As I was downtown eating in a restaurant I overheard the owner and some customers talking about the day and current events then the began talking about the “plight of downtown Albuquerque”; remember how a few years ago downtown had a new “downtown action team” and everything was going to be better, well its not, that might as well been some kind of political scheme to get tax payer money because now downtown is worse and with the county offices leaving the center of the city where they should be it could die all together, here’s the situation from the eyes of the downtown restaurant owner(which is a vital part of a diverse tourist friendly environment). She told me that restaurant owners have to pay a fee something like $7 for the “downtown action team” which she says was a good service in the beginning because they acted like security and scared off loiters but now they just clean, which tax dollars already pay for street cleaning. Next they have to pay rent and false alarm fees for police and fire, add on top of that an increase in minimum wage and the downtown brick and mortar restaurants are hurting, why are they pissed? because the county/city allow food trucks to come in and park during block parties and festivals taking business from the resident downtown businesses, there also mad because the city and county are relentless in making money over parking downtown, this isn’t New York city your not going to make that much! The owner even told me she saw a traffic officer write a guy a ticket while he just left his car to go buy the parking stub, a random citizen stopped in the middle if the street and was arguing with the traffic officer until the driver returned and put the stub on his window sparing him a ticket, then the city/county tried to make money off of businesses by charging them $50 to be included in a “walk downtown” map, is that promoting business?700-30,000 people may be leaving the downtown area the shop owner told me with the county leaving, if that’s right, downtown Albuquerque is going to hurt, bad.
So here’s the plan me and the owner came up with, if you want downtown to flourish 

ban food trucks or make them pay super high fees to park downtown, rent etc. grant free parking either at certain times or areas, this isn’t new York and the city/county will make more money from taxing profitable businesses than parking machines,

Consolidate and keep county city buildings downtown where they belong.

Create a balance between large and small businesses and use “downtown action team” fund to subsidize new businesses and new development,

Tax Large vacant apartment Builders For the building that are just sitting there, or reduce rental rates,-there’s been rumors that certain wealthy individuals that own apartments downtown are purposely leaving them vacant in a plot to move downtown toward the Coronado mall area, moving it farther from tits original and historical site, and possibly farther from the local poor and middle class in the area.

And the city should hold events downtown on a monthly basis, this will draw traffic and revenues as well as revitalize the area, these are just a few main things, however the duke city times being true to our word as being the voice of the people has spoken and mark our words, downtown is still broken, unless things are changed along the lines listed here we can pretty much predict that it will remain broken, so he hope that people will take pride in our city and rally together to get some things changed and truly revitalize this wonderful place we call the Duke City!