognizes 144 neighborhood associations that are registered with the city and 94 have web sites. Neighborhood Associations serve as a liaison between residents, city government and businesses facilitating community engagement, support and cooperation and communication. The Albuquerque Neighborhood Recognition Ordinance (NARO) establishes a framework for recognizing neighborhood associations within the city. NARO facilitates the recognition of neighborhood associations, registration and charters and requires them to receive notifications about city actions and developments that may impact their areas and neighborhoods. The ordinance outlines specific criteria and processes for neighborhood associations to gain official recognition from the City of Albuquerque.
The link to the City Office of Neighborhood Coordination is here:
https://www.cabq.gov/office-of-neighborhood-coordination
The link to view a map of recognized Neighborhood Associations is here:
DAN LEWIS SPONSORED CITY ORDINANCES AND MEMORIALS
On October 5th, the Albuquerque City Council will consider and vote on four major legislative proposals sponsored by westside Republican City Councilor Dan Lewis that will have major impact eliminating the rights of neighborhood coalitions to challenge developments. Two proposals are ordinances making dramatic changes to the Neighborhood Association Recognition Ordinance (NARO) and two are memorials asking the New Mexico legislature to make changes to zoning laws as they relate to appeals of development projects.
O-26-61 would remove city recognition for neighborhood coalitions, homeowners associations and business groups, and end developer good-faith requirements. Coalitions are defined as groups of neighborhood associations that can represent areas larger than some city council districts. Under the ordinance they could still organize but without a recognized city role. O-26-60 would raise fees to appeal project approvals to $925, up from $190-$265, to cover review costs.
State law governs zoning appeals. Councilor Lewis is sponsoring two memorials asking the New Mexico Legislature to make changes to state law governs zoning appeals. M-26-01 would clarify who qualifies as an “aggrieved” person with legal standing to challenge and sue. M-26-02 would let appellants go directly to District Court.
GUEST COLUMN BY MIKE VOORHEES
Mike Voorhees, whose educational background includes degrees in geography and engineering, moved to Albuquerque in 1995 to help grow the aerospace sector. Since then, he has been involved in various community organizations and activities, including a Habitat for Humanity house build, open space trail repair, and advocacy for safety and education in hot air ballooning. In 2024, after exposing multiple improper actions of the City’s Planning Department, he was elected to the Executive Committee of the West Side Coalition of Neighborhood Associations (WSCONA) as Member at Large. Mike Voorhees currently serves as the Vice President of the West Side Coalition of Neighborhood Associations.
Mike Voorhees submitted the below guest column to be published on www.PeteDinelli.com. He was not compensated for it and his column is being published as a public service:
Republican City Councilor Dan Lewis Sponsors Punitive City Council Ordinances As Retaliation Against Neighborhood Coalitions And To Benefit Developers
While most Burqueños are welcoming the world to our rich cultural heritage and spectacular color-filled skies for the 54th Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, at least one city councilor is using the celebration as cover for his rushed attempt to push through four horrendous bills that will trample upon our Constitutional rights while rapidly changing Albuquerque into a generic collection of fast food chains, overpriced high-rent apartments, carwashes, and multistory self-storage monstrosities.
Councilor Dan Lewis, who is also the Executive Director of the Asphalt and Pavement Association of New Mexico (APANM) is sponsoring City Council bills that expressly discriminate against Neighborhood Coalitions. What are Neighborhood Coalitions you ask? They are simply the people from different neighborhoods who have banded together to share information, help their neighbors stay informed about what is going on, and when necessary, hold the City accountable to following the law. Neighborhood Coalitions have repeatedly stood up for sustainable communities, open space, parks, and well designed commercial projects that enhance the quality of our lives. When the City has allowed unscrupulous developers to violate its own ordinances, we have taken them to court and won…repeatedly.
