The appropriation to extend the Fire Department’s infrastructure for water-delivery pipes, hydrants and possibly tanks to fight fires is essentially a continuation of the department’s multi-year plan to improve fire suppression capability.

Similarly, the Police Department renewed its request for new patrol cars and other equipment.

But relatively new is the project to create a new park-like environment along the nearly two-mile drainage  ditch and ditch bank roads east of Corrales Road owned and managed by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.

Going back decades, the Conservancy District has expressed willingness to close in the ditch, which no longer functions as intended, and transfer ownership to the Village of Corrales. A committee was established by Mayor Jo Anne Roake to explore that possibility and make recommendations.

The Corrales Interior Drain Committee requested $150,000 for the Village to hire a landscape architect to produce a plan for the project.

The other project that would be funded if the governor signs the capital outlays without vetoes is to design and build a gravity sewer main that would discharge sewage from some parts of Corrales  to Albuquerque’s sewer system. That possibility has been discussed over the past three years, chiefly by the Village’s Public Works director.

The municipal sewer line that serves the business district here was designed and built as a narrow diameter, liquids-only wastewater system that operates by a pump at each home or business’ septic tank. Significant problems have arisen, to the extend that a more conventional, gravity-fed sewer system is under consideration.