Santa Fe New Mexican, Jan. 14, 2024

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Lobos knock SDSU from Mountain West peak

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January 14, 2024

Judge rejects lawsuit to keep Trump off ballot in New Mexico

Fixing a towering issue New city councilors voice renewed desire to settle obelisk stalemate, the “city’s scarlet letter.” LOCAL & REGION, C-1

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LEGISLATURE

THE 2024 SESSION

By Nathan Brown, Daniel Chacón and Robert Nott nbrown@sfnewmexican.com dchacon@sfnewmexican.com rnott@sfnewmexican.com

N

33

voices

ew Mexico lawmakers love to say they keep busy during legislative sessions “doing the people’s work.”

The New Mexican asked 33 people, one from each county, what they want to see the Legislature prioritize during the 30-day session that begins Tuesday.

While the session will be focused primarily on the state budget for fiscal year 2025, lawmakers are likely to address several other key, and sometimes contentious, issues — such as renewable energy, rising crime and gun violence, the cannabis industry and public education.

The session comes as the state projects a revenue windfall, largely from the oil and gas industry, that has prompted both the governor and Legislature to propose record spending plans of more than $10 billion.

Some New Mexico residents urge the state to save for the future. Others see an opportunity for another round of tax rebates and big investments in behavioral health care, education, economic development, housing aid, military bases and border security.

One of the needs residents cited most frequently: roadway repairs.

“We’re either lacking in infrastructure, or there’s a lot of repair that needs to be done on roads — bridges, too,” a McKinley County resident said.

Another message for legislators: Remember rural communities and areas south of Interstate 40.

“Everything is for Santa Fe and for Albuquerque,” lamented a Lincoln County woman.

New Mexicans from every county sound off on priorities for lawmakers

Erica Rowland, Bernalillo County As the owner of Farm Flourish, a 5-acre cannabis operation in Albuquerque’s North Valley, Erica Rowland faced obstacles with Bernalillo County as she worked to get her business up and running after the state’s recreational cannabis industry was legalized in 2021.

She hopes the Legislature will direct funds toward improving the industry, which sees between $40 million and $50 million in sales every month.

Rowland said the state should ensure every city and county have a “designated cannabis department, director or contact person.”

“Funding should be granted to these municipalities in order to provide the required professionals like architects and engineers and contractors,” she said.

Please see story on Page A-4 Some of the 33 New Mexico residents who talked about what they would like to see accomplished during the 2024 legislative session, which starts Tuesday in Santa Fe. NEW MEXICAN AND COURTESY PHOTOS

Budget, guns likely to dominate session

By Daniel J. Chacón

dchacon@sfnewmexican.com

INSIDE u Legislators will try to build up affordable housing with proposals to add $500M to trust fund and creation of official housing office. PAGE A-6 u Gov. Lujan Grisham to again seek update to state’s gutted anti-corruption law. PAGE A-6 u Serrato: Fiscal agents should have audits done before receiving capital outlay funds. OPINION, B-1 u Lujan Grisham: It’s time to ban assault weapons in New Mexico. OPINION, B-2 u Shanahan: It’s about time state had an affordable housing office. REAL ESTATE, E-1

Pasapick pasatiempomagazine.com

Index

Classifieds E-3

New Mexico’s capital city will be buzzing with political activity for the next four weeks starting Tuesday, when the Legislature convenes for a 30-day session sure to be punctuated with intense and fiery debate over how to spend billions of dollars in new revenue and whether restrictions on firearms will help curb violent crime in the state.

What should New Mexicans expect?

As is the case every year, expect the unexpected.

While lawmakers will introduce a slew of proposed laws, the focus of the session will be on passing a budget amid record revenue projections for New Mexico — but with revenue growth expected to slow in the future.

The task of agreeing on a budget is certain

to spark conflict between Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and lawmakers, who develop separate spending plans with different priorities for the upcoming fiscal year and then try to meet in the middle.

The governor is proposing a $10.5 billion budget, which represents a nearly 10% increase over the current fiscal year.

Her proposal, which maintains reserves at 34%, calls for a $500 million housing package — half for direct assistance to renters, homeowners and people experiencing homelessness and the other half for loans for building and renovation projects — and a $283 million increase in education spending.

The governor’s spending plan also includes 14% salary increases for state police officers and 3% raises for most other state employees.

Sen. George Muñoz, a Gallup Democrat who

chairs two of the most influential committees in the Legislature — the Legislative Finance Committee and the Senate Finance Committee — said the governor’s spending plan isn’t sustainable.

“I think it’s going to be difficult to tamper down recurring spending by the executive,” he said Saturday. “If we don’t tamper down recurring spending, New Mexico will begin cuts within one to two years.”

Lawmakers are proposing a $10.1 billion budget, which would increase spending by nearly 6%.

Lawmakers’ spending plan, which would put reserves at 30%, calls for 4% raises for all state employees.

It also proposes creation of a $300 million governmental accountability trust fund that would essentially be used to fund pilot projects Please see story on Page A-6

Santa Fe Free Thinkers’ Forum

Today

Obituaries

Debra Oliver of Common Ground Mediation Services and Mary Ellen Gonzales of Unitarian Universalist Congregation discuss the benefits of restorative justice; 8:30 a.m.; Unitarian Universalist Santa Fe, 107 W. Barcelona Road; no charge; 505-438-6265; meetup.com/freethinkersforum; available to view online.

Some snow.

High 37, low 21.

Jacquita Jones, 92, Santa Fe, Jan. 5 Maria Elena (Meg/Mary) Martinez, 79, Santa Fe, Dec. 31

Mike E. Montoya, 88, Dec. 9 Lisa Michelle Murphy, 62, Santa Fe, Jan. 6 Mabel D. Rivera, Dec. 26 Maria Valdez, 84, Nambé, Jan. 2

More events Fridays in Pasatiempo

PAGE D-6

Carolane Le McNees, Jan. 10

PAGE C-2

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THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

Sunday, January 14, 2024

NATION&WORLD Bitter cold could set records in heartland

IN BRIEF Mudslide in Colombia kills at least 34 people; dozens more injured BOGOTA, Colombia — The death toll from a mudslide in western Colombia rose to 34 Saturday, authorities said.

The mudslide struck a busy municipal road Friday in a mountainous area connecting the cities of Quibdo and Medellin.

The National Disaster Risk Management Unit had said initially at least 18 people were killed. The agency also said at least 35 injured people were taken to hospitals.

The new death toll was reported by the Chocó Governor’s Office, where a unified command post was established to coordinate search and rescue operations.

In a statement, it said 17 bodies had been identified and officials were trying to identify another 17. The Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the death toll.

Earlier, Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez said a search continued “for people who remain trapped under the landslide.” She said several children were among the victims but gave no number.

The risk management unit didn’t specify what could have caused the mudslide, but the Defense Department reported Friday night it had been raining in the area, making rescue operations difficult.

Plan OK’d to store toxic waste from Maui wildfire in hillside pile WAILUKU, Maui — County officials have approved a plan to store a mountain of ash and debris from last year’s Lahaina wildfires, part of an emergency disposal strategy that faced intense opposition in recent weeks.

Critics had called the proposal both too hasty and too risky in its approach to mitigating a threat from the toxins left behind by the wind-driven inferno in Lahaina last August.

But late Friday, the Maui County Council voted 6-2 to allow a fleet of trucks to begin depositing the material on a hillside in Olowalu, a small coastal enclave a few miles from Lahaina.

The decision comes amid complicated efforts to rebuild after the fires, which killed at least 100 people and destroyed more than 2,700 homes and other structures.

GOP bill would save funding for anti-abortion counseling centers WASHINGTON — In a new twist to the fight over abortion access, congressional Republicans are trying to block a Biden administration spending rule they say will cut off millions of dollars to anti-abortion counseling centers.

The rule would prohibit states from sending federal funds earmarked for needy Americans to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” which counsel against abortions.

Congressional Republicans last week introduced legislation that would block the Health and Human Services Agency from restricting the funds from the centers. The bill has no chance of becoming law this year.

At stake are millions of dollars in federal funds that currently flow to the organizations through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, a block grant program created in 1996 to give cash assistance to poor children and prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

The proposal limiting funds for anti-abortion counseling centers is the Biden administration’s latest attempt to introduce federal policies that expand abortion access.

Conservative states, meanwhile, have severely restricted the care since the U.S. Supreme Court stripped women of their federal right to an abortion in 2022.

8M children in 15 states will be shut out of new summer food program More than 8 million children in 15 states will be unable to participate in a new federal food assistance program intended to help needy families during the summer months.

Set to begin this summer, the program will provide low-income families with $120 for each eligible child, which can be used to purchase food at grocery stores, farmers markets or other approved retailers when such assistance is not available in schools.

The deadline for states to opt into the program, which was approved by Congress with bipartisan support, was Jan. 1. The federal Agriculture Department announced this week 15 states, all led by Republican governors, said no.

Some of those governors voiced concerns about the program’s mechanics and administrative costs; some indicated they had ideological objections and a lack of faith in the federal government.

Food insecurity rose to 12.8% of U.S. households in 2022, up from 10.2% in 2021, the Agriculture Department said.

New Mexican wire services

By Jim Salter and Jennifer Peltz The Associated Press

ABBIE PARR/ ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

A woman clears snow off a sidewalk last week in Des Moines, Iowa. Arctic-like temperatures are raising concerns about turnout for Monday’s Iowa caucuses.

In Iowa, will weather dampen caucus turnout?

Conditions make it harder to participate in nominating process

By Nicholas Riccardi and Hannah Fingerhut

The Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa ost Iowans won’t be out Monday night. Never mind that it’s forecast to be well below zero, with wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees, and the roads may still be icy from a set of snowstorms that hammered the state this past week.

It’s because they’re not registered with the Republican Party, which is kicking off the presidential nominating season with its famous caucuses. Or because they don’t want to make the commitment to attend, which involves getting to the nearest of 1,500 caucus sites and sitting in a room — potentially for hours — for the chance to vote on the party’s presidential nominee.

But the winter weather, intimidating even for Iowa, will make an already unrepresentative process even less representative. Elderly Iowans, the backbone of the caucus, are wondering how they will make it to their sites Monday. Political types are mentally downgrading their expected turnout and wondering who a smaller, harder-core electorate will favor.

All this gives longtime critics of the caucus system even more reason to be critical.

“This is no way to begin the election of a president,” said Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and federal housing secretary who was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, when he called for Iowa to have a less prominent role. “You have to be a die-hard who’s willing to trudge through snow and be there for several hours.”

Democrats already have downgraded Iowa after the state party bungled the vote-counting in the 2020 caucuses. Democrats have relegated the state to later in their nominating process after President Joe Biden declared he wanted more diverse states that better represent his party and the country to cast the first votes. That party’s process starts Feb. 3 in South Carolina, then moves to Nevada, with New Hampshire next in the new order for 2024 even though the state party is going ahead with a Jan. 23 primary national Democrats say won’t count.

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But Republicans have stuck with Iowa, which once was competitive but has swung firmly to the right in the age of former President Donald Trump, who carried the state in the general election in 2016 and 2020. Its population is whiter, more rural and evangelical than the nation, but that matches the GOP’s voters better than the Democratic Party’s.

Some Republicans expect a still-robust turnout, but most acknowledge the weather will scare at least some voters away.

“This’ll be worse than we’ve ever had,” said Doug Gross, once a top aide to former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, who said his own 90-year-old mother had decided she couldn’t caucus in these conditions.

The cold and potential snow drifts, especially in rural parts of the state, make conditions “treacherous” for people of all ages, said Brad Anderson, state director of AARP Iowa.

He advised extreme caution, especially for those with mobility issues, and hopes Iowans will take safety into account.

One older woman who lives in a retirement home in Newton telephoned Thad Nearmyer, chair of the Jasper County Republicans, saying she still drives but would be “a bit more comfortable going if somebody else was driving,” he said. She will be asking friends, family and neighbors for a ride to Monday’s caucuses.

Even under better conditions, only a tiny fraction of Iowans even participate in the caucuses. In 2016, 186,000 votes were cast in the Republican caucus in a state with a population of more than 3.1 million. And that’s what provides the most important kickoff to the contest to lead a nation of 330 million people.

The caucuses are a relic of the push to reform party nominating processes in the 1970s, freeing them from the influence of party bosses. They tend to favor movement candidates and helped underdogs such as Democrats Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.

Seth Masket, a political scientist at Denver University, was preparing on Friday to take 13 of his students to watch the caucuses. He was bracing for the weather, but also for the randomness of the American nominating process.

“No one would ever design this intentionally,” Masket said. “No one would ever design something where the most important contests are in Iowa and New Hampshire — in January!”

MLK DAY OBSERVATIONS

Thousands of protesters call for end to Gaza violence

By Terry Tang and Noreen Nasir The Associated Press

As communities nationwide celebrate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday this weekend with events ranging from parades to prayer services, some people are taking a cue from the slain civil rights icon’s history of protest to demonstrate against the war in Gaza and draw attention to the looming U.S. presidential election.

The Monday holiday also marks 100 days since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched an attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people and resulted in about 240 taken hostage.

More than 100 Israelis remain kidnapped and more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, as global health organizations have warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis there.

Perhaps the biggest organized event

of the weekend in the U.S. was held in the nation’s capital Saturday — the March on Washington for Gaza, co-hosted by the American Muslim Task Force on Palestine, comprising some of the largest Muslim organizations in the U.S., along with antiwar and racial justice groups.

Thousands of people rallied near the White House to call for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza, with some holding signs questioning President Joe

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March organizers called on Biden to demand a permanent cease-fire and an end to the violence against civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.

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O’FALLON, Mo. — Icy winter weather blanketed the U.S. on Saturday as a wave of Arctic storms threatened to break low-temperature records in the heartland, spread cold and snow from coast to coast and cast a chill over everything from football playoffs to presidential campaigns.

As the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend began, the weather forecast was a crazy quilt of color-coded advisories, from an ice storm warning in Oregon to a blizzard warning in the northern Plains to high wind warnings in New Mexico.

“It’s, overall, been a terrible, terrible winter. And it came out of nowhere — two days,” Dan Abinana said as he surveyed a snowy Des Moines, Iowa. He moved to the state from Tanzania as a child years ago, but said “you never get used to the snow.”

In Portland, Ore., medical examiners were investigating a hypothermia death as freezing rain and heavy snow fell in a city more accustomed to mild winter rains, and hundreds of people took shelter overnight at warming centers.

Weather-related deaths already were reported earlier in the week in California, Idaho, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced a state of emergency, citing “very dangerous conditions.” Up to 2 feet of snow fell in some areas over the past week, and wind chills were well below zero.

“This event is not going away tonight.

It’s not going away tomorrow,” Pillen said at a news conference “It’s going to take a number of days.”

About 1,700 miles of Nebraska highways were closed. State police assisted over 400 stranded motorists, said Col. John A. Bolduc, head of the Nebraska State Patrol.

In Iowa, cars were stuck for five hours in blowing snow on Interstate 80 after semitrailers jackknifed in slippery conditions. State troopers had handled 86 crashes and 535 motorist-assist calls since Friday, State Patrol Sgt. Alex Dinkla said.

Road crews were “working the snow-blowers like crazy,” Dinkla said, but high winds were blowing snow right back onto roadways.

Governors from New York to Louisiana warned residents to be prepared for worrisome weather.

Parts of Montana fell below minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit Saturday morning, and the National Weather Service said similar temperatures were expected as far as northern Kansas, with minus 50 possible in the Dakotas. In St. Louis, the National Weather Service warned of rare and “life-threatening” cold.

“We’ve had, now, multiple back-toback storms” parading across the country, weather service meteorologist Zach Taylor said. That typically happens at least a couple of times in the U.S. winter.

Still, to Eboni Jones of Des Moines, it felt unusual for “how much we’re getting all within one week.”

“It’s pretty crazy out,” Jones said while shoveling snow.

Grant Rampton, 25, also of Des Moines, braved a wind chill of minus 20 to go sledding with friends at a golf course, fighting off the cold by wearing layers of clothing and insulated socks and keeping in constant movement.

“It’s a great state to be in,” said Rampton, a lifelong Iowan. “There’s not as much to do, in winter especially, but you can make your own fun, like out here, sledding with your friends.”

The temperature in parts of Iowa could dip as low as minus 14 Monday.

CORRECTIONS The Santa Fe New Mexican will correct factual errors in its news stories. Errors should be brought to the attention of the city editor at 986-3035.

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NATION & WORLD

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

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Kerry leaving climate position

Russian attacks put all of Ukraine on air raid alert

By Lisa Friedman

By Constant Méheut

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate, plans to step down by spring, ending a three-year run in a major diplomatic role that was created for him and will face an uncertain future with his departure.

Kerry, 80, has served as the president’s top diplomat on climate change since early 2021, John Kerry working to cajole governments around the world to aggressively cut their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

He led the U.S. negotiating team through three United Nations climate summits, reasserting American leadership after the country withdrew from the Paris climate agreement during the Trump administration.

Kerry championed cooperation on global warming between the United States and China, the world’s two largest polluters, during times of tension.

On Wednesday, Kerry met with Biden in the White House to inform the president of his intention to resign, according to one person familiar with the meeting.

On Saturday, his staff learned of his decision at a hastily arranged meeting, said the person, who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss personnel matters.

Kerry told staff he intended to depart in the coming months, and he is widely expected to get involved in the 2024 presidential campaign to help raise awareness of Biden’s work on climate change. No successor has yet been tapped.

The State Department confirmed Kerry’s planned exit. The White House did not respond Saturday to a request for comment. Kerry’s plans were first reported by Axios.

In the meantime, Kerry is planning to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as well as a meeting of the International Energy Agency in Paris in February.

A former Massachusetts senator, Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Kerry brought a celebrity status to the global climate summits.

Biden created the role specifically for Kerry, and he was granted a seat on the National Security Council in the White House, marking the first time an official on that body was dedicated specifically to climate change.

Widely regarded as a tireless crusader for climate action, Kerry traveled to 31 countries in an effort to restore confidence in the U.S. on climate change and persuade other countries to do more to help keep the average global temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.

That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the dangers of global warming — including worsening floods, droughts, wildfires and ecosystem collapse — grow considerably. Humans have heated the planet by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, largely by burning fossil fuels.

Former Vice President Al Gore in a statement Saturday called Kerry’s work on climate change “heroic.” But the future of the climate envoy role in the United States is uncertain.

Kerry wasn’t subject to Senate confirmation when he was appointed, a fact that angered some Republicans. Under a spending-bill provision in 2022, all new special-envoy positions reporting to the secretary of state will have to win Senate approval.

GOP lawmakers have accused Kerry of undermining the United States by negotiating with China. At a heated congressional hearing last year, Republicans also accused Kerry of flying on private jets.

Kerry called that a “stupid” lie, saying though his wife owns a jet, he hasn’t used one in his role as climate envoy.

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked Ukraine with several waves of missiles Saturday morning, the Ukrainian and Russian militaries said, putting the entire country under an air raid alert and sending people rushing for shelter as explosions were heard in several cities.

The attack, which started around 5 a.m. local time and lasted about three hours, involved nearly 40 cruise and hypersonic missiles fired from different regions, including the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea and the Caspian Sea, southeast of Ukraine. They were directed at cities including Kyiv, the capital, and Lviv, near the border with Poland.

It followed Russia’s recent strategy for large-scale air assaults: waves of different types of aerial weapons launched almost simultaneously from multiple locations and aimed at various targets, with the goal of overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses.

The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down eight missiles — a low interception rate compared with previous assaults — but more than 20 other missiles and drones had missed their targets because of electronic jamming. Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement its missiles had hit “Ukrainian military-industrial complex facilities” that produce shells, gunpowder and drones. Neither of the

Kyiv says it shot down 8 missiles; experts fear defenses strained The New York Times

The New York Times

LOUISE DELMOTTE/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te celebrates his election as president Saturday in Taipei, Taiwan. Lai told supporters Taiwan would “continue to walk side by side with democracies.”

TAIWAN

President-elect lauds democracy Lai backs softer stance toward Beijing, which has criticized him, party

By Simina Mistreanu and Adam Schreck The Associated Press

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s president-elect, has vowed to safeguard the island’s de-facto independence from China and further align it with other democracies.

Lai, 64, emerged victorious in the election Saturday on the island of 23 million people that China claims as its own. He is currently vice president with the Democratic Progressive Party, which has rejected China’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan.

As he faced his supporters Saturday night, Lai vowed Taiwan would “continue to walk side by side with democracies from around the world.”

“We are telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy,” he said.

Lai has promised to strengthen the island’s defense and economy, which depends heavily on trade with China. He has also tried to soften his earlier stance as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence.”

At the same time, the new president has expressed desire to restart dialogue with China, which has refused to communicate with the island’s leaders in recent years.

His chances of success in

talking to China, however, are close to null, analysts say.

“Beijing has repeatedly criticized not just DPP more broadly, but has actually criticized Lai Ching-te by name,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a fellow with U.S. think tank Atlantic Council. “It’s something that Beijing usually only does when they think there’s very little chance of the two sides ever repairing ties.”

Instead, Sung added, China will likely resort to a “maximum pressure campaign,” including military and economic coercion.

Lai has held several prominent jobs in addition to vice president, including premier, legislator and mayor of the southern city of Tainan. He originally was a physician and has a master’s in public health from Harvard University.

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claims could be independently verified.

The assault was part of an air campaign Russia began in late December targeting industrial and military infrastructure but hitting civilian areas in the process. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has said Russia launched about 500 missiles and drones in attacks around the New Year’s holidays. On Saturday, local authorities reported explosions, some of which may have been caused by Ukrainian air defenses, in cities in central Ukraine. Oleksiy Kuleba, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said the “mass attack” had caused damage to civilian buildings in three regions but caused no casualties.

A few hours after air raid sirens stopped wailing in Kyiv, Stéphane Séjourné, France’s newly appointed foreign minister, arrived there on his first trip abroad, in a visit aimed at showing the West’s continued support amid concerns Ukraine’s allies are growing tired of a protracted war.

Saturday’s attack was the fourth large-scale nationwide assault against Ukraine in about two weeks. In the previous attack, Monday, Ukraine said it had intercepted only about one-third of the missiles launched against its territory.

Military analysts said that was a sign Ukraine is running short of the surface-to-air missiles required to shoot down incoming Russian missiles.

Ukrainian officials said in the fall Russia had stockpiled more than 800 high-precision missiles in preparation for huge attacks designed to wear down Ukrainian defenses.

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THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

Sunday, January 14, 2024

LEGISLATURE

33

THE 2024 SESSION

voices New Mexicans from every county sound off on priorities for lawmakers Continued from Page A-1

She has another request for lawmakers: Set a schedule and stick to it.

Committee hearings and floor sessions should start on time so “people can follow along, support and be privy to what’s being decided for them,” she said. “It’s difficult to navigate the legislative session, and when you make a trip up to Santa Fe to see a certain hearing and it’s delayed until 10 p.m. ... it’s difficult to keep the faith.”

Blaine Atwood, Catron County Blaine Atwood and his wife, Jacquie Atwood, run the Eagle Guest Ranch in Datil.

“What I’d like to see done more than anything is get our dang roads worked on out here,” he said. “Our roads are awful.

Catron County never votes Democrat, so I think we get put on the back burner.”

Atwood said he is tired of seeing lawmakers pour money into education programs that don’t work but acknowledged the schools can use some help: “You could probably do some good investing a little bit in the schools.”

Mark Murphy, Chaves County Crime, health care and education should be the top priorities for lawmakers, said Mark Murphy, president of Stata Production Co., an oil and gas company in Roswell.

“Crime is worse in some areas than others,” he said. “We know the stats in Albuquerque, but it’s all over the state.”

Mark He noted the state Murphy generally ranks at the bottom of national reports on public education and has not moved from “48, 49, 50th for years.”

Lawmakers need to increase education funding and ensure programs are working for student success, he said.

They also should develop strategies for recruiting and retaining health care workers, especially in rural areas, he said, calling the shortage “abysmal.”

With some $3.5 billion in expected new state revenue and rising inflation, he added, “immediate relief to the taxpayer could be nice” in the form of rebate checks. So far, the spending plans don’t include such a provision.

Gaylord Siow, Cibola County When Laguna Pueblo Acting Gov. Gaylord Siow met with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham during the New Mexico Tribal Leaders Summit last summer, she told him she wants her administration to engage in more meaningful dialogue with tribal leaders about how they can work together and ensure tribes maintain their sense of sovereignty.

He said he would like to see legislators follow up on that idea.

Noting the record revenue projections, he said Native American children have to be kept at the forefront this session.

“We’d like to see them use a portion of the large budget surplus to support the state’s Tribal Education Trust Fund to make sure we have the resources to educate our children, as required by the Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit,” he said, referring to a landmark education lawsuit against the state.

Siow, an engineer by trade, oversees the pueblo of about 9,000 members, about 5,000 of whom live on pueblo property.

Michael Brown, Colfax County He’s a friendly guy who’s knowledgeable about the Raton area and what it has to offer visitors. But Michael Brown sees too many vacant or abandoned properties and thinks the state and county should consider supporting land banking — in which a public agency or community organization purchases properties with a goal of revitalizing them.

“The goal would be to either renovate them into affordable housing or, failing that, demolish it so a different building of sorts could be built there,” said Brown, who runs the retro, Route-66like Raton Motor Inn with Brandy Dietz.

Supporting public education should continue to be a priority, he said, and could help in reducing crime rates.

“Education helps to minimize the likelihood of people getting involved with drugs and not having a way out,” he said.

“If they have educational tools, it can help keep them out of jail or help rehabilitate them so they can fall back on.”

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Former state senator (1993-2002) and Public Regulation Commission member Pat Lyons is running 500 head of cattle on a farm and ranch outside Clovis and is enjoying the “retired but still working” life.

Watching the state Legislature as an outsider, he said he wants lawmakers to be careful with the record revenue they are planning to pour into the budget.

“They may not have this money all the time,” he said. “You have to make some nonrecurring expenses, a one-time deal.

Let’s use it for capital outlay money in cities and counties that need it.”

His second thought: how to help keep military bases in New Mexico from closing. They provide jobs, and the people working at them spend money in local communities, he said.

The Clovis native, noting the U.S. Air Force plans to pull a special operations squadron out of the Cannon Air Force Base by 2027, wants to see the Legislature set aside money to support the bases.

“I propose setting aside $10 million [per base] for capital improvements around the base,” Lyons said. “Repave the roads, improve the entryway into the bases — anything to help them cut their expenses and keep them from ending up on a closing list for bases. That’d be a big hurt to any community in which that happens.”

Toby Depavloff, Taos County

JIM WEBER/THE NEW MEXICAN

Santa Fe tattoo artist Chris Lopez works on a rendition of The Last Supper on Victoria Martinez’s arm during a marathon tattoo session Wednesday at Lakote Tattoos. Lopez would like to see the Legislature address safety and health issues around amateur and unsanctioned at-home tattoos, including by hiring more inspectors.

He said New Mexicans beat up by the fire learned “the county and the state are nowhere ready for any type of disaster.

We witnessed a lack of coordination; we witnessed a lack of preparation, a lack of ability to get food or water into an area that was shut down.”

He wants state lawmakers to fund an emergency preparedness team “that is ready at all times, ready to serve the people in disasters, specifically the elderly and disabled.”

Louie Gallegos, De Baca County

Terra Winter, Doña Ana County Terra Winter, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Southern New Mexico in Las Cruces, is an advocate for public-private partnerships — in which private organizations help finance and build government-owned facilities.

More than 35 states allow these partnerships, but New Mexico is not among them, even after past legislative Terra Winter efforts to join the club.

She wants the Legislature to get that conversation going again. She noted it could take years to see results; “it’s imperative to have that conversation now,” she said.

She also wants lawmakers to focus on building more early childhood education programs because working parents often struggle to find available spots for their kids in preschools and day cares.

“If we are going to increase economic development into our community, we also have to invest quality-of-life dollars into our communities,” she said.

Jay Jenkins, Eddy County Artesia-born Jay Jenkins, CEO of the Carlsbad National Bank, said he likes the idea of setting aside some of the state’s windfall for future years when record-breaking oil and gas money is “not always going to be there.”

“We’ve witnessed that in the past,” he said. “We have to focus on saving some of that money.”

Jenkins has worked in banking for 25 years and said he loves the business because it’s about helping people.

His favorite thing about New Mexico, he said, is it has the “best sunsets, best sunrises Jay Jenkins and best people.”

That’s why he joins others in rural New Mexico in citing “infrastructure — roads and bridges and the internet,” as a top priority. New Mexico should have “the best roads in the nation,” given the number of people, including tourists, who use them, he said.

Laura Aubry, Grants County Laura Aubry’s shop, The Mint Chip Creamery in downtown Silver City, has been broken into twice — both by the same person. She does not think the answer is to lock that person up and throw away the key without trying to find help — “especially if she or he is struggling with mental or behavioral health challenges.”

The Alaska native and mother of two Laura Aubry children who has lived in Silver City for seven years said, “I feel like mental health affects every aspect of everything we do.” She wants to see more investments in treatment.

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go to court, and then they let them off on five years’ probation.”

As a result of the experience and other incidents of lawlessness in Socorro, Scott wants lawmakers to crack down on crime and address homelessness.

“It’s bad in Socorro County,” she said. “It’s just as bad as it is in Albuquerque. We just RoxAnn don’t have the amount Scott of people.”

Scott also called for the state to provide more services for veterans.

“A large percentage of our homeless here in Socorro are vets,” she said.

Pat Lyons, Curry County

Fort Sumner Mayor Louie Gallegos, a member of the state’s Rural Economic Opportunities Task Force, said lawmakers should focus on state and local infrastructure.

“The majority of our community travels to Clovis, which is 65 miles away, and some of the roads and bridges need to be redone,” he said.

Little else matters if New Mexico residents can’t drive safely, he said.

Louie Gallegos, mayor since Gallegos 2018, was born and raised in Fort Sumner — “Billy the Kid Country,” he calls it.

He previously served as both a sheriff’s deputy and public works director for the village, population about 1,000, he said.

A good-humored man whose hobbies include his four grandchildren, he said what he likes best about his job is “serving the public. I love my community.”

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

GABRIELA CAMPOS/THE NEW MEXICAN

Erica Rowland, owner of a five-acre cannabis operation in Albuquerque’s North Valley, is shown last week with the many animals on her property. She hopes the Legislature will direct funds toward improving and regulating the industry during the upcoming session. “Funding should be granted to these municipalities in order to provide the required professionals like architects and engineers and contractors,” she said. Rowland would also like the Legislature to stick to a dependable schedule.

Too often people caught up in a career of crime “are not getting helped. ...

They’re not being kept safe, and as a community we’re not safe, either,” she said.

“In a similar vein, I want more support for affordable housing. ... People are not finding affordable, safe places to live,” she added.

She said she loves being a small-town business owner in the city’s historic downtown, providing a “cozy hub for people to experience and to have a hand-crafted ice cream. I love playing tour guide, talking to them about things outside ice cream, like hiking.”

Sherrie West, Guadalupe County Santa Rosa High School Principal Sherrie West has a decades-long résumé of public school service as a teacher at all levels, principal, literacy grant coordinator, cheer coach and school board member.

Like other educators, she will say her favorite thing about her job is helping children grow and succeed. But that’s not easy to do when public education policies get in the way.

West is an opponent of a proposed rule change that would require 180 days of instruction at all public schools beginning in 2024-25 and impose new accreditation requirements. She and others say the rule would drive teachers out of the workforce and whittle away at local control of schools.

In Santa Rosa, where students go to school four days a week and the workforce is limited, adding extra hours or days to the calendar could cause problems without solving other ones, she said.

West said lawmakers also should prioritize “career technical education and making school real again and relevant to students, where students are engaged.”

“We’re 50th [in education] for a reason,” she said. “It’s time to get back to what’s best for children.”

Matthew Baca, Harding County

As she travels with her husband and family for both ranching and rodeoing nearly every weekend, their trucks and trailers take a beating, particularly on Interstate 40, she said.

“I-40 from Albuquerque to the Arizona border is a scary road to be on,” she said. “We always have to replace axles and hubs. As soon as you cross the state line into Arizona — and Texas — the roads level out and stay level.

I don’t know where all the money is being allocated, but roads in our state should be a priority.”

Lawmakers also should adequately fund schools in small communities, where they are often “the hub,” she said.

She added she’d like more attention and manpower committed to border security, as well, to ensure safety of border residents.

Rose Gardner, Lea County Oil and gas is big in southeastern New Mexico. Rose Gardner knows it — she can see pumpjacks from her home in Eunice, and her local lawmakers are Republicans who are “pro-oil in every way.” One thing she will be following this year are proposals to put setback requirements on drilling.

“I get that the environmental part is so important,” she said. “Oh my goodness, who wants pumpjacks around your school or … around your house?”

Gardner also talked about the need to strike a balance between environmental concerns and the industry.

“I hope that the oil field doesn’t get slammed; I really don’t want it to,” she said.

“We are providing petroleum fuels and everything else that goes with petroleum.”

Gardner has also been active in opposing nuclear waste storage in her area. She said she is disappointed the Legislature doesn’t seem primed to take any action on uranium mine cleanup this year or on regulating the extraction of radioactive materials.

Lynda Sánchez, Lincoln County

Lynda Sánchez, a history writer who lives in Lincoln, said one of her first Former Roy Mayor Matthew Baca wishes for the Legislature would be to now works as a postal carrier, delivering set aside some money for the future and mail in this rural county. That means not spend it all. he’s on the road a lot.

“There are always times when you “They’re pretty bad,” he said, echoing don’t have a surplus,” she said. other New Mexicans’ concerns about She also wants to see more funding the state of the state’s roads. for the state-run Lincoln and Fort StanHe thinks the Legislature should ton historic sites. “prioritize road infrastructure, continued “They need to funnel some money to highway and bridge infrastructure” in [the Department of] Cultural Affairs for rural communities. staffing and make it clear it is to improve He said he drives around parts of ... certain sites,” she said.

Harding and San Miguel counties She would also like to see the state do where bridges have been washed out or something to stem the flow of migrants removed or fallen into disrepair, leaving across the border. Generally, she would nothing but culverts and no way to cross. like to see a little more attention paid to He would also like to see lawmakers the needs of Southern New Mexico. find a way to draw manufacturing “Everything is for Santa Fe and for — perhaps a solar company — to Albuquerque,” she said. rural communities. But bringing new businesses and new workers to any comAlvin Warren, munity won’t happen without one key Los Alamos County component, he said: affordable housing.

“People come into the district to work Alvin Warren is a lifelong Northern for the schools, but retaining teachers is New Mexico resident and Santa Clara a problem because there’s zero housing. Pueblo member whose past includes Put some affordable housing initiatives stints as Indian Affairs Cabinet secretary in place,” he said. and lieutenant governor of his pueblo.

Now he is a vice president of the Erica Valdez, Hidalgo County LANL Foundation and still “very The rural countryside between Animas involved in the legislative process.” and Lordsburg has always been home to Erica Valdez, who grew up there in a Kenny Salazar, owner of Saints and ranching community and still raises beef. Sinners in Española, serves customThe neighbors look out for each other, ers at the bar last week. Salazar said he’d like to see the Legislature do she said: “You’ve always got somebody more to help New Mexico’s homeless you can call for help. We really have to population in the upcoming session. depend on each other out here. Every“Anything to help these people get body’s got each other’s backs.” fed and stay warm.”

She wishes somebody would take better care of the roads.

LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN

The foundation has “a number of priorities” this year, from early childhood education funding to making sure the New Mexico Opportunity Scholarship program gets its proposed $146 million.

One new one is securing the $50 million Tribal Education Trust Fund proposed in lawmakers’ education spending plans but not included in the governor’s.

Alvin Warren The foundation was a big supporter of last year’s “Innovation Zones” initiative to improve graduation rates. It is suggesting the state invest $50 million in the effort this year.

“We know that there’s tremendous demand for these programs in our schools, and we have the money to invest in them, but we need to stay the course and increase support so more schools can take part in things like the innovation zones initiative,” Warren said.

Nim Manriquez, Luna County Nim Manriquez was having a hard time finding people with a good work ethic to hire for his pest- and weed-control company, Bug Busters LLC, in Deming. He solved the problem by waiting for his younger brother, Atlai, to graduate and then hired him.

But many small businesses in his community don’t have that option, he said, and are forced to reduce hours or close for lack of workers.

He recently spoke to a local restaurant owner who said she may have to close because of the problem.

Along with offering funding for smalltown businesses through grants, he’d like to see the state develop a training program to teach people work ethic so they can earn money and hold down a job.

He said he is “worried this new generation is wired a different way — through social media — that they find there’s easier ways to make money online than to get a job in the real world. If social media ever stopped, a lot of these people wouldn’t be able to get a job.”

Another problem he would like lawmakers to address is tied to homeless people breaking into stores and homes

and sometimes vandalizing them. He is frustrated courts can’t always keep such suspects detained due to mental health conditions, and he thinks the state should fund treatment centers to help them.

“Yes, give them help, a facility to help them,” he said. But they should also be held accountable to the law, he added, which often “can’t do anything about that, and it’s a big problem here.”

Marie Chioda, McKinley County Gallup native Marie Chioda loves the red-rock beauty of the natural environment around her home town.

There’s just one problem. The exterior of the area looks great with its earthly beauty. Downtown, and on the byways outside of town, it’s full of a different kind of rocky terrain: badly beat-up roads.

She would like to see the roads look as pristine as the natural environment around the city.

“We have such a disaster in road infrastructure in McKinley County,” she said.

“Waterlines keep bursting left and right.

We’re either lacking in infrastructure, or there’s a lot of repair that needs to be done on roads — bridges, too.”

Chioda, who with her husband runs Sammy C’s Rock n’ Sports Bar & Grille and the Rocket Cafe in Gallup, said public education must continue to remain a priority for lawmakers.

When people apply for jobs at her two businesses, there’s “no common sense anymore; the level of education has dropped,” she said.

Joseph Griego, Mora County Joseph Griego, marketing president for Chicanos Por La Causa in Mora, has just one thing on his mind as lawmakers get ready for the session this week: the devastation inflicted by the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, ignited by federal prescribed burns gone bad.

The former director Joseph Griego of the Mora/Colfax Head Start program, Griego saw up close the trauma the fire brought upon the community, which is still reeling from flash flooding and economic despair in the wake of the fire.

Michael Shyne, Otero County St. Louis-born Michael Shyne loves both the natural beauty and military bases — Hollomon Air Force Base and White Sands Missile Range — of Alamogordo, where he has lived since the late 1950s.

The owner of the commercial Westsource Corp. Real Estate wants those bases acknowledged and supported by state leaders.

“I would like to see Santa Fe and the Legislature recognizing with financial support the importance of the presence of the Army and the Air Force in Otero County and the value that having an Air Force and Army base adjoining each other offers the U.S. Department of Defense to train together — since they fight together,” he said.

Statewide, he wants the Legislature to “require all law enforcement agencies to ascertain and publicize — when criminals are apprehended — if those crimes have been committed by U.S. citizens or noncitizens to better address the root cause of crime in New Mexico.”

Richard Randels, Quay County Rancher Richard Randels of the small community of Montoya pulled over to the side of the road to consider what he sees as top priorities for the Legislature.

Actually, he said, he was just “thinking today who in the world I could talk to about this.”

The longtime Quay County resident — he’s been there since 1956 — said there is no doubt what the Legislature has to focus on for both the state and the county: Interstate 40.

“It’s dangerous, dangerous, dangerous,” he said, citing pot holes and noting he saw a car knocked off the side of the road by a rock recently.

He has a joke about it he likes to tell, though he know it’s not very funny: “You have to take a quilting course before you go to work for the [Department of Transportation] because all they do is patching.”

Kenny Salazar, Rio Arriba County Saints & Sinners, an Española bar, recently celebrated its 60th birthday.

Owner Kenny Salazar regularly regales visitors with stories of family gatherings, celebrity appearances and monkeyshines.

As he watches a tent city grow in this community north of Santa Fe, Salazar said he realizes more must be done to help New Mexico’s homeless population.

“You feel bad for them in this

weather,” he said on a recent below-freezing day. He wants lawmakers to find a way to house folks who lack shelter — “anything to help these people get fed and stay warm.”

“I’m not sure what that will take housing or shelter-wise,” he said.

Noting people have found it increasingly difficult to acquire housing they can afford in the state, he said on a larger scale, “offer affordable housing for everybody.”

Gary Piepkorn, Roosevelt County Gary Piepkorn knows it’s highly unlikely the Legislature will take action on what he considers the most pressing issue in New Mexico today.

But Piepkorn, pastor of Faith in Christ Lutheran Church in Portales, said his top priority would be a ban on abortion.

“New Mexico has got just a really terrible record in recent years of fostering the murder of innocent, unborn babies,” he said.

While chances of the Legislature prohibiting abortion is less than slim, especially after the Legislature codified a woman’s right to have an abortion a year ago, “there’s a lot of people out here where Gary I live that have that Piepkorn very same position,” Piepkorn said.

Protecting the right to bear arms is also critical to Piepkorn.

“Anytime there’s any infringement of the Second Amendment, it makes it more difficult for good people, honest people, to protect their families and others that they may protect,” he said.

Madison Elwell, Sandoval County Moving from Colorado to Cuba about three years ago was an eye-opening experience for Madison Elwell.

“There’s a lot of buildings that have been abandoned, and they don’t look good along the highway,” she said.

Elwell, a 16-year-old junior at Cuba High School, isn’t old enough to vote, but she hopes lawmakers will listen. She said they should invest in revitalizing communities such as hers.

“I think the main thing that should happen is the revamping of Madison Elwell Sandoval County,” she said.

Elwell, who plans to pursue a degree in wildlife biology after she graduates, said New Mexico youth also need more activities outside of school, especially in rural areas.

“I believe it could benefit them physically, socially and involve them in their communities,” she said.

student loans are $147,000.”

Maldonado is, among other things, an art professor at Luna Community College in Las Vegas, the only community college in northeastern New Mexico.

While lawmakers are considering pay increases for state employees, Maldonado wants to see higher raises for higher education teachers, particularly in community colleges. In some instances, professors’ salaries are “shocking,” she said.

“People always think that the teachers are complaining, but they don’t realize that’s why teachers then have to go and be waitresses and Uber drivers,” she said.

Maldonado, 51, who also works in a gallery and teaches private art classes on the side, said she would also like the Tourism Department to invest more in promoting the burgeoning arts scene in San Miguel County.

Bernadette Maldonado works four jobs.

“I really do,” she said, “because my

Paul ‘Tito’ Chavez, Torrance County

Cows continue to roam the 5,000-acre ranch Paul “Tito” Chavez owns near the tiny village of Encino.

But they’re not his.

Chavez, 83, said ranching became too costly for him, so he leases his land to Chris Lopez, Santa Fe County another rancher.

Just about anybody can call them“A rancher doesn’t make a lot of selves a tattoo artist these days, and money because the little money they that’s a huge concern for Chris Lopez. make when they sell their calves is to “You could go on Amazon, buy pay for their hay [and other feed for yourself a tattoo machine, some tattoo cattle] and gasoline,” he said. needles and ink, and you’re a tattoo artist But Chavez sees other opportunities at home tattooing people — not knowing for large landowners like himself, parthe risks of blood borne pathogens,” said ticularly as the state pursues renewable Lopez, a licensed tattoo artist. energy sources.

Lopez wants the state to crack down He said the Legislature should on unsanctioned tattooing, which he said incentivize the installation of more wind is rampant and dangerous. turbines, which would provide ranchers “They just need to really focus on another revenue source while continustricter penalties for people that are ing their cattle operations. tattooing without a license,” he said.

“The wind doesn’t cost anything, and Under the Uniform Licensing Act, the the turbine doesn’t take very much space state can impose a civil penalty in an on the land,” he said, adding the move amount not to exceed $10,000 for each would not only be good for the environviolation, but Lopez said enforcement is ment but also create jobs. lacking.

Currently, the Regulation and LicensKim Miller, Union County ing Department’s Boards and ComRancher Kim Miller has a long wish missions Division, which licenses and list for the Legislature, from protecting regulates more than 30 professions and specialized trades, has only three inspec- Second Amendment rights to devoting tors for licensed body art establishments more resources to border security.