Councilor Lewis complains that our actions are “frivolous”, but the courts have ruled in our favor that City has violated its own rules and ordinances, state laws, and the Constitution. The courts have stated that Councilor Lewis specifically acted with biased prejudgment when serving in a quasi-judicial roll, and have barred him from repeating that. The State Ethics Commission forced Councilor Lewis into a Settlement Agreement requiring “Mandatory Recusal from all matters involving APANM and its Members.” And yet the four ordinances he is sponsoring are designed to favor developers, APANM, and its members, while discriminating against any who dare oppose one of their projects. Very few commercial development projects are built without some amount of asphalt pavement.
Former politicians can usually recall which vote of theirs was a career-ending mistake. I suspect supporting any of Dan’s four bills will haunt those future former politicians for the remainder of their lives. Why are these so egregious?
Let me explain. The Constitution forbids Bills of Attainder: Article 1, Section 10 “No State shall…pass any Bill of Attainder”. Being prohibited from the start, many Americans have forgotten what a Bill of Attainder is. Simply put, it is any targeted, punitive law against a group or individual (such as Neighborhood Coalitions) without due process, and based upon the past actions of such a group (like the repeated success of Neighborhood Coalitions exercising their Constitutional Rights in the courts). The Constitution also protects Freedom of Speech in the First Amendment and Equal Protection in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that Viewpoint Discrimination is an “egregious form of content discrimination” and is not permitted under the First Amendment.
Dan Lewis’ legislation would charge anyone with a viewpoint opposing a development $1000 to appeal, but those favoring a development (the developer) would only pay $300. This treats different groups unequally and thus also violates the Fourteenth Amendment. The First Amendment also bans any law abridging the right of the people… to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Lewis’ memorials are designed to do just that if the State Legislature followed his request. So any councilor voting for this would, by definition, be violating their oath to the Constitution.
Lewis’ narrative is that if only pesky neighborhood advocates would get out of the way of letting developers build whatever they want, wherever they want it, we would live in an affordable paradise. He would have us silenced so that developers could build AI data centers next door, using all the water, and consuming ever more and more electricity, and no one would have standing to stop it.
Sadly, in each city that has been gullible enough to listen to this private equity propaganda campaign, they have found the opposite to be true. Those cities became dramatically less affordable, their local businesses are closing at an accelerating rate, homeless is going up, and quality of life is declining.
Surprise legislation with only two weeks public notice is almost never legitimate. This certainly isn’t. Let’s hope Albuquerque’s other City Councilors are less gullible than I fear.
Respectfully,
Mike Voorhees
DINELLI ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY
It is clear that the four proposed city council actions sponsored by Dan Lewis are politically motivated. Lewis has an extensive history of tangling and disagreeing with the West Side Coalition of Neighborhood Associations (WSCONA) who have often objected to many of his efforts on the city council and development projects that may affect their homes and neighborhoods.
City Councilor Dan Lewis is one of the longest serving City Councilors having been elected to three 4 year terms. During the last five years Dan Lewis has exhibited a pattern of downright hostility towards his own constituents who oppose or who disagree with his votes on policy and legislation. Lewis has a reputation during city council meetings of berating, insulting or ignoring members of the public who disagree with him. Lewis is known to be on his phone or texting during city council public comments. Lewis is known to go out of his way to offend citizens by leaving meetings very early on not to return.
Since being elected in 2021 to a third four year term, and after he ran for Mayor in 2017 and lost to Tim Keller in a landslide runoff 62.20% to 37.8% of the vote and returning to the City Council, Lewis has engaged in obstruction tactics to carry out a very personal vendetta against Mayor Tim Keller. His tactics include demanding additional confirmation hearings on already council approved Keller Department Director appointments, such as the City Clerk and Chief Administrative Officer, so he could disparage their job performance and insult them during public hearings he presided over with the full intent not to vote for their confirmation. In 2021, immediately upon being sworn in, Lewis introduced legislation to repeal pandemic era legislation he disagreed with and that was enacted after he left the council in 2017, with all 4 of his efforts to repeal failing to his chagrin.
