ABQ’s new mayor faces growing financial crisis

albuquerque s new mayor spends his first official day on the job -- amid growing gloom about the city s financial health
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05 06 pm stuart dyson is live downtown -- with more on the challenge confronting mayor richard berry stu it s a lot like the state s budget crisis - big bills to pay with taxpayer dollars that are coming in lower and slower as the great recession deepens - the city of albuquerque is in the same boat richard berry takes over as mayor in the worst economic crisis since the great depression - all the earlier fantasy-talk about new mexico avoiding the worst of it seems to have evaporated - along with thousands of jobs and hundreds of shut-down businesses berry says the city s revenue shortfall may be twice the size of what the previous administration predicted - a whopping 24 million dollars so we ve got some financial challenges - there s no question about tit - the good news is we re gonna get through it - we re gonna be fine in the long run - we re gonna have some tough decisions to make but
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05 07 pm i ve got a great team of financial people in the administration and we re gonna work with the council and we re gonna find our way through it city council president ike benton is looking ahead to the next budget year - and seeing more shortfall i ve heard anywhere from like you said - from 10 to 40 million - so we re gonna have to get down - figure out what those numbers really are gonna be - a certain amount of that is crystal-balling - what s gonna happen with gross receipts taxes - that s what we live and die by here the city gets most of its money from that tax on sales and services - and in the recession people have less money to spend on stuff - so taxes are down bigtime - city employees may feel the pain i don t want to be the one to say it - but i think they re gonna have to be - i imagine they re gonna be looking at a certain amount of furloughs - i mean everybody s looking at that nowadays - here at our office we re on a 32 hour work week - at our architect office nobo in the berry administration - nobody on the city council - wants to see furloughs or layoffs for city employees - but everybody knows the private sector
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05 08 pm - the business economy - is dealing with those things every single day - at city hall stuart dyson eyewitness news four