But at the top of her list is the creation across the entire state. of a state meat inspection program.

While he doesn’t condone at-home “Currently, we have to tattooing, Lopez also said the state should send most of our meat create a mechanism that allows artists out of state to be prolike himself to offer safety courses. When cessed and then brought he tried to pursue the idea, he said, the back in order to sell, so state deemed it an apprenticeship. we are really hoping to implement a state Charlie Warren, Sierra County program,” said Miller, A push by the governor and other who runs a sprawling Democrats to pass a slew of gun ranch with about 600 violence prevention measures worries Kim Miller cows and 400 yearlings Charlie Warren. alongside her husband, “I’m tired of the governor and a handRed, between Clayton and Des Moines. ful of the legislators trying to eliminate Efforts to create such a program, our right to bear arms,” said Warren, which would be housed under the New a retired Sandia National Laboratories Mexico Livestock Board, have stalled at employee. the Capitol in the past.

Warren said he hopes legislative com“It kind of just keeps getting tabled, so mittees in each chamber of the Legislature we would really like to see that handled will drop proposals he believes infringe at this session once and for all,” said on New Mexicans’ Second Amendment Miller, 52. rights “and then move

on to the serious stuff,” such as passing a state Allen Elmore, San Juan County budget.

“She hit national While the state is cash-rich at the news ... and then all the moment, due in large part to the booming lawsuits came,” he said, oil and gas industry, Allen Elmore hopes referring to an execulawmakers won’t go on a spending spree. tive order from the gov“I know that our government, if they ernor that suspended have money, they spend it,” he said. “That’s Charlie Warren the right to carry open the way of the government, right?” or concealed firearms Elmore, a Realtor, in all public places in Albuquerque and wants the DemBernalillo County. ocrat-controlled “If the Legislature is so dang busy Legislature to exercise fighting on all those fronts, they’re not fiscal restraint and put more money away, par- going to get the real work done,” he said. ticularly amid a push Warren, vice president of the Friends to transition to a clean of Elephant Butte Lake State Park, is energy future.

Allen Elmore “That’s businessman also advocating for more funding for New Mexico’s largest state park, where logic and my personal federally funded improvements are budget-at-home logic,” underway. he said. “But that’s not typical govern“There’s kind of a thing with Northment logic. If they have money, they ern and Southern New Mexico,” he said. spend it.”

“Santa Fe doesn’t seem to acknowledge Elmore said he wants lawmakers to invest in education and economic devel- things going on much below I-40.” opment to help grow and diversify the RoxAnn Scott, Socorro County state’s economy, which would put New Mexico on firmer financial footing when Two years ago, business owner Roxoil and gas revenues plateau.

Ann Scott had to spend about $2,500 to

Bernadette Maldonado, San Miguel County

They say bartenders see and hear it all — a maxim 51-year-old Toby Depavloff confirms is true.

Depavloff, who has been a bartender and bar manager at the Gorge Bar and Grill in Taos since it opened 13 years ago, said bartenders have a pulse on their communities because they talk — and listen — to so many people.

In Taos County, residents complain about the poor condition of the state’s roads, which is why Depavloff would like the Legislature to invest more in transportation.

“I hear that all the time,” he said. “The locals feel they do the main road right through town — they’ve been working on that since forever with no end in sight — but the roads outlying don’t get any attention.”

Locals also say affordable after-school programs for youth are difficult to find, he said.

“These are people that I talk to, blue-collar people, that have children,” Depavloff said.

replace windows and doors a group of vandals broke at her thrift store.

“We had one [adult] and four teenagers on a little crime spree do damage to seven businesses and two private vehicles,” she said. “It took two years to

Martha Sanchez, Valencia County Martha Sanchez of Adelino spent more than 20 years teaching life skills in public schools in New Mexico and another 40 years or so teaching churchbased religious education. What does she love best about being an educator?

“Children,” she said with a laugh.

Lawmakers should focus on providing more mental and behavioral health initiatives to help the many people in the state struggling with addiction or emotional and mental problems, she said.

“We need more behavioral and mental health research and Martha more rehabilitation Sanchez for those patients,” she said. “Let’s get to the root of the problem — we can build shelters and put them in shelters but that does not train them to support themselves. All that is a Band-Aid. And we need more trained advocates who can help them in the streets.

“It’s the same concern throughout every county. Every county has its homeless and its mentally handicapped and disabled and emotionally and psychologically injured people, and that’s what the Legislature needs to focus on — how to help them.”

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THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Lawmakers will try to build up affordable housing Senators plan $500M in appropriations to trust fund and creation of official housing office

A crew member works on a roof at a Santa Fe affordable housing complex in February 2021. With a shortage of 32,000 affordable units for low-income households in the state, two leading state senators have put forward proposals in this year’s 30-day legislative session to help solve the problem.

GABRIELA CAMPOS/NEW MEXICAN FILE PHOTO

By Robert Nott and Nicholas Gilmore

rnott@sfnewmexican.com ngilmore@sfnewmexican.com

In a state dominated by concerns about education, crime and poverty, another consistent challenge has been rapidly climbing its way to the top tier of worries: housing — particularly, affordable housing.

A study commissioned in 2022 by the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority said the state has a shortage of 32,000 affordable units for low-income households in New Mexico. The study says the lack of affordable housing not only hinders household self-sufficiency and economic growth but also impedes economic development.

Housing prices and rental rates have been increasing quickly over the past few years. Median home prices in the Santa Fe area alone still hover around the half-million-dollar mark, while the average hourly wage for the Santa Fe metropolitan area is about $25, according to spring 2022 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data.

Two leading state senators want to do something about that during this year’s 30-day legislative session, scheduled to start at noon Tuesday.

One wants the state to create a new housing office to come up with a strategic plan for solving

the issue. The other wants the Legislature to add $500 million to the state’s housing trust fund.

Both agree affordable housing is a key to ensuring public safety, supporting economic development and attracting workers to New Mexico.

“It affects our workforce,” said Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe, who introduced the legislation to appropriate $500 million to the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund, which is under the Mortgage Finance Authority. The fund is designed to help finance affordable housing initiatives through low-interest rate loans, mortgage assistance and construction loans to companies wanting to build affordable housing in New Mexico communities.

“The impact [of a lack of affordable housing] goes so far — domestic violence, mental

health, the health of families, the unhoused,” Rodriguez said in an interview. “Look at families who may be dealing with depression, financial challenges, social ills; not having a house has got to negatively impact these families.”

Sen. Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque, who introduced legislation to create the state Office of Housing, echoed that thought.

The possibility of owning a home is part of the American Dream, he said, and not having a shot at that goes far beyond missing out on that dream.

“We have to solve our housing crisis because it lends itself to so many other issues and problems,” he said.

The proposed department would, among other measures, work to provide affordable workforce housing. A director (not a Cabinet secretary) would

Gov. again seeks update to gutted corruption law

By Marjorie Childress

New Mexico In Depth

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wants to once again let prosecutors criminally charge public officials for a range of ethics violations.

The New Mexico Supreme Court gutted the state’s Governmental Conduct Act in a September 2022 ruling. Because this year’s is a short session, putting together the state budget takes priority, although a governor can add non-budgetary topics to the agenda. Lujan Grisham’s office confirmed via email Friday afternoon she will empower state lawmakers to consider revising the act to let prosecutors go after more corrupt public officials.

The Supreme Court decision came out of litigation involving four separate cases featuring unethical behavior by local and state public officials between 2011 and 2018: A Doña Ana County treasurer offering money to an employee for sex; a district attorney in Grants using her position to intimidate officers investigating her use of a public vehicle for personal reasons; an Aztec magistrate judge who was removed from the bench by the state Supreme Court for illegally recording her colleagues in secure areas of a court building; and a New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Cabinet secretary who used her position to access the tax records of a previous employer.

The public officials were hauled into court by prosecutors on a range of charges, some of which were criminal counts that they violated the Governmental Conduct Act, a state ethics law that applies to all officers and employees of the state or political subdivisions of the state such as counties, boards or commissions.

Criminal convictions under other statutes, civil convictions, removals from office and public reproach followed. But none were criminally convicted under the ethics law, which would have subjected them to a fine of up to $1,000 and up to a year in jail.

That’s because the Supreme Court held the sections of the Government Conduct Act prosecutors sought convictions under were too vague, effectively squashing the ethics cases against the four defendants.

Those sections counsel public officials to not use their positions for personal gain and exhort them to act with integrity, disclose real or potential conflicts of interest and state that “at all times, reasonable efforts shall be made to avoid undue influence and abuse of office in public service.”

While prosecutors argued those sections of the act were sufficient to bring criminal charges, the court disagreed, saying the wording isn’t specific enough about what acts would actually constitute a crime. A separate provision in the ethics

statute that bars bribery was not struck down, meaning prosecutors can still criminally charge public officials under the statute for bribery.

In the wake of the ruling, then-New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas dismissed ethics charges his office had brought in a separate case in Los Lunas.

The Supreme Court “took away” a necessary tool, Balderas told the Valencia County News-Bulletin at the time, calling on the state Legislature to “strengthen” state ethics laws.

Balderas’ successor, Raúl Torrez, hasn’t since pursued criminal cases under those sections either.

“Our review of the Governmental Conduct Act violations since that time takes into account the Supreme Court’s opinion,” said Torrez spokeswoman Lauren Rodriquez.

Jeremy Farris, executive director of the New Mexico State Ethics Commission, bluntly characterized the Supreme Court ruling during a conversation with New Mexico In Depth last month as “gutting out” the state’s “main anti-corruption statute.”

“They held that one of the most important provisions of the Governmental Conduct Act is not criminally enforceable,” Farris said. “That’s taking it off the books for the Attorney General’s office.”

Farris said that when a court decision significantly affects a state statute, “the Legislature has to respond ... and this was two or three years ago.”

Torrez’s office agrees.

“By amending the statute, it would allow an assurance that there is an enforcement mechanism to guarantee that the [act] will be followed,” Rodriquez said.

Lawmakers considered a bill that would have revised the act last year but ran out of time after the bill passed the House but stagnated in the Senate in the final weeks of the 60-day session. This year’s bill has yet to appear on the legislative website but will likely be very similar.

The bill last year would have revamped the Governmental Conduct Act, providing ethical principles as guidance in one section, and making clear in other sections a range of activities that would be subject to criminal enforcement. Those activities include conducting political activity while on duty or in a public building or coercing government employees to vote in a certain way.

It also would have allowed greater financial penalties for civil cases, which are currently capped at $250, a state of affairs that Farris called shocking. “Those penalty provisions are quite old now and they no longer really serve as a deterrent,” he said last week.

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develop a housing action plan for the state by July 1, and then provide subsequent plans once a year. The estimated startup cost to get the department going is $1 million, Padilla said in an interview. Padilla said he has Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s support on the initiative.

Housing advocates are praising both bills. They say housing makes a key difference in both safety and economic development: After all, they ask, how can you live and work in a community if you cannot find or afford housing?

Builders lack incentive to come in and “build something that will help the community,” said Nicole Martinez, executive director of the nonprofit Mesilla Valley Community of Hope, which oversees a city-approved encampment for the unhoused near Las Cruces.

The New Mexico Housing Trust Fund provides “gap” money to make up whatever budgeting shortages builders face in an effort to build rental units, she said. Rodriguez’s $500 million proposal can help fill in that gap bucket, she said.

Martinez said out-of-state entities may be creating additional barriers — administrative and holding fees for renters — to affordable housing, making Rodriguez’s bill particularly important.

Meanwhile, Padilla’s proposed housing office would help small developers take on projects that can only be done now by larger, out-of-state developers, said Daniel Werwath, a housing developer and advocate for affordable housing development.

Werwath said he and other housing advocates helped shape Padilla’s bill with the hope the office, if it becomes a reality, will “study, evaluate and coordinate housing across jurisdictions statewide, including housing investment, development, infrastructure, revitalization, equity, stability, quality and standards.”

He said the original proposal came together in Lujan Grisham’s Housing Investment Council, to which he was appointed last year and which also includes Padilla.

“The big goal was to come up with some key solutions that are going to address not just affordability but housing availability in general,” Werwath said.

He said one “big deterrent” hindering much-needed development — especially for smaller operators — is the upfront cost of building infrastructure including roads, bridges and streetlights for housing developments. Loans for such projects tend to be risky, he said, and the assets are usually turned over to the city or county over time.

An Office of Housing could help coordinate housing infra-

TAKEAWAYS ◆ Advocates say more must be done to provide affordable rental and housing units in a state where one study says there is a shortage of at least 32,000 affordable housing units for low-income families. ◆ Two state senators have introduced bills to address the problem.

One calls for the creation of a new state Office of Housing to create a strategic housing plan; the other asks the Legislature to appropriate $500 million to the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund. ◆ Other affordable housing bills are likely to be introduced during the upcoming legislative session, scheduled to begin at noon Tuesday. Gov. MIchelle Lujan Grisham has also called for a $250 million appropriation for the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund in her proposed budget for the coming year.

structure projects around the state, he said, and steer more funds where needed.

These will likely not be the only housing proposals pitched during the session. Already Lujan Grisham’s proposed budget includes putting $250 million in nonrecurring money into the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund.

And Sen. Roberto “Bobby” Gonzales, D-Rancho de Taos, has introduced a bill to appropriate $500,000 to help the New Mexico Mortgage Authority support the state’s Affordable Housing Act. Martinez said it’s past time to do something about the problem.

“Housing has been neglected for a long time, and not just in New Mexico,” she said. “I think the housing issues in the state have risen to the forefront.”

Session Continued from Page A-1

in state government to ensure they deliver results before the Legislature commits to them long-term.

Public safety The issue likely to trigger the most controversy is — no surprise — firearms regulation.

The governor on Friday unveiled a slew of gun control measures, including an assault weapons ban and a 14-day waiting period to buy firearms.

She called it the largest and most comprehensive public safety package in New Mexico history.

Republicans, who are in the minority in both chambers, immediately fired back, signaling what promises to be a hard-fought debate as lawmakers continue to look for ways to address crime.

The fight over guns will be on full display outside the Capitol — firearms are largely prohibited inside the Roundhouse — when the New Mexico Shooting Sports Association and other pro-gun groups hold what they’re calling a Second Amendment Day Rally on Feb. 3.

Rep. Andrea Romero, a Santa Fe Democrat leading the charge on a proposed assault weapons ban, said the likelihood of the gun control bills passing this year after failing to gain traction during last year’s 60-day session is strong.

Romero said a mass shooting in Farmington in May reinforced the need for gun control, and lawmakers have fine-tuned their proposed bills to withstand legal challenges.

As for the proposed assault weapons ban: “We’re not looking at the cosmetics,” she said. “We’re looking at the mechanisms that create the atrocities that we’re trying to prevent and how we regulate it, so we’re approaching it completely differently from the bottom up, and we’ve learned from our federal partners, and we’ve learned from the folks who said this is not going to work and this is why not.”

Local lawmakers Romero won’t be the only Santa Fe-area lawmaker with a full plate.

Members of Santa Fe County’s legislative delegation are proposing a variety of bills, including one that takes aim at the city of Santa Fe and its late audits.

Rep. Linda Serrato, D-Santa Fe, is sponsoring a bill to codify an executive order issued by former Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, requiring agencies to be up-to-date on their financial reporting in order to receive capital outlay.

Serrato received applause at a recent forum when she announced she would be working on the bill with state Auditor Joseph Maestas, a former Santa Fe

LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN

Khalida Lockheed, left, and Rebekka Watkins with the Capitol’s IT Department work on the Senate’s webcams Friday. The 2024 legislative session — primarily focused on passing a budget but sure to have fights over firearm regulations and capital outlay projects — begins Tuesday.

TAKEAWAYS ◆ Debates over the budget will likely dominate the 2024 legislative session, with lawmakers proposing a slightly smaller spending plan than Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. ◆ Some local lawmakers could also take center stage, with bills including gun control proposals and one to withhold state money from the city of Santa Fe until it gets caught up on its audits. ◆ Some Republicans are proposing offbeat bills that are unlikely to get considered, such as one for chemical castration of sex offenders and another to build a wall along the Mexico/New Mexico border.

city councilor.

She said the Legislative Finance Committee in May found $3.1 billion in capital outlay that had not been used, including funding for 72 projects she has invested in.

“I need it in my community right now,” she said. “There are sewer lines that are failing right now my community needs, so we’re looking to put that into statute to make that the law.”

In an op-ed published Sunday in The New Mexican, Serrato threatened to withhold funding from the city of Santa Fe. “Before I can appropriate any more dollars to the City as a fiscal agent, I need to see these projects move forward,” she wrote.

New faces The 30-day session comes in an election year certain to change the makeup of the Legislature.

Already, the composition of both chambers will be slightly different following the departures of several longtime lawmakers.

Rep. Greg Nibert, a Roswell Republican who has been member of the House of Representatives since 2016, will now be in the Senate. He was appointed to fill the seat of former

Sen. Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, who announced his retirement in October after 39 years in the Legislature.

Jared Hembree, a Republican attorney from Roswell, has been nominated to replace Nibert in the House and is awaiting a formal appointment by the governor.

Another new member to the House is Democrat Cristina Parajón, former director of strategy for the New Mexico Human Services Department. Parajón was appointed last year to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Rep. Christine Trujillo, an Albuquerque Democrat who stepped down in July after more than a decade in the Legislature.

Rancher and businessman Steve McCutcheon II, a Carlsbad Republican, will be new to the Senate. The former Eddy County commissioner replaced former Sen. Gay Kernan, R-Hobbs, who resigned in August after 21 years in the Legislature.

Offbeat bills Lawmakers have been busy crafting legislation, and some measures have started to generate attention although it’s unclear which will get the governor’s approval to be placed on the agenda.

While lawmakers can introduce bills on any topic during a 60-day session, 30-day sessions are focused on the budget and bills approved by the governor.

Rep. Stefani Lord, a Sandia Park Republican, is proposing some of the most unconventional bills of the session, including a proposal to outlaw necrophilia and another that would allow a court to order a convicted sex offender to undergo chemical castration as a condition of parole.

Rep. John Block, R-Alamogordo, is proposing a $1.5 billion appropriation to construct what he called 50.3 miles of “unfinished border barrier” between New Mexico and Mexico.

Follow Daniel J. Chacón on Twitter @danieljchacon.

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NATION & WORLD

Austin meets perils of public job Lapse over notification about his illness brings unaccustomed scrutiny

Clashes follow moves against prison gangs The New York Times

The New York Times

STEFANI REYNOLDS/NEW YORK TIMES FILE PHOTO

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington in 2021.

Austin, who failed to inform President Joe Biden of his hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery and later readmission, has drawn scrutiny and criticism to the president’s national security team.

him second only to the president in the chain of command.

But Austin also brought with him to the job a reputation for avoiding attention and exposing as little as possible about himself.

At the Pentagon, staffers often share the meme of Homer Simpson backing into a hedge and disappearing from view to characterize their boss’s aversion to any limelight. But that reticence, Austin’s backers say, reflects decades of cultural challenges for a Black man who has succeeded in the military by learning not to showcase too much of himself.

Austin has told friends the

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story about how just after graduating from West Point, he did what many young men coming into their own do when they get their first few paychecks: He bought a flashy new car. Within weeks, he was stopped by cops in Alabama wanting to know if the car was stolen.

Austin has spoken of getting a white officer to give his briefings back when he was the commander of the storied 82nd Airborne Division because he figured a white officer was more likely to be listened to.

Austin’s backers said in dealing with his prostate cancer, he was following a military ethos

hammered into him his entire work life: Don’t complain. But in keeping quiet about his illness and hospitalization, Austin threw a huge chunk of red meat to Republican critics of the Biden administration.

There are calls from Republicans in Congress for Austin to be impeached, there is an investigation underway by the department’s inspector general, and the evolving story of his failure to keep the White House apprised of how his absence could create a gap in the chain of command has been in permanent rotation in the 24-hour television news cycles.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Just weeks before Ecuador descended into chaos, with prison riots, two escaped criminal kingpins and the brief siege of a television station, the country’s top prosecutor launched a major operation aimed at rooting out narco-corruption at the highest levels of government.

The investigation, called “Caso Metastasis,” led to raids across Ecuador and more than 30 arrests.

Among those charged were judges accused of granting gang leaders favorable rulings, police officials who were said to have altered evidence and delivered weapons to prisons, and the former director of the prison authority himself, who was accused of giving special treatment to a powerful drug trafficker.

They had been implicated by text chats and call logs retrieved from cellphones belonging to the drug trafficker, who was killed while imprisoned.

When the attorney general, Diana Salazar, announced the charges last month, she said the investigation had revealed the spread of criminal groups through Ecuador’s institutions.

She also warned of a possible “escalation in violence” in the days to come and said the executive branch had been put on alert.

Her prediction came true.

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WASHINGTON — For three years, President Joe Biden has been just fine with the private nature of his media-shy, introverted defense secretary, Lloyd Austin.

But in failing to inform the president he required surgery for prostate cancer and later had to return to the hospital suffering from severe complications, Austin, 70, has attracted more attention to himself than at any point in his long career. He has also drawn scrutiny and criticism to Biden’s national security team as it is managing multiple crises around the world.

Asked about Austin on Friday, Biden said he retained confidence in him. But the president gave a pointed, one-syllable answer when asked if it was a lapse in judgment for Austin not to have informed him he had been out of commission at times in recent weeks. “Yes,” he said.

Austin, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, brought 40 years of service with him when he took the top Pentagon job in 2021.

He led men and women in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and helped devise and put in place the campaign to defeat the Islamic State group. A graduate of West Point, Austin did what no other Black man had done before, rising through the military to eventually lead the country’s 1.4 million active-duty troops in a civilian role that puts

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

Sunday, January 14, 2024

reveal what might have set off the violence in Ecuador this past week, which was so intense it prompted President Daniel Noboa to declare war on the gangs and impose a state of emergency.

According to the interviews, the attorney general’s investigation played a pivotal role.

“Metastasis is where everything starts,” said Mario Pazmiño, a retired colonel and former director of intelligence for the Ecuadorian army who is an independent analyst on security matters.

The raids put pressure on Noboa, who took office in November and had promised to crack down on gangs and clean up the prison system, to take concrete steps, Pazmiño said.

The president assured that major changes were coming.

Although he did not publicly say what they were, officials said the changes included transferring several powerful gang leaders to a maximum-security facility in Guayaquil, a major coastal city.

Gang leaders learned of the plan before the transfer could take place, however, most likely through a government leak, the officials said. And on Sunday, Adolfo Macías — who runs a gang called the Choneros and is widely considered the most powerful gang leader in Ecuador — went missing from his cell.

In response to the planned transfer, experts say leaders probably ordered gang members — from within the prisons that serve as their command centers — to fight back.

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NATION & WORLD

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Netanyahu: ‘No one will stop us’ Trump prosecutors G EORGIA

remain mum about impropriety claims

Israeli prime minister strikes defiant tone as war nears 100th day

By Najib Jobain, Samy Magdy and Bassem Mroue The Associated Press

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israel will pursue its war against Hamas until victory and will not be stopped by anyone, including the world court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a defiant speech Saturday as the fighting in Gaza approached the 100-day mark.

Netanyahu spoke after the International Court of Justice at The Hague held two days of hearings on South Africa’s allegations Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, a charge Israel has rejected as libelous and hypocritical. South Africa asked the court to order Israel to halt its blistering air and ground offensive in an interim step.

“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else,” Netanyahu said in televised remarks Saturday evening, referring to Iran and its allied militias.

The case before the world court is expected to go on for years, but a ruling on interim steps could come within weeks.

Court rulings are binding but difficult to enforce. Netanyahu made it clear Israel would ignore orders to halt the fighting, potentially deepening its isolation.

Israel has been under growing international pressure to end the war, which has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza and led to widespread suffering in

By Holly Bailey and Amy Gardner

The Washington Post

ADEL HANA/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Palestinian child walks past destroyed factories Saturday in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip.

the besieged enclave but has so far been shielded by U.S. diplomatic and military support.

Israel argues ending the war would mean victory for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 and is bent on Israel’s destruction.

The war was triggered by a deadly Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas and other militants killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians. About 250 more were taken hostage, and while some have been released or confirmed dead, more than half are believed to still be in captivity. Sunday marks 100 days of fighting.

Fears of a wider conflagration

have been palpable since the start of the war. New fronts quickly opened, with Iranbacked groups — Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria — carrying out a range of attacks. From the start, the U.S. increased its military presence in the region to deter an escalation.

Netanyahu said Israel has no immediate plans to allow the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, the initial focus of Israel’s offensive. Fighting there has been scaled back, with forces now focusing on the southern city of Khan Younis.

The Gaza Health Ministry said

Saturday that 135 Palestinians had been killed in the last 24 hours, bringing the overall toll of the war to 23,843. The count does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, but the ministry has said about twothirds of the dead are women and children.

Israel has argued Hamas is responsible for the high civilian casualties, saying its fighters make use of civilian buildings and launch attacks from densely populated urban areas.

Since the start of Israel’s ground operation in October, 187 Israeli soldiers have been killed and another 1,099 injured in Gaza, according to the military.

S. Africa lauds support for genocide claim

By Gerald Imray

The Associated Press

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — South Africa says more than 50 countries have expressed support for its case at the United Nations’ top court accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in the war in Gaza.

Others, including the United States, have strongly rejected South Africa’s allegation Israel is violating the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Many more have remained silent.

The world’s reaction to the landmark case heard Thursday and Friday at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, shows a predictable global split when it comes to the 75-year-old problem of Israel and the Palestinians.

The majority of countries backing South Africa’s case are from the Arab world and Africa. In Europe, only the majority-Muslim nation of Turkey has publicly stated its support.

No Western country has declared support

for South Africa’s allegations against Israel.

The U.S., a close Israel ally, has rejected them as unfounded, the U.K. has called them unjustified and Germany said it “explicitly rejects” them.

China and Russia have said little about one of the most momentous cases ever to come before an international court. The European Union also hasn’t commented. Israel fiercely rejects the allegations of genocide and says it is defending its people. It says the offensive is aimed at eradicating the leaders of Hamas, the militant group that runs the territory and provoked the conflict by launching surprise attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages.

South Africa has also condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack but argues it did not justify Israel’s response. Turkey, which is in the process of joining the EU, was a lone voice in the region. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country provided documents that were being used against Israel in the case.

“With these documents, Israel will be con-

demned,” he said.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation was one of the first blocs to publicly back the case when South Africa filed it late last month. It said there was “mass genocide being perpetrated by the Israel defense forces” and accused Israel of “indiscriminate targeting” of Gaza’s civilian population.

The OIC is a bloc of 57 countries that includes Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. Its headquarters are in Saudi Arabia.

The Cairo-based Arab League, whose 22 member countries are almost all part of the OIC, also backed South Africa’s case.

A handful of South American countries have spoken up, including the continent’s biggest economy, Brazil, whose Foreign Ministry said President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva backed South Africa’s case. However, the ministry’s comments did not directly accuse Israel of genocide but focused on the need for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Brazil said it hoped the case would get Israel to “immediately cease all acts and measures that could constitute genocide.”

ATLANTA — The Georgia judge overseeing the criminal election interference case against former President Donald Trump and allies said he planned to schedule a hearing next month on a motion seeking to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis amid claims she had an improper personal relationship with a special prosecutor she appointed to the case.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said during a hearing Friday he was waiting to see a response from Willis to misconduct allegations leveled Monday in a court filing by Mike Roman, one of Trump’s remaining 14 co-defendants in the criminal case and a former high-ranking campaign aide during the 2020 election. So far, there has been none.

Roman has moved to disqualify Willis and her office from the case, claiming Willis has been engaged in a “personal, romantic relationship” with Nathan Wade, whose firm has been paid more than $650,000 by the district attorney’s office since he was tapped as an outside prosecutor on the case in November 2021.

Willis has not publicly commented on the allegations, with a spokesman saying she will respond in a court filing.

On Friday, McAfee asked Wade and other prosecutors in attendance, at a scheduled hearing on other matters in the case, if they wanted to respond to Roman’s motion.

As the judge waited for an answer, Wade, the lead prosecutor, remained seated. A few seconds later, Daysha Young, an executive district attorney assigned to the case, rose to respond. “Not at this time, your honor,” Young said.

The interaction marked the first public appearance by Wade and other members of the prosecution team amid allegations that threaten to delay or even upend the high-profile racketeering case alleging Trump and his allies illegally conspired to overturn the former president’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.

In Monday’s motion, Roman claimed Wade’s hiring was

U.S. says Houthis hurt; still a threat

By Eric Schmitt The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led airstrikes Thursday and Friday against sites in Yemen controlled by the Houthi militia damaged or destroyed about 90% of the targets struck, but the group retained about three-quarters of its ability to fire missiles and drones at ships transiting the Red Sea, two U.S. officials said Saturday.

The damage estimates are the first detailed assessments of the strikes by American and British attack planes and warships against nearly 30 locations in Yemen, and they reveal the serious challenges facing the Biden administration and its allies as they seek to deter the Iranbacked Houthis from retaliating, secure critical shipping routes between Europe and Asia, and contain the spread of regional conflict. Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, the director of the military’s Joint Staff, said Friday the strikes had achieved their objective of damaging the Houthis’ ability to

launch the kind of complex drone and missile attack they had conducted earlier in the week.

But the two U.S. officials cautioned Saturday even after hitting more than 60 missile and drone targets with more than 150 precision-guided munitions, the strikes had damaged or destroyed only about 20% to 30% of the Houthis’ offensive capability, much of which is mounted on mobile platforms.

The two U.S. officials spoke

on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.

Finding Houthi targets is proving to be more challenging than anticipated. U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have not spent significant time or resources in recent years collecting data on the location of Houthi air defenses, command hubs, munitions depots or storage and production facilities for drones and missiles, the officials said.

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improper and unethical because of what, he claimed, was an ongoing personal relationship between Wade and Willis that predated Wade’s hiring as an outside prosecutor.

The filing claimed Willis had benefited personally from Wade’s income from the case, alleging she had joined him on multiple cruises and other trips unrelated to work Wade had paid for.

Wade and Willis, Roman’s filing claimed, were “profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.”

The filing provided no proof to back up those claims. Ashleigh Merchant, a prominent Cobb County defense attorney who represents Roman, later told The Washington Post the claims were based on sources she did not name as well as records she said had been disclosed as part of Wade’s ongoing divorce proceedings, which have turned contentious.

On Monday, hours before Roman’s filing, Willis was subpoenaed to be deposed as a witness in Wade’s divorce case by Wade’s estranged wife, according to a court filing provided to The Post. It was not immediately clear why Wade’s wife was seeking to depose Willis, and an attorney for Joycelyn Mayfield Wade declined to comment on the subpoena.

Wade has not responded to requests for comment. Scott Kimbrough, Wade’s divorce attorney since November, also declined to comment on the pending case when reached by telephone Friday.

Four of Trump’s original 19 co-defendants have accepted plea deals and are cooperating in the case, while others, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, have been unsuccessful in their attempts to move the case from state to federal court.

Santa Fe lawyer John Eastman is among the co-defendants in the case.

Paul Duran

Paul Duran 505.310.5566

Keller Williams Realty 130 Lincoln Ave., Ste. K, Santa Fe, NM 87501 505.983.9161

Our View Cartoons My Views

OPINION

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SECTION B SunDAy, JAnuARy 14, 2024 THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

M Y VIEW LINDA SERR ATO

Essential S.F. sewer problems must be fixed first T

his 30-day session, it’s worth talking about the $3.1 billion gorilla in the room: unused capital outlay funds. Capital outlay enables legislators to directly appropriate funds to projects important to their districts. We work with cities and other public entities to use our funds wisely and invest in the needs of our neighborhoods. These fiscal agents are expected to put these dollars to work as soon as possible to alleviate challenges in the community.

Sometimes, our constituents bring forward projects so urgent that we must act quickly. Starting in 2021, I allocated state funds to the city of Santa Fe for essential sewer infrastructure projects within my district, specifically targeting the neighborhoods off Airport Road. Notably, Vereda de Valencia and Jemez Road depend on antiquated septic systems.

Decades ago, as these areas were annexed by the city of Santa Fe, they were assured of a transition to a more reliable city wastewater system. Yet these promises remain unfulfilled, leaving residents in a perilous state of neglect and heading toward a public health emergency. This community, characterized by its hardworking families, has long been overlooked and underserved.

With my total allocation of $700,000 in state capital outlay to the city to fix these neighborhoods, there was a palpable sense of hope among the residents.

They believed their decadeslong crises had finally come to an end. However, this hope has disintegrated into disillusionment and distress. Their septic systems are failing, leading to back-ups and creating a serious health hazard.

The reason cited for this unacceptable delay in Vareda de Valencia is as bureaucratic as it is frustrating. I’m asking the city to immediately appropriate funds from the recently announced $16 million surplus from city gross receipts tax revenue to fix this pending public health emergency. It is unconscionable that, amid this abundance, the city chooses to allocate funds to discretionary projects while a community suffers without essential sanitary services.

The $700,000 sits waiting to serve my Please see story on Page B-5

Phill Casaus

y Commentary

A name change is just the start for AG Torrez

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LE T TERS T O THE EDIT OR

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La Familia is getting back on its feet

t’s been almost 90 days since we shared the news about La Familia’s precarious financial status and launched the Emergency Funding Campaign. I want to update everyone about our current situation and going forward. First: Thank you, Santa Fe, for stepping up to help save La Familia. As a result of the community’s big-heartedness, we are cautiously optimistic about the future. Hundreds of individuals, businesses and family foundations have responded generously by contributing $300,000 toward our $1 million campaign goal.

In addition, we have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of financial support from current and past patients, family members and new friends. Your stories about La Familia’s impact on your life and that of your family have encouraged our staff and reinforced our determination to come out of this crisis financially sustainable. We will continue to seek support from government and private foundations to help us reach our $1 million goal. Ongoing support is needed for La Familia and all community health centers nationwide as we see growing numbers of uninsured and low-income neighbors in our clinics.

While our financial challenges remain, the community’s kindness gives us breathing room as we implement the changes and process needed for long-term sustainability.

On behalf of the entire organization, thank you! We look forward to providing high-quality comprehensive primary care to everyone in Santa Fe for another 50 years.

Brandy Van Pelt-Ramirez

interim chief executive officer Santa Fe

M Y VIEW GEORGE GUNDRE Y

The value of work is undervalued

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very year, New Mexicans living along the rivers get together to clean their acequia — ditch day.

The acequias deliver water to farms for growing everything from chile, beans, apples and grass or alfalfa for livestock.

Each parciante, the landowner, must provide peones, or laborers, to help clean the ditch. The number of peones a parciente must provide is determined by the size of his or her land.

The cleaning of the acequia is an annual ritual that is critical to the survival of New Mexico’s culture and heritage. If the ditches are not cleaned every year, irrigation gets more difficult, or impossible. The entire acequia community is expected to participate because without irrigation, there is no water on the farms and hence no crops to eat.

When a parciante does not provide a peone, or enough peones, the rest of the community must pick up the slack.

Everybody just has to work harder or longer to get the job done. Sometimes they must come back a second day to finish the job. There is no sick pay.

There are no unemployment benefits.

Peones are not paid a “fair living wage.”

You just show up and you do the work, or else the acequia falls into disrepair.

Ditch day has benefits beyond a functional acequia. The community comes together with common goal. Personal relationships are maintained. Neighbors who may not like each other work side by side. News is shared. Plans are made.

Young people participate in hard work and learn from their elders.

To have a healthy and wealthy family, community or state, people need to do productive work. I believe a significant reason we are such a poor state and have Please see story on Page B-5

Question artificial planting A hard look should be given to the request for nearly $50 million from the Legislature to reforest burned patches with nursery-grown trees (“Reforestation center will improve health of state’s forests,” My View, Jan. 7).

Reforestation in the Southwest was abandoned years ago because most seedlings die soon after planting. The odds for survival are even worse today in the increasingly hot, dry climate.

Artificial planting is also not ecologically sound. It attempts to speed up the natural cycles of renewal by skipping the stage where shrubs such as oaks and locust enrich the soil while also providing important habitat for ground nesting birds and other wildlife. A forest that regenerates naturally from local seed sources may take longer but will be better adapted and more likely to survive in the changing climate. No taxpayer dollars needed.

Sam Hitt

president, Santa Fe Forest Coalition Santa Fe

Watch and imagine

flix movie Bank of Dave to your readers. It is a wonderfully produced and directed movie that tells the story of a small businessman in northern England who wants to start a local, community-oriented, nonprofit bank to meet the unmet social and economic needs in his rural area. But there is also love, drama, intrigue, humor and great music throughout. It also radiates the values and strengths of local, community-based economic control as well as financing gaps left by the big guys.

Now, England is not the U.S., and the Bank of Dave is not the public bank proposed for New Mexico. But the motives and the values behind Dave’s efforts and those behind the tactics employed by the big banks against him are dead on target. The line I remember comes from one of the staunch defenders of the big banks. He said (paraphrased), “We have been successful at keeping more big banks out of England, but a whole lot of small banks would be a new, huge problem that we have to defeat.”

So, check out Bank of Dave on Netflix. It’s a great movie as well as a pointed lesson on the value and power of a state bank working through credit unions and local commercial banks to fill the documented lending gaps and, in so doing, strengthening New Mexico’s local economies.

Peter Smith

chair, Alliance for Local Economic Prosperity board Santa Fe

Avangrid appreciation As president and CEO of United Way of North Central New Mexico, I was disheartened to learn of Avangrid’s decision to terminate its merger agreement with Public Service Company of New Mexico. However, I’m pleased about Avangrid’s expressed intention to remain in the state, pursuing new opportunities through its Renewables Division. As a longtime nonprofit executive, I’ve come to appreciate Avangrid’s commitment to effecting positive change within the communities it serves. The Avangrid Foundation’s mission of contributing to community partnerships, arts and culture, the environment and higher education is commendable.

The decision to dissolve the merger undoubtedly presented challenges for all involved. I hope any difficulties encountered haven’t impacted Avangrid’s perception of New Mexico and its people. Despite any setbacks, I am grateful that Avangrid remains a steadfast presence in our state. To the Avangrid leadership, on behalf of the communities and nonprofit organizations my organization serves, our board of directors, our team and the entire business community — we want you to know that New Mexico we appreciate Avangrid. We look forward to many years in partnership with Avangrid as New Mexico continues to lead the nation in renewable energy projects and programs.

Rodney Prunty

I am writing to enthusiastically recommend the Net-

United Way of North Central New Mexico Albuquerque

“What I always say is, for the next 30 or 60 days, whatever length of time the session is, we basically live at the Capitol.”

Daniel J. Chacón, New Mexican reporter, on covering the New Mexico Legislature

Hear more from Chacón on Conversations Different, out Tuesday at santafenewmexican.com

scan of New Mexico attorneys general over the past half-century reveals an unpredictable Scrabble of political fortune.

And political fortune — rather, political future — is one of the reasons people run for the office in the first place.

Played correctly, attorney general is the ultimate launchpad job. Only New Mexico’s governor has a bigger bully pulpit, though it’s one that doesn’t come with much protective coating, given media critics and a Legislature of 112 men and women, all of whom think they’d be better at the position than the office’s occupant.

AG? You’ve gotta win cases, sure.

But mostly, you’ve gotta win hearts and minds — trumpeting the victories and minimizing the losses. Do that well enough, often enough, and you end up in 60-point newspaper headlines and on the “A” block of the 6 p.m. news.

Stack those clips high enough, and anything’s possible.

Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman got elected to Congress after running the Attorney General’s Office. Toney Anaya became governor.

But it doesn’t always work that way in New Mexico. Hal Stratton, the only Republican to have the post in the past nine decades, saw his path forward blocked, more by party than performance.

Paul Bardacke, probably the best pure lawyer of the bunch and the guy for whom the AG complex on Galisteo Street is named, couldn’t win the Democratic nomination for governor. Gary King and Patricia Madrid saw their political careers end with failed November runs for governor and the U.S. House, respectively.

Hector Balderas is a college president in Española.

With political past and future all around, what to make of Raúl Torrez, who as of last week no longer heads the Attorney General’s Office but the — drum roll optional — New Mexico Department of Justice?

After 16 years of circumspect, sometimes odd leadership in AG’s office, Torrez is a throwback to the stereotype of what people used to think an attorney general did. Rare is the week he’s not announcing a new initiative, an investigation, a push, a plan.

It’s a case against the Facebook guys at Meta. Or an investigation of disciplinary practices in the Gallup-McKinley County school system. Or an intervention in the endless Yazzie/ Martinez education-funding case. An agreement with Deutsche Bank to fight human trafficking. The list goes on.

Even Wednesday’s announcement about the name change came with a nod to the big picture. At one point, Torrez earnestly told an audience of mostly friends and staffers that despite being a Democrat, his favorite president was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln. He even quoted snippets of Lincoln’s inaugural address in 1861, a time when a nation headed toward an apocalyptic Civil War was fragmented, set against itself.

Torrez, 47, said he hears those echoes as we gird for what promises to be an ungodly election season in a country where there’s a gun on every corner but not a chicken in every pot; an era when American politicians and even poll workers can, incredibly, be threatened. But it’s more than that. He noted he devised the name change in hopes of telling the public a Department of Justice is really their court — actually, their investigator and prosecutor — of last resort, regardless of whether the issue is PFAS or CYFD or any of the other acronyms or maladies that bedevil daily lives.

“I don’t want to imply that my predecessors aren’t interested in those things or Please see story on Page B-5

M Y VIEW JAVIER MARTÍNEZ, GAIL CHA SE Y REENA SZC ZEPANSKI AND R AY MUND O L AR A

Investments in family-friendly policies are paying off

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ver the last several years, New Mexico has planted the seeds for generational change with family-driven policy wins like raising the minimum wage, passing one of the most generous child income tax credits in the nation, creating a constitutional right to early childhood education and making higher education tuition-free. These are transformational policies, but it will take time to see

the results, and we do not have time to waste.

Despite our significant progress in recent years, we know that too many of our neighbors have trouble making ends meet at the end of the month. Too many of our kids struggle in school. Too many of our loved ones cannot afford the health care they need. Too many of our families worry about the safety of their communities.

Editorial page editor: Inez Russell Gomez, 505-986-3053, igomez@sfnewmexican.com Design and headlines: Brian Barker, bbarker@sfnewmexican.com

Our focus in the upcoming budget session must be on making investments that will truly make a meaningful difference, for this generation and the next. New Mexico has once again been blessed with record revenues, which means we have an incredible opportunity to address long-term challenges. We also Please see story on Page B-5 SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

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Sunday, January 14, 2024

Robert M. McKinney

Robin M. Martin

Phill Casaus

Inez Russell Gomez

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OUR VIEW

A short session but a long list of initiatives

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hort legislative sessions are known for their intensity — in 30 days, the Legislature and governor have to agree on a budget, decide how to divide those funds and, as we are seeing in the lead-up to Tuesday’s opening, consider a host of other topics. If, that is, the governor is willing. Constitutionally, it’s her call.

No one said governing was easy, and this year — despite the continued budget surplus — is no different.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wants to use the 30 days to tackle public safety, something nearly everyone would like to see improve. It’s how she is setting out to do it that will be controversial. Last week, the governor set out an ambitious list of proposed legislation designed to reduce crime and generally make residents feel safer.

On the right, Republicans and some conservative Democrats aren’t likely to support a ban on assault weapons or a 14-day waiting period for the purchase of firearms. They likely won’t even back raising the age to 21 from 18 for someone to buy automatic weapons. Also likely to face opposition is the push from the governor to turn parts of her public health order on guns into law, particularly outlawing guns in parks and playgrounds.

But the package isn’t all about guns. Millions of dollars are being funneled to boost pay in critical public safety jobs, with state police officers singled out for a 14% raise — $11.5 million — and an 8% — $7.2 million — increase for corrections, probation and parole officers.

Even paying cops more is somewhat controversial. Those raises for state cops would mean cities and counties could lose officers; even with the recruitment fund established in 2022 to help local agencies find and keep officers, the state police force can’t pay so much more that local agencies are gutted — unless, of course, the state can help local governments cover long-term pay increases.

