Our main concern is the HEART ordinance in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Implemented by Councilwoman Sally Mayer without allowing the general public to vote, this ordinance threatens animal ownership within the affected area.

Now, another ordinance of the same type is being proposed in Corrales, New Mexico, a comunity that is right next to Albuquerque. For a copy of the proposed legislation, please click here.

For all of you outraged or puzzled at the media reports that only three signatures were submitted July 20 for the Rescind HEART referendum, let me explain, assure, thank and congratulate you.

First, Ron did not submit ANY signatures, since by late Thursday morning it was clear we would NOT make the 17,458 signatures necessary. What he did deliver to the City Clerk’s office Thursday was a letter of protest maintaining that the City did not provide all the necessary information in its publication of the notice of HEART as provided by the City Charter and thus that the July 20 date was invalid.

Upon serving the Clerk the letter and discussing the matter with the staff for nearly an hour, Ron learned as he was leaving that a well-meaning volunteer, knowing how important each vote was at the end, had hand delivered a petition with three signatures directly to the Clerk that morning. When Ron asked for the petition back, he was told it wasn’t possible. Thus this was the number that those “reporters” who were not interested in the full story published and implied by omission that three was the sum total of support that the Rescind Heart movement was able to raise.

On Thursday evening Ron sent out a press release to the media and a letter of explanation to as many of you as we had e-mail addresses for, setting forth our stand that the City had failed to give proper publication and thus the July 20 deadline invalid and requesting proper re-publication of the notice. He also explained that though we had collected thousands of signatures, we hadn’t collected enough to meet our 17,458 threshold even if every signature we gathered had been found to be valid. The short 35 day time frame and the fact that there was no “us” at the very beginning proved to be circumstances just too difficult to overcome. However the disappointment of not meeting our goal has been completely overshadowed by the joy of seeing what a momentous effort this has turned out to be.

This was and is truly a grass-roots movement. It is basic democracy in action. It began with a single individual taking it upon himself to challenge the ordinance under provisions given in the city charter and, like ripples in a pond, it spread and grew to include a truly amazing number of enthusiastic, hard-working people. You completely exceeded all of our expectations with your numbers and with your eagerness, ideas and generosity. As contributions came in during the last days of our allotted 35 days, we were even able to contract with a professional petition signature gatherer to gather 500 signatures for us, but the absolutely overwhelming number of signatures that came in were gathered by you: by individuals downloading petitions and taking them around their neighborhoods, by individuals driving out of their way to stop where petitions were available for them to sign, for those of you who took it upon yourselves to visit businesses, dog parks and events to spread the word and collect signatures.

Had we been able to start on Day 1 with all of you that we had on Day 35, there is no doubt that we would have made our goal! Our sincerest thanks and congratulations to all of you for a nearly miraculous job! We hope you will hold on to your zeal because this is indeed only the first act of our drama and there are still several other ways open to us to defeat what has now become much more widely recognized as a burdensome, contradictory, inconsistent and badly written ordinance.

With your continued energy and support, we aim to prove that you can indeed fight City Hall – and win! Consider this just the set change before Act II.