Albuquerque City Councilor Michael Cadigan has decided to run for re-election, but the ex-mayoral candidate probably won’t seek public financing, Cadigan tells NMI.

When the tw0-term West Side councilor dropped out of the mayor’s race, he said that he wouldn’t seek re-election this year for his District 5 city council seat, which is the largest in the city. At the time, he referenced the sacrifice that serving on the Albuquerque City Council brings. “Service is a sacrifice, professionally, personally, financially, and often it is a sacrifice for their families,” he said.

But after hearing from many colleagues and constituents urging him to run, and having had time after his short-lived mayoral race experience to think through it, Cadigan says he’s realized he still has work to do on the council.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do in the area of growth management,” he explains. “We’ve had a bit of a break right now because of the economic slow-down, but when it turns around, I don’t want to see the progress we made managing growth reversed.”

“We also need to continue to have someone watchdog the city budget,” he continues, “and with eight years on the Council, I have a lot of understanding and knowledge of how the budgeting process works.”

Cadigan said he probably won’t seek public financing, and he feels the council still needs to examine whether the process of qualifying for public financing needs to be “fixed.”