And from the left, here are a few of the governor’s ideas that could be viewed critically. A proposed law to ban the unlawful use of public spaces, streets, sidewalks and curbs by panhandlers, if passed, will draw a lawsuit. Panhandling has generally been held to be a constitutionally protected activity, even when — as this law will attempt to do — the measure is passed with stated intent to increase public safety.

Just ask the city of Albuquerque, whose ordinance against panhandling was struck down by the 10th Circuit Court in 2021

for being insufficiently narrow. Even if the proposed state law satisfies judges, it might be viewed skeptically by progressives who believe such laws unfairly target the unhoused.

Many Democrats also won’t support the governor’s renewed attempt to increase pretrial detention for defendants accused of serious, violent crimes by putting into place a standard called “rebuttable presumption.”

Instead of the prosecution proving a defendant is dangerous, the defendant would be considered a threat unless a lawyer proves otherwise. A better approach to stopping violent crime would be swift trials and sure sentences; that way, violent criminals would be in prison where they belong, serving their sentence, not awaiting trial.

Portions of the governor’s public safety approach do deal with sentencing. There is a proposal to increase the maximum penalty for second-degree murder from 15 to 18 years, and to make a felon in possession of a gun a second-degree felony. Again, with those increases in penalties — likely deserved — fund the justice system so trials aren’t delayed. The court system functioning properly is critical to reducing crime and improving public safety.

And these are just a few highlights of the governor’s public safety efforts — which, after all, are not the point of a 30-day session.

And, not the only initiative she is planning — a major investment of $500 million toward improving housing options also is on the agenda, as well as a proposed tax decrease and yet another discussion on increasing the liquor excise tax. All worthy, but still a sideshow.

The biggest job — the constitutionally mandated task — is passing a budget, expected to be slightly more than $10 billion, with some $3.5 billion in excess dollars that can be invested for future needs or saved for those days when the oil money runs out. The governor is proposing $10.5 billion in recurring spending, about a 10% increase over last year, with the Legislative Finance Committee coming in at $10.1 billion. That’s hardly a chasm to breach, although lawmakers likely will wait until the final days to complete the job. It’s what happens in legislative sessions, whether short or long. And it all begins noon Tuesday when the governor steps up to deliver her State of the State address. No, governing is not easy.

COM M ENTARY M ICHELLE LUJAN G RISHAM

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CO MMENTA RY PERRY BACO N J R.

Biden’s message: Self-serving and true

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ne of the main campaign messages so far from President Joe Biden and Democrats is that to protect democracy, American voters have only one legitimate choice in the upcoming election: Biden. That message is obviously self-serving and perhaps even contradictory and anti-democratic.

It’s also true. If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, American voters who want the nation to remain a full-fledged democracy have to back Biden, even if they hate him.

Theoretically, part of living in a democracy is that you get a real choice between at least two qualified candidates for major offices. But while Biden obviously isn’t canceling the upcoming election as autocrats do, he isn’t leaving much intellectual space to vote against him, either. In speeches, TV ads and comments to reporters, Biden and his campaign staffers are reeling off Trump’s misdeeds and explicitly stating that whether the United States remains a democracy will be decided by this year’s election.

Framed that way, Americans who prefer lower taxes, limits on abortion and other conservative policies can’t really vote for Trump — at least if they believe in maintaining democracy.

And while Biden himself isn’t doing this, many Democratic activists and voters are imploring progressives who are skeptical of the president to rein in their criticisms and under no circumstances consider either abstaining from voting or backing scholar Cornel West or another third-party candidate.

Protecting democracy, these Democrats argue, means liberal and centrist Americans must unify behind Biden.

In short, the argument from many Democrats is that Americans who care about democracy must vote for Biden in 2024 to preserve their right in future elections to actually vote for their preferred candidate among a

field of options.

I find this argument very unsettling, for a number of reasons. It denies people on the left and right who don’t agree with Biden on policy the clearest, most consequential way to show their disapproval — voting against him. It allows those who agree with Biden on policy (more centrist Democrats) to invoke electoral considerations as a pretext to discourage the president’s critics (usually more progressive Democrats) from speaking out against, say, his Israeli-Palestinian policies.

Also, Biden himself adopting the “vote for me or lose democracy” message seems insincere and political.

For much of his first three years in office, the president emphasized economic policies and his ability to work across party lines while playing down democracy issues and the growing radicalism of the Republican Party.

That didn’t work politically. Biden is very unpopular and trails Trump in many polls. He’s leaning hard into democracy and Trump bashing now because that’s probably the only way he can win reelection.

And if the election is defined as democracy vs. dictatorship, the contrast Biden used in a recent speech, that sidelines other important issues.

A U.S. general election is in many ways a national conversation between citizens, politicians, civil society groups and the media about the state of America and what should change.

But if one candidate wants to end democracy and the other doesn’t, it’s hard to focus on their differing views on charter schools or taxes. All of those issues pale in comparison to democracy itself.

So I wish I could say that Biden was exaggerating the threat of Trump when he all but tells Americans they must vote for him. I wish we could have an election where policy issues were front and center.

Editorial page editor: Inez Russell Gomez, 505-986-3053, igomez@sfnewmexican.com, Twitter @inezrussell

But Biden and the Democrats are right. If Trump is elected, he will end American democracy as we know it — or at least severely erode it.

Trump spent his last few months in office trying to use his powers to steal an election that he clearly lost.

He is unapologetic about his actions before and on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s likely he would try again to reverse the results if his preferred candidate lost — and might be more successful in a second attempt, knowing what didn’t work the first time.

And the aftermath of the 2020 election wasn’t a unique time in Trump’s presidency. His tenure was full of undemocratic acts, such as trying to stop independent investigations of himself and launch probes against his political rivals. He is promising an even more radical approach if elected to a second term.

So everything is on the line this November. Americans who live in California, Idaho or other states that are either clearly blue or clearly red can openly express their dissatisfaction or policy differences with Biden and vote for Trump, West or not vote at all. But if you live in Wisconsin, Michigan or another swing state and Trump is the Republican nominee, you need to vote for Biden, even if you hold views to his left or right and spend every day before and after the election bashing him.

That’s the reality. And that reality illustrates a deeper, even more troubling truth: The United States is so far off track that being pro-democracy is now a distinguishing characteristic for a presidential candidate (Biden) and nearly half of the voters are going to back the anti-democratic alternative (Trump). If our elections now are about saving democracy, then democracy is already semi-dead.

Perry Bacon Jr. writes for The Washington Post.

It’s time to ban assault weapons in New Mexico

very day, Americans wake up to the news of another community torn apart by gun violence. America’s gun violence crisis has become so rampant that we are virtually numb to the deadly reality that more than 120 Americans are shot and killed every day in our country. Far too often, these tragedies reach our doorsteps right here in New Mexico. Families from Farmington to Las Cruces feel the anxiety and fear of being gunned down at shopping malls and movie theaters, of dropping their children off at school.

We saw it in Farmington — a teenager legally purchased an AR-15 in late 2022 and bought an additional three magazines just days before he went on a shooting spree. He fired over 150 rounds, killed three and injured six, including two police officers. Three women were brutally slaughtered by an automatic weapon designed for warfare and whose only purpose is to kill multiple people in a short amount of time.

Between 2015 and 2022 in the U.S., eight of the 10 deadliest mass shooting incidents involved the use of a firearm equipped with a high-capacity magazine, an assault weapon or both.

Shootings where assault weapons were used resulted in more than twice as many people killed and more than 22 times as many people wounded per incident on average. There’s no training or survival class against an assault weapon. In addition to brutalizing our communities, these military-grade weapons can overwhelm and endanger law enforcement.

As governor, I took an oath to protect New Mexicans. I take this responsibility seriously and I refuse to stand by while weak laws allow our streets and neighborhoods to be terrorized by weapons of war again and again. It’s time for New Mexico to break the cycle and ban assault weapons once and for all.

Banning assault weapons isn’t a novel concept. President Bill Clinton took decisive action in 1994 and the data is clear: Banning assault weapons saves lives. A 2019 study revealed a staggering 70% reduction in mass shooting fatalities between 1994 and 2004, when the federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines was enforced. When the federal ban expired, state governments had to take up the charge of protecting their own people, and nearly one-third of the population now lives in states that prohibit assault weapons. Many of these states, such as California, have the lowest gun violence rates in the country.

Between 1993 and 2017, California saw a remarkable 55% decrease in its firearm mortality rate, a reduction nearly four times greater than the rest of the nation in the same period of time. The numbers don’t lie; commonsense gun safety solutions save lives, and it’s time for New Mexico to follow suit.

My proposed assault weapons ban

takes an innovative approach. We can tackle this crisis by prohibiting the sale, transfer and receipt of gas-operated semi-automatic firearms, such as AR-15 rifles, and large-capacity magazines that hold 10 or more rounds of ammunition. Our proposed assault weapons ban will keep these weapons of war off our streets while continuing to allow most handguns and common hunting firearms to be sold.

My legislation would ban extraordinarily dangerous firearms based on their internal construction, so gunmakers will not be able to circumnavigate the ban in the future — as they have done in other states — by changing their firearms’ external features. This means New Mexicans will be protected for generations to come, at the same time responsible gun ownership for self-defense, hunting and other activities meaningful to New Mexicans is preserved.

This upcoming legislative session, I am laser-focused on putting an end to our gun violence crisis. New Mexicans are ready for meaningful action — that’s how we honor victims and save lives. There are political forces who will oppose taking these weapons of mass destruction off the streets.

In recent years, my administration has shown them that we are putting courage over politics by expanding background checks for gun purchases and preventing children from gaining access to their parents’ weapons. Now it’s time to get these weapons of war off our streets once and for all.

As a daughter, mother and grandmother, my family’s experiences motivate me to be in this fight. In 2019, my daughter was in a mall that was on active shooter lockdown while we debated gun violence legislation here in New Mexico; my granddaughter’s school was locked down because a student brought a fake gun to school in a backpack that was mistaken for a real firearm. Later, two adults had an altercation outside of that school during afternoon pickup, resulting in one of them brandishing a firearm while students were being released for the day and all access points to the campus were open. Parents don’t know if the school drop-off is the last time they will ever see their kids. For them, and for children across New Mexico, we cannot shy away from this crisis. Not anymore.

We need leaders at every level, regardless of our politics, to come together and present commonsense solutions to this ceaseless pattern of mass shootings. It’s time to put the safety of our families over partisan politics and meet this moment by doing what we know saves lives.

Together, we can put an end to the public health crisis of mass shootings, protect our citizens and get weapons of war off our streets.

Michelle Lujan Grisham is governor of New Mexico.

SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

OPINION M Y VIEW L AURENCE SHANDLER

Kids need protection from the darkness of internet

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s a pediatrician, I have worked for over five decades caring for generations of children in Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico. In my time working to keep kids healthy and safe, I have encountered a number of threats.

Today we are facing a new one: the unregulated online world. Recently, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta, calling Facebook and Instagram breeding grounds for predators who target and exploit children. Over 30 other state attorneys general are also suing Meta, alleging Instagram and Facebook intentionally addicted children for profit.

The internet holds tremendous potential to benefit children, allowing them to participate in educational activities, explore their emerging identities, communicate with friends and loved ones, and engage with the political process. Kids should be able to engage in these valuable online activities without risking harm facilitated by the very providers of the services they use.

Unfortunately, children and their families cannot be assured of safety in today’s online landscape. The New Mexico Department of Health reports New Mexico high school students who spend three or more hours a day in front of a screen are 45% more likely to express persistent sadness or hopelessness. Meanwhile, 59% of U.S. teens report being bullied on social media, an experience linked to increased risk of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. Disturbing data like this about risks to kids’ mental health have prompted the U.S. surgeon general to issue an advisory calling for immediate action to create a safer online environment for children.

Here in New Mexico, there is hope: an important bill that could make a real difference in helping our young people. The New Mexico Kids Code calls for mandatory safety-by-design and privacy-by-default protections.

Based on a concept called age-appropriate design, the bill aligns with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ national priorities by requiring digital platforms to put the online privacy and well-being of children and adolescents first.

Harms that children encounter online don’t happen by chance. Instead, they often result from failures by tech companies to consider kids’ cognitive and emotional development when designing their products. Even when the stakes aren’t life and death, it’s clear digital platforms aren’t being designed with young users in mind. A pediatric colleague recently told me it took her 4-year-old about 10 seconds to mistakenly purchase a yearlong PlayStation Plus subscription while trying to play a children’s game.

The Kids Code bill uses two core principles to make digital platforms stop taking advantage of young people: making sure they protect kids’ data and making sure they consider likely users’ ages and developmental stages when designing their products.

Any effort to protect the safety and privacy of children must involve children themselves, which is why I’m encouraged to see the effort to pass the Kids Code includes the advocacy of youth-led groups advocating for a better online world. This month, I am planning to meet with Santa Fe teens to discuss these issues and pique their interest in advocacy. We need to involve them in these important conversations, and we also need to listen to their perspectives, especially at a time when so many are crying out for help.

If you care about the health and safety of children, as I do, join me at the Roundhouse this coming legislative session. Let’s urge our legislators to pass the New Mexico Kids Code and build New Mexico’s young people a safer, healthier future.

To learn more about New Mexico’s proposed age-appropriate design code legislation, visit NewMexicoKidsCode.com.

Dr. Laurence Shandler, FAAP, has been a pediatrician in Santa Fe for decades.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

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M Y VIEW AMBER ESPINOZ A-TRUJILLO

State should remember lean years of the past

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s we prepare for a new legislative session, I hope our governor and Legislature consider what financial catastrophes have occurred in other parts of the United State.

Detroit has lost its pensions. The monetary problems in California and Arizona should be a further warning to the results of reckless spending. One additional example could be the need for New Mexico to prevent retiring state employees under the

age of 55 to access retiree health care.

I worked for New Mexico state government for 27 years in 11 different positions. The only way to get a raise was to take on additional duties or move to a higher position. I am happy the state employees have been given substantial raises in the most recent years, raises we would have loved to have received.

But I caution our leaders to ensure they are able to keep up with the additional

T H E D RAW I N G B OA R D T H E W E E K I N CA RTO O N S

monies they have added to the budget and make certain the state is able to pay the bills going forward in leaner years.

Employees have had to take furloughs when the state overspent or couldn’t meet the obligations. Let’s learn from the past.

As a former government manager, an additional issue must be raised. What measurable goals are being set as leaders make changes? It is great to be innovative and come up with new ideas, but our

lawmakers and government officials must ensure there are measurable outcomes, not just “look at me” ideas.

Let’s not just throw money at a problem but ensure we are having deliverables that move us forward.

Amber Espinosa-Trujillo is a 16th-generation New Mexican mestiza and retired state employee since 2021. She is working at a local hospice until age 55, when she becomes eligible for retiree health care insurance.

M Y VIEW L AURA MONTOYA

Financial literacy will benefit students

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rowing up in rural New Mexico, the eldest of three, I had no choice but to grow up fast. I helped care for my siblings, and in addition, worked my first jobs cleaning houses and babysitting. I gave the money I earned to my mama, and quickly learned the value of a dollar, the meaning of family unity and teamwork.

Like many families, I grew up with humble beginnings and learned most of my life lessons regarding finances by trial and error, whether it was my own or someone I knew. Although I loved math and was in calculus in high school, I had no clue as to how to balance a checkbook. I didn’t know what a savings account was or what stocks or CDs were.

New Mexico lawmakers have an opportunity during the upcoming legislative session to benefit all the state’s students as well as the economy by adding financial literacy to the high school graduation requirements.

Momentum is growing nationally for making financial literacy a graduation requirement. Four years ago, six states required students to take a standalone personal finance or financial literacy course. Today, 25 states have added financial literacy to their high school graduation requirements. Now, 53% of students nationwide are guaranteed to receive this education. Sadly, New Mexico students are not among them.

WalletHub ranks New Mexico 49th for overall financial literacy.

Requiring financial literacy for all students can strengthen our youth, some of whom will hopefully go on to serve as bank tellers, accountants, chief financial officers, board members and other financial roles in both the public and private sectors that are so desperately needed in our communities. I always tell my godchildren, “No matter what career path you choose, finances will always need to be a part of it to be successful, and whatever your passion is, it is always important to understand a budget because if you know where the money is, you can use it for what you are passionate about.”

The New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee reported that after financial education was mandated in the states of Georgia,

Idaho and Texas, students who participated in the programs had higher credit scores and higher savings rates. Studies also find that when students increase their financial literacy, they often bring those lessons home to their parents and grandparents, benefiting the entire family.

Having financial education is essential to reduce poverty, decrease crime, improve opportunities for higher-skilled positions that pay higher wages, and become financially independent. These changes will also positively impact gross receipts taxes, property taxes and other funding sources that improve schools, hospitals, roads, senior services, etc. In turn, we will be reallocating funding so our children and families will not need to depend on government services (SNAP, Medicaid, etc.).

I ran for office on the idea of bridging the gap of inequity, and I know financial literacy is a key component to breaking the cycle of financial instability. We should make it a common practice to discuss budgeting, a savings account, stocks, bonds, taxes, retirement and investing.

It also helps hold those in authority accountable, whether at your work, children’s school, city councils or county commissions.

We have an obligation to prepare our children for a better future than the one our parents prepared for us. We need to stop the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck and still not having enough no matter how hard you work or how many jobs you have at the same time.

I call on the governor and the Legislature to act during the 2024 legislative session and add financial literacy to the state’s high school graduation requirements — I’d take it a step further and request financial literacy be in all levels of education.

Knowledge is power, and financial literacy is the ultimate power to eliminate poverty and increase generational wealth for our families to live healthy, prosperous and productive lives where they can contribute to our economy and live in whatever part of New Mexico they love.

Laura Montoya is state treasurer for the state of New Mexico, serving her first term.

THE PAST 100 YEARS From The Santa Fe New Mexican: Jan. 14, 1924: Whether or not the Reclamation service will go ahead with the proposed investigation of the underground flow of the Estancia valley, to find out whether it is feasible to develop the water for irrigation, appears doubtful.

Jan. 14, 1949: Livingston N. Taylor, judge of the Colfax-Harding-UnionTaos district for 12 years and 10 days, has become the first to take advantage of the 1947 judges retirement act, which provides $3,000 a year for life.

Jan. 14, 1974: When the gavels fall in both chambers of the State Legislature tomorrow, it will signal the opening of what observers feel will be one of the most intense 30-day “short sessions” on record.

It will be marred somewhat by the fact that Sen. Anthony Lucero, D-Bernalillo, was indicted last Friday on charges of bribery and conspiracy. Lucero is vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Jan. 14, 1999: Following through on his top campaign promise, Gov. Gary Johnson announced Wednesday that he will ask the Legislature to approve an income tax cut that would allow taxpayers to pocket an average of $177.

M Y VIEW AUDRE Y ABE Y TA

Chaparral has proved welcoming to a new family

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h boy, did we have huge dread about returning to school after our winter break.

My son, Mateo, goes to Chaparral Elementary School. We returned to school on the first Wednesday in January and were in the drop-off drive-thru line.

We noticed Chaparral faculty and staff making a point of handing out something to every parent as they dropped off. We were curious. When it was our turn to drop off Mateo, Principal Erica Martinez-Maestas came to my truck and with a huge smile she handed me this shiny silver bar that had a message saying, “Bar None — Firebird families are THE best!”

Underneath the silver wrapping and

message was a Hershey chocolate bar.

Immediately, I couldn’t help the smile that came on my face, and the dread of returning to the school schedule left. I turned to Mateo and said, “We love this school! How nice of them to welcome us back!” Mateo had a huge smile, and I know he is proud to be a Firebird.

Later that evening, I talked to Mateo about the genuine sentiment that Chaparral gave us by welcoming us back to school from winter break with kind words and a chocolate bar. It was a kind gesture to help us with a day that is hard for everyone. This is only one of the giveaways Chaparral has provided. These small gestures provide families with

incentives to participate in school.

Mateo and I talked about what it feels like for him to be a part of Chaparral community; this is our first year attending Chaparral. Mateo said it best, “They want me to do well!” Mateo feels supported, loved and challenged. I have seen Mateo grow in different positive ways since we started to attend Chaparral.

Mateo was the new kid in second grade, and I was curious and nervous to see how he was going to adjust.

I couldn’t be prouder of my son. He has demonstrated that he is more than capable of managing a life change head-on.

He has made many friends with kids and with the faculty and staff at Chaparral.

He has proven to his teacher that he is really trying hard in class, and this year he participated in the spelling bee. I believe Mateo is excelling as a student at Chaparral, and it would be because of the love and support from Chaparral. I really appreciate the faculty and staff, especially Mrs. Prada, Mateo’s teacher. They are making a difference in our lives.

It seems like Chaparral is always thinking of our kids and making sure the families feel part of the community. I wanted to write and let our Santa Fe community know what a fantastic school Chaparral is, and I wanted sincerely to thank Chaparral for welcoming us as a new family.

Audrey Abeyta lives in Santa Fe.

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THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

OPINION

Sunday, January 14, 2024

M Y VIEW JAMIE ARANDA

In-home child care providers serve New Mexico well R eputable child care programs in Santa Fe for children under the age of 2 have over a yearlong waiting list, costs similar to tuition for a year at a university and hours that don’t usually cover an entire workday.

I am a working mom of identical twins who had a complicated and premature start. My husband and I were focused more on supporting our girls through their medical challenges than getting them on a list for those child care programs.

Once we got to the point of needing

child care, we were shocked to hear how much time it would take to get them into care, the costs of the programs (especially for two), plus we had no idea what we would do for the hours not covered. Not only were we facing an immense cost burden, but how would we find child care that would help our girls developmentally?

After extensive searching, we luckily found an excellent caregiver affiliated with Growing Up New Mexico. Growing Up New Mexico’s Family, Friends and Neighbors program supports a

network of in-home caregivers with training, resources and financial supports to meet their professional goals.

The providers are the tías, abuelitas, family, friends and neighbors who care for children in their home.

We met with the provider and knew it would be a good match. The caregiver provides a warm, nurturing, caring place for our girls to grow. She focuses on helping them thrive and meet their developmental goals. She is motivated to learn, welcomes their early intervention therapists and applies all of their recom-

mendations. Our girls have advanced their motor skills immensely and often come home having learned something new.

As I have become more familiar with this hidden workforce, I have learned that these incredible caregivers who provide extraordinary care for our children represent the largest percentage of the early childhood workforce caring for infants and toddlers. Family, friends and neighbors are the mainstay of the American child care sector. Over 5 million of these caregivers look after 11.5 million children, including 5.8 million

children ages 0-5. They often do it for little pay or benefits.

I want to recognize these caregivers and give them the gratitude they deserve. Further, as we work to expand and strengthen our early childhood system, such providers should have access to the professional and developmental resources they need to provide quality care — such as the care my twins receive that gives my husband and me peace of mind.

Jamie Aranda is a Santa Fe mom.

M Y VIEW SUZ ANNE SPIEGEL

Remove herbal certification as a requirement for acupuncture

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M Y VIEW ELMER MAESTA S

Use history to teach in present day

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ith regard to the continuing debacle regarding the Soldiers’ Monument, as well as the Don Diego de Vargas statue and Kit Carson monument, we should all be mindful that throughout the ages, eras and times, there have always been, and will continue to be, well-deserved acknowledgements for heroes, heroic deeds and/or grand accomplishments relative to those times.

Whether for Columbus, for de Vargas, for Po’Pay, for Carson, for Geronimo, for Ulysses S. Grant or for Martin Luther King Jr. — these were notable and worthy people of their times, for their people and others. And, as notable New Mexico historian Marc Simmons wrote: “At the times Europeans, like Indians, tended to go where they pleased. In truth all history is filled with storm and violence, both in the Old World and the New. A 16th Century soldier could not be expected to have performed as a 20th Century man with modern sensibilities … and Indians, likewise, cannot now be held accountable because some Tribes culturally approved of torture and mutilation of captives.”

However, some positive aspects were also noted because of Spanish settlement. In the book Po’Pay,

by Joe Sando and Herman Agoyo, the authors wrote: “Despite their tribulations, the Pueblos were fortunate that it was the Spanish who colonized this area because the Pueblos were given full citizenship and rights to their lands … and the Pueblos are still living where the Spanish invaders found them, while other Indian tribes which met the English, French and Russian [invaders] were moved to much less desirable areas, and lost much of their language and religion.”

Our Founding Fathers, in the American Declaration of Independence, described Natives as “mer-

ciless Indian savages,” and The New Mexican, in past eras, wrote: “The successes of Col. Carson will distinguish him and those with him, They deserve and will receive the gratitude for every Indian they have killed or made captive.”

So we ask this: What was the normal, average citizen to think and to act during those times?

It is not for us to attempt to erase history, but rather, learn from it. It is not for us to smear paint, demolish or vandalize, but rather to work together to learn and understand that, even given past negative historical aspects, which also fell upon many Hispanics during and after the American takeover of New Mexico, we are indeed fortunate to live and raise our children in a great country. It is a nation we jointly built, and will continue to build and improve, together.

Thus, even given past failings locally and current catastrophic events around the world (Russia-Ukraine/Israel-Hamas conflicts) and U.S. political strife, we New Mexicans have opportunities to show our resolve to work together and fix things. So, we must take advantage of opportunities that come our way — and one is the recent gift presented to the people of Santa Fe by our neighbor, Tesuque Pueblo.

This gift, a stone-carved representation of two Pueblo Revolt Native runners — Catua and Omtua — should be displayed and placed at the Cathedral Park, with the statue of Don Diego de Vargas reinstalled in its original place there. The statue of the runners could be placed in the northwest area facing Don Diego, which would be placed in the Southwest area, also facing the Native Indian Runners. Then, we can move on.

ew Mexico is struggling to keep health care practitioners in the state. And the problem is even bigger in rural New Mexico, where people are often forced to drive hours to visit the closest medical facility. To compound the problem, New Mexico is one of only eight states with outdated and antiquated licensing requirements for the practice of acupuncture.

Acupuncture has been widely accepted by medical practitioners as an important and effective way to deal with many medical issues.

In fact, the World Health Organization endorses acupuncture, and clinical studies have shown it to be a beneficial treatment for many conditions including chronic pain, migraines, tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, just to name a few.

New Mexico mandates that to be licensed to practice acupuncture in the state, people must have degrees both in acupuncture and Chinese herbs. But 42 states license herbs as a separate practice than acupuncture. Additionally, New Mexico permits chiropractors (along with DOs and MDs) to administer acupuncture with minimal additional training and without the credentialing in herbs, so the herbal requirement, which is solely for acupuncturists, seems arbitrary.

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INEZ RUSSELL GOMEZ OPINION PAGE EDITOR, SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN JAN. 16 - KEY ISSUES IN THE UPCOMING LEGISLATIVE SESSION WITH:

Jayne Aubele New Mexico’s Geological Landscape and Its Effect on Our Culture and Social History January 30 | 6pm

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Dr. Stephen Lekson Of Noble Kings Descended: Colonial Documents and the Ancient Southwest February 27 | 6pm

Tickets $10, Free for Members of Las Golondrinas and MNMF Reserve your tickets online at golondrinas.org!

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HOSTED BY:

Winter Lecture Series

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art

Suzanne Spiegel practices acupuncture in Placitas, where she lives with her husband, Jeff.

N Ever New E ry Tuesday

Elmer Eugene Maestas lives in Santa Fe.

Dr. Thomas Chavez The Diplomacy of Independence: Benjamin Franklin and Spain March 26 | 6pm

Dr. Paul Roth, former chancellor of the University of New Mexico medical school and vice president at UNM Health Sciences, said: “Historically, only about 25% to 30% of graduates stay in New Mexico to work. Various reasons draw them away, such as higher pay, lower taxes and a more favorable legal climate. The rural nature of the state and professional isolation are also problems.”

Roth also added, “We have to do everything we can to address both the doctor shortage and maximize what nurse practitioners and other clinicians can do and produce more of those as well.”

Given these realities, it makes sense to be doing everything we can to attract medical practitioners to New Mexico, rather than deter them. Acupuncture is becoming more and more accepted by the Western medical community because of its ability to address some of Western medicine’s blind spots, like addiction recovery, pain (without addictive pharmaceuticals), prevention and quality of life.

Legislators, as we move into the legislative session, we hope you will follow the standard of the majority of states in the U.S. and treat acupuncture and herbalism as separate licenses. It will make a difference for all New Mexicans.

TO SUBSCRIBE VISIT: SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM/PODCASTS CASTS

and Robert Nott

Santa Fe New Mexicann reporter

OPINION

The value of work is undervalued Continued from Page B-1

policy “to help alleviate poverty” or “address inequality” by making all the problems associated with it more difficult to start or operate poverty, is because New Mexicans a successful business and create disproportionately do not work. jobs. While well-intentioned, New Mexico’s labor participation rules such as mandatory sick pay, rate — the percentage of people over liberal unemployment insurance, the age of 16 working or actively mandatory health insurance, paid looking for work — is 56.7%. This is family medical leave and many other 5% lower than the national average, requirements too numerous to list and we are fifth-lowest in the nation. hinder the process of creating more Most disturbingly, from 1999 to wealth and more jobs. Most of these 2021, the labor participation rate for policies are only a little onerous on men ages 25 to 34 fell from 87.7% to their own, but when added up they 82.3%. In other words, today almost create an anti-business climate and 1 in 5 young men in New Mexico exacerbate poverty. And they create are idle. These men are more likely a huge disincentive to businesses to become homeless, unhealthy, from hiring and mentoring anybody abuse drugs and alcohol, or engage who is at-risk. in criminal behavior or domestic These policies overlook a hard violence than those who work. fact of life. A wealthy and healthy The problem is not that people community is the result of hard are lazy. The problem is our culture work: from maintaining the acequia and policies do not value work. If to taking care of your own land to you don’t want to work, there are doing the planting, weeding and many ways you can get government harvesting year after year. Until benefits, even if you are totally our elected leaders and the voters able to work. We teach our youth who keep them in office wake up, they should work at jobs they “find our state will continue to be poor, meaningful” — as if any work lacks unhealthy and dysfunctional. meaning.

And every year the New Mexico George Gundrey is a Santa Fe native Legislature comes up with a new and business owner.

Just the start for AG Torrez Continued from Page B-1

didn’t do those things,” he said, a few moments after unveiling the Department of Justice’s new logo. “But what I’m trying to do is communicate to the general public. If they don’t know what we do, this is what we’re doing.”

Earlier in his career, Torrez worked for the U.S. attorney’s office. It’s clear the things he saw and learned there have marked the way he goes about the state job. He also spent years in the meat grinder of the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office, coming to the top post just as Albuquerque’s violence and drug problems were reaching their awful apex. He knows the drill as it applies to most of the serious crime that afflicts New Mexico.

The other stuff — degrees from

Harvard, the London School of Economics, Stanford — has a very nice sheen. If you’re looking at the future of the Democratic Party (and believe me, every Democrat under the age of 60 is always looking at the future of the Democratic Party in New Mexico), he’s going to be in the conversation for some time.

But when you unveil a new name for an old agency, and pop the top on lofty goals while invoking the name of Lincoln, maybe the governor isn’t the only one who will be carefully scrutinized. Torrez gets to catapult legal stones at Goliaths like Meta.

Whether he can bring them down is a completely different matter.

So Raúl Torrez’s standing, tomorrow, next Thursday and 1,000 days from now, is going to be very, very interesting — particularly in a party in which there’s plenty of depth and no shortage of ambition.

Bingaman, Anaya, Udall? Or King, Madrid, Balderas?

We’ll see where the Scrabble tiles shake out.

Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

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M Y VIEW ALBERT DYSON

Reality check necessary on Trump, Biden

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suggest that someone needs to provide a reality check for those poor misguided souls that continue to insist that, (1) the election in 2020 was somehow corrupt and, (2) that the incursion at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was no more than a tourist visit to that hallowed house of our democracy.

Let’s review all the more than 60 court cases filed by avid Trump supporters like Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell, both of whom have been sanctioned or censured by the bar associations they belonged to for misdeeds. All of those challenges to the 2020 election were tossed from the courts as having no merit. Look at all the recounts requested by the Trump supporters that

failed to find any evidence of corrupt voting and did nothing to disprove the announced results.

Then let’s air video from that disastrous day, Jan. 6, 2021, so they can see what the rest of the nation saw. Tell me what part of that horrific event was a calm tourist visit to the Capitol as they continue to assert. Was it the pushing past the security barriers and the police lines? Was it the smashing of the windows with the shields that were taken from the police trying to protect the building? Maybe it was the theft of official equipment from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and the chants of “hang Mike Pence” that were part

Investments in family-friendly policies are paying off Continued from Page B-1

have a responsibility to make a difference for New Mexicans today.

Now is the time for bold leadership and thoughtful, sustainable investments. If we make the kind of shortsighted investments favored by those who govern by election cycle, we will squander this moment. At the same time, if we let fear drive us to stash money under the mattress — beyond the robust reserves we know we need to weather rainier days — we will fail the New Mexican families who are counting on us to deliver now.

The best investments we can make, for today’s generation and the next, are in teachers, schools and students across New Mexico’s diverse communities. Education is not only the foundation of our children’s

success, it’s the foundation of our longterm priorities like ending generational poverty, preventing crime and building a more resilient, sustainable future.

In addition to continued investments in early childhood, K-12 and higher education, we need to fund workforce development, particularly for critical professions like health care, clean energy and social work.

This will help us staff our front lines today, solve tomorrow’s challenges, and make sure New Mexicans have good-paying jobs to support their families for decades to come.

By making necessities like housing and health care affordable and accessible, we can help New Mexico’s working families make ends meet. By passing a paid family and medical leave policy, we can ensure New Mexicans do not have to choose between caring for a loved one in a

of the tourist experience they saw.

In any case, these “believers” need to get their heads into the daylight and recognize what a threat to our democracy former President Donald Trump poses with his proclaimed program for the future if elected. Weaponizing the Department of Justice to wreak revenge on his enemies, deporting millions of migrants but saying nothing about what he will do to fix the economy that he claims President Joe Biden has terribly mismanaged with unemployment at 3.7%, hundreds of thousands of new jobs created and inflation lowered from 9% to around 3.4% in December.

Al Dyson is retired and lives in Santa Fe. time of need or keeping their job. These investments will not only benefit working families now, they will make our state a more attractive place for both workers and businesses down the line.

We also have to make our communities safer. That means passing commonsense measures now to reduce violent crime, including gun violence, making sure our law enforcement officers have the tools and resources they need to keep us safe, and investing in evidence-based solutions that address the root causes of crime, like behavioral health care and substance-use treatment.

If we use today’s resources wisely, we can prepare for tomorrow’s challenges, while making life better for families now. Now is not the time to kick the can down the road.

This generation is depending on us.

The authors are New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque; Majority Leader Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque; Majority Whip Reena Szczepanski, D-Santa Fe; and Majority Caucus Chair Raymundo Lara, D-Chamberino.

Essential S.F. sewer problems must be fixed first to see these projects move forward — specifically, I want to see an exact date for community, and like many other unused groundbreaking for both Jemez Road and capitol outlay projects, the costs are only Vereda de Valencia scheduled for 2024 or increasing. In May 2023, the Legislative 2025. This is a completely reasonable and Finance Committee stated that $3.1 billion doable request and is entirely within the worth of capital outlay across the state had spirit of capital outlay. When I allocate not been put to use. These dollars only work funds to serve my community, they should if they are in our districts as soon as possibe put to good use in a timely manner. I ble. Looking at my own projects, more than need the city to put these dollars to work 72% have been underutilized, including all instead of remaining pipe dreams. of my appropriated dollars to the city.

To this end, I am also collaborating with Before I can appropriate any more State Auditor Joseph Maestas on legislation dollars to the city as a fiscal agent, I need that will codify the executive order calling on Continued from Page B-1

every fiscal agent to have an up-to-date audit before it can receive its capital outlay. It is my duty to my community to be a responsible steward of our funds and to ensure our fiscal agents are acting as trusted partners.

There are many friends and allies in the city ready to make it right by our Airport Road communities. Let’s get these projects moving and improve the quality of life for all residents, especially those who have been historically marginalized and ignored.

State Rep. Linda Serrato represents District 45, which includes part of Santa Fe County.

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THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

HOROSCOPE HAPPY BIRTHDAY for Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024: You have a sharp mind. You’re an excellent communicator and very observant. You don’t like to be bored. Exciting changes will bring you increased freedom this year.

MOON ALERT: There are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions. The moon is in Pisces.

The stars show the kind of day you’ll have: 5-Dynamic; 4-Positive; 3-Average; 2-So-so; 1-Difficult

ARIES (March 21-April 19) HHH This is a pleasant day because it offers you the option of doing what you want. You can catch up on chores or you can relax. However, you do feel ambitious about getting something done. Tonight: Show respect.

This Week: Your ambition creates a strong impression on others.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

TIME OUT

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) HHH You’ll enjoy spending time with a friend or a group today, because you have a strong need to communicate to others. In fact, any kind of group activity, be it church or a club or family, will please you. Tonight: Explore!

This Week: Travel, study, learn — expand your horizons!

GEMINI (May 21-June 20) HHHH You’re high-viz today, which means people notice you more than usual. This puts you in a good position if you have to discuss how to divide or share something or deal with shared property. Tonight: Check your finances.

This Week: Take care of details about shared property, inheritances and taxes.

CANCER (June 21-July 22) HHHH You might do something different today. You want to shake things up a bit, but at your own comfort level. Preferably, let it come to you. Tonight: Discussions.

This Week: Close friendships and partnerships are your focus now.

LAST WEEK’S ANSWER

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) HHH This is a good day for discussions about your involvement with the resources of someone else.

People in authority will favor you.

Tonight: Work.

This Week: Work hard to be productive. Also, work to improve your health.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) HHH Today you will have to go more than halfway when dealing with others because the Moon is opposite your sign. Fortunately, people are in a generous frame of mind. Tonight: Play.

This Week: This is a social, playful, fun-loving week!

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) HHH Although many want to relax today, you will actually be productive because you’re in the mood to work. You’re trying to get a lot done at home because you are affected by your surroundings. Tonight: Relax.

This Week: Family discussions, home repairs and renovations.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) HHHHH This is a playful day for you! You can relax and take things easy.

You can enjoy fun activities with kids or sports events. Tonight: Make plans.

This Week: Busy, fast-paced and conversations with everyone!

KENKEN

© 2024 KenKenPuzzle, LLC Distributed by Andrews McMeel

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) HHH If possible, you’ll be pleased to stay at home today and focus on family. You will also welcome an opportunity to enjoy your own solitude in familiar surroundings.

Tonight: Check your money.

This Week: Strong focus on earnings, cash flow and your belongings.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) HHHH You’re busy with discussions, errands, short trips and busy diversions. Enjoy meeting new people and seeing new places, because you have energy to burn! Tonight: Conversations.

This Week: You are powerful, proactive and efficient!

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) HHH You might be concerned with financial matters today, including shopping. You also might have moneymaking ideas. Tonight: Research.

This Week: This is a quiet week. Take time to think about your year ahead.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) HHHH Because the moon is in your sign today, this gives you a slight advantage over all the other signs. Therefore, this is the day to ask someone for a favor.

Tonight: Friendships.

This Week: Increased involvement with friends.

Rules • Each row and each column must contain the numbers 1 through 6 without repeating.

• The numbers within the heavily outlines boxes, called cages, must combine using the given operation (in any order) to produce the target numbers in the top-left corners.

• Freebies: Fill in single-box cages with the number in the top-left corner.

Grama Cuca ‘sueña con el’ Elvis Presley

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na tarde, after a long day, Canutito came into the house y halló a Grama Cuca toda exhausted y sentada bien cansada en el portal. She looked as if someone had run her por el wringer and she had come out del esprimidor bien seca y arrugada.

Canutito looked at her, all dried and wrinkled and he said: “Grama, ¿por qué que parece a death warmed over?” “¡Ay, m’hijo!” she groaned, “I work all day long Con Soledad, and I wash the floors con un mopeh y Con Suelo and I get on my knees Con Dolores.”

“Ah, I understand!” Canutito squealed con gusto. “Trabaja con Loneliness y lava the linoleum floor con un mop and finally, se levanta de las rodillas con Pain. You need to get yourself una vida más glamorous, grama.”

“Cuando yo era una muchachita,” Grama Cuca began, “yo pensaban que yo iba a tener una vida muy interesante. I would imagine myself traveling por todo el mundo, visiting lugares como París y Roma y comiendo toda clase de exotic foods. I would be bien rica con mucho dinero and I would wear un diamond ring en cada dedo and I would be married con el Elvis Presley porque él era el más popular en el mundo e íbamos a tener a dozen kids juntos.”

Canutito sat down cerca de ella donde estaba sentada en la rocking chair. He took off los zapatos de los pies de la grama and he massaged sus cayos. Grama grimaced when he pulled on her corns and bunions.

He asked her, “Did you really think que se iba a casar con el Elvis Presley and have una docena de hijos, grama? Ésos son sueños y fantasias or as we say in English, ‘they are like building castles in Spain.’ ” “Oh sí, m’hijo,” she smiled. “I had great dreams de la familia grande que iba a tener con el Elvis Presley.

We were going to call a nuestros hijitos nombres que iban a hacer rhyme con el nombre de ‘Presley’ como Lesley, Wesley, Kesley, Besley, Tesley, Desley, Fresley, Gesley, Hensley, Nestley, and

Larry Torres

Growing Up Spanglish

Seymour Presley.” “¿Por qué le iba llamar al último niño ‘Seymour’, grama?” Canutito questioned her porque ‘Seymour’ no hacía rhyme con el apellido ‘Presley’.

“Porque by that time we would have run out de letras en el alfabeto para ellos,” she giggled. “Nosotros íbamos a llamarle a todo el pack of kids ‘los Hound dogs’ porque they would be ‘cryin’ all the time’ como dice la canción.”

“You must have really had a crush en el Elvis Presley, grama,” Canutito said, “porque él era un superstar and you were just una cualquier mugrita de las yerbas.”

“Sí,” Grama Cuca said. “I had even planned que algún día íbamos a vivir either en Túpelo, Graceland o en Canjilón.”

“Did you ever dream de que algún día el Elvis Presley would come to your house, grama?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, m’hijo,” grama said, mirando bien dreamy off into space, “I used to cut out todos los retratos del Elvis Presley y los ponía en golden frames in front of my grama’s own picture. En uno de ellos I even wrote: ‘to my darling Cuca con todo mi amor; la next time que I happen to be passing por ese rumbo, I will go y caerte por un date’.

Canutito was laughing del cuento de su grama. He asked her: “Grama, do you think que si el Elvis Presley was alive he might be sitting aquí en el portal sobándole los cayos on your feet?”

“Not only would he be rubbing my corns and bunions; he would be kissing my feet,” grama said.

Canutito se desmoreció de la risa; laughing uncontrollably porque he just couldn’t see it …

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C-2 C-6, C7 C-8

SECTION C Sunday, January 14, 2024 THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

New council eyes tackling city’s ‘scarlet letter’ Following CHART process ‘failure,’ newly minted leaders say they’re ready to replace the Plaza’s ‘big brown box’

By Carina Julig

cjulig@sfnewmexican.com

As the base of the Soldiers’ Monument enters its fourth year encased in a box on the Plaza, city councilors are voicing a renewed desire to tackle one of the city’s thorniest issues.

“Unfortunately this big brown box has become the city’s scarlet letter, and we need to get rid of it as quick as we can,” Councilor Michael Garcia said to applause at the council’s December inauguration ceremony.

The monument, which honored New Mexico veterans in both the Union

Army during the Civil War and wars against Native Americans, was toppled by protesters on Indigenous Peoples Day in 2020.

A resolution in March 2023 proposed reconstructing the obelisk in an updated form and with signs adding more context about its history, but it was withdrawn after widespread criticism from people both opposed to and in support of the obelisk’s removal.

Garcia and other councilors now say they are ready to try again. That includes new Councilors Pilar Faulkner and Alma Castro. Faulkner said the city needs to find a way to handle it “without offending anyone too harshly” and hopes her background in mediation can be of use.

“I think no matter what we do people are going to be unhappy to some degree,” she said. “But if we can find some way to resolve that conflict in a way that everybody feels they’ve walked away with Please see story on Page C-3

Pedestrians walk by the site of the toppled Soldiers’ Monument last year.