Based on his conduct and his hostility towards his own constituents, Dan Lewis has overstayed his welcome. Lewis is more interested in promoting his own personal agenda over the interests of his own constituents and carrying out a vendetta against neighborhood associations and coalitions to benefit developers.
LEWIS HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN PAST GUTTING NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION RIGHTS AND REMEDIES
The four legislative actions sponsored by City Councilor Dan Lewis are not the first time that Lewis has attempted to gut the rights and remedies of neighborhood associations and coalitions when it comes to appealing zoning changes and development projects.
In 2025, the City of Albuquerque lost a lawsuit in District Court that the Westside Coalition Of Neighborhood Associations filed against it when Dan Lewis acted improperly on behalf of developers to gut scenic protection rules near Petroglyph National Monument. His behavior was specifically cited in the Opinion and Order in that case (No. D-202-CV-2023-03961). The City appealed and lost again in the Court of Appeals. (See related article in postscript.)
It was on January 23, 2025 that Council Bill No. O-24-69, sponsored by Councilor Dan Lewis, was enacted by the city council on a 7 YES to 2 NO vote. It blatantly limits the standing of Neighborhood Associations to appeal zoning changes and development projects approved by the city. Specifically, Council Bill No. O-24-69 as enacted Limit the standing of Neighborhood Associations and provides as follows:
- It excludes an individual’s use of public lands as a basis for standing to appeal.
- It eliminates the failure to notify Neighborhood Associations as a basis for appeal or remand.
- It requires Neighborhood Associations to pay attorney fees and costs to developers when their appeals of approvals are denied, but developers have no liability to pay attorney fees of Neighborhood Associations when developers appeal a denial, regardless of the decision. If the appellant Neighborhood association loses their appeal, they are responsible for paying up to $1,000 for reasonable costs.
- It allows amendments by the request of a developer or other unknown party to bypass the EPC or LUPZ and go straight to the City Council;
- It adds the burdensome requirement for a Neighborhood Association to file a petition in order to have standing in any appeal;
- It allows a City Councilor to NOT be recused even when that councilor sponsors an amendment
The link to review the enacted O-24-69 is here:
https://www.cabq.gov/clerk/documents/o-2025-004.pdf
FINAL COMMENTARY
One major consequence of the Dan Lewis legislation, both on the city and state levels, would be that neighborhood coalitions would not have the standing to object to major developments in Albuquerque, such as the data center akin to Project Jupiter in Las Cruces, that would have a negative impact on the entire city.
The most glaring problem with the introduction of all four measures sponsored by Lewis is the fact that they were not referred to the City Council Land, Use and Planning Committee for a hearing and recommendations. Instead the full City Council will be voting on all four measures on October 5. It is clear that Lewis and perhaps the entire city council is once again taking steps to oppose neighborhood associations and coalitions.
Taken together, the four city council actions are nothing more than a continuation of Dan Lewis vicious attempt to eviscerate or disembowel neighborhood coalitions and neighborhood associations and their influence to speed up development and silencing their influence with help from the New Mexico legislature.
CONTACT CITY COUNCILORS
On Monday, October 5, the City Council meeting will be held in the Vincent E. Griego Council Chambers, basement level of the City of Albuquerque Government Center, 1 Civic Plaza NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102. The meeting is open to the public. The meeting will begin at 5:00 p.m., and to speak during the meeting on the resolution during public comments, you must sign up beginning at 4:30 p.m. You can sign up for Public Comments for the October 5 City Council meeting here:
https://www.cabq.gov/council/find-your-councilor/public-comments
Voters and residents are urged to attend the meeting or contact and voice their opinion and tell all city councilors or their city council service assistants to VOTE NO on O-26-60, O-26-61, M-26-1 and M-26-2.
CITY COUNCIL PHONE: (505) 768-3100
CITY COUNCILOR AND SUPPORT STAFF EMAILS
ipadilla@cabq.gov (Director of Council Services)
__________________
POSTSCRIPT
The link to a related article is here: