ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — There are many roads around Albuquerque that could use some work. After the recent storm, the need is greater than ever. We’re talking about repairs, and for some areas, ways to slow traffic and make our neighborhood streets safer.

But among the list of the city’s to-dos, we found one street that is getting extra attention and certainly more money.

The drive through Albuquerque’s Country Club neighborhood is a beautiful one. There are big trees, stunning homes, and on Park Avenue, a couple ways to keep people safe from speeding traffic.

There is a new speed hump, neighbors call version 3.0.

“My understanding is at neighborhood meetings, speed bump issues have been raised,” said Pat Montoya, Chief Operations Officer for the City of Albuquerque.

Montoya doesn’t deal with traffic headaches the same way he once did as the city’s Director of Municipal Development. But he did step back in that role to oversee a project on Park Avenue this summer.

The Water Authority destroyed one of the speed humps while replacing water lines. While the authority would have fixed what it destroyed, where it destroyed it, the city paid to move it closer to Mayor Tim Keller’s home.

“A few individuals raised the concerns of either their walls had been cracked, it was too close to a bedroom, it interfered with a driveway on their house,” said Montoya.

To prevent future damage and more complaints, the city moved it to a better location. But then the replacement needed replacing.

“It was rebuilt twice,” said Montoya. “The reason it was rebuilt is that there was sort of a miscommunication with the contractor.”

The first bump was too small, cars weren’t slowing down enough. The second was too high. It took the city three versions to get the mayor’s speed hump just right.

A cost to taxpayers of $34,000, close to the price of three speed humps. It was all done just weeks apart. Neighbors had questions too.

“Why did we act on it so quickly? Sometimes you just must make those decisions, and you run with it,” said Montoya.

Montoya admits the city did veer from standard procedure for this speed hump. The city’s Neighborhood Traffic Management Program sets the requirements and puts up the money.

There’s a formal process, like petitions, that need to be filed and a waiting list that, in the past, has taken the city years to get to.

There are hundreds of Albuquerque streets in various stages of traffic-calming requests. All of them require some type of traffic study. But there was not one done on Park Avenue.

Montoya said there are exceptions. Exceptions Montoya said they’ve used for work on other streets in other neighborhoods. But we don’t have a list of those.

Just hours before our story aired, Montoya called to say this money did not come from NTMP, instead he said it came from the road maintenance budget.

While the city provided documents showing the cost would be partially covered by the road maintenance fund, the city hasn’t provided documents for the full price owed.

City officials said it’s because they haven’t paid it yet. A spokesperson added, “It will not be paid with NTMP funds.”

For now, all is quiet in the country club neighborhood. All is well at City Hall.

Keller did not take us up on an interview request.