The monument, which honored New Mexico veterans in both the Union Army during the Civil War and wars against Native Americans, was toppled by protesters on Indigenous Peoples Day in 2020. NEW MEXICAN FILE PHOTO

Hard work and ‘a lot of love’

UNIVE RSIT Y OF NEW ME XICO

Study aims at understanding how body cams affect officers

Nambé couple in their 90s celebrate milestone 75th wedding anniversary: ‘It has been a lot of fun’ A portrait of Carolina and Ernesto Lujan. The couple, who were married Jan. 15, 1949, celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary Saturday. The pair, both from Nambé, met in elementary school, but Carolina at first disliked Ernesto, who admits to being “a bit of a bully.” COURTESY CAROLINA AND ERNESTO LUJAN

Researchers believe findings could yield broad insights into how people react to employee monitoring technologies By nicholas Gilmore

ngilmore@sfnewmexican.com

A day in the life of a law enforcement officer in the U.S. is now highly likely to be captured on video.

Across the country, more than half of all local and state agencies and more than 80% of large agencies now use body-worn cameras and accompanying technology.

How do police officers feel about working under the watchful eye of a wearable surveillance camera and how does it affect their job performance?

Those are key questions for researchers from the University of New Mexico who are in the early phases of a yearslong study aimed at gaining insights into the best ways to deploy these now common systems.

Some other questions the UNM study might answer: ◆ What should the cameras look like? ◆ When should they be recording? ◆ How should departments use the footage? ◆ How accessible should law enforcement videos be to the public and news media?

UNM professor Daniel Ravid, who is leading the study, hopes the effort will help improve the use of police body cameras. He declined to name any of the participating law enforcement agencies — confidentiality is needed to protect the integrity of the study, he said — but noted some of them are in the Southwest, and both rural and urban agencies are represented.

Ravid’s team in the Anderson School of Management is collaborating with researchers at Purdue University in Indiana for the project.

Body-worn cameras have proliferated in recent years amid widespread calls for increased accountability and Please see story on Page C-3 PHOTOS BY LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN

The Rev. Frank Pretto conducts Mass while Ernesto and Carolina Lujan celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary Saturday at Sacred Heart Church in Nambé. Seventy-five years ago, the marriage “just sort of happened,” Carolina recalls, adding that she “really didn’t realize why” at the time. “Years later, I look back, and we have very similar likes and dislikes,” she said.

By Maya Hilty

mhilty@sfnewmexican.com

NAMBÉ arolina and Ernesto Lujan recall working together to build the warm and colorful Nambé home where they still live, brick by brick.

It was 1951, when Carolina was pregnant with her second son. Her husband and his then15-year-old brother Ben Luján, Sr. — who went on to serve many years as speaker of the state House of Representatives — used horses to plow dirt for a mud mixture they poured into a frame to create the adobe bricks.

Kneeling on the ground, Carolina pounded the mud with her hands to push out any air bubbles.

“We made the adobes right on the corner down there,” Carolina said from a comfortable

C

Jimmie Martinez, a former school board member and Santa Fe city councilor, is being remembered for championing the city’s living wage ordinance.

Martinez, who died Dec. 24 at age 81, co-introduced the first iteration of Santa Fe’s ordinance “to require wages and benefits sufficient to ensure a decent and healthy life for workers design and headlines: Nick Baca, nbaca@sfnewmexican.com

and their families” while serving on the City Council between 1998 and 2002. At the time, it was one of the first of its kind in the nation; a version of it is still in effect today.

“He was definitely looking out for the community, always looking out for the little guy,” said Frank Montaño, who served on the City Council with Martinez and helped him introduce the ordinance. “There wasn’t anything that would come up that would be about peo-

By Scott Wyland

swyland@sfnewmexican.com

Please see story on Page C-2

Please see story on Page C-5

Please see story on Page C-3

Local politician looked out for ‘the little guy’

By Phaedra Haywood

U.S. court’s dismissal of Texas resident’s 14th Amendment claim says plaintiff fails to demonstrate he has legal standing

ple that he wouldn’t support. He and I had our differences on some things, but he was definitely a people’s councillor. He really wanted to do good for the average Santa Fesino.”

Martinez initially proposed raising the minimum wage for all employees to about $12 per hour at a time when the federal minimum wage was $6.25 per hour, Montaño said. But he faced opposition on many fronts, including from

their 75-year-marriage — a milestone the 93- and 94-year-old couple celebrated Saturday with a mass at Sacred Heart Catholic

JIMMIE MAR TINEZ , 194 2-2024

phaywood@sfnewmexican.com

Judge rejects suit to keep Trump off N.M.’s ballot

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that argued former President Donald Trump should be barred from the New Mexico ballot because he led an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, disqualifying him under the 14th Amendment.

Judge Matthew Garcia rejected John Anthony Castro’s claim he was a viable presidential candidate in New Mexico, which would give him legal standing as a political competitor to challenge Trump’s eligibility to run in this state.

“He [Castro] has offered no concrete proof of campaign operations within the state or contributions from New Mexico voters,” Garcia wrote in his opinion issued Friday.

“Castro has not committed to being a ballot-placed primary candidate or a write-in candidate. The facts ... as they exist now show that Castro is neither truly ‘competing’ with President Trump for the New Mexico Republican primary candidacy nor will he be concretely injured by President Trump’s presence on the ballot.”

Garcia noted Castro, who’s based in Texas, has filed similar legal actions that were rejected in other states.

Castro immediately filed an appeal Friday.

He filed the lawsuit in September aiming to compel New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver to exclude Trump from the ballot.

The 14th Amendment states anyone who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and then engaged in a rebellion or insurrection against the U.S. or aided the enemy cannot hold office. The amendment was added

Ernesto and Carolina hold hands as they celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary at Sacred Heart Church in Nambé on Saturday.

armchair, waving a hand toward N.M. 503. “In those days, we were strong,” she remembered.

The story is emblematic of

Mission Church, not far from their home.

“It has been a lot of fun, but it has not been easy,” Carolina said the week before the celebration.

“A lot of loyalty and a lot of work make marriages last,” she said. “You have to work at it.”

The couple, both from Nambé, met in elementary school, but Carolina at first disliked Ernesto, who admits to being “a bit of a bully.”

As Carolina walked to school with her younger sister, Ernesto would call his dog to chase them.

“We would run up a hill, and I would turn back and say, ‘¡Panza de agua puerca!’ meaning, ‘Belly full of dirty water!’ ” Carolina said with a laugh.

In seventh or eighth grade, Ernesto dropped out of school because he refused to finish

SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

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THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

Sunday, January 14, 2024

IN BRIEF

U.S. says Texas barred agents from Teens face charges park amid rescue BROWNSVILLE, Texas — in disturbance The U.S. Homeland Security at youth facility Department said Saturday that

ALBUQUERQUE — Three teens are facing charges including assault following what sheriff’s officials termed a “major disturbance” on Christmas Day at a youth detention center in Albuquerque.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that the three males, ages 16 and 17, were among the detainees involved in the incident that media reports said lasted about five hours Dec. 25 and left three people with minor injuries.

Friday’s statement put damage to the county Juvenile Detention Center at more than $100,000.

Sheriff John Allen said previously that 13 detainees gained control of a unit of the facility, covered cameras and may have wielded scissors, broomsticks and other makeshift weapons.

Detainees raised complaints about food, bathroom access, clean laundry and strip searches, according to parents, advocates and some lawmakers who rallied this week for better conditions at the juvenile holding facility.

Allen traced problems to staffing shortages and antiquated protocols and said an investigation was continuing. He also noted that some detainees were dangerous and were being held to face serious charges, including murder.

The charges announced Friday against the three teens include damage to property, tampering with evidence and conspiracy to commit unlawful assault. Their names were withheld because of their ages.

Texas denied federal agents access to a stretch of border when they were trying to rescue three migrants who drowned.

The federal government’s account came hours after U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar said the Texas Military Department and Texas National Guard “did not grant access to Border Patrol agents to save the migrants” Friday night.

Mexican authorities recovered the bodies of a woman and two children Saturday across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

“This is a tragedy, and the State bears responsibility,” said Cuellar, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee for homeland security, in a statement.

Homeland Security echoed Cuellar on the broad outlines of what happened, saying the migrants drowned in the Shelby Park area of Eagle Pass. In a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday, Texas acknowledged seizing the city park on the border but said the federal government had mischaracterized its actions, and it was trying to resolve any disputes over access.

“In responding to a distress call from the Mexican government, Border Patrol agents were physically barred by Texas officials from entering the park,” Homeland Security said in a statement. “The Texas governor’s policies are cruel, dangerous, and inhumane, and Texas’s blatant disregard for federal authority over immigration poses grave risks.”

The Associated Press

NEW MEXICAN FILE PHOTO

Jimmie Martinez at a school board meeting in 1998. Martinez, who died on Dec. 24 at age 81, co-introduced with Frank Montaño the first iteration of Santa Fe’s ordinance “to require wages and benefits sufficient to ensure a decent and healthy life for workers and their families” while serving on the City Council.

Local politician looked out for ‘the little guy’ National Hispanic Caucus to the National School Board Assoemployers and some fellow ciation, Martinez also pushed policy makers. to have children in the city’s Despite the pushback, the summer recreation programs council passed a scaled-back exposed to fine arts, not just version of the ordinance in 2002 sports. which applied at the time only Martinez “strongly believed to city workers, increasing their the path out of poverty was minimum wage to $8.50. The through education,” and he ordinance was later extended to went back to school late in life, the private sector and currently earning a degree in criminal requires employers to pay work- justice at age 58, according to ers at least $14.03 per hour. the obituary.

“I don’t believe he gets He was a sometimes controenough credit for the living versial figure. wage ordinance,” Montaño said.

A citizens group tried but “That was huge. At that time failed to remove him and two Santa Fe was one of only three other school board members cities [including New York and from office in 1990 after they San Francisco] that had one. voted to fire Santa Fe High And in my view, it led to the School football coach Wally entire nation starting to pay Green “without explanation,” attention to how well people according to reports from the were paid.” time. Martinez had a son on the Martinez, the youngest of 10 team and, Green speculated, siblings, was born and raised personal reasons for wanting to in Santa Fe, according to an obit- get rid of him, including the fact uary published by his family. He that he was Anglo. graduated from Santa Fe High Martinez rejected accusations School and had been married to he was racially biased.

Florine Martinez for 63 years at “There’s a misconception that the time of his death. The couI’m anti-Anglo, but that’s not ple had six children and nearly a true,” he told The New Mexican dozen grandchildren. at the time. “I’m just very proMartinez owned and operated Santa Fe. In seeking people for the Quick and Easy gas station jobs, rather than always seeking for about 30 years and worked someone from the outside, I’m as a stocker and manager in the for giving it to people from grocery industry for a total of 47 Santa Fe. It seems we’re always years — including 27 at Safeway short in coming up with people and subsequent stints at Furrs from Santa Fe for supervisory and Smiths — according to a positions.” recorded interview he gave the Montaño described Martinez University of New Mexico. as upbeat, friendly and a man For about a decade in the with vision.

1990s, he served on the Santa Fe “He was very much a progresschool board, where he advosive,” Montaño said. “He wanted cated for bilingual education to do good things and things and an increase in minority that helped people. Santa Fe teachers to address low test really lost a good person.” scores among Hispanic stuMartinez’s funeral Mass was dents, saying the system was not held Tuesday at St. Anne Parish. responsive to the cultural and Mourners were asked to donate familial obligations of Hispanics. to the Interfaith Community A onetime chairman of the Shelter at Pete’s Place on CerHead Start program for Santa rillos Road in lieu of bringing Fe County and an officer in the flowers.

Continued from Page C-1

LOCAL & REGION

FUNERAL SERVICES AND MEMORIALS MARIA VALDEZ MARIA C. (GRACE) HURTADO VALDEZ, also known by close family as Chelda, age 84, a resident of Nambé, NM, passed away peacefully surrounded by family on January 2, 2024. She was born on July 9, 1939, in Santa Fe, NM to George and Pablita Tapia Hurtado who preceded her in death. Grace is also preceded in death by her husband Esquipula N. Valdez; grandsons John Anthony Valdez and Danny Ray Ortiz; greatgrandson Jordan Valdez; brother Ray Hurtado; sister Margaret Quintana; nephew Marcos Hurtado; grandparents Reymundo and Atocha Hurtado, and Jose Guadalupe and Margarita Tapia; in-laws Felipe and Ursusina Maestas Valdez; brothers-in-law Joe Saiz and Robert Ortiz; brothers and sisters-in-law Pablo and Molly Valdez, Ramon and Augustina Valdez, Felipe A. and Bernie Valdez; and many other relatives.

Grace is survived by her daughters JoAnn Lopez (Leopoldo) and Maria Valdez (Daniel Cardiel); sons Manuel G. Valdez (Elsie), George Valdez, Leroy Valdez, Chris Valdez, John Valdez, Roman Valdez (Isabelle Duran), and Joseph Phillip Valdez (Francine); sisters Susie Saiz, Bernadette Ortiz, and Irma Gonzalez (Rene); brother-in-law Dennis Quintana; aunt Maria Duran; twenty-three grandchildren; thirty-two great-grandchildren; one great-great-grandchild on the way; numerous nephews, nieces, cousins, other loving relatives, friends, and many others throughout the community who considered her their second mom.

A public visitation will be held on Monday, January 15, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. at the Sagrado Corazon de Jesus Catholic Church in Nambé, NM, with a rosary to follow at 6:00 p.m. The mass of Christian burial will be celebrated on Tuesday, January 16, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. at the Sagrado Corazon de Jesus Catholic Church, with the burial to follow at Nambé Catholic Cemetery. Serving as pallbearers for Grace will be her sons. Honorary pallbearers will be her daughters, godson Manny Saiz, and all of her grandchildren.

MABEL D. RIVERA

DECEMBER 9, 1943 - DECEMBER 26, 2023

It is with heavy hearts and tremendous sorrow that we mourn the passing of our kind, generous, beautiful, loving, caring, wise, compassionate, bold, and loved-by-so-many mother, wife, grandmother, sister, aunt, godmother, and friend, Mabel D. Rivera. As a volunteer and through her community church, Mabel served the Lord as a longtime member of the Catholic Daughters Association and also in her lifelong service as a social worker for the State of New Mexico, helping and touching as many hearts as she could in her lifetime. Her love and passion to help those in need will always be admired and never forgotten. She continues her soulful journey in the Heavenly realm with her recently deceased husband and soulmate, Juan R., as she was called back home by our Heavenly Father on December 26, 2023, after an extensive and wearisome illness. Thank you to everyone who surrounded her with love and prayers through her transition. She will be forever deeply missed.

Mabel is preceded in death by her husband Juan R. (10/18/2023), parents Florentino and Matilda M., sister Katherine C., brother Florentino Jr. M., and sister-in-law Erlinda R. (12/13/2023), Sister/Brother-In-Law Romie, and Gilbert A. Mabel is survived by her children Anna R., Estevan R., and Enrique (Alex) R.; grandchildren Sophia B., Reina R., and Elisa R.; and brothers Phillip M., Carlos M., and Joseph M.; sisters Herlinda C., Rose A., Dubie B., and Sister-in-Law Susan R.; and many nieces, nephews, and godchildren.

Services will be held Friday, January 26, 2024, at St. Anthony’s Parish in Pecos, NM, with a rosary at 10 a.m., a mass at 11 a.m., and burial immediately after at the Pecos Cemetery.

Rivera Family Funerals and Cremations 417 East Rodeo Rd. Santa Fe, NM 87505 Phone: (505) 989-7032 riverafamilyfuneralhome.com

Rivera Family Funerals and Cremations 417 East Rodeo Rd. Santa Fe, NM 87505 Phone: (505) 989-7032 riverafamilyfuneralhome.com

CAROLANE LE MCNEES Carolane Le McNees passed away peacefully in her sleep at 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, January 10th, 2024. She had fought back from serious medical issues from the past, and though we were hopeful she would recover, it was not to be. We were all so lucky to have spent any amount of our time and love with her, however long or short.

Carolane and Jim were married for 50 loving years, were the apple of each other’s eye, and had a beautiful daughter, Lecie.

Carolane received two master’s degrees: one in health education from LSU and one in preschool special education from UNM. She worked for two years for Santa Fe Public Schools, teaching preschool special education, before leaving for Espanola Hospital to be a case manager for their Developmental Disabilities Waiver Program. Carolane started one of the first four privatized case management agencies in New Mexico, Visions Case Management, on February 2nd, 1994. She served as a DDW case manager and the leader of the company until a health emergency in 2015, at which time her daughter, Lecie, took the reins. During those two decades, she was a patient and tireless advocate for her clients and for the waiver programs. It was her life’s mission to work behind the scenes and within her case management agency to ensure people with developmental or intellectual disabilities were respected and supported. While accomplishing all of this, she was above all a loving wife and mother.

Carolane was also funny as hell, in an understated way, and if you listened closely to her during staff meetings or office chatter, you would certainly catch that lingering Louisiana accent quietly dropping jokes and great commentary about life, work, family, and, of course, the various state entities she engaged with.

Carolane’s compassion and dedication will carry on through love within her family, the work of the company she created, and the many lives she impacted. Things will never be the same without her. She was a special person, and she will be missed and remembered well by all who knew her.

A memorial service is to be held at Berardinelli Funeral Home on Thursday, January 18th, 2024, at 4:00 p.m.

MIKE E. MONTOYA

October 14, 1935–December 9, 2023 Retired New Mexico State Police Lieutenant Colonel Mike E. Montoya, 88, left this earth on December 9, 2023, after a brief illness. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, January 20, 2024, at Rivera Funeral Home.

Beloved husband of Linda, his wife of 66 years whom he married in 1957, and cherished father of four children: Shellie, Mike (Mary), Marina (Lee), and Shawn; his six grandchildren and eight great grandchildren whom he loved dearly, he will be sadly missed by all who knew and loved him. He is also survived by his sister, Celine Lopez, and was preceded in death by his parents, Miguel and Odelia Montoya, and his brother, Charles Montoya.

Mike was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and was a 1955 graduate of Santa Fe High School, where he lettered in multiple sporting and other activities. He joined the New Mexico State Police Academy and graduated in 1960. He lived in various cities throughout New Mexico and was posted to several divisions throughout his 30-plus-year career. He received multiple honors for his outstanding police work.

He was a dedicated officer who served with distinction until his retirement in 1992.

We invite all to join us in a celebration of life and final resting place on Saturday, January 20, 2024, at Rivera Funeral Home at 1:00 p.m.

Details will also be on riverafamilyfuneralhome.com Rivera Family Funerals and Cremations 417 East Rodeo Rd. Santa Fe, NM 87505 Phone: (505) 989-7032 riverafamilyfuneralhome.com

MARIA ELENA (MEG/MARY) MARTINEZ January 19, 1944 - December 31, 2023 Santa Fe - Our beloved Maria Elena (Meg/Mary) Martinez, 79, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, passed away peacefully in her sleep on Sunday, December 31, 2023.

She was born on January 19, 1944, in Rowe, New Mexico, and is preceded in death by her parents, Doroteo and Conferina Garcia, her brothers Jose Inez Garcia, Doroteo Garcia II, Anastacio Garcia, Jimmy Garcia, and her sister Rita Morelos.

Maria Elena is survived by her husband of 56 years, Jerry Martinez; her children, Sarah Martinez (Mark), Dorothy Martinez, Jerome Martinez, and Marsha Martinez (Michael); and her grandchildren, Eva Stenberg, Wesley Stenberg, and Sam Pirigyi, whom she adored. She is also survived by her brothers, Roque Garcia (Mona), Charlie Garcia, Tommy Garcia (Roberta), Gerald Garcia, and sisters, Margie Martinez (Gilbert), Pauline Garcia, and many beloved nieces, nephews, cousins, and extended family.

She graduated from Loretto Academy in 1961 and worked for the National Park Service and then for the Bureau of Land Management for many years, retiring officially in 1992. She then worked with her husband, Jerry, at their business, Professional Bookkeeping Service, until they both retired in 2018.

Maria Elena was the fifth in line of 12 children and the first girl. A consummate matriarch, she nurtured and cared deeply for all her family and friends, especially babies and children. Her tenderness and generosity also extended to those she didn’t know, and she deeply cared for the unseen and for all that needed love. She will be forever remembered for her immeasurable kindness, grace, and compassion. She touched the hearts and lives of everyone she met.

She will be greatly missed.

A rosary will be held on Monday, January 15, at 6 p.m. at Berardinelli Mortuary. The funeral mass will be held on Tuesday, January 16, at 11:30 a.m. at Cristo Rey Catholic Church, with the burial immediately following at Rosario Cemetery.

LISA MICHELLE MURPHY Lisa Michelle Murphy, age 62, lost her battle with cancer on January 6th, 2024, at her home in Santa Fe. She was born on January 27, 1961, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and spent much of her youth in Utah and Montana.

She was preceded in death by her father, Ronald Allen, and her half-brother, Jay Allen McCoy. Lisa is survived by her mother, Carolyn Taylor; her husband, Peter Murphy; her children, Brooke Roberts, Tyler Roberts, and Lauren Roberts; her grandchildren, Miles Swanson, Avery Roberts, and Austin Roberts; her siblings, Mitch Allen, Mary Allen Fetcinko, and Ron Allen; as well as her aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews.

Lisa earned her bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University and was an accomplished business owner and esthetician who established Santa Fe Lash and Beauty Bar, a company that won numerous Best of Santa Fe awards.

She was a kind, warm, and giving person who was loved by many, including her co-workers and clients. A Celebration of Life reception for Lisa will be held Friday, February 9, 2024, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM at the McGee Memorial Chapel, 1320 Luisa St., Santa Fe, NM.

JACQUITA JONES

APRIL 21, 1931 - JANUARY 5, 2024

appreciated.

Santa Fe - Jacquita passed away of natural causes at the age of 92 early in the new year. She was a long-time resident of Santa Fe (70+ years) and always lived in the same home. She lived the life she always wanted alongside her many rescue animals. She donated a good percentage of her income to animal charities in all categories.

She is survived by her children and grandchildren. If inclined, donations to animal rescue organizations would be

Celebrate the memory of your loved one with a memorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Please Call

986-3000

LOCAL & REGION

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

C-3

Study on how body cams affect officers which does not currently exist, he added. transparency in police departLaw enforcement officers ments, but the researchers in New Mexico have been designed the study to examine required to wear body cameras body cameras as part of another since lawmakers in 2020 trend: the use of technology approved a bill making them for monitoring and surveilling mandatory. work performance.

The Santa Fe Police DepartThe researchers believe the ment, which has used body study will yield insights into cameras for years, purchased how people react to employee new cameras — along with elecmonitoring technologies, such tronic weapons and virtual realas productivity tracking softity headsets — in October 2021. ware, the use of which is on the A $5.5 million contract with rise for those in low-wage jobs. Arizona-based Axon covered The UNM study, which the cameras, video storage and began in August, involves evidence management software, interviews, focus groups and along with other technological surveys of 60 law enforcement add-ons, for five years. agencies in 25 states over Ravid has embarked on about three years. The project research into other types of is receiving funding from the “organizational performance National Science Foundation, monitoring,” he said, such as an arm of the federal governprograms and technologies ment that administers public that track workers at Amazon dollars for research. warehouses or surveil office The research team is collect- workers’ browsers while they ing data on officers’ reactions to work from home. body camera use and policing Understanding police offibehaviors, and feedback from cers’ feelings about their body residents in their communities. cameras is “not that different In preparatory interviews from trying to understand and focus groups, many officers how a cashier in a supermarexpressed strong support for ket might respond to being the rising use of body cameras, recorded as they interact with Ravid said, because they feel a customer,” Ravid said. “These safer while wearing them or psychological concepts of being can collect evidence more watched and being recorded easily. Others have said the can help inform how we study cameras are not used effechow body-worn cameras are tively in their agency or they being used with officers.” feel the cameras cause them to Ravid has performed a be micromanaged, he said. meta-analysis of the results The goal of the study is to of about 100 “performance understand which circummonitoring” studies and found stances around body-worn — surprisingly, he said — no cameras correlate with “posicompelling evidence overall tive” outcomes, such as more that surveilling employees community policing and more made them more productive. proactive policing, Ravid said.

Workers often found ways to He believes the study could dodge monitoring technologies. have an effect on law enforceA remote worker might check ment policies and procedures. their social media accounts “If we give police orgaon their phone, for instance, nizations data that says, for to evade detection by a web example, drawing input on how browser tracker software, he said. cameras should be used seems “You really need to take a to be associated with more sup- nuanced perspective to perforport from officers — something mance monitoring technologies,” as small as that could be imple- Ravid said, “and that’s what we’re mented and could possibly lead trying to do here with this police to more effective use of body study is look at the individual difcameras,” Ravid said. ferences, how these technologies The study will produce a are being used and find out when robust and “unique” dataset on they’re going to be beneficial and officers’ reactions to the use of when they might actually harm body cameras in their agencies, performance.”

Continued from Page C-1

LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN

Amanda Lujan, granddaughter of Ernesto and Carolina Lujan, presents their great-granddaughter Tsireya Obeso-Lujan to the couple Saturday as they celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary at Sacred Heart Church in Nambé. “There have been sadnesses in the family. Nothing is easy, but our life has been full of, actually, a lot of laughter,” Carolina said.

Hard work and ‘a lot of love’

Carolina and Ernesto cut their wedding cake on the day they were married in 1949.

COURTESY CAROLINA AND ERNESTO LUJAN

Continued from Page C-1

some book reports, as the cuento, or story, goes — or because he needed money, he said.

The country was just emerging from the Great Depression, and everyone was poor, the family recalled.

Ernesto became a laborer, working on highway construction, at one point helping the community rebuild Sacred Heart church after a fire and then going on to join the U.S. Army at age 17, lying about his age to enlist.

When he returned from serving in Japan after World War II, “he was popular; he was handsome. What can I say?” Carolina said about her change of heart toward him. “The rest is history.”

The couple soon married on Jan. 15, 1949 — despite a schoolteacher’s comment to Carolina’s family that if she married Ernesto, she would likely die of starvation or in an automobile accident.

“The story was that he was so poor, he’d never be able to support her,” their oldest son Alfredo Luján said, as the family chuckled about the memory during an interview. (“Was he a bad driver or what?” Luján asked his mother.

“You know his driving habits!” she responded.)

Seventy-five years ago, the marriage “just sort of happened,” Carolina said, adding she “really didn’t realize why” at the time.

“Years later, I look back, and we have very similar likes and dislikes,” she said.

The couple loved music and jitterbug dancing. Ernesto even used to do the splits as he spun his wife around, Alfredo Luján said.

Perhaps most importantly, having grown up in large families in the rural community of Nambé, where everybody called everybody aunt, uncle and cousin, both elder Lujans deeply valued family.

Carolina’s most cherished memories are the birth and childhood of the couple’s two sons and daughter.

“At that time, I thought [our life] was very hard, but I’m looking back and those were the good days, very good days,” she said.

His parents were very

involved, Alfredo Luján said.

“If [we] kids had a baseball game or a basketball game or dance recital or anything, they never missed it. I mean, ever,” he said.

His mother led a Girl Scout troop, while his father, despite knowing nothing about baseball, organized and coached a youth baseball team. The couple also encouraged their kids through school to the point that, though the family owned almost no books, Alfredo wound up pursuing two graduate degrees in

New council eyes tackling city’s ‘scarlet letter’ Continued from Page C-1

something that respects their culture,” then maybe the city can find a solution.

Castro resigned from the Santa Fe Arts Commission over last year’s resolution, which would have reconstructed the obelisk in an updated form. She thinks the obelisk should be removed to clear the Plaza as a space where people can dance and view the outdoor stage without obstruction.

Following the obelisk’s toppling, the city paid $254,000 to the Albuquerque-based group Artful Life for a yearlong process of gathering feedback about what to do moving forward. The results of that process, known as the CHART report — for culture, history, art, reconciliation and truth — were published in 2022 but have mostly not been acted on.

Castro said the CHART process was “a failure” at getting the city to move forward onto a collective path, and the city needs to either redo the process or remove the obelisk and honor veterans in another way. She is concerned the lessons from last year’s failed resolution will not be heeded.

“I think there’s going to be an attempt to create legislation in a void again and that is why it’s really important that I’m at the table to bring different opinions and perspectives but also to let the community know what’s happening day to day with the process,” she said.

Last year’s resolution, which differed from the recommendations in the CHART report, was dubbed a compromise by the sponsors but was widely rejected by the public.

Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth, one of the resolution sponsors, also said it’s time to do something with the obelisk.

“I’d be curious to see if the community would be supportive of moving the whole thing to the [Santa Fe] National Cemetery,” she said, where Civil War soldiers and other veterans are buried.

In a recent interview, Garcia said he plans to introduce a resolution for a structural engineering study of the Soldiers’ Monument, which he thinks is needed to determine the scope of the city’s options.

“I would hate for any proposals to fail because [the] monument isn’t structurally sound,” he said.

He said he also wants a clear answer on which entity the obelisk belongs to because different people have told him it is city, state or federal property.

The city is currently involved in a lawsuit regarding the monument, filed by Union Protectiva de Santa Fe, that will cost the city upwards of $300,000.

Billed as the city’s oldest Spanish fraternal organization, Union Protectiva sued Mayor Alan Webber in 2022, accusing him of violating state historic preservation rules for calling for the obe-

English and becoming a teacher.

“That’s one of the things that’s remarkable to me,” he said.

“That’s the kind of support and commitment they had to their family.”

Decades later, Ernesto obtained his GED in a class taught by his son at what is now Northern New Mexico College.

Meanwhile, both parents eventually secured jobs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where Ernesto advanced from delivering mail within the lab to becoming a mechanical technician.

Carolina started as a print shop operator and moved through several secretarial roles up to a position as a lab technician.

The couple retired early enough to enjoy their retirement.

But the early years of their marriage were difficult, they said.

About a week after they married — though Ernesto’s parents, who were subsistence farmers, had invited the young couple to live with them — Carolina “had the nerve” to go clean out a small adobe building with a dirt floor that her mother-in-law used for storage, she remembered. She walked to the grocery store to buy — on credit, since she did not have 68 cents — a container of calamine powder, painted the storage area and set down wooden crates to use as tables and chairs.

“Then I put on a pot of beans to cook so when Ernesto came home from work, I had dinner ready for him,” she said. “I can’t believe I did that, but I did.

“People were poor financially, but they learned to work hard and there was a lot of love in [our] families,” she continued.

“There have been sadnesses in the family. Nothing is easy, but our life has been full of, actually, a lot of laughter.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

A body camera on the uniform of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy at department headquarters in Monterey Park, Calif. More than half of all local and state agencies and more than 80% of large agencies throughout the nation have adopted body-worn cameras and accompanying technology.

TAKEAWAYS ◆ Santa Fe city councilors say they are once again ready to address the issue of what to do with the Soldiers’ Monument, which has been boxed up since it was partially toppled on Indigenous People’s Day in 2020. ◆ The city is in ongoing litigation with the Union Protectíva de Santa Fé regarding the obelisk which is anticipated to cost the city over $300,000. A trial date is set for December following an unsuccessful mediation process. ◆ A statue of two runners who played a key role in the Pueblo Revolt that was gifted to the city by the Pueblo of Tesuque in 2018 has also yet to be displayed publicly.

lisk’s removal several months before it was toppled in 2020. The parties were in court-ordered mediation in the fall but failed to reach a resolution and are now preparing to go to trial.

“The city didn’t want to budge, so it was useless,” said Union Protectiva President Virgil Vigil.

Vigil said Webber will be deposed for the lawsuit in February, and city councilors may be as well. Both sides are currently engaged in the evidence discovery process.

In December, the council unanimously voted to increase compensation for the law firm representing the city by $40,000, to about $324,000. City Attorney Erin McSherry said the money is expected to be enough to last the city through the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

“If we can do it on less than that amount, that would be excellent,” she said.

At the time of the vote, McSherry said money remained on the contract, but she said didn’t want to have to continually come back to the council for more money.

The city is trying to finish discovery by the end of March, she said. There is a pretrial deadline in May and a trial date set for December.

The city is being represented by the

Modrall Sperling Law Firm, which has offices in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

McSherry said the city selected the firm because it has handled many other cases regarding cultural property disputes.

“It’s nice to work with folks who have a lot of expertise,” she said.

Vigil was harshly critical of Webber, whom he described as “anti-Hispanic.”

“We are prepared to spend whatever it takes to be sure that our history, culture and traditions are not changed as the mayor wants to do,” he said of the lawsuit. “We will fight the mayor to the bitter end, and if we lose, then we’ll appeal it. It’s not going to end if we lose.”

Other statue issues in the city are in a holding pattern. No further information has been released regarding the partial destruction of the Kit Carson obelisk outside the federal courthouse in Santa Fe in August.

“At this time, no one has been charged,” said Tessa DuBerry, a representative for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albuquerque.

A statue of two runners who played a key role in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, given to the city by Tesuque Pueblo in 2018, also has yet to be publicly displayed more than five years later.

The statue was created by Pojoaque Pueblo artist George Rivera and depicts Catua and Omtua, young men from Tesuque Pueblo who set out on foot to notify other tribes of a planned uprising against Spanish colonizers before being captured and killed by the Spanish.

A City Council resolution called for it to be placed in a courtyard between City Hall and the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. However, in 2020, plans to display the statue were put on hold, first by the coronavirus pandemic and then by nationwide reckonings over statues of controversial historical figures, including the toppling of the Soldiers’ Monument in Santa Fe. Last fall, Webber said he would like the statue of the runners and a statue of Don Diego de Vargas — which was removed from Cathedral Park in 2020 and put in storage — to both be displayed ”in a safe place” somewhere in the city where people can learn about them in context.

Vigil said he wants the de Vargas statue to be put back in its original location and for the runners to be displayed somewhere across the street to tell both sides of the story.

“We can be all-inclusive,” he said.

In December, Webber said the city is “at the level of conceptual conversations” regarding where to put the runners statue but he couldn’t share any more.

Rivera said he has had some conversations with the city about the statue, noting it has gone through “some tumultuous years.”

“It’s a beautiful piece,” he said. “It’s ready to be installed wherever the city decides to put it.”

C-4

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

LOCAL & REGION

Sunday, January 14, 2024

EPA rolls out ‘methane fee’ rules Taos area animal

control swamped as ’24 in full swing

Excess ‘super pollutant’ generated during oil, gas production would cost firms $900 per ton

Shelter did not renew contracts, leaving no place to take strays

By Matthew Daly

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Oil and natural gas companies for the first time would have to pay a fee for methane emissions that exceed certain levels under a rule proposed Friday by the Biden administration.

The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule follows through on a directive from Congress included in the 2022 climate law. The new fee is intended to encourage industry to adopt best practices that reduce emissions of methane and thereby avoid paying.

Methane is a climate “super pollutant” that is more potent in the short term than carbon dioxide and is responsible for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. The oil and natural gas sector is the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the United States, and advocates say reduction of methane emissions is an important way to slow climate change.

Excess methane produced this year would result in a fee of $900 per ton, with fees rising to $1,500 per ton by 2026.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the proposed fee would work in tandem with a final rule on methane emissions EPA announced last month.

The fee, formally known as the Methane Emissions Reduction Program, will encourage early deployment of available technologies to reduce methane emissions and other harmful air pollutants before the new standards take effect, he said.

The rule announced in December includes a two-year phase-in period for companies to eliminate routine flaring of natural gas from new oil wells.

“EPA is delivering on a comprehensive strategy to reduce wasteful methane emissions that endanger communities and fuel the climate crisis,” Regan said in a statement. When finalized later this year, the proposed methane fee will set technology standards that will “incentivize industry innovation’’ and spur action to reduce pollution, he said.

By Liam Easley The Taos News

ABOVE: A flare burns natural gas in 2021 at an oil well in Watford City, N.D. Oil and natural gas companies would have to pay a fee for methane emissions that exceed certain levels under a new rule proposed by the Biden administration.

MATTHEW BROWN ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

LEFT: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan last year in Washington.

Regan said the fee would work in tandem with a final rule announced last month.

MARK SCHIEFELBEIN ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

Leading oil and gas companies already meet or exceed performance levels set by Congress under the climate law, meaning they will not have to pay the proposed fee, Regan and other officials said.

Sen. Tom Carper, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said he was pleased the administration was moving forward with the methane fee as directed by Congress.

“We know methane is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere in the short term,’’ said Carper, D-Del. He said the program “will incentivize producers to cut wasteful and excessive methane emissions during oil and gas production.”

New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the

House Energy and Commerce Committee, said oil and gas companies have long calculated that it’s cheaper to waste methane through flaring and other techniques than to make necessary upgrades to prevent leaks.

“Wasted methane never makes its way to consumers, but they are nevertheless stuck with the bill,” Pallone said. The proposed methane fee “will ensure consumers no longer pay for wasted energy or the harm its emissions can cause.’’

Republicans call the methane fee a tax that could raise the price of natural gas. “This proposal means increased costs for employers and higher energy bills for millions of Americans,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas indus-

try’s largest lobbying group, slammed the proposal Friday and called for Congress to repeal it.

“As the world looks to U.S. energy producers to provide stability in an increasingly unstable world, this punitive tax increase is a serious misstep that undermines America’s energy advantage,’’ said Dustin Meyer, API’s senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs.

While the group supports “smart” federal methane regulation, the EPA proposal “creates an incoherent, confusing regulatory regime that will only stifle innovation and undermine our ability to meet rising energy demand,’’ Meyer said. “We look forward to working with Congress to repeal the EPA’s misguided new tax on American energy.”

TAOS — When Stray Hearts Animal Shelter, Taos County’s only animal shelter, didn’t renew its government contracts last year, animal control officers for the town and county were left with no place to take strays.

They say the stray pet population has continued to grow in the new year.

“You have to triage everything,” Taos police Chief John Wentz said. “You have a stray out there running around — it’s not an aggressive dog; it’s not chasing people. ... But there’s no place to take that animal because that dog’s not a danger to a human being.

“Sometimes you just have to let that dog walk because if you catch it, then what are you gonna do with it?” he added.

County animal welfare deputies — as they’re now called — also have stayed busy with a new list of responsibilities.

Taos County Sheriff Steve Miera said his animal control officers have been deputized, meaning they have become more autonomous and rely less on other deputies to assist with animal cruelty investigations.

The shift away from trapping animals and depositing them at a shelter has enabled the officers to realign their focus. Instead of trapping, they can now enforce animal code and law, meaning they can also investigate and bring charges against people engaged in animal abuse or neglect. Miera said this cuts down on the time and resources spent on a single animal welfare call.

According to the sheriff’s office, in 2023, it responded to 548 reports of stray animals and 70 animal bites.

Like the town, county deputies no longer trap stray animals because they have no place to bring them; in urgent cases, the county maintains a limit-

ed-capacity emergency shelter where animals can be housed temporarily.

If an animal is hurt, Miera said, the deputies render aid.

The county is building relationships with facilities outside the county to take in strays, he added.

The sheriff’s office held spay and neuter events in the summer and fall. Miera will be resuming these events in the spring.

Stray Hearts is also planning a three-day event in March, offering 200 spay and neuter surgeries at no charge.

Meanwhile, community members have been tracking stray animals using Facebook groups to call attention to the issue.

Joanna Magee began compiling statistics of strays from other animal welfare groups to better understand the scope of the issue in Taos County. The Facebook posts she sources usually include the breed, sex and location of an animal found, along with a photo.

She also tracks whether an animal is alive, dead or injured.

According to her latest statistics published Jan. 9, community members have found 215 animals since Nov. 15, when the data started being collected. This includes deceased animals.

Her charts indicate 86% of animals are found alive, 7.8% are found injured and 6.2% are found deceased. According to her numbers, only about 60 of these animals are still roaming.

“This is a significant underestimation of the free-roaming animals that are out there,” Magee said.

She sees the results of her work as a call to action.

Magee has been encouraging as many people as she can to report stray animals to Taos County Central Dispatch, so they can be officially documented.

“The biggest use of the data is related to keeping the issue front and center for the community and for our elected officials,” Magee said. “We need to hear from our elected officials. That’s the goal of this.”

This story first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.

Taos High graduate, Amid assurances, power grid is about to be tested star athlete dies in single-vehicle crash TE X A S

By J. David Goodman The New York Times

HOUSTON — Like many Texans, Jarrett Milton has been getting ready for the blast of freezing weather expected in the coming days. The owner of two food trucks near downtown Houston, Milton has coats for his workers and a stock of propane, extra firewood and lots of food.

“You got a storm coming? Oh, let me go buy the place out,” he said. “Because unfortunately, in Texas, you just have to be prepared for the worst.”

Memories of the worst are still fresh in Texas: The punishing winter weather of February 2021 caused a spectacular failure of the electricity grid, leading to the deaths of more than 240 people, some frozen in their own beds.

Since then, officials and lawmakers in Austin have tried to improve the reliability of the grid, making operational changes and passing laws to prevent a similarly devastating failure of crucial infrastructure during the cold.

Electric power plants have been better winterized. They are required to have backup fuel supplies. The state has conducted hundreds of inspections. And officials have taken steps to ensure that natural gas infrastructure receives power even during periods of rolling blackouts to keep fuel flowing to gas-powered electricity plants.

“We feel very good about the status of the Texas power grid,” Gov. Greg Abbott said during a news conference Friday.

TAMIR KALIFA/NEW YORK TIMES FILE PHOTO

Workers repair a utility pole in 2021 after the winter storm in Austin, Texas. State officials took steps to improve the grid after a disastrous failure in 2021. Demand for power this week is expected to break wintertime records.

Abbott said the mornings of Tuesday and Wednesday were likely to pose the biggest challenges to the grid but added that the state’s power generators have “never been as prepared for a winter event as they are today.”

At the same time, the state has added new residents and businesses, creating new strains on the grid. Demand for electricity reached and then surpassed previous records several times over the summer. And Texans collectively are expected to use more electricity during the coming cold snap than during the previous winter peak, reached during the last “hard freeze” in December 2022.

“It will probably shatter the wintertime demand,” said Daniel Cohan, a professor of civil and

environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston. “But if ERCOT’s forecasts hold true, the lights should stay on,” he added, referring to the operator of the state’s grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

Since 2021, the state has seen a vast expansion in the amount of solar power on the grid, on top of a vast amount of wind energy. But the amount of power from natural gas plants has not significantly increased despite efforts by the state to incentivize new production.

That means that when extreme weather hits, there remain times of vulnerability for the grid. In the summer, those times are often after sundown, when air conditioners are humming but solar energy sharply

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declines and overnight winds are still picking up.

In the winter, the most vulnerable times are early daylight hours: The air is cold and people wake up and start using more electricity, but the sun has only just come up and the wind has begun dying down.

A forecast by ERCOT found that if temperatures in January get as cold as they did in December 2022, there would be a roughly 1 in 6 chance of rolling blackouts during the mornings around 8 a.m. [For most of the rest of the day, the chances fall to about zero.] ERCOT did not forecast grid performance under even colder conditions like those in February 2021, when temperatures plummeted and stayed below freezing for days, hitting below zero in places including Dallas and Abilene.

“Texas has done a lot, but there’s still more to do,” said Becky Klein, an Austin energy consultant and former chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which oversees the grid operator. For example, the state is still working on standards for its energy market that would ensure greater reliability, she said, and an effort to provide loans and grants for new natural gas plants, approved last year, has just begun.

Experts said the coming cold would not last as long as the freeze of 2021 but could resemble the conditions in 2022, known as Winter Storm Elliot.

Snow and ice were not expected to widely affect the state this week, officials said.

By Liam Easley The Taos News

TAOS — Speed, inattention to road conditions and a lack of a seat belt were factors in a fatal crash that killed a 26-year-old Taos woman earlier this month on Blueberry Hill Road, investigators said.

Dawn Penso, a former Taos High School track athlete and star soccer player, was driving a gray Nissan sedan southbound on Jan. 4 when she failed to negotiate a righthand curve, causing her vehicle to skid across the roadway and strike a fence and gate post, Taos County Undersheriff Jerry Hogrefe said in a news release. Her vehicle rolled in the collision, causing her to be ejected.

Taos County Emergency Services medics responded to the scene and transported Penso to Holy Cross Medical Center, where she later died from her injuries, Hogrefe said in the news release.

