Albuquerque Needs Smart Growth

"Let's mince no words: The council should stop retreating and should embrace the original Planned Growth Strategy ordinance - not some watered-down compromise of an ordinance and the "we'll-get-to-it-when-we-can" collection of resolutions it adopted Monday."Albuquerque is in a growth crisis. Everybody knows it. It soon will be desperate. Resources, such as water and tax revenues, are drying up. Traffic is getting worse. Pollution is mounting, and the day is not distant when our skies could look the same as Phoenix's and Los Angeles'. Its core-area schools are beginning to look like $19-a-night motels."The city's quality of life is at stake. Time is running out on its opportunity to remake itself in its residents' best, long-term interests - not in continued sprawl development that sucks up profits and leaves taxpayers with the bill." [Link corrected.]