Singeli Agnew

Coronado Mall's plan for redevelopment raises air quality questions

People hate bad city planning. Which is why, nearly 25 years ago, Albuquerque's City Council decided to put an end to it, at least in one part of our city. The Uptown district, which is well-known for its sea of asphalt, undeveloped space and semi-empty strip malls, also has the worst air pollution in the city and is, for the most part, pedestrian unfriendly. And so, in an effort to curb these characteristics and transform Uptown into a thriving urban area, in 1981, the Council created the Uptown Sector Plan.

Our Banana Republic. Politics can be a downright pitiful exercise in nepotism. In New Mexico, the latest obvious example was a bill sponsored at the Legislature by Reps Dan Silva and Kiki Saavedra that was championed by their sons, who both happened to be lobbyists for the cause.

Singeli Agnew

City councilors began the April 4 meeting an hour early, shunted 14 bills to a land use meeting and slogged past the 10:30 p.m. deadline, but the last few weeks' backlog of bills just piled higher. The single thing councilors didn't discuss, having vented earlier at an afternoon press conference, was the current APD ruckus.

The Terry Schiavo tragedy just won't let go of my imagination. It is tempting to move on, to shift our focus, to look for the next public circus to distract ourselves from the painful truths opened by the still-fresh experience in Florida. But until we've teased out a few answers for ourselves, the contradictions are too extreme to set aside comfortably.

Dateline: Louisiana—Rapper C-Murder, in jail for the 2002 murder of a teenager, has changed his stage name because he thinks he is misunderstood. “I am not a murderer,” the rapper, whose real name is Corey Miller, said in a statement released last Tuesday. According to his publicist, Giovanni Melchiorre of New York-based Koch Records, the incarcerated musician will now go by the name of C Miller. “People hear the name C-Murder and they don't realize that the name simply means that I have seen many murders in my native Calliope projects neighborhood,” the rapper explained. The state of Louisiana disagrees, however. Miller was convicted of second-degree murder Sept. 30, 2003, in the death of Steve Thomas, 16, a fan of the rapper who was shot inside a nightclub in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey. Miller faces a mandatory life sentence without parole. Earlier this month, a state appeals court upheld Miller's conviction. His defense lawyer, Ron Rakosky, has said he will appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Campaign contributions put legislation into perspective

Handicap these odds: An important piece of legislation is before the New Mexico Legislature. Lined up on one side are all of Albuquerque's neighborhood coalitions. On the other sideline huddles a handful of lobbyists. Who wins?

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