In 2012, while still at Taos High, Penso became the first Taoseña to land a spot on the Region IV Olympic Development Team, which allows soccer players in the Southwest to play at a more competitive level. She was just one of two New Mexico players her age to receive the honor that year.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Penso was also a member

of the National Honors Society and science club at Taos High, where she participated in the Café SciDawn Penso entifique, a program that immerses students in the sciences. She worked as a tutor and was a member of the Taos art club. She eventually earned a $10,000 John and Marti Browne Endowed Leadership Scholarship from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a prestigious recognition of leadership and academic prowess.

She graduated from Taos High in 2015, then attended Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., where she studied art history and played on the NCAA Division 3 team, which won the national championship in 2015 and 2017.

According to her LinkedIn profile, after returning to Taos two years ago, Penso had worked as a freelance writer in Northern New Mexico, covering local art and events for Southwest Contemporary, a Santa Fe-based arts and entertainment magazine.

This story first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.

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LOCAL & REGION

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

C-5

Taos man joins medical training missions to Ukraine I have experience deploying basic life “ support skills, so my goal was to go there and

By John Miller

The Taos News

TAOS — Before embarking on two medical training trips to Ukraine this fall, David Elliot could barely speak the native language. He could say “hello” and “goodbye.” He could order coffee.

What he found when he arrived on his first trip to the embattled Eastern European nation last fall, however, was that many of the local nurses, doctors and firefighters he worked with in Ukraine not only spoke English but also knew the wordless language of resilience, the unruffled professionalism common to the first responders he works with stateside, even under the ongoing threat of war.

Before traveling to Ukraine, Elliot spent several years building a career as an emergency services professional in Northern New Mexico. He’s held many roles — as a firefighter and fire chief in Taos County and as an emergency manager for Santa Fe County.

During the pandemic, he and other local leaders formed a disaster response organization to help gather medical supplies for Taos County. He runs his own business, Resilience Emergency Management, and still works as the emergency response coordinator for Holy Cross Medical Center in Taos.

As the pandemic waned this year, Elliot was looking to take time off, but his hiatus was short-lived. In early fall, 2022 Taos News Unsung Hero Merril Tydings approached him about the opportunity to take his skills overseas; Tydings introduced Elliot to MedGlobal, a humanitarian nongovernmental organization that provides emergency response and health programs for disaster-affected areas.

Elliot was accepted as a volunteer and flew out of Santa Fe in September

teach ‘stop the bleed.’ ” David Elliot

COURTESY PHOTO

David Elliot, standing, at a training for Ukrainian firefighters in Chernihiv. Before traveling to Ukraine, Elliot spent several years building a career as an emergency services professional. He’s held many roles — as a firefighter and fire chief in Taos County and as an emergency manager for Santa Fe County.

— traveling from Santa Fe to Germany, and from Germany to Warsaw, Poland, where he took a car through border checkpoints to Rivne, a western Ukrainian city once home to about a quarter-million people. There, he met two critical care nurses who had also traveled from the United States: Alicia Bean from Illinois and Joelle Stack, a flight nurse from Arizona.

For the next two weeks, they taught Ukrainian doctors at Rivne City Hospital the American Heart Association standards for advanced cardiac life support and pediatric life support. As Elliot put it, they were there to teach young medical professionals “how you resuscitate someone who’s really trying to die.”

As an intermediate EMT accompa-

nied by nurses with greater experience, Elliot said he was there to learn, as well as to teach.

“I have experience deploying basic life support skills, so my goal was to go there and teach ‘stop the bleed’ — so tourniquets and blast bandages and stuff like that,’ ” he said. “And also teach the CPR part and then support logistics and help them teach the much more complicated stuff. I could help with skills, and I could help with certain stations, but they’re really the subject matter experts on those higher-level skills, the same way a doctor would be about doctor-level skills.”

Elliot said the two American nurses also took the lead to impart another distinguishing aspect of emergency

medicine in the United States — not waiting for a doctor to arrive to begin lifesaving efforts.

“It was important to us that the nurses were doing the teaching because in Ukraine doctors are really the leaders of medical response,” he said, “whereas in the United States, nurses have a lot more autonomy to be able to deploy some of those skills. So it was cool for them to see some really smart women teaching leaders there.”

Being far from the eastern and southeastern front of Ukraine’s ongoing fight with Russia, the threat of the war itself was mostly limited to air attacks aimed at critical infrastructure — drone strikes and, less frequently, missiles — of which Elliot said they were reminded daily by air raid sirens that would go off day and night, as well as the rubble that drew a stark contrast to those palatial Rivne city buildings that had survived the early part of the war.

For the young Ukrainian doctors they trained, however, Elliot said the military draft was their most immediate concern. While there are narrower draft requirements in place for Ukrainian women, they, too, can be forced into military service, and they can be drafted as soldiers if they have not yet completed their medical training.

“In the pictures I have from over there, you can see these young medical students really paying attention, but every single one is taking notes,” Elliot recalled. “Every single student is asking follow-up questions. Because this isn’t a hypothetical skillset — there was a 100%

chance in their minds they were going to have to use some of these skills.”

Elliot emphasized that the atmosphere wasn’t fearful, however. Rather, he said local medical teams and trainees were at once highly committed to their work and also jovial.

Ukrainians expressed no doubt about living out their lives in their mother country and accepted the risks of raising children there.

When Elliot returned on a second trip with MedGlobal a month later to teach chemical warfare response training to medical students in Kyiv and firefighter training in Chernihiv, he began to understand the complexity of Ukrainian optimism.

“There’s two things I noticed there: There’s the outward appearance people have that everything’s normal, and ‘It’s been almost two years, so we have to live,’ especially young people; but behind all of that exterior is so much pain, where every single person you meet can tell you a story about someone who’s died or someone who’s hurt or having served.”

After classes ended, he said, young students didn’t go to the local bar; they wanted to show their visitors national monuments and sites of recent battles around the cities. Elliot said the sense of unity and national pride was palpable.

Elliot said although he remains committed to emergency services work in New Mexico, he plans to continue to seek opportunities to teach — and learn — as the need for humanitarian work grows overseas.

Avalanche risk is up; here’s what you should know

By Rebecca Boone

The Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho — As a massive winter storm dumped snow across much of the western U.S., some hardy winter sport enthusiasts headed to ski resorts and backcountry slopes despite frigid temperatures during the long Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.

But in many areas, the storm brought a high risk of avalanche conditions along with the wind and snow, with fatal results.

In northern Idaho, two men were rescued after they were caught in an avalanche Thursday afternoon, while the body of a third man in their backcountry skiing group was located Friday.

On Thursday, the occupants of two vehicles escaped without injury after an avalanche buried their cars in another part of the state.

The first reported U.S. avalanche death of the season happened Wednesday in California, on a section of expert trails at the Palisades Tahoe ski resort near Lake Tahoe. Four people were trapped and one was killed in that slide. A second avalanche struck the same area the following day, with no reported casualties.

Here’s a look at why, when and how avalanches occur, and some tips on how to stay safe from slides:

Why do avalanches occur?

It generally takes just two ingredients to create avalanche conditions: A slope of 30 degrees or more, and layers of snow.

“Avalanches are really tied into having layers within the snowpack, and those layers are caused by weather conditions,” said Ben Bernall, an avalanche forecaster with the U.S. Forest Service Panhandle Avalanche Center. “It’s kind of like a cake: You might have a nice thick layer that’s good and cohesive, and then a thinner layer of frosting.

Then put another cake on top of that, and throw in the factor of a slope angle or steep terrain.”

Judge rejects suit Continued from Page C-1

after the Civil War and used several times to prevent ex-Confederates from taking office.

Castro contends Trump violated these provisions when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020, making him unfit to be a presidential candidate.

“The only remaining question is whether the federal judiciary has the courage to do the right thing,” Castro says in his suit.

The Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state have decided to keep Trump off the primary ballot in those states, although this is being challenged in court.

Extra pressure on top of that snowpack “cake,” from wind, rain, heavy snow or motion can cause some of the layers to shear off and slide down the slope, Bernall said.

Sometimes that slide happens in the form of loose snow, called a “sluff.” Sluffs account for only a small percentage of deaths and property damage from avalanches, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center.

But many avalanches are made up of slabs, where a large layer of snow breaks away and slides down the mountainside. Those account for most fatalities.

Another kind of avalanche occurs when wind creates a cornice of snow that hangs over a ridge or the edge of a steep slope. An overhanging mass of snow can fall suddenly, catching anyone standing underneath or on top of the cornice by surprise, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

How are they triggered?

Movement, rapidly changing weather, wind — any one of these things can cause an avalanche.

But experts say 90% of the avalanches that cause injuries or deaths are triggered by the victim or someone with them.

That means that people who

ski, snowmobile, snowshoe or enjoy other activities in the snowy backcountry should check the avalanche forecast before they head out, and make sure they have the right safety gear.

Most ski resorts have avalanche protocols or mitigation systems. Often that means checking snowpack stability. Avalanche experts and ski resorts also sometimes use remote detonations to trigger slides manually, removing the riskier layers of snow, before skiers are allowed on the slopes.

Avalanches are triggered by loud noises, generally. Despite what cartoons and movies might have you believe, the sound waves created by someone yelling aren’t enough to trigger an avalanche, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center.

In particularly unstable snow conditions, however, an extremely loud noise, such as from a nearby explosion, could do the trick.

Are avalanches common?

An average of about 28 people die in avalanches every year in the U.S., according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Last winter, 30 people died in avalanches in the United States.

They all were skiers, snowboarders, snowmobilers, snowshoers, climbers or hikers.

Last February, three members of a mountain climbing club from New York perished in an avalanche on a remote peak in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state.

Three climbers in Alaska’s Denali National Park died in May in two incidents on the same day.

One triggered an avalanche while skiing in the park’s backcountry.

Two others were swept away as they prepared to climb a peak known as Moose’s Tooth. Their bodies were never found.

SEVENTH RAY SKIN CARE

Where do they occur?

The vast majority of avalanche deaths occur in the wilderness.

They’re rare at ski resorts where crews manage the slopes and trigger smaller slides on purpose when no one is around.

“In the last 10 years, there have been 244 people killed in avalanches in the U.S. and only 3% of those were in open, operating areas of ski resorts,” said Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

But he said it’s impossible to eliminate them.

“We are dealing with Mother Nature. We are dealing with a natural hazard in very complex systems in mountain environments. We can’t remove the risk completely.”

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AANNOUNCEMENTS O C

Featured announcements in and around Santa Fe

HELP YOUR NEIGHBORS BY BECOMING AN ESL OR LITERACY TUTOR. Literacy Volunteers of Santa Fe’s 10-

hour trainings prepare volunteers to tutor adults in either English as a Second Language (ESL) or Basic Literacy (BL).

The ESL new tutor orientation will be held online on Thursday, February 8th from 4 to 6 p.m., and the in-person training will be on Friday & Saturday, February 9th and 10th from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at SFCC. The BL orientation will be held in person on Thursday, February 29th from 4 to 6 p.m., and the inperson training will be on Saturday, March 2nd from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at SFCC. A registration meeting and 2-hour follow-up workshop are also included. For more information, please call 505-428-1353 or visit www.lvsf.org to complete an application. No experience or second language necessary!

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THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

Sunday, January 14, 2024

© 2024 by Vicki Whiting, Editor Jeff Schinkel, Graphics Vol. 40, No. 7

Take a look at this list of MLK, Jr. Day Service ideas.

Then look at each picture. Number the project you think each kid chose in the circles.

1. Clearing an elderly neighbor’s sidewalk.

3. Help coach a younger child’s team.

2. Collecting canned goods for a food bank.

5. Play a game at the senior center.

Your family volunteered to help sweep around your school, but you’ll need the key to the supply closet. Can you get to it faster than a family member?

4. Help a neighbor with some yardwork.

ervice was at the heart of Martin Luther King’s philosophy. He urged Americans to take action to improve the lives of others.

In 1994, Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act to support efforts to make the King holiday a day of service. Since then, millions of Americans have honored the memory of Dr. King by making Martin Luther King Day as a “day on” instead of a “day off.”

People across the nation spend Martin Luther King Day volunteering to make their communities better places. Some will plant community gardens, clean up parks or beaches, and others will read to children or the elderly.

School Sign Painter Write in the missing vowels to complete these signs.

any communities have a place that helps volunteers find ways to help others. Write the letter that comes after each letter of the alphabet on the spaces at right to find a place you can call to see how you can be of service to your community.

Service Starts at Home

Sometimes the best place to be of service is in your own home. Make a list of five things you could do on Martin Luther King Day to help your mom, dad, a grandparent, brother, sister or neighbor.

Look through the newspaper to find: An organization that helps others A person helping others Adjectives about helping Martin Luther King, Jr. Day events Standards Link: Civics: Know how various American holidays reflect values, principles and beliefs of Americans.

Trash BagTeam

These students helped with a park clean up. How many bags of trash did each student fill? Use the clues to complete the chart.

• The 4 students filled a total of 15 bags.

• No one filled more than 7 bags.

• None of the students filled the same number of bags.

• Cassidy filled 5 bags.

• Owen filled 3 less than Cassidy.

• Sam filled the most bags.

Standards Link: Mathematical Reasoning: Use a variety of strategies to solve problems.

ACTION CLUES GARDENS GREAT HELPING HOLIDAY HOME IDEAS KING PROJECT MEMORY DAY READ SERVICE STUDENTS

S N E D R A G B Y H T B G H N O I T A E U C X T O R Y A D L D V L S L M T A I P E T W U E P E V L I N A V M E R K I O N T E O J P S V K H G S R T S A E D I N J Y G A C T I O N C X T C E J O R P G O E Standards Link: Letter sequencing. Recognize identical words. Skim and scan reading. Recall spelling patterns.

ANSWER: It overslept.

Standards Link: Use the newspaper to locate information.

This week’s word:

VOLUNTEER

The verb volunteer means to work or help someone for no pay.

The fourth grade students volunteer to read to the kindergarten students.

Try to use the word volunteer in a sentence today when talking with your friends and family members.

Make a Difference

Problems in the News

Reading your local newspaper is a great way to learn how to help your community. Look through today’s newspaper and find one or more problems in your community. Is there something you could do to help?

With hundreds of topics, every Kid Scoop printable activity pack features six-to-seven pages of high-interest extra learning activities for home and school! Get your free sample today at:

Write about how you make a difference in someone’s life within your family, your school, or in your community.

FAMILY

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

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Teaching your child about the greater good

L

earning to make decisions is an important skill for children to develop, and the more they practice as a child, the more confidence they will have as adult decision-makers.

In making decisions, choosing what is in your best interest is foundational.

Equally vital is being aware of the greater good.

Being aware of the greater good means tuning in to the impact of a decision — both long- and short-term — on others and on the world. For children, it means learning about cause and effect.

It means developing deeper empathy.

It means not only understanding but also embodying that they are a part of a community. They influence something larger than themselves that reciprocally influences them.

Teaching children to make decisions that not only support themselves but also the greater good will build closer relationships, tighter communities and a more compassionate, sustainable world.

Here are some ways.

Maggie Macaulay

Whole-Hearted d Parenting

Make decision-making a conversation. When decisions are discussed within your family, deciding becomes less intimidating. Children become more comfortable with making choices and less afraid of making mistakes.

Children will also see that they need not make decisions in a vacuum, even though our culture often dictates that we do things as if we are. When you drive yourself to the store, it may initially appear to be an autonomous act; however, you are doing so on the shoulders of those who designed and manufactured your car, built the roads, and extracted and refined the gasoline.

We are all a part of that supportive

network called the greater good.

In your conversation, ask your child about their thoughts and feelings.

Inquire about what it feels like in their body. Explore what the immediate results of their decision might be as well as what might happen in the future.

Include questions about what they value and what they want.

Through discussion, you can guide your child to reach a decision without making it for them. In doing so, they learn about their own agency and resourcefulness.

Because children learn a great deal from watching you, it is incredibly helpful when you discuss your own decision-making out loud with them or allow them to observe you walk through making a decision. Witnessing you go through the process will provide great clarity.

Teach them the difference between discernment and judgment. Discernment is seeing what is in your best interest and the best interest of others.

It supports the greater good. Judgment is measuring someone or something against someone or something else and providing a label. Judgment is limiting and isolating. Discernment is limitless and connecting.

If you find yourself slipping into judgment, shift into discernment. For example, if you selected one job over another, refrain from sharing with your child that a factor in your choice was that the manager of one company seemed like a jerk (judgment). Instead, let them know that the manager of the other company had values that aligned with yours (discernment).

Teach them to consider and honor the interests of others. That is the foundation of cooperation. Resolving a disagreement with a friend will go more smoothly if you are not only interested in getting what you want but also in them getting what they want. The result will be supportive of the greater good.

This involves letting go of dualistic thinking — that either you win or lose

M

COURTESY SANTA FE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Juliette Anderson of Santa Fe Preparatory School, far right, won Santa Fe Public Schools’ spelling bee Friday at Santa Fe Community College. Joshua Bala, left, of Mandela International Magnet School came in second place and Sabine Cathey of Wood Gormley Elementary School came in third. The trio is shown with pronouncer Meredith Madri.

Faces & places Solace Sexual Assault Services announces its new board of directors.

David Wannigman is serving as treasurer. Wannigman has a passion for community service and the prevention and elimination of sexual violence. He joined the Solace team soon after retiring from Los Alamos National Laboratory. He also serves as a volunteer advocate on the after-hours hotline and an administrative support volunteer and aids with maintenance tasks around the center. In his professional life, Wannigman was a nuclear safety engineer.

Nirmala Ganapathy is board president. She has been a managing partner of a small business in Santa Fe for the past 18 years. She is a licensed airplane pilot and electrical engineer who had a successful research and development career in the petroleum, consumer electronics and medical-devices industries for over 25 years. For over 30 years she has been dedicated to helping survivors of sexual violence.

Amy Adler is vice president and secretary. As a nurse practitioner, Adler has been caring for patients for almost two decades, including as a forensic nurse examiner.

Laura Carlson is the business development manager for Nusenda. She has worked in finance, tech and software, and has over 15 years of experience in contract commercial furniture.

Peter Ives has worked as an attorney in the area for many years. His work has focused on the preservation of land and cultural resources in New Mexico.

Mona Martin is longtime New Mexico resident whose professional career and volunteer work have focused on vulnerable populations.

Martin worked for many years as a bilingual special education instructor, program director and administrator, as well as teaching computer science at Santa Fe Community College and developing instructional courses for Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Education standouts U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M,

Amelia Beingessner-Chavez of Santa Fe was named to the Western Carolina University dean’s list for fall 2023.

u Alfredo Burdwell of Santa Fe u Monica Rivera of Los Alamos u Benny Lujan of Taos u Chastity Garcia of Las Vegas The following students were named to the school’s president’s list. u Amy DeLong of Edgewood u Roddy-James Martinez of Santa Fe u Alexander Howell of Santa Fe u Catherine Hinton of Santa Fe u Matthew Valdez of Santa Fe u Ihsaana Whitaker of Santa Fe u Jonathan Sanchez of Española u Tristen Viarreal of Fairview u Amanda Burnworth of Los Alamos u Jonathan Guise of Los Alamos u Jessica Bustos of Ohkay Owingeh

uuu

uuu

announced student nominations from New Mexico to enter the United States service academies. Following are local nominees: United States Merchant Marine Academy: Kaelin Hanson of Los Alamos United States Military Academy: Luke Archuleta of Alcalde, Jacqueline Charlifue of Santa Fe, Lucy Kelley of Los Alamos United States Naval Academy: Jacqueline Charlifue of Santa Fe, Niven Horvath of Santa Fe, Jason Shelton of Edgewood uuu

The following local students were named to the Southern New Hampshire University dean’s list for fall 2023. u Luisa Aguirre Sotelo of Sante Fe u Isaac Burdwell of Santa Fe

Maggie Macaulay is the owner of Whole Hearted Parenting, offering coaching, courses and workshops. She can be contacted at 954-483-8021 or Maggie@ WholeHeartedParenting.com.

Having end-of-life wishes in order is thoughtful gesture to family

CITY SPELLING BEE CHAMPS

CELEBRATIONS

— and embracing that both people in a disagreement can win. The result may not be what you initially imagined, and both people can be happy with the outcome. There is cooperation over compromise. No one settles.

Imagine the results of raising a generation of children who embody these concepts — that you can make decisions that both support you and the greater good; that you do not make decisions alone in a vacuum; that you can be discerning over judgmental; and that you can reach mutually agreeable decisions in which everyone wins. As we become more compassionate, future decisions that influence communities, nations, and the earth become more compassionate. Through this reciprocity, we have the way to sustain us all.

Alejandra Slentz of Santa Fe has been named to Midway University’s dean’s list for the fall 2023 semester.

The New Mexican

SNOW DOG DAYS Meleah Artley and Chris Jones took advantage of a snowstorm Monday — one of two last week — to create frosty artwork in a shared driveway. Another storm is expected to bring snow to Santa Fe today.

COURTESY PHOTO

y mother has two pot-bellied pigs named Charlotte and Wilbur. My late stepfather, Tom, met them as piglets seven years and 150 pounds ago, back when they fit in one hand.

I was there that day, and you’d be hardpressed not to ooh and aah over them.

Tom never met or rescued an animal he didn’t intend to keep. Orphaned skunks, ducks, stray dogs and donkeys have all passed through or still remain at their home. Tom was always in the moment and did not give much rational thought to his decisions when it came to pet procurement, including the life span of certain breeds.

One horse is now 32, and the pigs are not even halfway through their long lives.

I have joked recently that my mother, now well into her 70s, is going to have to put them in her will in case they outlive her.

I like to mix in a little humor when I introduce the topic of death and long before it might occur. My husband and I laugh about how we only prepared our wills a few days before the birth of our second child, ironically, the same year the pigs arrived.

It was an arduous experience — two parts reality check and one part fantasy world. We had contingency plans for contingency plans. There’s nothing like having children to bring the topic of wills, power of attorney and health directives to the forefront.

The start of the new year also feels like a time to get one’s ducks in a row and an appropriate opportunity to revisit this topic I shared years ago.

Discussing hypothetical illness and death scenarios while almost nine months pregnant doesn’t seem very joyful, but it gave me peace of mind to put some plans in place. Should something have happened to me during childbirth, I did not want my family to have to guess what my wishes were or for my husband and parents to be at odds with one another about what to do.

Preparing a will and health directive is one of the most thoughtful things you can do for your family. While its contents may not please everyone, it will take the mystery out of what others think you might want in the event you are incapacitated or pass away.

If you think it’s not polite to bring up a loved one’s affairs while they’re still living, I can assure you the potential for impolite talk will reveal itself while a disorganized estate is hashed out with the relatives or those who think they are.

What’s the etiquette for bringing up the topic? Much of this depends on the dynamic of your relationship, what your goals are and current circumstances.

There are many approaches, and here are a few ideas to keep the conversation civilized.

“There is never a great time to bring up these issues with a loved one, but the best time to do so is often when the possibilities of death or disability feel very remote,” advises local attorney Jenny F. Kaufman.

“Another time to raise these issues is when there has been a change in circumstance that makes you think about the ‘big picture.’ These might include a new baby, buying a house, moving, adopting a child, getting married, getting divorced. At these life junctures, bringing up estate planning can feel less out of the blue because it relates to a change in life circumstance.”

Parents and elders can get the ball

Bizia Greene Etiquette Rules!

rolling by talking about their wishes long before it’s necessary. My motherin-law has always shared stories about her possessions, like the family photo albums and old letters, during visits to her home. Being familiar with her personal items and their histories has informed us about what has sentimental meaning but also what may have financial value. This openness has created the opportunity for conversation about who feels connected to certain items.

She has also been very open about what to do with her remains when she passes. Because she’s been candid about her intentions and put them in her legal documents, no one has to make a decision for her or against the wishes of another. Talking about it normalizes the topic and prepares us for the inevitable.

For the child who wants to learn more about their parents’ or elders’ intentions, you can start by doing your own estate planning and use that as a conversation starter. Being familiar with the process and the terminology provides some talking points.

I know that if there is traumatic event involving my husband or parent, I would want the guidance of that person’s health care directive and end-of-life wishes known. I don’t know if I could be prepared to make decisions on behalf of a loved one. If everything was laid out for me, perhaps I’d have the ability to remain more present during a pivotal moment.

Talk about what your wishes are for yourself, and then ask about their wishes.

When my father was ill and it became obvious (and sadly accepted) that he was going to pass away, I felt a little bit less fearful of death. I asked him if he thought about where he wanted to be buried. We had never discussed anything like this, but we knew what was coming, and I wanted to know if he had envisioned a place where we, family, could visit him. I wanted his participation in a decision that would affect us children over the remainder of our lives. The moment presented itself, and it didn’t seem inappropriate.

Never assume that just because someone is organized, has a large estate or the means to secure the services of an attorney that their legal affairs are in order.

One of my grandmothers worked for an attorney and probate judge for decades and died without a will, to our shock.

“Make sure that your loved ones understand that you are not trying to dictate how to dispose of their property or give them advice about these issues, but rather that you want them to feel protected and empowered to make these decisions for themselves,” Kaufman says.

Don’t let your affairs go to the dogs (or pigs). Normalize the topics of estate planning and health care directives by talking early and often to take the guess work out of a difficult circumstance.

Bizia Greene is an etiquette expert and owns the Etiquette School of Santa Fe. Share your comments and conundrums at hello@etiquettesantafe.com or 505988-2070.

Preparing a will and health directive is one of the most thoughtful things you can do for your family.

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Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

TRAVEL

Staying safe in the air What to do if a fire, decompression or other emergency hits your flight

By Tobi Raji and Heidi Pérez-Moreno The Washington Post

W

hile aviation experts have said crashes and hazardous emergencies are “extremely rare” and the nonprofit National Safety Council has said the odds of dying in a passenger aircraft within the United States are too small to calculate, two recent aviation-related incidents have brought the question of safety aboard an aircraft back into the public consciousness.

On Jan. 5, an Alaska Airlines plane made a dramatic emergency landing after a piece of the Boeing 737-9 Max plane’s wall blew out midair. Earlier that week, a Japan Airlines jet caught fire after colliding with a coast guard plane at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, killing five coast guard crew members.

All 171 passengers and six crew members on the Alaska Airlines flight as well as the 367 passengers and 12 crew members on the Japan Airlines jet survived the incidents. Flight safety experts attributed the success of the Alaska Airlines emergency landing and Japan Airlines evacuation to the crews’ strict guidance and passengers’ compliance.

Commercial air travel is one of the safest methods of transportation, according to the National Safety Council, and although danger is rare, it does happen. When disaster strikes, being prepared by wearing natural fibers, rather than synthetic, in the event of a fire, or simply listening to the preflight safety brief so you know how to don an oxygen mask, can save lives.

Here’s what experts say to stay safe in an air accident or incident:

1. Before the flight Before leaving home, flight safety expert Anthony Brickhouse says passengers should consider wearing long pants and closed-toe shoes for protection in case they need to disembark without notice. They should also

eat a meal before boarding the plane in case the aircraft makes an emergency landing far from an airport.

During boarding, passengers should make note of where the emergency exits are, including the one closest to them. In the event of an emergency evacuation, experts recommend leaving all belongings behind. They should also listen to the safety briefing before takeoff, and follow all instructions from flight attendants and pilots.

“They are providing vital information to passengers about the airplane itself, about what they should be doing in case of emergency — that’s important information, even for seasoned travelers,” said Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation. “When an emergency happens, that becomes even more important.”

2. Medical emergencies There have been many notable medical emergencies on flights, including the death of American Express President Ed Gilligan on a 2015 corporate plane and the time a flight attendant who used to be a nurse delivered a baby aboard an 11-hour flight.

In case of a medical emergency, the flight crew might ask for help from someone on the ground or a physician, if they are on board. Flight attendants are trained to provide basic care, like first-aid and CPR. Most major airlines will be able to communicate with an on-ground medical operator who can walk them through various medical scenarios if doctors or attendants need assistance.

Airlines are prohibited from departing unless there is a sealed emergency medical kit on board, the Federal Aviation Administration website says.

The flight may need to be diverted if the situation requires urgent care.

Flight crews are “not really trained to be emergency medical staff, but they certainly have basic training in dealing with these kinds of things,” Shahidi said.

3. Unruly passenger In 2022, the FAA received 2,455 reports of unruly passengers, down from nearly 6,000 reports in 2021,

NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD VIA AP

NTSB Investigator-in-Charge John Lovell examines the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Jan. 7 in Portland, Ore. A panel used to plug an area reserved for an exit door on the Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner blew out shortly after the flight took off from Portland on Jan. 5, forcing the plane to return to Portland International Airport.

according to the agency’s website. In 2023, the number declined to 2,075. Such behavior includes cursing, yelling and physically assaulting crew members and other passengers.

When a fellow passenger is acting up, leave it to the professionals, said Brickhouse, a professor who teaches aviation safety and investigation courses at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

“Flight attendants are trained to deal with unruly passengers,” Brickhouse said. “Let the flight attendants do their job and assist the flight attendants with however they may need to be assisted.”

4. Major turbulence Brickhouse urges passengers to wear their seat belt at all times — even when the seat belt sign is off.

On the Alaska Airlines flight, a paneled-over exit door blew out, leaving a gaping hole beside a row of seats, The Washington Post reported. Elizabeth Le, 20, one of the flight’s 171 passengers, said she heard an “extremely loud pop.” She told The New York Times that while no one was sitting in the window seat next to the missing exit door, a teenage boy and his mother were sitting in the middle and aisle seats at the time of the incident.

Had an unbuckled passenger been

occupying the window seat, Brickhouse said, “we could be dealing with a totally different news story this morning.”

Doug Moss, director of the aviation-safety program at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, said this should be one of the first things passengers should do once they board the flight.

“It sounds self-explanatory but there are a select few that like to go against the grain,” he said.

5. Plane fire In case of a fire, Brickhouse advised passengers to remain calm and listen to the professionals. But he also offered another key piece of advice: Think about what you’re wearing.

Ditch the synthetic fibers such as polyester and nylon, which can melt to your skin, Brickhouse said. “Cotton fibers and natural fibers are going to give you more protection.”

Moss said being covered is important because flames can work their way through layers, so long-sleeve shirts, jackets or other forms of coverage would act as a barrier while you navigate the situation. Having comfortable shoes and other attire can also help you focus on the task at hand.

You should leave your luggage behind and stay away from any sighting of smoke, he added.

“That’s a perfect example of when you need to evacuate off an airplane — you didn’t see it coming, but all of a sudden, bam, there you are, you gotta get out,” he said.

6. Decompression Brickhouse advises all passengers to pay attention to the safety briefings before takeoff. They will be instructed on how to put on oxygen masks, how their seat belts work, where air vents are located and their nearest emergency exits.

If a plane depressurizes, which may be gradual or rapid depending on the situation, a pilot will be alerted.

Standard practice calls for the pilot to descend the plane to 10,000 feet, the highest altitude a human can sustain normal breathing at, until the pilot has resolved the issue.

“It’s really frustrating when I see passengers with noise canceling headphones on and not paying attention to the safety briefing,” Brickhouse said, “because the flight attendants are going to tell you everything you need to know.”

L AST IN G I MAG ES PARI S G ETS READY

TR AVEL TIPS

Laraine Ferguson submitted this photo of Paris at Christmas and as the city prepares to host the summer Olympics. COURTESY PHOTO

A fanny pack is the only bag you need

By Blake Snow

The Washington Post

SHARE YOUR TRAVEL PHOTO: Email your pictures to bbarker@sfnewmexican.com. All submitted photos should be at least 4 inches wide at 300 dpi. Submissions will be printed once a week as space is available. No money will be paid for published photographs. Images must be original and submitted by the copyright owner. Please include a descriptive caption. The New Mexican reserves the right to reject any photo without notice or stated reason.

New ordinance seeks to keep foot traffic moving on Las Vegas Strip Tourists hoping to take selfies on pedestrian bridges along the Las Vegas Strip may appear to run the risk of breaking a new law, but officials say they shouldn’t worry.

The Clark County Commission passed an ordinance this week that prohibits stopping or standing on these overpasses or engaging in other activities that slow foot

traffic. The ordinance, approved in a unanimous 7-0 vote this month, calls for creating “flow zones” on the Strip’s 15 bridges and up to 20 feet on surrounding stairs, escalators or other areas. There are exceptions for stopping for short periods of time that will accommodate people waiting to use the stairs or tying their shoes.

“The Pedestrian Flow Zone ordinance will help to ensure our world-class tourism destination remains a safe place for people to visit,” Jennifer Cooper, Clark County’s chief communications and strategy officer, said in a statement.

Design and headlines: Brian Barker, bbarker@sfnewmexican.com

County officials have said the ordinance is intended to reduce crime and enhance safety by encouraging continuous, free movement for pedestrians. People who violate the ordinance could face a misdemeanor charge. If they are found guilty, they could face up to six months in jail and/ or a $1,000 fine.

However, Clark County officials said the ordinance should not be interpreted to mean that pedestrians can’t take photos along Las Vegas Boulevard while on a pedestrian bridge. A Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokes-

person said officers will continue regular patrols of the bridges and surrounding areas throughout the Strip, and will encourage pedestrians to voluntarily comply with the ordinance. A pedestrian arrest or citation would be issued on the “rare occasion” that the officer’s warning is objected.

Restrictions on the Strip come months after pedestrians crowded the area’s pedestrian bridges for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The city expects to see hundreds of thousands of visitors for the Super Bowl next month.

The Washington Post

“That’s all you packed?” my fellow hiker asked, looking at me in disbelief.

We were just about to start a four-day, 50-mile hike along the Jordan Trail into Petra. And I had carried only a single fanny pack across the Atlantic Ocean for my first week in the Middle East.

At 10 liters, my Bergans “hip” or “waist” pack is the biggest money can buy. But it’s still only half the size of a small backpack. How is it possible to travel so far with so few possessions? And why on Earth would anyone do that?

If you’re incredulous, understand that most expert travelers pack way lighter than the average jetsetter. Picture captains and flight attendants zipping through security with their tiny roll-aboards. Packing light saves hours in airport lines and conserves precious energy. It also forces us to build connections with the locals, especially shop owners, that help us on our way.

In the most famous example, Rick Steves travels to Europe every summer with only a backpack. “Slim your suitcase by doing laundry in your room every few days,” he advises.

If you don’t mind doing sink laundry every few days, you can travel anywhere in the world with only two tops, two bottoms, and two pairs of socks and underwear, plus a packable puffer coat. In addition to a hyperlight sleeping bag and pad, two water bottles, and a small zip-top of toiletries, that’s all I took to Jordan — minus a ball cap that I wore or strapped to my pack.

This strategy depends on an increasingly developed world that has a lot more infrastructure, shopping and “Western conveniences” than you might assume. Even rural and remote wilderness areas boast shopping, cafes, campsites with working showers and survival essentials that didn’t exist 10 to 20 years ago. The idea that, “If I don’t bring it, they might not have it,” has been outdated for decades. After 10 years of travel reporting to all seven continents, I’ve never failed to procure a basic necessity.

Jordan wasn’t the first time I traveled overseas with only a fanny pack. Many years ago, I hiked Patagonia with one. And I’ve taken similar trips to Europe and the East Coast with only a bumbag, as the Brits say.

Why do I do this when international carriers allow two free checked bags? Because traveling with only a fanny pack is proof that minimalism works just as well, if not better, than carrying lots of baggage.

I save an hour each way at the airport by never checking a bag. I’m always the first from my flight to exit the airport, because I don’t have to wait for my luggage to hit the carousel before passing through customs. I never have to worry about stowing or fitting my bag on planes, trains and automobiles.

And I’m never mentally or physically bogged down by excessive luggage, especially on 50-mile hikes.

Fashionistas will hate this advice. I get it. But it’s a wonderful feeling to pack extremely light, trusting that “team human” will take care of the rest.

SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

TV times NFL Weather

SPORTS

D-2 D-5 D-6

SECTION D SunDay, January 14, 2024 THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

AFC WILD - C ARD GAME S

Chiefs freeze out Dolphins in win Temperature below zero as Mahomes’ helmet shatters after being hit

By Dave Skretta

The Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was so cold Patrick Mahomes’ helmet shattered on a hit. Andy Reid’s mustache froze on the Chiefs 26 sideline. Fans Dolphins 9 and players alike huddled for warmth, trying their best to grit their way through the fourth-coldest game in NFL history.

The Kansas City Chiefs managed to handle the adversity well.

Handled the Miami Dolphins quite well, too.

Mahomes threw for 262 yards, found Rashee Rice eight times for 130 yards and a touchdown, and made several daring runs for key first downs. Isiah Pacheco pounded over the frozen turf for 89 yards and another score. And the Chiefs shut down a prolific Miami offense in a 26-9 victory in the wild-card round of the playoffs Saturday night.

Harrison Butker added four field goals for the reigning Super Bowl champs, who appear to be warming up for another run.

“Guys came with that attitude, that mentality — we knew it was going to be cold,” Mahomes said.

“All week we were preaching, ‘Let’s come in there with that fire and just get after it and see what happens.’ ”

BR AVE S , L ADY BR AVE S INVITE S

Mesa Vista sweeps boys, girls crowns

Please see story on Page D-5

Texans bash Browns behind rookie Stroud Quarterback youngest to win playoff game

By Kristie rieken

The Associated Press

REED HOFFMANN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes goes to the bench to get his helmet replaced after part of it was broken, upper left.

TODAY ON TV

Card: Philadelphia at Tampa Bay

2:30 p.m. FOX — NFC Wild Card Playoff: Green Bay at Dallas 6:20 p.m. NBC — NFC Wild Card Playoff: LA. Rams at Detroit

INSIDE

MONDAY ON TV 2:30 p.m. CBS — AFC Wild Card Playoff: Pittsburgh at Buffalo 6:15 p.m. ABC, ESPN — NFC Wild

u Cowboys ride 16-game home win streak against Packers. u Stafford back to Detroit with Rams to face Lions in playoffs. u Steelers-Bills game moved to Monday afternoon kickoff due to weather. PAGE D-5

HOUSTON — Rookie C.J. Stroud became the youngest quarterback to win a playoff game after throwing for Texans 45 274 yards Browns 14 and three touchdowns, and the Houston Texans returned two interceptions by Joe Flacco for scores in a 45-14 rout of the Cleveland Browns in a wild-card matchup Saturday.

Stroud, the second overall pick in the draft in April, is also the highest-drafted rookie QB to win in the postseason.

He picked apart Cleveland’s vaunted defense, throwing

touchdown passes of 15 yards to Nico Collins, 76 to Brevin Jordan and 37 to Dalton Schultz.

At 22 years and 102 days old, Stroud passed Michael Vick, who was 22 years, 192 days old in 2002 when his Falcons beat the Packers.

Stroud threw for 236 yards and three touchdowns before halftime as the Texans built a 24-14 lead. The defense took over after that, with Steven Nelson and Christian Harris returning interceptions for touchdowns on consecutive drives in the third quarter to extend the lead to 38-14.

With the Texans up 45-14 with nine minutes to go, Stroud’s work was done, and he was replaced by Davis Mills.

Back in the playoffs for the first time since 2019, Stroud’s Please see story on Page D-5

UNM BA SKE TBALL

Lobos’ House keys upset UNM blows out No. 19 San Diego State with dominant second half, loud fans in Pit

Trojans’ outwork Braves as Lady Trojans switch defense

By James Barron

jbarron@sfnewmexican.com

Welcome to Mesa Vista — the little school that could.

The little school in Ojo Caliente left Santa Fe Indian School’s Everett R. Chavez Pueblo Pavilion Saturday with the boys and girls championships of the Braves and Lady Braves Invites Boys — and both times Mesa Vista 55 against the host SFIS 48 school.

The boys team outhustled and outGirls worked the Braves, Mesa Vista 42 building a 21-point SFIS 40 lead that held up for a 55-48 win. Meanwhile, the Lady Trojans overcame 20 offensive rebounds by SFIS to rally from an eight-point deficit to squeeze out a 42-40 win and their third regular-season tournament title in as many weeks.

BOYS

Trojans’ ongoing work on defense paying off Mesa Vista head coach Thomas Vigil learned an invaluable lesson during his three-year stint piloting the Pojoaque Valley program from 2017-20 — defense must be a constant. When he returned to his alma mater in 2022, Vigil made defense the focal point of his program.

“There are some things we do every other day, and some things we do once a week,” Vigil said. “But we work on our defense every day — every day. I plan my practices out and at least 50% of that is dedicated to some aspect of defense.”

One of the key elements of the Trojans’ defense is its help-side effort. The players put on a clinic on how to cut off drives from guards, hound post players once the ball got into the paint and how to recover when the ball was passed back out to the perimeter.

That combination allowed Mesa Vista (8-4) to hold the Braves (11-3) to just 18-for-52 shooting and outrebound them by a 29-27 count. Jason Abeyta, SFIS head coach, said the Trojans simply outworked his squad.

“There is no other way to say it,” Abeyta said. “They outshot us, they outhustled us, they had more heart than us tonight. I told the guys in the locker room [after the game] if we come out like that again — get outplayed and outhustled — it’s gonna be a long district season.”

It was a long afternoon, especially from the second quarter onward. A 13-3 run erased a 15-14 SFIS lead as the Trojans drained four 3-pointers during that run. The last came from Kenny Gallegos with 1:30 left before halftime to produce a 27-18 lead.

Vigil said Gallegos’ contribution highlighted what he wants his team to embrace.

“Kenny came in and played an Please see story on Page D-3

PHOTOS BY JIM WEBER/THE NEW MEXICAN

UNM point guard Jaelen House celebrates a basket in the fourth quarter against No. 19 San Diego State on Saturday in The Pit. The Lobos pulled off an 88-70 upset as House scored a game-high 26 points and started the run that knocked off the Mountain West rival Aztecs.

By Will Webber

wwebber@sfnewmexican.com

ALBUQUERQUE urns out “The Truth” is also a straight up flamethrower.

Just as it seemed San Diego State was about to kick sand in his team’s face and leave it in a heap on the side of the road, University of New Mexico men’s basketball player Jaelen House came to the rescue on the biggest stage of all Saturday afternoon in The Pit. Playing before the building’s largest crowd in 15 years, the Lobos dominated No. 19 San Diego State in the second half in an 88-70 win that was as much a tribute to House’s influence as it was the Lobos’ unrelenting defense.

The senior guard scored a game-high 26 points and ignited a decisive 17-0 first-half run by scoring 11 consecutive points after the Aztecs had built a 35-23 lead with less than six minutes before the half.

UNM (14-3 overall, 2-2 Mountain West) recorded 14 blocked shots and forced 13 turnovers against the conference’s bell cow, a team that came into the nationally televised game winners of seven straight and reputation for hanging tough in challenging road environments.

“I’m the truth!” House yelled as he ran up the ramp to the team’s locker room after the game.

He’s not wrong.

Saturday’s win was essentially a must-have for the Lobos.

Having lost two of three games to start conference play, they needed to defend the home court in what will be two straight games against Top 25 clubs, which started with a visit from the Aztecs (14-3, 3-1).

Coming in, House had received plenty of

T

Please see story on Page D-3

Sports editor: Will Webber, wwebber@sfnewmexican.com Design and headlines: Richard Olmsted, rolmsted@sfnewmexican.com

Lobos center Nelly Junior Joseph, second from right, and forward J.T. Toppin battle Aztecs forward Elijah Saunders, right, and forward Jaedon LeDee for a rebound.

UP NEXT

INSIDE

Tuesday: No. 20 Utah State (16-1, 4-0 MWC) at New

u The Lobos’ next opponent, No. 20 Utah State, beats UNLV with late 5-point play. See a Mountain West roundup. u No. 1 Purdue rebounds from loss to dispatch Penn State. See a roundup of Top 25 men’s games.

Mexico (14-3, 2-2), 8:30 p.m. in The Pit TV: FS1 Radio: KKOB 770 AM Live stats: GoLobos.com/mbbstats

PAGE D-4

SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

D-2

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

SCOREBOARD

Sunday, January 14, 2024

TODAY ON TV Schedule subject to change and/or blackouts. All times local.

AUTO RACING Noon NBC — AMA Supercross Series: Round 2, San Francisco (Taped) 2:30 p.m. CBS — ABB FIA Formula E: The 2024 Hankook Mexico City E-PRIX — Round 1, Mexico City COLLEGE BASKETBALL (MEN’S) 10 a.m. BTN — Rutgers at Michigan St. 10 a.m. FOX — Georgetown at UConn 11 a.m. ESPN2 — Memphis at Wichita St. Noon BTN — Maryland at Illinois 1 p.m. ESPN2 — Liberty at Louisiana Tech 2 p.m. CBSSN — Delaware at UNC-Wilmington 5 p.m. PAC-12N — Washington at UCLA COLLEGE BASKETBALL (WOMEN’S) 10 a.m. ACCN — Pittsburgh at Boston College 10 a.m. CBSSN — Rhode Island at Richmond 10 a.m. CW — Miami at Notre Dame 11 a.m. ESPN — Virginia Tech at Florida St. 10 a.m. ESPNU — South Florida at Rice 10 a.m. SECN — Missouri at Vanderbilt Noon ACCN — Wake Forest at Louisville Noon CBSSN — Davidson at Fordham Noon PAC-12N — Stanford at Colorado 1 p.m. ESPN — LSU at Auburn 1 p.m. SECN — Arkansas at Alabama 2 p.m. ACCN — Virginia at North Carolina 2 p.m. BTN — Michigan St. at Ohio St. 3 p.m. ESPN — Tennessee at Texas A&M 3 p.m. PAC-12N — UCLA at Southern Cal 3 p.m. SECN — Mississippi vs.

Mississippi St. 4 p.m. CBSSN — N. Illinois at Kent St. FIELD HOCKEY (WOMEN’S) 4:30 a.m. CBSSN — Olympic Qualifier: U.S. vs. Italy, Pool B, Ranchi, India FIGURE SKATING 10 a.m. NBC — European Championships: Women’s and men’s free skates, plus pairs and dance finals, Kaunas, Lithuania (Taped)

GOLF 2 p.m. NBC — PGA Tour: The Sony Open In Hawaii, Final Round, Wai’alae Country Club, Honolulu 4 p.m. GOLF — PGA Tour: The Sony Open In Hawaii, Final Round, Wai’alae Country Club, Honolulu HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL (BOY’S) 3:30 p.m. ESPN2 — Hoophall Classic: Don Bosco Prep (N.J.) vs.

Archbishop Stepinac (N.Y.), Springfield, Mass.

5:30 p.m. ESPN2 — Hoophall Classic: Montverde (Fla.) vs. Prolific Prep (Calif.), Springfield, Mass.

HORSE RACING 12:30 p.m. FS1 — NYRA: America’s Day at the Races IIHF HOCKEY (GIRL’S) 5 p.m. NHLN — Under-18 World Championship: TBD, Gold-Medal Match, Zug, Switzerland NBA G-LEAGUE Noon NBATV — Indiana at Maine 2 p.m. NBATV — Salt Lake City at Iowa NFL 2:30 p.m. FOX — NFC Wild Card Playoff: Green Bay at Dallas 6:20 p.m. NBC — NFC Wild Card Playoff: LA Rams at Detroit NHL 11 a.m. NHLN — Washington at NY Rangers SAILING 4 a.m. CBSSN — Sail GP: Event 7, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates SOCCER (MEN’S) 7 a.m. USA — Premier League: Aston Villa at Everton 11:30 a.m. ABC — Spanish Super Cup: Real Madrid vs. FC Barcelona, Final, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia SWIMMING 11:30 a.m. CNBC — TYR: Pro Swim Series, Knoxville, Tenn.

(Taped) TENNIS 6 a.m. ESPN2 — ATP/WTA: The Australian Open, First Round, Melbourne, Australia (Taped) 5 p.m. ESPN — ATP/WTA: The Australian Open, First Round, Melbourne, Australia 9 p.m. ESPN2 — ATP/WTA: The Australian Open, First Round, Melbourne, Australia 1 a.m. Monday ESPN2 — ATP/ WTA: The Australian Open, First Round, Melbourne, Australia

NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE ATLANTIC

W

L

Boston Phila.

New York Brooklyn Toronto

30 24 23 16 15

9 13 16 22 24

Miami Orlando Atlanta Charlotte Washington

22 21 15 8 7

16 18 23 28 31

Milwaukee Indiana Cleveland Chicago Detroit

27 23 22 19 3

12 15 15 22 36

SOUTHEAST

CENTRAL

W

W

SOUTHWEST

W

L

16 17 19 25 31

Minnesota Oklahoma City Denver Utah Portland

27 27 27 21 10

11 11 13 20 28

L.A. Clippers Sacramento Phoenix L.A. Lakers Golden State

25 23 20 19 18

13 15 18 21 21

PACIFIC

W

.579 .538 .395 .222 .184

— 1½ 7 13 15

L

24 23 19 14 7

W

— 5 7 13½ 15

PCT

New Orleans Dallas Houston Memphis San Antonio

NORTHWEST

.769 .649 .590 .421 .385

L

WESTERN CONFERENCE

L

L

L10 7-3 5-5 6-4 3-7 4-6

STR W-1 W-1 W-1 L-2 L-3

HOME 19-0 14-6 11-4 10-9 9-9

AWAY 11-9 10-7 12-12 6-13 6-15

CONF 22-6 17-10 16-9 13-12 9-17

GB

L10

STR

HOME

AWAY

CONF

PCT

GB

L10

STR

HOME

AWAY

CONF

PCT

GB

L10

STR

HOME

AWAY

CONF

.692 .605 .595 .463 .077

.600 .575 .500 .359 .184

PCT

.711 .711 .675 .512 .263

PCT

.658 .605 .526 .475 .462

FRIDAY’S GAMES

Indiana 126, Atlanta 108 Houston 112, Detroit 110 Phila. 112, Sacramento 93 L.A. Clippers 128, Memphis 119 Minnesota 116, Portland 93 Golden State 140, Chicago 131 San Antonio 135, Charlotte 99 Miami 99, Orlando 96 Utah 145, Toronto 113 Denver 125, New Orleans 113

SATURDAY’S GAMES

Boston 145, Houston 113 Washington 127, Atlanta 99 New York 106, Memphis 94 Milwaukee 129, Golden State 118 Oklahoma City 112, Orlando 100 Chicago 122, San Antonio 116 New Orleans 118, Dallas 108 Utah 132, L.A. Lakers 125

SUNDAY’S GAMES

Indiana at Denver, 1:30 p.m.

Charlotte at Miami, 4 p.m.

L.A. Clippers at Minnesota, 5 p.m.

Sacramento at Milwaukee, 5 p.m.

Phoenix at Portland, 7 p.m.

MONDAY’S GAMES

Houston at Phila., 11 a.m.

New Orleans at Dallas, 12:30 p.m.

Detroit at Washington, 1 p.m.

Orlando at New York, 1 p.m.

San Antonio at Atlanta, 1:30 p.m.

Golden State at Memphis, 4 p.m.

Chicago at Cleveland, 5 p.m.

Boston at Toronto, 5:30 p.m.

Miami at Brooklyn, 5:30 p.m.

Indiana at Utah, 7 p.m.

Oklahoma City at L.A. Lakers, 8:30 p.m.

PREP SCORES GIRLS BASKETBALL

GB

Albuquerque High 44, Santa Fe 39 Artesia 69, Ruidoso 32 Bernalillo 46, McCurdy 6 Bloomfield 49, Crownpoint 12 Capitan 35, Santa Rosa 31 Cleveland 65, Gallup 61 Cottonwood Classical 34, East Mountain 31 Deming 66, Hatch Valley 20 Dora 50, Grady 36 Dulce 45, Questa 38 Eldorado 54, Rio Rancho 41 Goddard 32, Chaparral 20 Hobbs 78, Sandia 63 Hozho 44, Coronado 26 Laguna-Acoma 59, Raton 12 Los Alamos 41, Aztec 34 Mountainair 64, Native American Community Academy 57 Navajo Pine 39, Monte del Sol 10 Newcomb 60, Cuba 59 Pine Hill 47, Ramah 21 Pojoaque 82, Hot Springs 34 Rehoboth 40, Evangel Christian 29 Reserve 66, Maxwell 25 Robertson 48, Del Norte 24 Sandia Prep 41, Moriarty 40

— 3½ 4 9 24

— 1 4 9½ 16

GB

— — 1 7½ 17

GB

— 2 5 7 7½

6-4 3-7 3-7 1-9 2-8

5-5 9-1 7-3 6-4 1-9

7-3 5-5 4-6 4-6 3-7

L10

5-5 8-2 7-3 8-2 3-7

L10

8-2 6-4 6-4 3-7 3-7

W-1 L-3 L-2 L-4 W-1

W-2 W-3 W-4 W-1 L-7

W-1 L-1 L-1 L-2 L-1

STR

W-1 W-4 W-1 W-5 L-3

STR

W-3 L-1 W-1 L-2 L-1

11-7 13-5 6-11 4-13 3-13

18-4 13-8 13-8 13-10 2-17

12-8 12-9 15-6 3-15 3-16

HOME

15-2 16-5 16-4 14-5 5-11

HOME

16-4 13-7 11-11 13-7 11-11

11-9 8-13 9-12 4-15 4-18

9-8 10-7 9-7 6-12 1-19

12-8 11-8 4-13 11-10 4-15

AWAY

12-9 11-6 11-9 7-15 5-17

AWAY

9-9 10-8 9-7 6-14 7-10

16-10 15-10 10-19 7-17 5-25

21-10 20-11 14-9 12-15 3-20

17-14 17-14 14-10 11-20 5-19

CONF

19-6 15-8 17-10 12-15 5-22

CONF

19-10 15-12 13-14 14-14 11-16

St. Pius X 55, St. Michael’s 35 Taos 31, Capital 26 Tohatchi 62, Piedra Vista 47 Tse Yi Gai 45, Zuni 42 Volcano Vista 46, La Cueva 41 West Mesa 60, Atrisco Heritage 51

BOYS BASKETBALL

Alamo-Navajo 69, Tohajilee 30 Albuquerque High 74, Del Norte 39 Artesia 68, Belen 59 Capital 51, Goddard 25 Centennial 56, Roswell 54 Chaparral 62, EPLA, Texas 23 Cimarron 81, Penasco 68 Cliff 46, Cobre 32 Deming 57, Hatch Valley 55 Floyd 43, Dora 35 Grady 58, Elida 40 Grants 89, Miyamura 56 Highland 55, West Mesa 49 Hope Christian 77, Hobbs 72 Hozho 42, Coronado 32 Maxwell 56, Reserve 47 Mesa Vista 55, Santa Fe Indian 48 Mesilla Valley Christian 59, Lordsburg 44 Organ Mountain 68, Clovis 51 Pecos 51, Escalante 43 Piedra Vista 41, Bloomfield 30 Pine Hill 54, Cottonwood Classical 45 Sandia Prep 60, McCurdy 58 Santa Fe 67, Rio Rancho 63 Santa Fe Prep 69, Moriarty 43 Tularosa 71, Socorro 57 Volcano Vista 63, Cleveland 56

NFL PLAYOFF GLANCE WILD-CARD PLAYOFFS SATURDAY Houston 45, Cleveland 14 Kansas City 26, Miami 7

SUNDAY

Pittsburgh at Buffalo, ppd. to Jan. 15 Green Bay at Dallas, 2:30 p.m. (FOX) L.A. Rams at Detroit, 6 p.m. (NBC/Peacock)

MONDAY

Pittsburgh at Buffalo, 2:30 p.m. (CBS) Philadelphia at Tampa Bay, 6:15 p.m. (ESPN/ABC)

DIVISIONAL PLAYOFFS JAN. 20 AND JAN. 21

NFC lowest remaining seed at San Franciso, TBD Houston or Pittsburgh at Baltimore, TBD NFC two remaining seeds at higher seed, TBD Houston at Kansas City or Kansas City at Buffalo, TBD

CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS JAN. 28 AFC

AFC lowest remaining seed at AFC highest remaining seed, 1 p.m. (CBS)

NFC

NFC lowest remaining seed at NFC highest remaining seed, 4:30 p.m. (FOX)

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY, FEB. 11

At Las Vegas, Nev.

Girls basketball

NFL SUNDAY

FAVORITE

at DALLAS at DETROIT

OPEN

TODAY

OPEN

TODAY

7 3

MONDAY FAVORITE

at BUFFALO Philadelphia

7 3

10 2½

O/U

UNDERDOG

O/U

UNDERDOG

(50½) (51½)

10 3

(37) (43)

FAVORITE

LINE

at DENVER at MIAMI at MILWAUKEE LA Clippers Phoenix

55

Pittsburgh at TAMPA BAY

O/U

11 7½ 5 1½ 10½

ST. MICHAEL’S

UNDERDOG

(239) (222) (249) (222½) (230½)

Indiana Charlotte Sacramento at MINNESOTA at PORTLAND

LINE

UNDERDOG

35

COLLEGE BASKETBALL SUNDAY

FAVORITE

at FLORIDA ATLANTIC at UCONN at MICHIGAN STATE Memphis at IONA at GREEN BAY at MARIST Saint Peter’s at ILLINOIS at LOUISIANA TECH at ILLINOIS STATE Tulane at UNC WILMINGTON at MURRAY STATE Utah Washington National Hockey League (NHL)

SUNDAY

FAVORITE

LINE

at N.Y RANGERS at TORONTO

-220 -178

KANSAS CITY 26, MIAMI 7 0 7

7 9

0 3

0 7

— —

First Quarter KC_Rice 11 pass from Mahomes (Butker kick), 11:05.

Second Quarter KC_FG Butker 28, 14:51.

Mia_T.Hill 53 pass from Tagovailoa (J.Sanders kick), 14:01.

KC_FG Butker 26, 7:36.

KC_FG Butker 32, :18.

Third Quarter KC_FG Butker 21, 7:49.

Fourth Quarter KC_Pacheco 3 run (Butker kick), 11:06.

MIA

7 26

KC

First downs 13 25 Total Net Yards 264 408 Rushes-yards 18-76 34-146 Passing 188 262 Punt Returns 0-0 1-1 Kickoff Returns 4-88 2-27 Interceptions Ret. 0-0 1-0 Comp-Att-Int 20-39-1 23-41-0 Sacked-Yards Lost 2-11 0-0 Punts 4-40.75 3-44.333 Fumbles-Lost 0-0 3-1 Penalties-Yards 8-62 5-45 Time of Possession 25:55 34:05 INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS RUSHING_Miami, Mostert 8-33, Tagovailoa 3-25, Waddle 1-9, Achane 6-9. Kansas City, Pacheco 2489, Mahomes 2-41, Edwards-Helaire 7-20, Hardman 1-(minus 4).

PASSING_Miami, Tagovailoa 20-39-1-199. Kansas City, Mahomes 23-41-0-262.

RECEIVING_Miami, T.Hill 5-62, C.Wilson 3-37, Achane 3-21, Smythe 3-12, Cracraft 2-33, Waddle 2-31, J.Wilson 1-6, Mostert 1-(minus 3).

Kansas City, Rice 8-130, Kelce 7-71, Ju.Watson 2-20, Gray 1-20, Valdes-Scantling 1-8, James 1-6, Edwards-Helaire 1-5, Hardman 1-3, Pacheco 1-(minus 1).

MISSED FIELD GOALS_None.

CLEVELAND HOUSTON

7 10

7 14

0 14

0 7

— —

14 45

First Quarter Hou_FG Fairbairn 21, 5:29.

Cle_Hunt 1 run (R.Patterson kick), 2:09.

Hou_N.Collins 15 pass from Stroud (Fairbairn kick), :11.

Second Quarter Cle_Hunt 11 pass from Flacco (R.Patterson kick), 12:18.

Hou_Jordan 76 pass from Stroud (Fairbairn kick), 12:00.

Hou_Schultz 37 pass from Stroud (Fairbairn kick), 1:11.

Third Quarter Hou_Nelson 82 interception return (Fairbairn kick), 6:05.

Hou_C.Harris 36 interception return (Fairbairn kick), 4:06.

Fourth Quarter Hou_Singletary 19 run (Fairbairn kick), 13:27.

A_71,946.

CLE

HOU

First downs 18 14 Total Net Yards 324 356 Rushes-yards 20-56 22-76 Passing 268 280 Punt Returns 1-2 1-8 Kickoff Returns 0-0 1-14 Interceptions Ret. 0-0 2-118 Comp-Att-Int 34-46-2 17-22-0 Sacked-Yards Lost 4-39 0-0 Punts 4-44.0 4-46.0 Fumbles-Lost 0-0 0-0 Penalties-Yards 4-32 3-20 Time of Possession 35:26 24:34 INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS RUSHING_Cleveland, Hunt 8-26, J.Ford 9-17, Flacco 3-13. Houston, Singletary 13-66, Metchie 1-9, N.Collins 1-4, Stroud 1-1, Pierce 3-0, Mills 3-(minus 4).

PASSING_Cleveland, Flacco 34-46-2-307. Houston, Stroud 16-21-0-274, Mills 1-1-0-6.

RECEIVING_Cleveland, Da.Bell 8-54, Njoku 7-93, Hunt 5-9, Bryant 4-65, Cooper 4-59, J.Ford 4-15, Moore 2-12. Houston, N.Collins 6-96, Metchie 3-44, Singletary 3-4, Hutchinson 2-12, Jordan 1-76, Schultz 1-37, Woods 1-11.

MISSED FIELD GOALS_None.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL MEN’S SATURDAY SCORES EAST

Albany (NY) 95, Binghamton 75 American 79, Army 60 Boston U. 60, Loyola (Md.) 58 Bryant 89, New Hampshire 74 CCSU 75, St. Francis (Pa.) 61 Colgate 84, Bucknell 73 Fairleigh Dickinson 81, Stonehill 74, OT Fordham 80, St. Bonaventure 74 George Washington 83, Davidson 79, OT Holy Cross 69, Lehigh 66, OT Howard 72, Md.-Eastern Shore 61 Lafayette 78, Navy 62 Loyola Chicago 78, Saint Joseph’s 75 Mass.-Lowell 86, UMBC 82 Merrimack 66, Le Moyne 62 Northeastern 67, Towson 59 Rhode Island 89, UMass 77 Sacred Heart 89, LIU 55 South Alabama 91, Marshall 85 VCU 71, La Salle 65 Vermont 76, NJIT 55 West Virginia 76, Texas 73 Xavier 85, Providence 65

SOUTH

Alabama St. 55, Alcorn St. 53 Appalachian St. 59, James Madison 55 Auburn 93, LSU 78 BYU 63, UCF 58 Campbell 69, Hofstra 68 Charleston Southern 77, SC-Upstate 70 Clemson 89, Boston College 78 Coastal Carolina 79, Old Dominion 75 Coll. of Charleston 94, Monmouth (NJ) 83 Drexel 89, Elon 69 Duke 84, Georgia Tech 79 E. Kentucky 81, North Alabama 72 FIU 72, UTEP 68 Florida 90, Arkansas 68 Furman 82, ETSU 73 Gardner-Webb 76, Presbyterian 60 Georgia St. 90, Georgia Southern 62 Grambling St. 79, Bethune-Cookman 69 Jackson St. 75, Alabama A&M 67 Lamar 78, Nicholls 76, OT Lipscomb 91, Austin Peay 77 McNeese St. 74, SE Louisiana 65 Miami 75, Virginia Tech 71 Mississippi 69, Vanderbilt 56 NC State 89, Louisville 83 New Orleans 83, Texas A&M-CC 80 North Carolina 103, Syracuse 67 Northwestern St. 97, Incarnate Word 71 Richmond 77, George Mason 70 SMU 75, East Carolina 64

UAB Georgetown Rutgers at WICHITA STATE Mount St. Mary’s Cleveland State Rider at MANHATTAN Maryland Liberty Valparaiso at TULSA Delaware Northern Iowa at STANFORD at UCLA

UNDERDOG

LINE

Washington Detroit

TBD vs TBD, 4:30 p.m. (CBS)

MIAMI KANSAS CITY

15½ 20½ 10½ 5½ 4½ 1½ 2½ 6½ 8½ 2½ 8½ 2½ 4½ 1½ 2½ 1½

HOT SPRINGS

34

+180 +146

CAPITAL

26

CS Northridge 76, Cal St.-Fullerton 71 Cal Baptist 68, Abilene Christian 53 Denver 99, S. Dakota St. 80 E. Washington 79, Idaho 58 Grand Canyon 74, Tarleton St. 48 Montana St. 90, N. Colorado 81 New Mexico 88, San Diego St. 70 North Dakota 82, UMKC 69 Oregon 80, California 73 Portland St. 69, Weber St. 66 Saint Mary’s (Cal.) 73, Santa Clara 49 Texas Rio Grande Valley 76, Utah Valley St. 68 UC Davis 78, CS Bakersfield 71, OT Utah St. 87, UNLV 86 Washington St. 73, Arizona 70 Wyoming 68, Fresno St. 67

NEW MEXICO 88, NO. 19 SAN DIEGO STATE 70

FG FT REB SAN DIEGO ST. MIN M-A M-A O-T A PF PTS 37 6-15 23 2-4 28 2-5 16 2-7 26 2-8 31 5-11 19 5-9 17 1-4 3 1-1

TOTALS

3-3 0-0 3-6 2-2 0-1 1-2 0-1 2-3 0-2

1-6 1-4 0-0 2-5 0-9 1-2 0-3 0-4 1-2

4 2 5 1 0 3 0 0 0

1 15 1 5 4 7 5 6 3 6 2 12 4 13 1 4 1 2

200 26-64 11-20 6-35 15 22 70

Percentages: FG .406, FT .550.

3-Point Goals: 7-22, .318 (Byrd 3-4, Waters 2-5, Saunders 1-2, Trammell 1-5, Butler 0-1, Pal 0-2, Parrish 0-3).

Team Rebounds: 2. Team Turnovers: 1.

Blocked Shots: 1 (Pal).

Turnovers: 12 (LeDee 4, Butler 2, Pal 2, Parrish 2, Trammell 2).

Steals: 6 (Byrd 2, Trammell 2, Butler, Waters).

Technical Fouls: Parrish, 2:00 second.

FG FT REB NEW MEXICO MIN M-A M-A O-T A PF PTS

31 8-15 1-10 9-16 1 3 17 26 1-3 0-0 3-8 0 4 2 34 1-8 4-4 0-4 4 1 6 33 7-16 8-8 1-6 5 3 26 30 7-17 4-4 0-4 2 2 19 18 3-4 4-5 0-4 0 3 12 18 2-4 0-0 0-3 0 2 4 4 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 4 1-1 0-0 0-0 0 0 2 1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0

200 30-68 21-31 13-45 12 18 88

Percentages: FG .441, FT .677.

3-Point Goals: 7-24, .292 (House 4-9, Amzil 2-3, Mashburn 1-6, Toppin 0-1, Washington 0-2, Dent 0-3).

Team Rebounds: 2. Team Turnovers: None.

Blocked Shots: 14 (Joseph 5, Toppin 5, Amzil, Dent, House, Washington).

Turnovers: 10 (Mashburn 3, Amzil 2, Dent 2, House, Toppin, Washington).

Steals: 8 (House 3, Toppin 2, Washington 2, Joseph).

Technical Fouls: Amzil, 11:52 second; House, 2:00 second.

SAN DIEGO ST. NEW MEXICO

A_15,437 (15,411).

37 40

33 48

WOMEN’S SATURDAY SCORES EAST

Albany (NY) 60, Binghamton 58 Boston U. 55, Loyola (Md.) 48 Brown 76, Yale 71 Bryant 55, New Hampshire 54 Buffalo 59, Akron 57 CCSU 61, St. Francis (Pa.) 37 Colgate 71, Bucknell 46 Columbia 82, Cornell 53 Fairfield 78, Siena 73 Holy Cross 75, Lehigh 54 La Salle 70, UMass 64 Le Moyne 74, Merrimack 59 Manhattan 41, St. Peter’s 37 Marist 61, Niagara 60 Mass.-Lowell 59, UMBC 46 Navy 56, Lafayette 47 Penn 53, Dartmouth 39 Princeton 72, Harvard 49 Quinnipiac 70, Iona 64 Rider 76, Canisius 63 Sacred Heart 67, LIU Brooklyn 56 Saint Joseph’s 77, Duquesne 62 Stonehill 60, Fairleigh Dickinson 56 UConn 92, St. John’s 49 Vermont 68, NJIT 55 Alcorn St. 49, Alabama St. 42 Chattanooga 75, Samford 52

— —

the Jaguars overcame a 6-2 deficit after a quarter to take a short-lived 10-9 lead in the second.

Taos rallied to secure a 12-10 halftime lead and extended it to 22-18 after three quarters before increasing it to as much as 28-19 before Capital made a last-ditch run.

Top players: Annica Montoya led Capital with 10 points.

What’s next: Capital (3-10) travels to Pecos Monday, while Taos (3-10) heads to Aztec on Tuesday.

31

FAR WEST

LeDee Saunders Butler Parrish Waters Trammell Byrd Pal Heide

What happened: In a sloppy, defensive battle,

TAOS

Bowling Green 83, N. Illinois 72 Bradley 77, Ill.-Chicago 59 Cent. Michigan 77, Kent St. 62 Creighton 66, St. John’s 65 Drake 76, S. Illinois 58 Florida St. 67, Notre Dame 58 Indiana St. 94, Belmont 64 Iowa St. 66, Oklahoma St. 42 Kansas 78, Oklahoma 66 Miami (Ohio) 71, E. Michigan 54 Missouri St. 74, Evansville 64 N. Kentucky 81, Detroit 76 Oakland 88, IUPUI 66 Omaha 96, N. Dakota St. 92, OT Purdue 95, Penn St. 78 SIU-Edwardsville 61, Morehead St. 48 Seton Hall 78, Butler 72 South Carolina 71, Missouri 69, OT St. Thomas (MN) 87, Oral Roberts 76 Toledo 77, Ball St. 72 W. Illinois 63, E. Illinois 60 W. Michigan 81, Ohio 79 Wisconsin 71, Northwestern 63 SOUTHWEST Ark.-Pine Bluff 70, Texas Southern 67 Baylor 62, Cincinnati 59 Cent. Arkansas 59, Bellarmine 57 Charlotte 66, UTSA 58 Houston Christian 69, Texas A&M Commerce 65 Louisiana-Lafayette 84, Arkansas St. 77 North Texas 69, Temple 51 Prairie View 71, MVSU 60 TCU 68, Houston 67 Texas A&M 97, Kentucky 92, OT Texas Tech 60, Kansas St. 59 Texas-Arlington 80, Seattle 75

SOUTH

best performance of the season, knocking down 12 3-pointers as they routed the host Tigers in a nondistrict game in Truth or Consequences.

Pojoaque head coach Cindy Roybal said all of the shooting drills she put the team through are starting to pay off. “They are starting to play as a team, and this is what I had envisioned at the beginning of the year,” Roybal said.

Top players: Five Elkettes reached double figures in scoring, led by Mariana Romero’s 14 points. Marissa Martinez added 12, Monique Arrietta had 11, while Jasmine Valdez and Lauren Salazar each scored 10.

What’s next: Pojoaque (7-9) plays Albuquerque Hope Christian at home Tuesday.

82

MIDWEST

TOTALS

What happened: The Elkettes put on their

POJOAQUE VALLEY

Sam Houston St. 60, Middle Tennessee 51 Samford 134, VMI 96 Southern U. 74, Florida A&M 65 Stony Brook 63, William & Mary 59 Tennessee 85, Georgia 79 Tennessee St. 75, Lindenwood (Mo.) 60 Tennessee Tech 70, SE Missouri 59 Texas St. 67, Louisiana-Monroe 54 Troy 82, Southern Miss. 56 UNC-Asheville 65, Longwood 61 UNC-Greensboro 70, Chattanooga 54 UT Martin 77, UALR 72 W. Carolina 64, Mercer 52 W. Kentucky 80, Jacksonville St. 69 Wake Forest 66, Virginia 47 Winthrop 92, Radford 88, 3OT Wofford 72, The Citadel 71

Toppin Joseph Dent House Mashburn Amzil Washington Baker Forsling Mushila Webb

What happened: All streaks have an expiration date, and the 11-game winning mark by the Lady Horsemen vanished in a rain of 3-pointers by the Lady Sartans in Saturday’s championship game of the Sundevil Invitational at Albuquerque Sandia Prep. St. Pius hit eight 3s in the game, building a 12-6 lead after a quarter and a 28-16 margin at the half. A 16-9 scoring run in the third quarter ended any hopes of a comeback as the Lady Sartans led 44-25.

Top players: Jada Lujan led the Lady Horsemen with 12 points, while Elsie Odai added eight.

What’s next: St. Michael’s (12-4) travels down Siringo Road to play Santa Fe High on Wednesday.

ALBUQUERQUE ST. PIUS X

Green Bay LA Rams

NBA SUNDAY

HOUSTON 45, CLEVELAND 14 PCT

PREP ROUNDUP

SPORTS BETTING LINE

70 88

The New Mexican

SATURDAY’S GAMES

ETSU 77, Mercer 71 Florida A&M 59, Southern U. 53 Florida Gulf Coast 66, Stetson 51 Gardner-Webb 72, Presbyterian 58 Georgia St. 73, Appalachian St. 68 Grambling St. 63, Bethune-Cookman 62 Incarnate Word 63, Northwestern St. 57 Jackson St. 70, Alabama A&M 41 Kennesaw St. 59, Jacksonville 57 Lamar 52, Nicholls 49 Liberty 66, Louisiana Tech 59 Lipscomb 85, North Alabama 67 Louisiana-Monroe 73, Texas St. 63 Marshall 72, Coastal Carolina 60 North Florida 76, Queens (NC) 57 Old Dominion 70, Georgia Southern 50 Radford 63, Winthrop 55 SC-Upstate 59, Charleston Southern 58 SE Louisiana 77, McNeese St. 63, OT Southern Miss. 77, South Alabama 69 Tennessee St. 83, Lindenwood (Mo.) 80 Tennessee Tech 76, SE Missouri 65 Texas A&M-CC 61, New Orleans 54 Troy 87, James Madison 74 Tulane 81, East Carolina 55 Tulsa 81, FAU 72 UALR 57, UT Martin 48 UNC-Asheville 69, Longwood 61 UNC-Greensboro 70, Furman 55 W. Kentucky 62, Jacksonville St. 52 West Virginia 76, UCF 59 Wofford 75, W. Carolina 56

Washington 3, N.Y. Rangers 2 Ottawa 5, San Jose 4 Vancouver 1, Buffalo 0 New Jersey 4, Florida 1 Seattle 7, Columbus 4 Tampa Bay 5, Anaheim 1 Colorado 5, Toronto 3 Carolina 3, Pittsburgh 2, OT Detroit 5, Los Angeles 3 Philadelphia 2, Winnipeg 0 Edmonton 2, Montreal 1, OT Nashville 3, N.Y. Islanders 1 Dallas 3, Chicago 1 Boston 4, St. Louis 3, OT Arizona 6, Minnesota 0 Calgary 3, Vegas 1

GOLF SONY OPEN IN HAWAII SCORES SATURDAY

At Waialae Country Club Honolulu Purse: $8.3 million Yardage: 7,044; Par: 70

THIRD ROUND

MIDWEST

Ball St. 76, Bowling Green 61 Bradley 58, S. Illinois 56 Cent. Michigan 64, E. Michigan 60 Cleveland St. 68, Fort Wayne 56 E. Illinois 72, W. Illinois 63 E. Kentucky 79, Bellarmine 66 Green Bay 72, Robert Morris 40 Iowa 84, Indiana 57 Iowa St. 66, Baylor 63 Kansas 70, Oklahoma St. 64 Kansas St. 61, Texas 58 Miami (Ohio) 63, W. Michigan 50 Michigan 76, Wisconsin 52 Milwaukee 66, Youngstown St. 58 Morehead St. 77, SIU-Edwardsville 64 N. Dakota St. 87, Omaha 69 North Dakota 76, UMKC 62 Oakland 89, Detroit 55 S. Dakota St. 68, Denver 50 Seton Hall 61, Xavier 47 St. Thomas (MN) 73, Oral Roberts 72 Toledo 63, Ohio 50 VCU 52, Loyola Chicago 36 Villanova 65, Butler 54

SOUTHWEST

Abilene Christian 96, Cal Baptist 93, OT Cent. Arkansas 56, Austin Peay 55 FIU 83, UTEP 62 Grand Canyon 79, Tarleton St. 47 Houston 77, TCU 66 Louisiana-Lafayette 64, Arkansas St. 63 Middle Tennessee 87, Sam Houston St. 55 Oklahoma 73, Texas Tech 55 Prairie View 83, MVSU 69 Stephen F. Austin 68, S. Utah 53 Texas A&M Commerce 63, Houston Christian 53 Texas Southern 85, Ark.-Pine Bluff 80

FAR WEST

BYU 68, Cincinnati 58 Boise St. 68, San Diego St. 59 Cal Poly 49, UC San Diego 39 Colorado St. 61, New Mexico 55 E. Washington 67, Idaho 44 Fresno St. 90, Utah St. 64 Gonzaga 85, San Diego 67 Idaho St. 62, Sacramento St. 48 Loyola Marymount 66, Saint Mary’s (Cal) 48 Montana 89, N. Arizona 84 N. Colorado 58, Montana St. 53 Nevada 64, San Jose St. 57 Portland 73, Santa Clara 63 San Francisco 81, Pacific 68 Texas-Arlington 72, Seattle 54 UC Davis 62, CS Bakersfield 46 UC Santa Barbara 69, Long Beach St. 56 UNLV 76, Air Force 64 Utah Valley St. 75, Texas Rio Grande Valley 62 Weber St. 89, Portland St. 53

NHL ATLANTIC

GP W L OT PTS GF GA 42 25 8 42 27 13 40 21 11 44 22 17 42 21 16 42 17 18 43 18 21 38 15 23

9 2 8 5 5 7 4 0

59 141 114 56 132 106 50 146 130 49 146 149 47 151 142 41 116 145 40 127 143 30 127 140

41 26 13 2 42 24 13 5 43 23 14 6 42 19 13 10 40 22 15 3 40 20 14 6 41 20 15 6 43 13 21 9

54 136 120 53 146 127 52 126 118 48 128 141 47 142 141 46 98 123 46 126 113 35 130 162

METROPOLITAN GP W L OT PTS GF GA

N.Y. Rangers Carolina Philadelphia N.Y. Islanders New Jersey Washington Pittsburgh Columbus

WESTERN CONFERENCE CENTRAL

GP W

PACIFIC

GP W

Winnipeg Colorado Dallas Nashville St. Louis Arizona Minnesota Chicago Vancouver Vegas Los Angeles Edmonton Seattle Calgary Anaheim San Jose

L OT PTS

GF GA

42 43 42 43 41 41 42 43

28 28 25 24 21 21 17 12

10 12 12 18 18 18 20 29

4 3 5 1 2 2 5 2

60 59 55 49 44 44 39 26

139 160 155 138 118 126 121 97

97 133 129 134 131 123 144 158

43 43 39 39 42 43 42 43

29 24 20 23 19 20 14 10

11 14 11 15 14 18 27 30

3 5 8 1 9 5 1 3

61 53 48 47 47 45 29 23

165 136 129 138 122 136 106 88

110 119 102 117 122 137 144 178

FRIDAY’S GAMES

L OT PTS

Nashville 6, Dallas 3 Philadelphia 4, Minnesota 3, OT

67-66-63—196 69-63-64—196 67-67-63—197 67-64-68—199 66-66-67—199 66-66-67—199 68-65-66—199 67-68-64—199 65-66-69—200 71-66-63—200 70-62-68—200 68-66-66—200 69-64-68—201 67-65-69—201 69-66-66—201 65-67-69—201 71-64-66—201 68-65-68—201 64-68-69—201 69-67-65—201 66-65-70—201 66-72-64—202 62-70-70—202 70-62-70—202 69-68-65—202 70-65-67—202 66-69-67—202 69-67-66—202 71-67-64—202 68-70-64—202 70-65-68—203 69-65-69—203 66-67-70—203 69-68-66—203 69-68-66—203 68-65-70—203 66-69-68—203 67-67-69—203 70-68-66—204 68-68-68—204 68-68-68—204 69-69-66—204 68-70-66—204 68-64-72—204 70-66-68—204 65-69-70—204 70-66-68—204 67-70-67—204 69-67-68—204 70-65-70—205 69-67-69—205 69-69-67—205 69-66-70—205

TRANSACTIONS

EASTERN CONFERENCE Boston Florida Toronto Tampa Bay Detroit Montreal Buffalo Ottawa

Keegan Bradley Grayson Murray Sam Stevens Byeong Hun An Chris Kirk Matthieu Pavon Taiga Semikawa Ben Silverman Austin Eckroat Emiliano Grillo Kurt Kitayama Troy Merritt Akshay Bhatia Stewart Cink Russell Henley Stephan Jaeger Seonghyeon Kim Patton Kizzire Taylor Montgomery Nick Taylor Carl Yuan Eric Cole Cameron Davis Ben Griffin Brian Harman Tyrrell Hatton Alex Noren Taylor Pendrith Adam Svensson Brandon Wu Zac Blair Joseph Bramlett Harris English Ryo Hisatsune Kyoung-Hoon Lee Andrew Putnam Brendon Todd Matt Wallace Corey Conners Nicolas Echavarria Billy Horschel Michael Kim Denny McCarthy Keith Mitchell J.T. Poston Aaron Rai Patrick Rodgers Justin Rose Erik Van Rooyen Ludvig Aberg Will Gordon Nick Hardy Si Woo Kim

GF GA

BASEBALL Major League Baseball National League CINCINNATI REDS — Agreed to terms with LHP Brent Suter. Designated RHP Daniel Duarte for assignment.

FOOTBALL National Football League DALLAS COWBOYS — Promoted LBs Buddy Johnson and Malik Jefferson to the active roster from the practice squad.

DETROIT LIONS — Placed CB Jerry Jacobs and TE James Mitchell on injured reserve. Signed TE Anthony Firkser and CB Chase Lucas to the active roster. Promoted DL Tyson Alualu and FB Jason Cabinda to the active roster from the practice squad.

GREEN BAY PACKERS — Promoted CB David Long Jr. to the active roster from the practice squad.

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS — Promoted NT Mike Pennel and CB Keith Taylor to the active roster from the practice squad.

LOS ANGELES RAMS — Promoted LB Olakunle Fatukasi to the active roster from the practice squad.

MIAMI DOLPHINS — Promoted CB Ethan Bonner and LB Malik Reed to the active roster from the practice squad.

HOCKEY National Hockey League CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS — Activated D Seth Jones from injured reserve.

DETROIT RED WINGS — Recalled D Brogan Rafferty from Grand Rapids (AHL).

MINNESOTA WILD — Returned G Jesper Wallstedt to Iowa (AHL) on loan. Activated G Filip Gustavsson from injured reserve.

NEW YORK RANGERS — Reassigned F Jake Leschyshyn to Hartford (AHL).

OTTAWA SENATORS — Activated C Rourke Chartier from injured reserve.

PHILADELPHIA FLYERS — Reassigned D Mason Millman to Lehigh Valley (AHL) from Reading (ECHL).

PITTSBURGH PENGUINS — Reassigned F Jordan Frasca and D Ryan Shea to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (AHL) from Wheeling (ECHL). Recalled F Colin White from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

ST. LOUIS BLUES — Loaned LW Jakub Vrana to Springfield (AHL).

VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS — Recalled G Isaiah Saville and C Byron Froese from Henderson (AHL).

SPORTS

“ We’re going to win with our defense. We know that.”

Lobos forward J.T. Toppin

Continued from Page D-1

PHOTOS BY JIM WEBER/THE NEW MEXICAN

UNM center Sebastian Forsling, right, and San Diego State forward Jaedon LeDee battle for a rebound during UNM’s 88-70 upset win over No. 19 San Diego State on Saturday in The Pit.

throw line, an effort he said he will aim to correct in practice starting Sunday morning.

He and center Nelly Junior Joseph combined for 10 blocked shots and 24 rebounds, each accepting the challenge of defending SDSU’s low-post players above the rim.

Nearly one-fourth of the Aztec’s 64 shot attempts were rejected.

As the game unfolded, the focus for the UNM offense was on guard Jamal Mashburn Jr. Having struggled to find his shot since returning to the lineup after more than a month on the shelf with an injury, he managed to score 19 points despite missing 10 shots.

Forward Mustapha Amzil had 12 points, hitting a pair of clutch 3-pointers early in the first half to keep UNM close.

His emergence from a seasonlong slump is one reason Pitino is giving him extended minutes as one of the first players off the bench.

“He has stayed the course, his attitude has been really, really good,” Pitino said of Amzil. “We know he’s a better shooter than that.”

Together, the Lobos’ big men held San Diego State’s Jaedon LeDee to 15 points and six rebounds — both well below his MWC-leading averages — by taking him out of his comfort zone. Considered a strong candidate for All-American status, LeDee was hounded all game in the low block.

“As soon as he put the ball on the ground, try to go dig it ’cause we knew he wasn’t going to pass much and he was going to try to go up with it,” Toppin said. “We

tried to make him kick it out as much as we can. I felt we did a great job at it.”

Pitino said the plan was to make someone other than LeDee beat his club.

To that effect, the sixth man may have had something to do with it.

The crowd was given several chances to erupt as the game unfolded, much to the delight of Pitino and his players.

It’s games like that, Toppin said, that adds something extra to the product on the court.

“I feel like when we got a big crowd we can’t lose,” Toppin said. “We can’t lose ’cause we be having all the advantages, for real. And when they get louder it’s over with. We match their energy for sure.”

He added: “You just think, like, all the fans are on the court playing with you, for real.”

NOTES

UNM forward J.T. Toppin, right, and San Diego State forward Jaedon LeDee scramble for a loose ball.

The Athletic dispatched a writer to follow UNM and SDSU around this week. That story should be out soon. … CBS play-by-play man Spero Dedes hadn’t called a Lobos game in 11 years. The last time he did was for the 2013 NCAA Tournament in Salt Lake City when thirdseeded New Mexico was upset by No. 14 Harvard. … The 17-0 run was the longest sustained run against a Division I opponent in the Pitino era. The Lobos had a pair of 20-0 runs against lower-level teams. …

Aztecs guard Lamont Butler had just seven points. He’s the guy who memorably sank buzzer-beating winners against UNM in The Pit and Florida Atlantic in the Final Four last season. … There were seven video reviews by the officials during Saturday’s game. …

There were three technical fouls and two flagrants, which speaks to the physical nature of the game. …

Tuesday’s visit against Utah State will be the second straight home game against a team in the Top 25, and the Lobos’ third against a ranked team since the start of conference play. Utah State used a five-point play with 8 seconds left to rally past UNLV in Las Vegas, Nev., on Saturday. The Aggies (161, 4-0) own the nation’s longest active winning streak and are one of just two remaining teams (Boise State, 12-4, 3-0) that are unbeaten in league play. ... The top six teams in the MWC are in the top 50 of the latest KenPom rankings.

Mesa Vista sweeps boys, girls crowns Continued from Page D-1

amazing five minutes, and this is what I’m trying to tell them,” Vigil said. “Look, not everybody is going to play 10 minutes. This is varsity basketball. But we can be equitable. When you get your minutes, I don’t want to hear a victim mentality that you didn’t get your minutes. Get your minutes and go excel in them.

“And Kenny? Huge today.”

Excelling is what sophomore forward Jordan Gallegos did, as well — albeit he had more minutes with which to do it. He scored 16 of his 20 points in the first half and kept the Trojans in the game despite some early struggles.

In the third quarter, it was Santiago Martinez’s moment to shine, as he scored eight of his 12 points in the quarter and the lead expanded to 45-31.

While the win was the sixth in a row for the Trojans, Vigil said he wants to see progress as they are a week away from the District 5-2A season. Another big challenge awaits Mesa Vista on Tuesday as it takes on reigning Class 2A champion Pecos in another busy week. Mesa Vista will have played 10 games in a 16-day span by Jan. 20.

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

D-3

SIDELINES Texas gives football coach Sarkisian four-year contract extension to 2030

Lobos’ House keys upset attention for an emotional demeanor that defines his playing style. Not all of that attention has been positive and often becomes a target when the team doesn’t play well.

His coach, he’s seen enough.

“It’s overblown,” said UNM coach Richard Pitino. “I think we’ve talked about it too much.

I’m really happy he’s on my team.

There’s going to be times he’s going to be emotional. I know every coach in this league, I know every coach in the country would take a Jaelen House. So I’m not trying to rein him in. I’m going to live with who he is, and who he is is a really, really good player.”

So, too, was just about everyone else who took up a defensive position in Saturday’s game.

Physical from start to finish, it matched two teams whose styles play right into the other’s hands. For the Lobos, that meant getting down and dirty with an SDSU squad whose reputation is of a team that wants to out-muscle and out-defend the opposition.

“We weren’t going to win if we didn’t,” Pitino said. “We’re smaller than them; we’re not as big as them; strong, long, whatever you want to say, but we had to be physical. … You have no chance against them if you don’t do that.”

For much of the first half, the difference was more about SDSU’s ball control.

The Aztecs went most of the way without a turnover. The Lobos’ offense is predicated on creating miscues on defense, which gives their guard-heavy attack opportunities to generate points on the other end. Without turnovers, nothing seems to click.

“We’re going to win with our defense,” said Lobos forward J.T. Toppin. “We know that.”

When the turnovers starting matching the Lobos’ blocked shots — they had 11 rejections in the first half — the rally from San Diego State’s double-digit lead began.

The 17 unanswered points helped open a 40-37 lead at the break.

Still a three-point game seven minutes into the second half, it quickly became a rout as the Lobos scored 29 of the next 39 points to take control.

It sent the capacity crowd of 15,437, which included an appearance by Houston Astros third baseman Alex Bergman, into a frenzy.

“I was like, dang, I ain’t never heard it this loud before cause I didn’t really go to the games last year,” said Toppin. “I never been in an environment like this before, playing basketball. It’s amazing.”

Toppin had 17 points, 16 rebounds and five blocked shots.

His only blemish was a numbing 1-for-10 effort from the free

Sunday, January 14, 2024

“If we come out and play to the best of our abilities, the outcome of the game is the outcome of the game [against Pecos],” Vigil said. “When you focus on the outcome of the game, it’s too big of a concept to focus on. Just focus on this possession, each possession and the outcome will take care of itself.”

In other games, Santa Fe Prep (7-6) rolled to a 69-43 win over Moriarty (4-8) in the third-place game. Morgan Field led the way with 20 points, while Van Anderson added 14. Albuquerque Sandia Prep (3-10) took fifth place with a tight 60-58 win over McCurdy (7-7).

GIRLS

Mesa Vista changes defense to defeat Lady Braves The Lady Trojans do not dwell on last year’s Class 2A quarterfinal loss to Texico, but they have not forgotten the lessons that evolved from it. As the Lady Braves (10-5) outhustled them for 18 offensive rebounds to take a 32-24 lead on Kaydence Riley’s jumper with 1:27 left in the third quarter, Mesa Vista showed it

learned how to respond — with hard work.

“We’re trying to prepare for the giants,” Lady Trojans head coach Jesse Boies said. “Out schedule has giants, and we’re Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk.

Every week, I go and bang with them and do rebounding drills.

And tonight, these girls [the Lady Braves] were huge! But we didn’t stop, we didn’t quit.”

And the Lady Trojans changed up their defense, going from their packages of zone defenses to a man-to-man in order to offset SFIS’ size advantage. SFIS only managed three offensive boards the rest of the game, which fueled Mesa Vista’s offense.

With Lady Trojans point guard Isabella Boies bottled up by Lady Braves guard Aaliyah Valencia, it put the onus on junior Tana Lopez and senior Shanae Silva to give her a hand.

They did their part, as Lopez scored 12 of her 25 points and Silva had four of her 10 in the fourth quarter.

Lopez scored seven straight points as Mesa Vista got within 36-35 on Lopez’s short jumper off the glass with 4:30 left. Then, she hit a 3 from the top of the key after Valencia whiffed on a

steal near halfcourt with 2:40 to tie the score at 40-all at the 2:40 mark.

“Bella is our key player, she takes care of the ball,” Lopez said. “But it made us step up as players and show what we can do.”

Silva made her presence felt in another way, as her drive and dish to a wide-open Brittni Suazo with 1:48 left in the game gave Mesa Vista a 42-40 lead that held up despite the Lady Braves’ attempts. In fact, SFIS missed its last seven shots, including a 16-foot shot by Emma Lewis that was short as the buzzer sounded.

Coach Boies said his team is learning how important one possession can be.

“They know how critical one missed rebound, missed dive on the floor, one tie-up on the floor is,” Boies said. “They’re stepping up to the plate.”

In the third-place game, Newcomb (8-6) rallied from a 10-point deficit with less than 2 minutes left to beat Cuba (5-11), 60-59.

In the fifth-place game, Bernalillo (7-8) rolled past McCurdy (4-6) for a 46-6 win.

Laguna-Acoma (6-5) claimed seventh place with a 58-12 win over Raton (0-14).

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ first Big 12 championship since 2009 and the program’s first appearance in the College Football Playoff earned Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian a four-year contract extension through 2030, the school announced Saturday.

Financial terms of the deal, which must be approved by the school’s Board of Regents, were not released. Sarkisian’s initial contract paid him nearly $6 million in 2023, and it’s expected his new deal will push him closer to $10 million annually and among the top-paid coaches in the country.

“Coach Sark is an incredible coach, a firstclass person and tremendous leader of men,” Board of Regents Chairman Kevin Eltife said. “Coach Sark has brought the pride and passion back in our program. We’re so fortunate to have him and we’re looking forward Steve to many more exciting years ahead.”

Sarkisian Texas finished 12-2 and ranked No. 3 after a 37-31 loss to Washington in a national semifinal that came down to the final play. The Longhorns won the Big 12 in their final season in the league. Texas moves into the Southeastern Conference next season.

Sarkisian, 49, is 25-14 in his three seasons at Texas. His name had briefly surfaced as a candidate for the job at Alabama after Nick Saban retired last week. But even before Saban retired, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte had said the university was considering a raise and extension for Sarkisian.

“We’re just getting started,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve been building this program for long-term success. We’re here to chase greatness, win championships and be one of the best in the nation year in and year out.”

Spain’s Botin takes lead in Abu Dhabi SailGP regatta while Team USA is 3rd SAN DIEGO — Spain’s Diego Botin finished last in the first fleet race before winning the next two races to take the lead in the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Sail Grand Prix on Saturday.

Botin’s strong performance aboard his red foiling catamaran “Los Gallos” in light wind on the Persian Gulf came a day after three-time defending SailGP champion Tom Slingsby challenged younger skippers to step up after veterans Jimmy Spithill and Sir Ben Ainslie retired from racing in tech billionaire Larry Ellison’s global league.

Botin, who turned 30 on Christmas, won the Los Angeles regatta in mid-July for Spain’s first-ever SailGP win but has made the podium race only once in the four regattas since then.

Botin has 21 points going into Sunday’s two fleet races, after which the top three teams from the 10-boat fleet advance to the podium race. New Zealand’s Peter Burling, a two-time winner this season, is second with 20 points after going 1-10-2 while Taylor Canfield has the new-look Team USA in third place with 19 points after finishes of 9-2-3.

“We started the day in a poor position with a last place in the first race but it was amazing to come back with two wins and be on top of the leaderboard,” Botin said. “It was super close so everything will be decided tomorrow.”

Falcons interview Bengals’ Callahan, 49ers’ Wilks for head coaching job FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — The Atlanta Falcons have interviewed two more candidates for their head coaching position, meeting virtually with Cincinnati offensive coordinator Brian Callahan and San Francisco defensive coordinator Steve Wilks.

The club announced its interviews with Callahan and Wilks on Saturday after first discussing the job with Baltimore defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald.

The 39-year-old Callahan has spent five seasons as offensive coordinator for the Bengals, working with quarterback Joe Burrow on a team that reached the Super Bowl after the 2021 season and the conference title game a year ago.

Burrow suffered a season-ending wrist injury in November.

The Bengals finished 9-8, missing the playoffs.

Callahan previously served one season as quarterbacks coach for the Raiders and two years in the same post with the Detroit Lions.

Callahan began his NFL coaching career with Denver in 2010, serving in a variety of roles for the Broncos.

The 54-year-old Wilks has coached in the NFL for 16 years.

He was Arizona’s head coach in 2018 and stepped in as Carolina’s interim coach during the 2022 season.

Titans interview Raiders interim coach Pierce for head coaching job NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee Titans have interviewed Las Vegas Raiders interim head coach Antonio Pierce for their vacant head coaching job.

The Titans announced Saturday they completed their third interview to find a replacement for Mike Vrabel, who was dismissed Tuesday after consecutive losing seasons and just six wins in the last 24 games.

Pierce was named interim head coach for the Raiders after Josh McDaniels was fired on Oct. 31 following a 3-5 start to his second season with the team. Pierce and the Raiders went 5-4 after the change, and he remains a leading candidate to get the full-time job.

On Friday, the Titans starting the coaching search, interviewing Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan and Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka.

Pierce, who joined the Raiders as linebackers coach in 2022, started his coaching career as a high school head coach at Long Beach Poly in California before joining Arizona State as linebackers coach/recruiting coordinator in 2018. He worked from 2018 to 2021 at Arizona State, where he eventually rose to Assistant Head Coach/Defensive Coordinator, before joining the Raiders.

Odermatt edges rival in World Cup downhill marred by Kilde’s bad crash WENGEN, Switzerland — A serious crash for his friend and biggest rival Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, who was airlifted to a hospital, took some pleasure away from a stellar win for Swiss star Marco Odermatt in his nation’s signature ski race on Saturday.

Kilde crashed within sight of the finish of the longest downhill on the World Cup circuit just minutes after Odermatt raced to what might have been his best win in an already standout career at age 26.

“A bitter-sweet day, for sure, when you see a friend like Alex crashing that hard,” said Odermatt, calling the performance to earn a 31st career World Cup win “probably one of the best ever from my side.”

Kilde, the overall World Cup champion in 2020 and longtime partner of American star Mikaela Shiffrin, had lengthy treatment on his right leg while laying flat next to the finish line. A helicopter came to the finish area and Kilde was winched up laying on a medical board to be taken to a hospital.

The Associated Press

D-4

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

SPORTS

Sunday, January 14, 2024

COLLEG E FO O TBALL

DeBoer embraces chance at Alabama

By John Zenor

The Associated Press

SAM CRAFT/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Texas A&M guard Wade Taylor IV, left, scored a game-high 31 points against Kentucky on Saturday in College Station, Texas. The Aggies beat the No. 6 Wildcats 97-92 in overtime.

COLLEG E T OP 25

No. 1 Purdue dispatches Penn State The Associated Press

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Zach Edey scored 30 points and grabbed 20 rebounds, and No. 1 Purdue made 11 3-pointers Saturday in a 95-78 rout of Penn State.

The Boilermakers (15-2, 4-2 Big Ten) rebounded from their second loss of the season with their 10th consecutive home victory and their eighth straight in a series they’ve dominated.

Lance Jones had 14 points, Fletcher Loyer added 11 and Braden Smith tied his career high with 11 assists.

Nick Kern Jr. had a careerhigh 18 points to lead Penn State and Kanye Clary added 16. The Nittany Lions (8-9, 2-4) have lost three of four overall.

TCU 68, NO. 2 HOUSTON 67 In Fort Worth, Texas, Emanuel Miller’s layup with six seconds left gave TCU a victory over Houston, the Cougars’ second straight loss to an unranked team.

Miller led the Horned Frogs (13-3, 2-1 Big 12) with 13 points, with his go-ahead basket his only points in the second half. Trevian Tennyson added 12, while Avery Anderson finished with 11.

J’Wan Roberts had a season-high 20 points for Houston (14-2, 1-2). Damian Dunn finished with 17.

NO. 3 KANSAS 78, NO. 9 OKLAHOMA 66 In Lawrence, Kan., Kevin McCullar had 15 of his 21 points in the second half as Kansas surged past Oklahoma, extending its winning streak over the Sooners to six games.

Hunter Dickinson led Kansas (14-2, 2-1 Big 12) with 24 points and 14 rebounds. KJ Adams also had a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds. Dajuan Harris had 8 assists and no turnovers.

NO. 5 TENNESSEE 85, GEORGIA 79 In Athens, Ga., Dalton Knecht scored 36 points, including a go-ahead 3-pointer with less than two minutes remaining, and Tennessee recovered after losing a 14-point lead to beat Georgia and end the Bulldogs’ 10-game winning streak.

Tennessee (12-4, 2-1 Southeastern Conference) blew a 42-28 lead in the first half and trailed by 11 points, 75-64, before recovering in the closing minutes.

TEXAS A&M 97, NO. 6 KENTUCKY 92, OT

Stadium. “I firmly, 100% believe that he wants nothing but the best. Some people when they leave, it’s like, ‘Eh, I want to be that legend, and I don’t want it to be as good as it was when I was there.’

“That’s obviously not the case.

He wants this thing to be even

better. His legendary status will never be questioned.”

Saban and his wife, Terry, sat in the front row Saturday watching DeBoer address a room with dozens of Tide supporters and university brass. Then they slipped out without talking to reporters.

G OLF

Three-way tie for lead in Hawaii

NO. 11 DUKE 84, GEORGIA TECH 79 In Durham, N.C., Kyle Filipowski scored a career-high 30 points while Tyrese Proctor and Ryan Young had big second-half contributions to help Duke hold off Georgia Tech, losers of five straight.

Filipowski, a 7-foot preseason Associated Press All-American, also had 13 rebounds and four assists in a huge performance the Blue Devils (13-3, 4-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) desperately needed to avenge last month’s loss to the Yellow Jackets.

Naithan George scored 17 points for the Yellow Jackets (8-8, 1-4), who were within reach of their first win at Duke’s famously rowdy Cameron Indoor Stadium in nearly two decades.

NO. 15 WISCONSIN 71, NORTHWESTERN 63 In Madison, Wis., Max Klesmit scored a career-high 24 points and A.J. Storr added 14 to help Wisconsin hold off Northwestern.

Wisconsin (13-3, 5-0 Big Ten) has won six straight games and is the only undefeated team in the Big Ten Conference. The Badgers’ 5-0 start in league play is the first since the 2007-08 season.

NO. 16 AUBURN 93, LSU 78 In Auburn, Ala., Chad Baker-Mazara had 19 points and six steals off the bench and Auburn won its ninth straight by double digits over LSU. Auburn (14-2, 3-0 Southeastern Conference) had a season-high 16 steals and scored 26 points off of 17 total turnovers from LSU (10-6, 2-1).

Johni Broome added 18 points and seven rebounds for Auburn, who shot 40% on 3-pointers and 87.1% from the free-throw line.

NO. 18 BYU 63, UCF 58 In Orlando, Fla., Aly Khalifa scored 17 points and BYU held off UCF for its first Big 12 win since joining the conference.

Trevin Knell had 14 points for BYU (13-3, 1-2), and Spencer Johnson finished with 12. Knell made four 3-pointers and Khalifa had three as the Cougars went 9 for 26 from deep.

NO. 21 CLEMSON 89, BOSTON COLLEGE 78 In Clemson, S.C., PJ Hall and Joe Girard III each scored 26 points to help Clemson (12-4, 2-3 ACC) snap a three-game Atlantic Coast Conference losing streak by beating a short-handed Boston College.

Boston College (10-6, 1-4) played without leading scorer Quinten Post, who was among three players out with the stomach flu. Post averages 16.9 points a game.

Hall had a game-high 11 rebounds, while Girard’s 26 points were a season high.

NO. 7 NORTH CAROLINA 103, SYRACUSE 67

NO. 22 CREIGHTON 66, ST. JOHN’S 65

In Chapel Hill, N.C., RJ Davis scored 22 points to help North Carolina race away from Syracuse for the win.

Armando Bacot added 16 points and 11 rebounds as the Tar Heels (13-3, 5-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) won their sixth consecutive game.

In Omaha, Neb., Trey Alexander made the go-ahead free throws with 12.3 seconds left, and Creighton ended St. John’s (12-5, 4-2) four-game win streak.

In Pullman, Wash., Isaac Jones had 24 points and 13 rebounds and Washington State defeated Arizona.

After a 26-point outing in a

VASHA HUNT/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

New Alabama football head coach Kalen DeBoer said Saturday in Tuscaloosa, Ala., “I felt confident enough in my abilities, along with knowing that you have someone that wants this program to be so successful.”

victory at Southern California on Wednesday night, Jones was magnificent again. He got a short jumper to fall with 1:11 left to put the Cougars (12-5, 3-3 Pac-12) up by four and grabbed the game-ending rebound after Caleb Love’s 3-point attempt fell short.

In College Station, Texas, Wade Taylor IV scored a gamehigh 31 points, Tyrece Radford scored a season-high 28 and Texas A&M (10-6, 1-2 Southeastern Conference) defeated Kentucky in overtime.

Radford hit the only field goal of the overtime period, and went 1 for 2 at the free throw line.

Taylor made all four of his free throws in the extra frame. Taylor hit 6 of 13 from 3-point range after having shot 3 of 20 in his last two games.

WASHINGTON STATE 73, NO. 8 ARIZONA 70

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Kalen DeBoer stood at a lectern, only a few feet from Nick Saban, and enthusiastically embraced the chance to both replace and learn from his larger-than-life predecessor.

The outsized expectations Saban leaves behind are a big part of that.

The former Washington coach, hired two days after Saban’s retirement, said he’s giving the 72-year-old ex-coach “100% access” to his program — saying he’d “be a fool not to” — and that Saban firmly wants the Crimson Tide’s success to continue. All that makes it easier to be the guy who replaces the guy who brought six national championships to Tuscaloosa in 17 years.

“I felt confident enough in my abilities, along with knowing that you have someone that wants this program to be so successful,” DeBoer said Saturday, speaking to reporters after he was introduced at Bryant-Denny

WEST VIRGINIA 76, NO 25 TEXAS 73 In Morgantown, W.Va., Pat Suemnick set career highs of 16 points and six rebounds, West Virginia built a double-digit lead and held on to beat Texas.

Kerr Kriisa and RaeQuan Battle added 14 points apiece and Quinn Slazinski had 13 points for West Virginia (6-10, 1-2 Big 12).

But Saban’s shadow still loomed. A huge photo of Saban and players hoisting a national championship trophy hung on the wall behind DeBoer as he talked to reporters.

University President Stuart R. Bell said Alabama found “the perfect person” to lead the program. But he drew loud applause when he gave a nod to Saban.

“Your legacy will forever be interwoven with the fabric of the university,” Bell said.

DeBoer spoke with Saban on the phone Friday morning and called him again the next morning. Saban has told ESPN he will keep an office at the stadium.

Still, it’s DeBoer’s moment.

The 49-year-old from South Dakota was hired Friday after leading Washington to the national championship game in his second season and earning Associated Press coach of the year honors. He’s 104-12 as a head coach, winning three NAIA national titles at alma mater Sioux Falls and quickly having success at Fresno State and Washington. He was 25-3 with the Huskies.

By Doug Ferguson

The Associated Press

ANDY WONG/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Serbia’s Novak Djokovic has made it a habit to start the year with a title in Australia. He’s on a 28-match winning streak at Melbourne Park, where he has won 10 men’s singles crowns.

AUSTR ALIAN OPEN

Djokovic says his wrist doing OK as he begins title defense

By John Pye

ON TV

The Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia — The injury update from Novak Djokovic was all good on the eve of his Australian Open title defense.

Djokovic hurt his wrist playing for Serbia in the United Cup two weeks ago, and needed treatment twice during a quarterfinal loss to Australia’s Alex de Minaur.

“My wrist is good. I had time from the last match against de Minaur to my first match here to recover,” he said. “I’ve been training well.

Practice sessions pain-free so far. It’s good. It’s all looking good.”

Djokovic has made it a habit to start the year with a title in Australia. He’s on a 28-match winning streak at Melbourne Park, where he has won an unprecedented 10 men’s singles crowns.

It’s a major contributor to his record 24 Grand Slam titles.

And so he feels right at home. He hosted “A Night with Novak and Friends” that drew almost a capacity crowd to Rod Laver Arena, where he got the jump on organizers by announcing he’d be playing the night match Sunday — Day 1 of the first-ever 15-day Australian Open.

Both singles champions will play in the first of the night sessions: Djokovic’s opener against qualifier Dino Prizmic will by followed by Aryna Sabalenka’s first-round match against Ella Seidel.

Fourth-seeded Jannik Sinner, who beat Djokovic twice in a month late last year, including in Italy’s run to the Davis Cup title, will open

6 a.m. ESPN2 — Australian Open, first round (taped) 5 p.m. ESPN — Australian Open, first round 9 p.m. ESPN2 — Australian Open, first round 1 a.m. Monday ESPN2 — Australian Open, first round

play on the main show court against Botic van de Zandschulp.

That match will be followed by No. 8 Maria Sakkari’s women’s first round against Nao Hibino. Caroline Wozniacki, the 2018 champion who is returning to Melbourne Park for the first time as a mother, will open the night session on Margaret Court Arena.

The first round will be staged over three days, with organizers hoping to cut back on the late finishes across the tournament.

Djokovic won 27 of his 28 matches in Grand Slams last year, losing only the Wimbledon final to Carlos Alcaraz. He’s determined to go one better than that in 2024, and would like an Olympic gold medal in Paris to go with it.

Asked Saturday if the so-called Golden Slam — all four majors plus Olympic gold — was in his reckoning for this season, Djokovic said it’s no secret he wants to win every major he contests.

“It’s no different this year,” he said. “I’m just hoping I can start the season in a way that I have been starting my seasons, most of my seasons, throughout my career: with a win here in Australia, in Melbourne. My favorite place, no doubt.”

HONOLULU — Keegan Bradley birdied his last two holes Saturday for a 7-under 63, giving him a share of the lead with Grayson Murray in a Sony Open that is far from a two-man race.

Six players were within three shots of the lead, typical for Waialae. It was so chaotic on a gorgeous afternoon up the shores from Waikiki that 10 players had at least a share of the lead at some point in the third round.

Getting some separation was tough, though Bradley and Murray at least got a little.

Bradley hit a cut 6-iron to a back pin to 6 feet for birdie on the par-3 17th, and then his tee shot on the par-5 closing hole avoided the bunker. He had a good enough lie to get it on the green for a two-putt birdie.

That put him at 14-under 196.

Murray soon joined him, getting up-and-down from the bunker left of the 18th green for his 64.

They led by one shot over Sam Stevens, who had a 63.

Among those still in the mix is Chris Kirk (67). He won The Sentry last week and at three shots behind can still entertain hopes of joining Justin Thomas in 2017 and Ernie Els in 2004 to sweep the Hawaii swing.

Bradley, a former PGA champion, will be trying to win for the third time in the last 16 months.

He will be in the final group with Murray, a raw talent who went to three colleges and was battling alcohol problems three years ago, including one incident in Honolulu.

He thinks he has turned the corner, and he took plenty of inspiration from Kirk, who also had to step away from golf in 2019 to address alcoholism and depression.

“I’ve obviously been vocal about the alcohol use in the past.

I’m over eight months sober now.

I have a beautiful fiancée that I love so much and who is so supportive of me, and my parents are so supportive of me,” Murray said.

MOUNTAIN WE S T BA SKE TBALL

Utah State beats UNLV with late 5-point play The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Great Osobor made two free throws with 8.4 seconds left to complete a five-point play for No. 20 Utah State’s only lead of the game Saturday and allow the 20 Utah St. 87 Aggies to escape with an UNLV 86 87-86 victory over UNLV. UNLV’s Luis Rodriguez made two free throws for an 86-82 lead with 14.3 seconds remaining for an apparent two-possession lead. But Darius Brown II made a 3-pointer and UNLV’s Kalib Boone was called for a foul away from the ball, sending Osobor to the line. He missed what would’ve been a game-tying layup on the previous possession.

But then Osobor calmly made both free

throws for the winning points.

“It shows he’s maturing,” Utah State coach Danny Sprinkle said. “A year ago, two years ago, I don’t know if he would’ve done that.

He’s grown physically, spiritually, mentally, all of it.”

Osobor said a timeout by UNLV before his free throws “helped me calm down.”

“When I was at the line, Coach Sprinkle was like, ‘You’re built for this,’” Osobor said. “Everyone was like, ‘Go win this one.’ I calmed down, and I prayed real quick.”

After Osobor made the foul shots, UNLV’s Dedan Thomas Jr. missed a jumper at the buzzer.

“You’re going to win most of those games,” UNLV coach Kevin Kruger said. “There’s nothing to say after a game like that. There’s

nothing you can tell a player.”

WYOMING 68, FRESNO STATE 67 In Laramie, Wyo., Brendan Wenzel led Wyoming with 17 points and Akuel Kot scored the game-winning jump shot with one second left as the Cowboys beat Fresno State 68-67 on Saturday night.

Wenzel had eight rebounds for the Cowboys (9-8, 2-2 Mountain West Conference). Sam Griffin scored 16 points and Kot added 12 points.

Isaiah Pope finished with 15 points, seven rebounds and two steals for the Bulldogs (7-9, 0-3). Donavan Yap added 12 points for Fresno Statek and Xavier Dusell scored 10.

Griffin scored 10 points in the first half and Wyoming went into the break trailing 35-28.

Wenzel scored 14 second-half points. Wyoming outscored Fresno State by eight points over the final half.

NFL WILD-CARD WEEKEND

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

D-5

Cowboys ride 16-game home streak against Packers

By Schuyler Dixon

The Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Texas — Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys couldn’t have asked for things to go any better than they did the last two weeks of the regular season.

Their rise to the No. 2 seed in the NFC means they won’t have to leave home in the postseason unless they get where they’ve wanted to be for 28 years without making it — the conference championship game.

The possibility of at least two playoff games at AT&T Stadium comes with the Cowboys (12-5) riding a 16-game winning streak under their retractable roof.

All fine and good, Prescott says, but first things first.

The NFC East champs will see the playoff debut of Green Bay quarterback Jordan Love, future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers’ successor, when the Packers (9-8) visit in a wild-card game Sunday.

“On our end, it starts off with us taking care of this one,” Prescott said.

“We can talk about the opportunity, this and that, but the opportunity is right now with this game. I’d be getting ahead of myself if I didn’t say it’s today and the rest of these meetings and our approach.”

Dallas is in the playoffs for the third consecutive season, which the franchise hasn’t done since a run of six straight

DANIEL KUCIN JR./ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

Cowboys cornerback Jourdan Lewis, right, and teammates celebrate against the Commanders Jan. 7 in Landover, Md.

from 1991-96 that included three of its five Super Bowl titles. The Cowboys were knocked out by San Francisco each of the past two postseasons, first in a wild-card game at home, then the

divisional round on the road.

“Experience is everything,” said Dallas receiver CeeDee Lamb, who set club records with an NFL-best 135 catches for 1,749 yards. “I feel like we have a lot

of guys that have also been on the team for quite some time, and we all went through the same scars, and we’re not trying to feel that again.”

This time, Dallas wouldn’t see the

top-seeded Niners until the NFC title game. The Cowboys chased defending division champion Philadelphia for two months before overtaking the Eagles in the final two weeks.

Instead of a postseason likely filled with road games like a year ago, when Dallas dominated Tampa Bay before the loss in the Bay Area, the Cowboys are in line for multiple home playoff games for the first time since they were the NFC’s top seed in Prescott’s rookie year in 2016.

Prescott lost his playoff debut to Rodgers and coach Mike McCarthy’s Packers.

McCarthy is now in his fourth season in charge of the Cowboys.

“It’s all about an excellent opportunity that we prepared ourselves and we put ourselves in this position,” said McCarthy, who led Green Bay to a Super Bowl title 13 years ago and spent 12-plus seasons there. “We earned it, deserved it and more importantly, we’re going to take advantage of it.”

Love threw 18 touchdown passes with just one interception in the final eight games, when the Packers went 6-2 to surge into the final playoff spot in the NFC. “We’ve had to win every game going forward to be able to put ourselves in this position,” Love said. “Obviously now the stakes are a little bit higher in the playoffs, but I think we’ve been here, we have the right mindset going forward.”

Stafford returns to Detroit with Rams in battle with Lions

By Larry Lage

The Associated Press

DETROIT — The Detroit Lions’ first home playoff game in three decades features the return of one of the many quarterbacks who failed to lift the franchise to postseason success since it won the NFL title in 1957.

Matthew Stafford, drafted by a Detroit team in 2009 coming off the league’s first 0-16 season, is making his return to Ford Field with the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night — three years after asking for a trade that triggered a win-win blockbuster deal.

The Rams acquired Stafford, who led them to a Super Bowl title two years ago, in exchange for Jared Goff and first-round picks that helped the Lions draft record-breaking rookie tight end Sam LaPorta, standout rookie running back Jahmyr Gibbs and second-year receiver Jameson Williams.

Lions general manager Brad Holmes made the deal in January 2021 with the Rams — the team that employed him for the previous 18 seasons — shortly after he was hired by Detroit.

Holmes was tasked with turning around an organization that has been one of the NFL’s worst for generations.

Detroit’s most recent playoff victory was Jan. 5, 1992, and that was the franchise’s only postseason win in six-plus decades.

“This town is ready for a winner, and we’re ready to give them that,” said Lions defensive

Steelers, Bills moved to Monday The Associated Press

end Aidan Hutchinson, who is from suburban Detroit and played at Michigan. “There’s been a lot of tough years for the Lions.”

The Rams got off a rough start this season, going into their bye with a 3-6 record, before bouncing back to earn a postseason bid for the fifth time in coach Sean McVay’s seven seasons.

“I’m excited to go play anybody anywhere in the playoffs,” said Stafford, who set franchise records for yards passing and touchdowns over 12 seasons in Detroit. “We were a team that at the beginning of the season, nobody gave us a chance to be at the position that we’re in.”

Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford was drafted by the Lions in 2009 but was traded to Los Angeles in 2021. He returns today to Ford Field for an NFC Wild Card game.

First-timers

Silver lining

The Rams won the Super Bowl after the 2021 season, but much of that team’s core is gone.

Los Angeles had the NFL’s second-youngest roster for much of the season, which means about two dozen firstor second-year players will make their playoff debuts in Detroit. The group includes record-setting rookie receiver Puka Nacua, 1,100-yard rusher Kyren Williams and the rookie pass-rushing tandem of Kobie Turner and Byron Young.

“A lot of the guys around the building are hyped,” Turner said. “To go back with Matthew, and to have it be their first home playoff game in 30 years, I know the atmosphere is going to be insane.”

ADAM HUNGER/ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

When Detroit coach Dan Campbell decided to play his starters last week, hanging onto slim hopes of going from the No. 3 to 2 seed, it looked like Sam LaPorta might have been a casualty.

The standout rookie tight end landed awkwardly on his left leg while being tackled, and was knocked out of the game with a knee injury that appeared serious.

LaPorta, though, said he was able to run some routes and participate in blocking drills at practice Thursday.

“When it first happened, it didn’t feel great,” he said. “I feel like I’ve started to bounce back quickly.”

Crowded house The Rams had to play only one postseason road game during their championship run two years ago, but McVay and some of his veteran leaders have been in hostile playoff atmospheres.

McVay said the NFC Championship game in New Orleans in January 2019 — when Campbell coached the Saints’ tight ends — prepared players such as receiver Cooper Kupp and

defensive tackle Aaron Donald for what they’ll hear at the Motor City’s indoor stadium.

“It’ll be crazy,” McVay said.

Potentially pivotal How Stafford fares through the air, particularly to Nacua and Kupp, against one of the league’s worst pass defenses may prove to be the difference in the game.

Detroit defensive back C.J. Gardner-Johnson, though, does not sound to be worried about it.

“I’ve been against tougher quarterbacks,” said Gardner-Johnson, who played in six postseason games with New Orleans and Philadelphia. “He’s a good quarterback, a great quarterback.”

Chiefs freeze out Dolphins in win

Texans bash Browns

the wind chill to a bone-rattling minus-27 degrees, that made the Meanwhile, the injury-deweather truly miserable for just pleted Dolphins (11-7) looked about everyone. nothing like the dynamic offense That included pop star Taylor that led the league in yards.

Swift, who once again turned up Tua Tagovailoa was presto see her boyfriend, Chiefs tight sured relentlessly by the NFL’s end Travis Kelce. second-ranked defense, wide She at least got to watch from receiver Tyreek Hill had a an enclosed suite. Most fans 53-yard TD catch but was other- huddled outside in parkas, ski wise shut down in his return to goggles and snow pants, and Kansas City, and the Dolphins players huddled around heaters finished with 264 yards in all. on the sidelines as if they They have not won at Arrow- were an oasis in the cold. The head Stadium since Nov. 6, 2011, National Weather Service issued or won a playoff game since Dec. a warning for what it called 30, 2000. “dangerously cold” weather that “All the weather,” Reid said, had blanketed the Midwest. “it’s a little bit different than In fact, the cold may have down in Miami.” made Mahomes’ helmet brittle The Chiefs won their 15th con- enough that a hit in the third secutive home playoff game, not quarter knocked a chunk of the counting a trio of Super Bowls plastic shell from it. Once offithat netted them two Lombardi cials saw the fist-sized hole, they Trophies. made Mahomes get a backup But they will head to Buffalo helmet from the bench. next week if the Bills beat the “We have to talk about where Steelers on Monday in a game we store the backup,” Mahomes pushed back a day by a blizzard. said. “It was like, frozen.”

Otherwise, the Chiefs will host The weather didn’t seem to Houston, which beat the Browns bother Hill, who was playing earlier Saturday. in Kansas City for the first It was minus-4 degrees Fahrtime since his old team traded enheit at kickoff, easily setting him to Miami two years ago. a record for the coldest game at The league’s leading receiver Arrowhead Stadium. But it was warmed up in a short-sleeved wind gusts, whipping through at shirt, then proceeded to scorch the stout Chiefs defense and Allmore than 25 mph and driving Continued from Page D-1

Continued from Page D-1

stellar play and the leadership of first-year coach DeMeco Ryans transformed the Texans (11-7) from NFL laughingstock to AFC South champions.

Flacco, who turns 39 in three days, came off the couch to go 4-1 as a starter to end the regular season and lead the Browns (11-7) to just their third playoff appearance since their 1999 expansion rebirth but second in four seasons under coach Kevin Stefanski. Playing in his 17th postseason game but first in nine years, Flacco couldn’t continue his magical run under the bright lights of the playoffs.

He finished with 307 yards and had a touchdown pass in the first half, but his mistakes under pressure in the third quarter were too much for the Browns to overcome on a day when Stroud easily outshined him in his playoff debut.

The previous highest-drafted rookie QB to win a postseason game was the New York Jets’ Mark Sanchez, who was the fifth overall pick in 2009.

Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson

The Pro Bowl player had 86 catches, breaking Keith Jackson’s NFL record for receptions by a rookie tight end that had stood since 1988, and set franchise marks at the position with 889 yards receiving and 10 touchdowns.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A potentially dangerous snowstorm that hit the Buffalo region Saturday led the NFL to push back the Bills’ wild-card playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers from Sunday to Monday.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and the NFL cited public safety concerns for the postponement, with up to 2 feet of snow projected to fall on the region over a 24-plus-hour period. Heavy snow began falling by midafternoon Saturday, accompanied by strong wind, and the Bills posted a video on social media of whiteout conditions at Highmark Stadium.

“The decision to move the game to Monday was made in consultation with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in the best interest of public safety, and with the Buffalo Bills and the Pittsburgh Steelers, as the region prepares for the storm,” the NFL and Bills said in a joint statement.

Hochul said she started talking with the NFL on Thursday about the possibility of rescheduling the game because of what she called a “dangerous storm.” Hochul, who is from just outside Buffalo, closed her news conference by saying, “Go Bills.”

“We want our Bills to win, but we don’t want 60,000 to 70,000 people traveling to the football game in what’s going to be horrible conditions,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a news conference in the Buffalo suburbs.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning lasting through Monday morning.

DAVID J. PHILLIP/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Texans running back Devin Singletary celebrates after scoring against the Browns in a wild-card playoff game Saturday in Houston. The Texans won 45-14.

was under center for the Texans during their last playoff run but played just six games for the Browns this season before having season-ending shoulder surgery.

He was on the sideline for just the second time since his surgery, watching the coming out party for the man who replaced him as Houston’s franchise quarterback.

The sellout crowd was rowdy and ready for Houston’s return to the postseason after three awful seasons where the team combined for just 11 wins. They chanted “MVP! MVP!” throughout the game when Stroud dropped back to pass.

Collins had six receptions for 96 yards and a touchdown, and Devin Singletary ran for 66 yards and a late score for Houston.

Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie for a his long touchdown reception midway through the first half.

But the Dolphins’ offense otherwise struggled, just as it did in a 21-14 loss to the Chiefs in their November game in Germany.

Kansas City was far more efficient, scoring on four of its six first-half drives. Mahomes capped the first with a TD toss to Rice, and while ensuing drives kept fizzling in the red zone, Butker added a trio of field goals to give Kansas City a 16-3 lead.

“That was like kicking a block of ice,” Reid said.

The Chiefs added another field goal in the third quarter, but it was still a two-possession game early in the fourth when the Dolphins appeared to force another field goal. But a late flag on Christian Wilkins for roughing the passer on third down gave Kansas City a fresh set of downs, and Pacheco plowed into the end zone moments later to give the Chiefs a 26-7 lead.

The Dolphins finally put together a sustained drive afterward, but by that point it was much too late. And when they failed to convert on fourth down, they were headed to their 11th straight loss when the gametime temp is 40 degrees or less.

Far less, in this case.

D-6

ALMANAC

Midnight through 6 p.m. Saturday

Santa Fe Area .Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.00" .... .Month . . . . . to . . .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.68" .... . . . . .to Year . .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.68" ....

AREA RAINFALL

Albuquerque Area .Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.00" .... . . . . . . to Month . . .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.29" ....

Tonight

Today

Few Snow Showers.

37

21

Albuquerque .Severity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3, . . . .Low ...

Allergens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Juniper,Amaranth ...............

Source: https://pollen.com

TODAY'S UV INDEX + 10 8 6 4 2 0

Extreme Very High High Moderate Low

The UV index forecasts the ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun. The higher the number the more risk of sun damage to your skin.

37 / 20

Humidity (Noon)

Partly Cloudy.

41 / 26

Sunny.

43 / 19

Humidity (Noon)

Saturday

Partly Cloudy.

41 / 18

Humidity (Noon)

City

43 / 17

Humidity (Noon)

Humidity (Noon)

86%

70%

54%

52%

59%

52%

54%

Wind: W 15 mph

Wind: NW 15 mph

Wind: WNW 15 mph

Wind: NW 15 mph

Wind: WSW 10 mph

Wind: WSW 10 mph

NEW MEXICO WEATHER

NATIONAL WEATHER

Shown is today's weather. Temperatures are today's highs and tonight's lows.

Taos 35 / 18

Farmington 40 / 20

Raton 31 / 13

~ ola Espan 43 / 21

San Francisco 60/47

Albuquerque 51 / 26

Truth or Consequences 64 / 30

L

Las Vegas 59/38

Denver 6/-3

Mérida 88/72

0s

10s

20s

30s

40s

50s

60s

Carlsbad 48 / 24

70s

Rain

70° in Jal -1° in Mosquero

90s

100s

110s

Thunderstorms

Snow

Ice

Jet Stream

Warm

Cold

Stationary

The Northeast will see partly to mostly cloudy skies with isolated snow, highest temperature of 45 in Berlin, Md. The Southeast will experience partly cloudy skies with isolated snow, highest temperature of 76 in Miami, Fla. In the Northwest there will be mostly clear to partly cloudy skies with the highest temperature of 52 in Brookings, Ore. The Southwest will see partly cloudy skies with isolated snow, highest temperature of 70 in Palm Springs, Calif.

WEATHER HISTORY

NEW MEXICO CITIES

Yesterday Today Tomorrow Hi/Lo W Hi/Lo W Hi/Lo W City

Alamogordo 59/27 s 60/32 pc 58/26 s Albuquerque 50/30 s 51/26 pc 49/22 pc Angel Fire 27/16 pc 29/11 sn 28/3 mc Artesia 66/34 s 49/23 s 52/11 s Carlsbad 67/41 s 48/24 s 51/12 s Chama 35/18 mc 30/13 ss 31/6 mc Cimarron 27/16 s 38/18 s 35/4 mc Clayton 26/-1 pc 7/-2 mc 12/-5 mc Cloudcroft 59/27 s 39/21 pc 38/16 s Clovis 55/22 s 32/13 s 37/4 pc Crownpoint 36/21 s 39/25 pc 40/20 pc Deming 59/21 s 61/27 s 62/26 s 38/23 s 43/21 ss 41/17 pc Espan~ ola Farmington 39/7 pc 40/20 ss 38/13 mc Fort Sumner 58/28 s 43/21 s 49/6 pc Gallup 39/13 s 39/15 pc 42/13 pc Grants 45/16 s 43/20 s 45/18 pc Hobbs 64/27 s 34/16 s 38/9 pc Las Cruces 60/32 s 64/32 pc 63/29 pc

Las Vegas Lordsburg Los Alamos Los Lunas Portales Raton Red River Rio Rancho Roswell Ruidoso Santa Rosa Silver City Socorro T or C Taos Tucumcari Univ. Park White Rock Zuni

Yesterday Today Tomorrow Hi/Lo W Hi/Lo W Hi/Lo W 43/28 s 41/22 s 40/4 pc 43/37 s 59/25 s 58/26 s 38/23 s 39/23 ss 37/19 pc 54/25 s 53/23 pc 51/20 pc 55/22 s 36/13 s 39/5 pc 43/21 s 31/13 s 24/-2 mc 27/16 pc 32/13 mc 28/6 mc 46/25 s 48/24 pc 46/20 pc 65/28 s 50/26 s 52/14 s 50/37 s 49/29 s 48/17 s 52/22 s 46/22 s 44/4 pc 53/19 s 50/27 s 51/26 pc 59/26 s 57/28 pc 56/27 s 58/21 s 64/30 s 61/29 pc 34/15 mc 35/18 ss 33/9 mc 59/13 s 31/10 s 27/2 pc 60/32 s 64/32 pc 63/28 pc 38/23 s 42/21 ss 40/16 pc 46/34 s 43/18 pc 44/17 pc

Jan. 14, 1989 - A winter storm spread snow and sleet and freezing rain from the Middle Mississippi Valley to the northeastern U.S. Freezing rain in West Virginia caused fifteen traffic accidents in just a few minutes west of Charleston.

NATIONAL EXTREMES SATURDAY High

87° in Pompano Beach, Fla.

NIGHT SKY

Low

-54° in Chester, Mont.

Sunrise Today Monday Tuesday

Mercury 7:13 a.m.

7:12 a.m.

7:12 a.m.

Rise Set

5:36 a.m.

3:27 p.m.

5:12 p.m.

5:13 p.m.

5:14 p.m.

Rise Set

Mars

4:45 a.m.

2:40 p.m.

Rise Set

6:13 a.m.

3:50 p.m.

9:48 a.m.

10:17 a.m.

10:45 a.m.

Rise Set

12:05 p.m.

--

9:11 p.m.

10:22 p.m.

11:30 p.m.

Rise Set

Uranus

9:27 a.m.

8:25 p.m.

Rise Set

12:41 p.m.

--

Sunset Today Monday Tuesday Today Monday Tuesday

WIND TRACKER

Moonset Today Monday Tuesday

8 p.m.

2 a.m. Mon.

First Q. Jan. 17

Full Jan. 25

Venus

Jupiter

Moonrise

Weather (w): cl-cloudy, fg-fog, hz-haze, mc-mostly cloudy, pc-partly cloudy, r-rain, rs-rain & snow, s-sunny, sh-showers, sn-snow, ss-snow showers, t-thunderstorms

2 p.m.

80s

Fronts:

STATE EXTREMES SATURDAY

8 a.m. Sun.

Miami 75/69

Cancún 81/75

Mexico City 73/58

-0s

H

New Orleans 60/46

Guadalajara 81/53

Hobbs 34 / 16

High Low

Atlanta 49/30

Dallas 27/15

Monterrey 73/55

La Paz 75/61

Alamogordo 60 / 32

Washington D.C. 38/21

St. Louis 8/3

Albuquerque 51/26 Phoenix 65/40

New York 39/20

Detroit 16/3

Chicago -1/-6

Omaha -7/-15

Hermosillo 77/53

Roswell 50 / 26

Las Cruces 64 / 32

City

Los Angeles 63/49

Clovis 32 / 13

Ruidoso 49 / 29

Boise 25/10

Boston 40/22

Minneapolis -1/-10

Billings -7/-18

Las Vegas 41 / 22

Pecos 37 / 22

Sillver City 50 0 / 27

Seattle 31/23

Santa Fe 37 / 21

Gallup G 3 / 15 39

L

H Clayton 7 / -2

Los Alamos 39 / 23

AIR QUALITY INDEX

Santa Fe .Severity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3, . . . .Low ...

Allergens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Juniper,Amaranth ...............

Sunny.

Friday

Wind: WSW 15 mph

A partial list of the City of Santa Fe's Comprehensive Water Conservation Requirements currently in effect: No outside watering from 10am to 6pm from May 1 to October 31.

For a complete list of requirements call: 955-4225 http://www.santafenm.gov/water_conservation

POLLEN COUNTS

38 / 14

Humidity (Noon)

Thursday

80%

WATER STATISTICS

Source: www.airnow.gov

Sunny.

Wednesday

Wind: SW 20 mph

Taos Area .Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.00" .... . . . . . . to Month . . .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.06" ....

0-50, Good; 51-100, Moderate; 101-150, Unhealthy for sensitive groups; 151-200, Unhealthy; 201-300, Very Unhealthy, 301-500, Hazardous

Tuesday

Partly Cloudy.

Humidity (Mid.)

Los Alamos Area .Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.00" .... . . . . . . to Month . . .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.68" ....

.Saturday's . . . . . . . . .rating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 .. . . . . . . . Forecast Today's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 ..

Monday

Partly Cloudy.

Humidity (Noon)

Las Vegas Area .Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.00" .... . . . . . . to Month . . .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.52" ....

The following water statistics of January 11th are provided by the City Water Division (in millions of gallons).

Total water produced from: Canyon Water Treatment Plant: 3.983 Buckman Water Treatment Plant: 1.945 City Wells: 0.0 Buckman Wells: 0.0 Total production: 5.928 Total consumption: 6.275 Santa Fe reservoir inflow: 0.73 Reservoir storage: 244.61 Estimated reservoir capacity: 19.15%

NATIONAL CITIES

7 DAY FORECAST FOR SANTA FE

Santa Fe Airport Temperatures .High/low . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42°/26° ......

Normal . . . . . . . high/low . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45°/19° ...... . . . . . . .high Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55° . . . in . . 1953 .... . . . . . . .low . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -6° . . . in . . 2013 ....

Record Santa Fe Airport Precipitation .Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.00" .... .Month . . . . . to . . .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.15" .... . . . . . . . month Normal . . . . . .to . . date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.20" ....

Year . . . . .to . .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.15" ....

Normal . . . . . . . year . . . . to . . date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.20" .... .Last . . . year . . . . .to. .date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.20" ....

THE WEATHER

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

Saturn

Last Q. Feb. 2

New Feb. 9

Yesterday Today Tomorrow Hi/Lo W Hi/Lo W Hi/Lo W

Anchorage 25/7 mc 32/14 ss 19/11 pc Atlanta 48/30 s 49/30 s 52/31 mc Baltimore 57/39 pc 39/23 pc 34/28 mc Bangor 43/23 ra 36/19 ss 30/16 pc Billings -7/-26 s -7/-18 mc 3/-9 s Bismarck -13/-27 mc -13/-18 mc -5/-8 pc Boise 18/7 sn 25/10 ss 22/5 pc Boston 61/42 ra 40/22 ss 32/23 pc Charleston,SC 66/43 pc 59/39 s 62/46 pc Charlotte 52/41 s 51/31 s 47/32 cl Chicago 34/10 sn -1/-6 pc 2/-5 mc Cincinnati 39/21 sn 18/8 mc 19/9 mc Cleveland 49/27 sn 16/7 sn 18/9 mc Dallas 63/30 s 27/15 mc 26/12 ra Denver 0/-14 mc 6/-3 sn 7/-11 sn Des Moines 7/-9 sn -6/-17 mc -3/-12 mc Detroit 39/27 sn 16/3 ss 11/5 mc Fairbanks -8/-22 mc -1/-9 sn 9/4 sn Flagstaff 45/10 s 44/18 s 45/19 mc Helena -18/-36 s -8/-22 sn 1/-11 s Honolulu 77/58 s 78/64 s 79/69 pc Houston 65/32 pc 47/35 mc 37/25 sh Indianapolis 25/18 sn 8/3 mc 12/4 mc Kansas City 9/-2 mc -2/-8 mc 4/-6 cl Las Vegas 52/30 s 59/38 s 60/37 pc Los Angeles 64/43 s 63/49 mc 66/48 mc Louisville 34/24 mc 15/10 mc 19/9 ss Memphis 45/26 s 23/14 mc 18/9 sn Miami 86/68 mc 75/69 t 79/72 mc Milwaukee 34/19 sn 4/-8 mc 1/-9 mc Minneapolis 12/-1 sn -1/-10 mc -2/-6 mc New Orleans 54/43 pc 60/46 s 61/34 mc New York City 60/40 mc 39/20 ss 31/27 mc Oklahoma City 23/10 pc 9/4 ss 15/6 mc Omaha 1/-13 sn -7/-15 pc -1/-11 mc Orlando 75/55 mc 65/52 mc 71/63 sh Philadelphia 59/37 mc 40/21 ss 32/27 mc Phoenix 63/37 s 65/40 s 66/41 pc Pittsburgh 45/26 sn 23/11 ss 24/18 mc Portland,OR 21/15 sn 25/16 mc 27/17 pc Richmond 63/43 ra 59/46 ra 58/45 mc Salt Lake City 36/27 sn 38/28 sn 35/13 sn San Antonio 70/30 pc 35/26 mc 36/22 ra San Diego 63/41 s 62/49 mc 65/50 mc San Francisco 57/46 ra 60/47 ra 59/46 mc Seattle 25/14 mc 31/23 pc 35/24 pc Sioux Falls 2/-17 sn -9/-17 pc -5/-9 pc St. Louis 21/14 sn 8/3 mc 10/2 mc Tampa 73/57 mc 63/56 mc 74/64 sh Trenton 59/44 ra 40/19 ss 32/25 mc Tulsa 24/10 pc 7/3 ss 13/4 ss Washington,DC 55/37 pc 38/21 pc 34/28 mc

WORLD CITIES City Amsterdam Athens Baghdad Beijing Berlin Bermuda Bogota Cairo Copenhagen Dublin Frankfurt Guatemala City Istanbul Jerusalem Johannesburg Lima London Madrid Mexico City Moscow Nassau New Delhi Oslo Paris Rio Rome Seoul Stockholm Sydney Tel Aviv Tokyo Toronto Vienna

Yesterday Today Tomorrow Hi/Lo W Hi/Lo W Hi/Lo W 42/39 mc 47/43 ra 70/50 pc 34/19 mc 36/32 sn 68/65 ra 69/48 ra 70/54 s 39/30 ra 44/33 mc 34/29 cl 80/53 s 39/33 mc 57/46 mc 84/60 mc 78/69 s 41/34 cl 48/37 s 75/55 pc 1/-18 s 84/73 s 69/45 pc 26/12 sn 37/30 cl 82/75 ra 54/36 s 40/21 s 33/26 sn 86/68 s 66/54 ra 51/42 ra 41/30 ra 34/28 mc

43/40 ra 50/40 s 69/52 s 35/23 s 38/35 sn 69/65 ra 70/48 ra 66/54 s 37/33 mc 42/36 cl 36/32 cl 77/55 s 42/31 s 51/45 ra 83/60 pc 77/72 mc 43/37 mc 50/43 ra 73/58 cl 8/-12 mc 77/74 ra 71/45 mc 34/16 sn 36/28 mc 82/75 ra 54/41 ra 35/22 ra 28/20 cl 79/69 ra 63/57 ra 51/37 s 26/20 sn 36/29 mc

38/36 sn 54/44 ra 68/55 s 35/23 s 35/33 sn 65/63 mc 70/47 ra 65/54 s 33/27 sn 36/30 mc 36/33 sn 80/54 s 51/42 pc 52/44 ra 88/65 pc 77/71 cl 36/32 s 52/46 ra 76/57 s 26/18 sn 76/75 ra 72/53 s 24/5 mc 38/35 sn 90/75 mc 58/51 ra 32/25 s 23/20 sn 70/68 ra 62/57 ra 48/43 s 17/13 mc 37/32 mc

‘Descriptive,’ ‘banal’: Netflix’s tags reel in viewers

By John Koblin

The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — Grey’s Anatomy is “soapy” and “emotional.”

Emily in Paris is “campy” and “quirky.” Our Planet II is “relaxing” and “captivating,” while Gravity is “suspenseful” and “visually striking.”

Words like those — displayed near the synopsis and movie poster-style tile for each one of the thousands of titles on Netflix — appear to be scooped out of a grab bag.

In fact, they are a critical tool to induce viewers to click play, and a key to Netflix’s dominance.

The two- or three-word tags, meant to convey the gestalt of a show or movie, regularly help viewers choose a show from the service’s nearly endless library, the company says. The words are selected by about 30 employees — so-called taggers.

“Imagine magazines that have no cover lines, and there were just photographs on them,” said Allan Donald, a director of product at Netflix. “Tags make as much of a difference as a cover line in that snap, ‘This is for me’ decision.”

As Netflix widens its Secre-

tariat-like lead in the so-called streaming wars, the descriptive, if sometimes banal, tags stand out as an example of how the company stays ahead. Most rival streaming services don’t bother displaying tags or don’t have the same financial resources to support a group of employees to do all the work behind them.

Netflix made about $4.5 billion in profit over the past four quarters, while most of its competitors continued to lose money in streaming. It commands 247 million subscribers worldwide, more than double many other streaming services. It accounted for 7.4% of total television use in the United States in November, according to Nielsen, far outpacing Amazon Prime Video (3.4%), Hulu (2.7%) and Disney+ (1.9%).

One of the reasons Netflix’s engagement is so high is it deploys numerous tools to coax a viewer to watch. And that’s no small matter. There are more than 10,000 titles on Netflix and thousands more on other streaming services. Picking a show or movie is often tedious and frustrating.

Through years of testing, Netflix executives know the tools — what they call “promotional

assets” — have essentially less than a minute to work. “On average, if you haven’t gotten someone to hit play within 53 seconds, the likelihood goes down precipitously” the person will watch anything, said Eunice Kim, Netflix’s chief product officer.

The assets include the movie poster-style tiles as well as trailers and synopses. Tags are another, providing a minipreview to a viewer.

Netflix also uses them to help populate theme rows of titles on the service, like “Goofy TV Shows” and “Girls Night In.” Like the image tiles, the three tags a subscriber is shown — out of the handful attributed to each show — are based on the person’s viewing history.

Each time the company has removed tags as an experiment, engagement has plummeted, executives said.

“People would take much longer to choose,” Donald said.

“They would drop out of a title because they didn’t like it too much or because they didn’t know what they were getting.”

Not all of Netflix’s efforts to help subscribers find content have worked. In 2021, the com-

COURTESY PHOTO

ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy offers a “soapy” and “emotional” viewing experience, according to Netflix’s in-house taggers. The streaming giant says tags help viewers find and stick with programming.

pany introduced a “Surprise Me” button, similar to the “I’m Feeling Lucky” search button on Google.

Clicking it gave viewers something Netflix’s algorithm was fairly certain they would like.

Even though executives felt

“incredibly confident” that the algorithm was right, viewers rejected it. Apparently, they wanted more choice, and the button was abandoned early last year.

The company now features a

“Match” button, which tells subscribers, down to a percentage, just how much a show would be to their liking. That tool is apparently a bit confounding to most members, and it is probably on the way out.

T OM SHALE S , 194 4 -2024

Pulitzer-winning critic covered the small screen with fine-tuned wit

By Adam Bernstein and Brian Murphy The Washington Post

Tom Shales, a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic for The Washington Post who brought incisive and barbed wit to coverage of the small screen and chronicled the medium as an increasingly powerful cultural force, for better and worse, died Jan. 13 at a hospital in Fairfax County, Va. He was 79.

The cause was complications from COVID-19 and renal failure, said his caretaker, Victor Herfurth.

TV critics in New York and Los Angeles traditionally had greater show business clout than one in the entertainment backwater of Washington, but Shales proved a formidable exception for more

than three decades.

As The Post’s chief TV critic starting in 1977, he worked at a newspaper still basking in the cachet of its Watergate glory, his column was widely syndicated, and his Tom Shales stiletto-sharp commentary on TV stars, trends and network executives brought him national attention and influence.

Shales provided exhaustive coverage of all forms of the medium, from nature documentaries to late-night talk shows, network sitcoms to cable dramas, Saturday Night Live to pomp-filled State of the Union addresses, perky morning

programs to reality shows he called “Humiliation Television.”

His body of work elevated the coverage and criticism of television beyond mere musing on plots and gags.

He described shows, serious or silly, as pieces of a cultural mosaic worthy of deeper inspection. In 1988, he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism — becoming the fourth TV reviewer to earn the top prize in journalism — for work that not only evaluated shows on their escapist and artistic merits but also illuminated how broadcast coverage can shape the public perception of news events. He had been at the forefront of analyzing political debates as a form of prime-time TV spectacle. He excavated “not only their political meaning but also their

media meaning,” said Ron Simon, curator of television and radio at the Paley Center for Media in New York.

Shales became a professional critic at a moment when cable was in its infancy.

The networks were moving back to a more predictable diet of sitcoms and cop dramas after TV’s leap into social commentary with shows such as All in the Family. Shales, however, was among those who recognized a shift had begun.

Television’s potential — and its influence on the national zeitgeist — had been unleashed, he said. He treated the medium accordingly, with a highly entertaining style that could blend the snark of a stand-up comic with the connectthe-dots loftiness of a media scholar.

His columns drew the ire of network

executives, who Shales said often felt above any form of criticism and held those who made a living at it in contempt. CBS News President Bill Leonard told Time magazine Shales “uses the English language like a sword to punch holes in whatever he feels like punching holes in.” Roone Arledge, who was president of ABC News and whom Shales dismissed as “Rooney Tunes,” remarked the critic “loves to make catchy little phrases that are belittling.”

Shales responded he was just throwing back at the bosses the kind of scorn networks seemed to have for audiences.

“People who respect TV are the ones I respect,” he added. “It’s the ones who wipe their feet on it whom I probably write nasty things about.”

REAL ESTATE

Home listings E-3 Jobs E-5 Classifieds E-7

Recent city and county home salles

8%

HOME BASE A snapshot of the Santa Fe housing market

City, county home sales, Jan. 5-11

30-year

Source: Freddie Mac

7%

6.66%

Sales data for the period of Jan. 5-11 from the Santa Fe Association of Realtors MLS reports. Not all sales are reported.

SunDay, JanuaRy 14, 2024 THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

NORTHWEST COUNTY

NO ORTHEAST COUNTY

Homes sold: 2 Median price: $2,012,500

Ho omes sold: 0 Me edian price: NA

NO ORTHEAST CITY

NORTHW WEST CIT TY

Ho omes sold: 3 Me edian price: $810,000

Homes so old: 0 Median pric ce: NA

SO OUTHEAST CITY Ho omes sold: 3 Me edian price: $695,000

SOUTHWE EST CITY

6%

average u.S. mortgage rates

22

Median sales price, Jan. 5-11

15-year

SECTION E

Homes sold d: 9 Median pric ce: $450,000

5.87%

Weekly average rates from June 29-Jan. 11 6/29

1/11

$679,000

City and county home inventory

384

Source: Santa Fe Association of Realtors unless otherwise noted

SO OUTHEAST COUNTY Ho omes sold: 1 Me edian price: $850,000

SOUTHWEST T COUNTY

ELDORA ADO

FA AR SOUTH COUNTY

Homes sold: 2 Median price: $591,0 000

Homes sold d: 2 Median price: $660,0 000

Ho omes sold: 0 Median price: NA

Making room

Kim Shanahan Building Santa Fe

When the starter home becomes the forever home

A state affordable housing office is long overdue

G

ov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is fixing to go after the state’s housing crisis. She needs the New Mexico Legislature to pony up and fund her good ideas.

Her first good idea started in May when she created the Housing Investment Council, making former House Speaker Brian Egolf its chairman. The mandate was to get something ready for the upcoming 30-day session.

The large group had some heavyweight politicians but also a diverse statewide representation. Besides Egolf, key appointees included Daniel Werwath, the executive director of New Mexico Inter-Faith Housing Corp.; Laura Long, chairwoman of the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association’s government and political affairs committee; and Randy Traynor, a longtime lobbyist for the New Mexico Home Builders Association.

Werwath has in-the-weeds expertise, and state Sen. Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque, and an appointee to the State Investment Council, was obviously paying attention.

This past week, he filed a bill to create an “Office of Affordable Housing” under the state Department of Finance and Administration.

It’s a doozy. The office would have a director reporting to the Governor’s Office. Its first task is creating a state housing plan by July 1. The bill stipulates what details should be in the plan and directs the office to work with local and tribal governments.

That’s a lot of work in a short time, though presumably if the new housing office director was a member of the investment council, they may have a running start. The bill also allows for the office, subject to appropriations, to hire technical and clerical assistants to collate mountains of data the office would receive from the field.

The office then is expected to execute the plan by offering expertise, guidance and incentives to local and tribal housing offices. If provisions in the governor’s budget come through, it also will help determine disbursement of $250 million in new money for housing.

The governor is asking for $500 million for housing — $250 million for the state’s existing housing trust fund overseen by the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority and the new $250 million to establish the Opportunity

CHLOE AFTEL/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Vickie Franzen and her husband, Jon Crenshaw, bought their home in Roseville, Calif., in 2018. Now they’re figuring out how to make it work for their growing family amid higher mortgage rates and home prices.

Please see story on Page E-2

By Rachel Kurzius

The Washington Post

W

hen Vickie Franzen and her husband, Jon Crenshaw, bought their first house in Roseville, Calif., in 2018, they never expected they would still be there in 2024, weighing whether to squeeze a desk into the nursery along with the crib, so the space could double as an office.

Both tech workers, they chose the three-bedroom, two-bathroom abode

because it seemed like the perfect starter home. That was before the pandemic turned them both into full-time remote workers (only Crenshaw had been working from home). Before the former guest room became an office. Before they got pregnant with their first kid.

Suddenly, the house’s 1,600 square feet feel like a way tighter squeeze. But there’s another number they can’t get out of their minds, either: 3.5%, their current mortgage rate, which they scored by refinancing in 2020 and aren’t eager to give up.

Their quandary isn’t unique, of course.

Today’s high interest rates and low housing affordability mean that across the country, homeowners just like them — people who thought they were buying good-enough-fornow houses they would leverage into dream homes soon enough — are having to reevaluate. Not that Franzen and others in her situation aren’t grateful to own a home, given the current market conditions. But turning a starter home into something closer to a forPlease see story on Page E-2

How to get a more eco-friendly yard, one season at a time

By Kate Morgan

For The Washington Post

By their very nature, people who garden are some of the most environmentally conscious. Studies have found a connection between spending more time outside and wanting to help mitigate climate change and protect

the environment. For those who are so inclined, making a real difference can start right in your own backyard.

To become a more conscious member of your local ecosystem, you don’t need to totally change the way you garden.

According to experts, small shifts can go a long way, and they don’t all have to happen at once. Make your home

a haven for flora and fauna by adding these new habits throughout the year.

1. Winter: Create compost and keep the water flowing Though it may feel like your garden is on pause during the colder months, there’s plenty you can be doing to help

it thrive. Mary Phillips, head of Garden for Wildlife programs at the National Wildlife Federation, says winter is a great time to start composting. Turning your kitchen scraps into compost not only means sending less to the landfill; it can also have a significant benefit for the nutrient profile of your garden.

“Composting is super purposeful,

and you will eventually get some really good soil,” Phillips says. You can choose to compost directly in your garden (an important facet of the “no-till” gardening approach), or in a designated pile or composter. It’s fairly simple to make your own bin by drilling holes in Please see story on Page E-2 SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

Design and headlines: Brian Barker, bbarker@sfnewmexican.com

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REAL ESTATE

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Why your mortgage payment went up, and what to do about it There’s the money you pay into your principal, which pays off the debt you owe your lender and builds equity; there’s the interest; The benefit of a fixed-rate mortgage is that your interest rate and there’s your escrow payment, stays consistent. But your monthly the account used to cover your mortgage bill can still change — in property taxes and your home fact, it generally fluctuates at least insurance. a little bit every year. Rising home The part of your fixed-rate mortgage payment that changes values and insurance premiums annually is your escrow. Each year, have caused unusually dramatic the financial institution that holds increases for some homeowners your mortgage estimates how in recent years. Here’s why and what you may be able to do about much you’ll pay in property taxes and home insurance. If your home it if your payment has increased value has risen since the prior significantly. year, the cost of your taxes and insurance will also increase. Thus, Mortgage payments the entity that holds your mortchange because of escrow gage will hike up your escrow to Your mortgage payment gets ensure your monthly payment can broken down into multiple parts: cover those higher bills. (You’ll

By Rachel Kurzius

The Washington Post

get a refund check if the estimate ends up being too high and there’s money left over in your escrow account after a year.)

Why did my mortgage payment go up so much?

The very thing that homeowners usually want — an increase in their home’s value — is most likely the culprit, though other factors may have also contributed.

“Generally, home values have been going up across the country,” says Rob Cook, vice president of marketing at Discover Home Loans. “That does ultimately impact the tax liability that borrowers have.”

An increase in home values doesn’t just impact the taxes you

owe, says Joann Thomas-Vason, the mortgage lending manager at First Florida Credit Union. It also affects your insurance premiums.

Home insurance premiums nationwide rose by nearly 9% in the first eight months of 2023, according to financial analytics company S&P Global, and 15 states saw monthly insurance payments increase by a double-digit percentage.

According to a study from Policygenius, an online insurance marketplace, insurance costs have also escalated because of extreme weather. U.S. insurers paid out $99 billion in claims because of natural disasters in 2022; they appear to recoup those losses by charging higher premiums, the study says. It also cites

inflation and supply-chain issues as reasons for higher premiums.

Can I protest increase?

Your local tax authority will send you information well in advance of any changes in the taxes you’ll have to pay and will notify you about how they’re determining your home value.

(You should expect an increase in home value if you do a renovation or make other significant improvements to your home.)

“Homeowners should not discard that — that’s something you should look at and understand, ‘OK, well, if my tax burden is going to go up, at some point my escrow requirements are going to go up,’ ” Cook says.

If you disagree with the valuation of your home, each jurisdiction will have a process for you to appeal the estimate.

Thomas-Vason suggests speaking to your home insurance provider as well “to see if there’s any way possible to lower that premium,” and shopping around to ensure that you’re getting a good deal.

If you won’t be able to pay the increased monthly cost, she recommends talking to your servicer, which is the financial institution that holds your loan.

“Most loan servicers would help,” Thomas-Vason says. Typically, they’ll “spread the increase in the escrow over a longer period of time,” lowering the amount you owe each month.

Eco-friendly yard 3. Summer: Line dry; turn out lights Continued from Page E-1

a garbage can — just be sure to do a little research on what you should and shouldn’t compost, and mix the contents up every now and then.

If you want to support native wildlife populations, Phillips says, “the really important thing, which is especially challenging in the winter months, is water.” Birds, small mammals, and other wildlife that remain active through the winter all need access to water, but many sources freeze.

“You can help by installing a heated bird bath,” Phillips says. “Or, if you have a regular bird bath, just change the water regularly and try adding some hot water when temperatures drop below freezing.”

2. Spring: Skip the spraying; go native

CHLOE AFTEL/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Before their baby arrives, Vickie Franzen and Jon Crenshaw use their garage as a storage space.

Making room Logically, as homeowners stay put, they consider whether to ever home requires compromise, renovate. But acquiring a loan from sacrificing space to putting to fund a remodel can be costly. off having children.

Renovation loans functionally In October, Franzen considered refinance a mortgage at the upsizing to a larger home, but current interest rate. And home once she and her husband took a equity lines of credit typically look at the market, they quickly come with either adjustable rates retreated. Prices in their area, a or rates fixed at a high number. suburb of Sacramento, had shot Still, many families are finding up more than 35% since they had that renovations are the way to last house-hunted. Add in higher go. Molliee Marechal and her interest rates, Franzen says, and husband are among them. After “we couldn’t afford our current researching what it would cost home now,” let alone a bigger one. to buy a new home, they opted The inventory didn’t wow to renovate the San Francisco them, either. (As of November, Bay Area house they bought in new listings nationwide were 2013 and refinanced during the down more than 14% compared pandemic. with pre-pandemic levels, When they first saw the according to Zillow.) “We’re three-bedroom, one-bathroom talking ’70s shag carpeting and ranch house more than a decade kitchens you would have to ago, Marechal says it reminded redo,” she says. “Selling [our her of where she grew up and home] right now just seems like that she loved that the neighborthe worst idea possible.” hood was full of kids. “We have a So, instead, she and Crenshaw huge tree in our front yard,” she are modifying it. They put a mini- says. “It just appealed to us.” It split in their sunroom to heat and needed work even then — they cool it, so they can use the space added a primary suite shortly the entire year. Now it does triple after moving in — but as a starter duty as a dining room, greenhouse home, it was ideal. and place to brew beer. They Three children later, it’s a difdon’t park in the garage, instead ferent story. “There’s not enough using it as a staging ground for room for our girls’ clothes in their baby furniture in anticipation of tiny closet. They were sharing a their June due date. room. We were just like, ‘We have “We’ve had a lot of conversaoutgrown this house,’ ” she says. tions,” Franzen says. “Especially “We agonized. We went home with expecting a little one, we’re shopping. We looked at probably like, do we move? Do we not 10 different homes.” move? And we’ve committed to What they learned was that making this house work.” even with a sizable renovation — they’re adding two bedrooms, ‘We’re just stuck’ a bathroom, a laundry room and These days, a lot of homeown- relocating the garage — “long term, we are still saving money ers are having those debates.

Heather Devoto, vice president of versus buying a brand new house,” says Marechal, if you take the McLean, Va., branch of First Home Mortgage, describes many into account higher interest rates, moving costs and personalizing of her consultations with clients a new space. Plus, the family gets lately as “therapy calls.” to stay in the neighborhood they “I spend more time on the phone now with people, listening adore.

Tim Haugh, who bought a and trying to help them, and three-bedroom house in San [doing] a lot of hand-holding,” she says. “They’re just like, ‘We’re Jose, Calif., in 2020, also doesn’t see how his family could move. just stuck.’ ” “We’re locked in,” he says.

Devoto says multiple clients “Unless something drastic haphave told her they’re holding pens, like we hit the lottery or off on having a second child because of this limbo. “People are something.”

He and his wife have a 3% thinking about their lifestyles in a mortgage rate. Even if they could different way and not sure what pay the same price for their house to do,” she says. “There is a lot of soul-searching that people are today, Haugh says, “with the interest rates, I think [it would be] doing right now.” more than double the mortgage Within the past year, the majority of Devoto’s clients have payment, which is just insane.”

Since moving in, the couple been first-time homebuyers has had two kids — always the because they don’t have a low plan, though it happened faster interest rate to hang onto, she than anticipated. Rather than says. More than 6 in 10 current adding square footage to the homeowners have an interest rate below 4%, according to Red- house, Haugh and his wife are fin, and about a quarter have one focusing on upgrading the yard below 3%. The average rate last to give their daughters additional week hovered around 6.66%. play space.

Continued from Page E-1

That decision aligns with what Allison Messner, CEO of landscaping design service Yardzen, says she has lately seen among clients. As more families stay in their homes longer, she says, they are asking to add to the yard’s fun factor with features such as fire pits, plunge pools and dedicated kids’ areas.

Beyond the outdoor upgrades at his home, Haugh says, “it’s a game of, do we maybe one day think about converting our garage” into an additional room, as some neighbors have.

Though, “everything is so expensive these days,” he says.

New normal But at some point, people will have to start moving again — right?

Desiree Gaeta, a real estate broker in Charlotte, N.C., says she has been advising clients to rethink their definition of a “low” interest rate. “All of us are expecting interest rates to drop down just a little bit in 2024 and stabilize,” she says. “But for now, it’s not going back down to that 2 to 3 percent. And I think people are starting to get to that realization that that was just a very unique situation that happened.”

For all the ways that buying or selling a home is about the hard data, there is also psychology involved. A 5% interest rate seems like a lot compared with 3%, but it certainly looks a lot better than 8%. And aside from getting used to the new normal, Skylar Olsen, chief economist at Zillow Group, predicts people will slowly get back into the housing market, simply because life happens.

“People move because they have a lifestyle change,” she says.

“Why we will get back to normal and the housing market will recover is that enough of us will go through divorces and deaths and we’ll have babies and things will change.”

Back at Vickie Franzen and Jon Crenshaw’s house in Roseville, they’re still working out the floor plan of the nursery — or perhaps the nursery-slash-office. As more baby stuff piles up, Franzen says she’s constantly searching for new ways to reconfigure or repurpose the home’s various closets and alcoves to “find a little more space.” But those solutions won’t work forever.

“We are expecting another member of the family, and at some point, they will need a dedicated space that is just for them,” she says. “I have a feeling that if interest rates haven’t gone down by the time they’re 2 or 3, we’re not going to have a choice [but to move].”

Until then, she and her husband will be preparing by paying down debt and saving for a bigger down payment on the next home. That way, she says, “we’re not afraid about the interest rate.”

The easiest way to have a positive impact, says Uli Lorimer, director of horticulture for the Native Plant Trust, is to “stop using fertilizers and pesticides.” These chemicals harm beneficial insects and soil microbes, and eventually make their way into local waterways, hurting fish and other aquatic species. If you adopt no other habit on this list, Lorimer says, just stay away from the spray.

While every gardener should be using as many ecosystem-appropriate plants as possible, Lorimer says it’s not necessary to tear out everything nonnative. He points to research that suggests a “crucial threshold” of 70% native plants “will support the greatest insect diversity and therefore also the greatest bird diversity.” That 70% can be a longer-term goal, Lorimer adds. “It’s something to work toward, whether you do it over five years or 10 years,” he says. “Welcoming any native or regionally appropriate plant is a step in the right direction.”

To help you find those plants, Phillips suggests the National Wildlife Federation’s online native plant finder tool, nwf.org/nativeplantfinder. “You just put your ZIP code in and get lists of native plants that support high numbers of wildlife,” she says.

Lorimer offers one more tip for those who want to go native: “When you go to the nursery, it’s important to ask the right questions,” he says. Try to find out whether a plant was grown locally, and whether its grower used pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids. “It’s one of the cruelest ironies,” he says, “when you’ve made the decision to seek out pollinator-friendly plants, but they’re grown with a chemical that will poison the creatures you’d like to support.”

Long overdue Continued from Page E-1

Enterprise Revolving Fund under the state Department of Finance and Administration.

Unlike much of the money administered under the mortgage authority, which often goes out as grants, the revolving fund expects to see its money come back. What’s its highest and best use? Low-interest infrastructure loans for new homeownership subdivisions built by local for-profit builders who are unable to qualify for infrastructure loans.

The number — $250 million — sounds big, and it is, but it could go out quickly with no returns coming back for years. The infrastructure for 1,000 single-family lots, about what the final phase of Tierra Contenta anticipates, will be well north of $50 million. That does not include $20 million

In many homes, the least environmentally friendly appliance is the dryer. Generating enough heat to dry your clothes requires a lot of energy, and multiple loads a week can quickly increase a family’s carbon footprint. Plus, when dryer lint makes its way into the environment, it releases microfibers into ecosystems like marine habitats, where they can damage the tissues of some species.

Luckily, there’s a simple, old-fashioned solution, especially in the sunny summer months: a clothesline. Line-drying might take longer, but it’s a simple fix with a big impact. And you can’t beat that fresh scent (which is scientifically proven to be a thing).

Another simple backyard change involves your lighting: Phillips says we all need much less of it.

“Light pollution is a really big thing,” she says. Too much artificial light can confuse birds, disrupting their migration paths and leading them to fly into buildings. “I recommend not having as much light outside, or only having lights on during designated hours. And if you must have lights on, switch to very yellow bulbs, which are not as distracting to birds.”

4. Fall: Leave the leaves In the fall, many gardeners clear old growth and cut down plants that have finished producing. To really help the local wildlife, consider leaving a bit of mess.

“Creating little areas in your yard with some brush, and maybe some stumps and dead trees offers amazing shelter for a variety of wildlife,” Phillips says.

You may have heard the advice to “leave the leaves.” Lorimer clarifies that you can benefit all the small creatures who depend on leaf litter while still cleaning up your landscaping. “It’s OK to use a rake to move the leaves off the lawn,” he says. “But then, use them to mulch your shrubs and trees; don’t bag them up and haul them away.

You’ll be missing a lot of wonderful creatures from your garden next year if you’ve blown them all away into a bag or put them through a shredder.”

And when it comes to those native plants, their ecosystem services continue year-round. Leaving some stalks standing provides valuable hibernation habitat for many insect species.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t give things a trim. “I think not cutting anything is just too wild for most people,” Lorimer says. “So compromise: you can still make it look neat and more manicured. Just be intentional about what you leave behind.” necessary for spine infrastructure and the loop connection of two legs of Paseo del Sol. Tierra Contenta originally had many small tracts — too small for publicly traded mega-builders but ideal for local builders. Banks are happy to lend $2 million for 30 to 40 lots of infrastructure to any local builders who can put $2 million on deposit with them. That means almost nobody.

A state revolving fund is exactly what is needed.

Local builders mean local jobs, local taxes and local custom quality. Go ahead and attach strings for affordability and super-green homes. As hot as our market is now and will be for the foreseeable future, the revolving fund will easily get paid back upon sale of each new home.

These ideas are 15 years overdue. Get it done this session.

Contact Kim Shanahan at kimboshanahan@gmail. com.

TRUST US, you don’t have to be a first-time homebuyer to work with Homewise While Homewise specializes in helping first-time homebuyers, we can help anyone who is looking to buy a home, even if you have owned a home before. For 38 years we’ve been a trusted homeownership resource for New Mexicans from all income levels and stages of life. Call today and find out how we can help you.

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HOME Featured Listings Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

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208 San Francisco & 207/211 West Water Street

185 Brownell Howland

11 Bishops Trail

HIDDEN RIGHT IN THE HEART OF HISTORIC SANTA FE

EXTRAORDINARY SPANISH PUEBLO REVIVAL ADOBE

A TREASURE IN THE SANTA FE SKIES

Hidden right in the heart of historic downtown Santa Fe is a secret residential building. Part was built in 1845, and includes the jail that held the outlaw, Billy, the Kid from 1880-1881; the rest was built 140 years later in 1986. The lucky investor will acquire 27 residential units, including studio apartments, one bedrooms, and a two bedroom penthouse, along with three prime street level retail boutiques. $7,250,000 MLS # 202340229

This exceptional 7.45-acre estate designed in late 1920’s by renowned architect John Gaw Meem enjoys breathtaking views in every direction.

With 200-year-old carved and painted wooden doors and 5,900 + sq. ft. of living space, this classic triple adobe hacienda features 4 main bedrooms, 4 baths, 2 guest house casitas, and 1926 old barn to be restored or repurposed. $6,200,000 MLS # 202341636

Minutes to The Plaza • 2013 Kim Unger home • 4,200 Sqft • East & West views • 2.15 acres • Gated Bishops Lodge Estates • Folding glass doors for integrated indoor/ outdoor space • Open kitchen/dining area, raised kiva fireplace • Primary suite has office space, kiva fireplace, private patio, steam shower, outdoor shower, hot tub • Guest suite, private patio • Lower-level wine & media rooms, bedroom, 3?4 bath $3,995,000 MLS # 202341172

ASHLEY MARGETSON

DARLENE STREIT

(505) 920-8001 • dstreit@dstreit.com Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-2533 326 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

THE DURAN ERWIN GROUP

505-204-2491 • duranerwingroup@santaferealestate.com Barker Realty • (505) 982-9836 530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 santaferealestate.com

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(505) 920-2300 • ashley.margetson@sothebys.realty Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-8088 231 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

86 Droege Road

96 Double Arrow Road

141 Paseo Aragon

THE BLUEBIRD HACIENDA

HACIENDA STYLE ADOBE HOME & GUEST HOUSE

A REFINED LAS CAMPANAS RETREAT

Welcome to The Bluebird Hacienda in Arroyo Hondo, namely inspired by the many bluebirds that are attracted to this community. This beautifully crafted Northern New Mexico style solar home was completed in 2022

by Greenstar Builders with no attention to detail spared. Sited on 10 breathtaking acres in Arroyo Hondo. A main house casita. An ideal horse community only 24 minutes to The Plaza. $3,650,000 MLS # 202341984

Main house @ 4097 Sqft, 3 bedroom/3 bathroom • Guest house @ 820 Sqft, 1 bedroom/1 bathroom • Panoramic views • Adobe construction • Pool and sunken jacuzzi • 5 acres, fenced with 500 trees • Large portales w/ fireplace • Gated entrance • Coved vigas ceilings • 9 fireplaces • Primary suite with office • Primary bathroom with kiva fireplace, steam shower • Separate Den • Private well • 2-car garage $3,250,000 MLS # 202341258

This sophisticated, serene residence in Las Campanas boasts breathtaking sunset views and an open floor plan that seamlessly blends indoor and outdoor spaces to create an environment that encourages relaxation and enjoyment. Each of the three bedrooms has its own bath and walk-in closet. Residents may take advantage of the amenities of the Club at Las Campanas or simply revel in the surroundings. $2,625,000 MLS # 202341752

HAL LOGSDON & CRISTINA BRANCO

THE DURAN ERWIN GROUP

MARION SKUBI

505-204-2491 • duranerwingroup@santaferealestate.com Barker Realty • (505) 982-9836 530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 santaferealestate.com

(505)-660-8722 • marion.skubi@sothebys.realty Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-2533 326 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

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(505) 819-8796 • hal.logsdon@sfprops.com (505) 920-7551 • cristina.branco@sfprops.com Santa Fe Properties • (505) 982-4466 216 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 santafeproperties.com

2 Entrada Hermosa

1109 East Alameda Street

943 Canyon Road

LUXURY SANTA FE LIFESTYLE IN LAS CAMPANAS

DISTINCTIVE 3BR, 2BA EASTSIDE PROPERTY

CANYON ROAD 2BR, 2BA DOUBLE ADOBE HOME

This light-filled home has been meticulously reconstructed and designed.

All new electrical, plumbing, HVAC, windows, roof, stucco, and interior finishes. Beautiful living room & dining area with vaulted ceilings and square beams, designed kitchen with large butler’s pantry. The private primary suite has a raised fireplace, a beautiful bath and an access to an outdoor patio. 2 parking places behind the home. $1,995,000 MLS # 202341872

Discover this cozy residence offering a perfect blend of comfort and convenience in the heart of Santa Fe. Features a Kiva fireplace, upgrades throughout, a new elevator that provides access to the first floor with a separate downstairs entrance for added guest privacy, eco-friendly features and more. Outdoor include spacious yard adorned with fruit trees, charming cobblestone driveway with ample parking. $1,750,000 MLS # 202400006

Stunning 4BR, 4.5BA contemporary home built in 2021 approximately 15 minutes from Santa Fe Plaza. Entertain in grand style in an expertly landscaped outdoor oasis complete with custom outdoor kitchen and awe-inspiring Sangre de Cristo Mountain views. Expansive 1,200 sq. ft. covered and heated patio with gas fire pit provides threeseason enjoyment. $2,600,000 MLS # 202341280 DARLENE STREIT

HULTBERG & BURGESS TEAM

(505) 695-4047 • hultberg.burgess@gmail.com Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-8088 231 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

C. GRIFFITH, R. ALLEN, T. EARLEY

(505)-500-2729 • cathy.griffith@sothebys.realty Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-8088 231 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

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(505) 920-8001 • dstreit@dstreit.com Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-2533 326 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

109 Avenida De Las Casas

996 Old Pecos Trail and 998 Old Pecos Trail

26 Avenida La Scala

NEWLY RENOVATED CASAS DE SAN JUAN GEM

EXQUISITE CONDOMINIUMS ON OLD PECOS TRAIL

PRIVATE PROPERTY IN GATED CASAS DE SAN JUAN

Completely Remodeled 2021 • Gated Casas De San Juan Community, 24Hour Security • 2,548 sqft Including 400 sqft Detached Casita • 3 Bedroom, 3 Bath • 10 Minutes to The Plaza • Panoramic Sangre De Cristo, Opera House Views • High Ceilings, Vigas, Brick Flooring • New Kitchen, Pella Windows & Doors • Primary Bedroom W/ Study & Direct Access to Patio • HOA Covers Exterior Insurance, Water, Sewer and Refuse $1,650,000 MLS # 202340714

Two exquisite townhouse style condominiums just blocks from the Plaza, Canyon Road & Museums: 2 bed/ 2.5 bath, plastered, high ceilings, fireplace, fabulous finishes. Location, location, location! $1,695,000 MLS# 202339137 $1,650,000 MLS # 202340413

This open concept four bedroom, four bath property captures magnificent Sangre de Cristo mountains. The 3BR, 3BA main house has 2-story windows in the living area opening onto a shaded garden with sitting areas and swimming pool. The 1BR, 1BA guest casita with 2 kivas features a panoramic room with dining space and bifold windows.

Detached 2 car garage. Perfect home for indoor/outdoor entertaining. $1,485,000 MLS # 202341580

THE DURAN ERWIN GROUP

505-204-2491 • duranerwingroup@santaferealestate.com Barker Realty • (505) 982-9836 530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 santaferealestate.com

ASHLEY MARGETSON

(505) 920-2300 • ashley.margetson@sothebys.realty Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-8088 231 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

DARLENE STREIT

(505) 920-8001 • dstreit@dstreit.com Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-2533 326 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

HOME Featured Listings

E-4 THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN Sunday, January 14, 2024

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3101 Old Pecos Trail #671 4 SUITES IN ELEGANT REMODELED QUAIL RUN CONDO Ideal for all lifestyles, QR is a green oasis with incredible amenities minutes from downtown. Classic SF style. Gourmet kitchen, marble counters, custom cabinetry, California closets. Combo dining/living. The 4 suites are nicely separated & the 4th suite has custom built-ins as a den/ library/office with a huge deck & sweeping mountain views. Walled gardens. 3-4 Beds, 4 Baths, 2770 sq ft. $1,300,000 MLS # 202336275

1331 Vista Morada

11 Via Diamante

THIS COULD BE THE RIGHT HOME FOR YOU IN 2024?

NEW CONSTRUCTION - TANO AREA

Santa Fe style, custom built, single level, passive solar home. Large combo living/dining/kitchen with high ceilings, views, and French doors to an oversized deck. Mostly concrete construction. New roof November 2023. Radiant heat. Separate office/studio. Hot tub. Convenient, closein NW location just 10 minutes to Downtown. 3 beds, 2 baths, office, 3,000 sq ft, 1.8 acres. $1,275,000 MLS # 202341704

Located in the desirable area of Tano Road, this exceptional NEW CONSTRUCTION 3BR, 3BA, 2,300 sq. ft. home is ready for your buyers now! The floor plan offers numerous large windows to capture views, an oversized 2-car garage, and an extraordinary front courtyard providing privacy. The Heartstone community features its own 3,000 square foot Common House for neighborhood events and gatherings and acres of open and protected space surround the neighborhood. $1,250,000 MLS # 202340208

GAVIN SAYERS

GAVIN SAYERS

SKYE SMITH

(505) 690-3070 • sayersgavin@gmail.com Santa Fe Properties • (505) 982-4466 216 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 santafeproperties.com

(505) 690-3070 • sayersgavin@gmail.com Santa Fe Properties • (505) 982-4466 216 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 santafeproperties.com

806 E Palace Unit #C

43 Avenida Frijoles

89 Rito Guicu

THE PERFECT PACKAGE ON EAST PALACE

BEAUTIFUL DESIGN & LANDSCAPING IN ALDEA

LAS LAGUNITAS OASIS

Minutes’ Walk to The Plaza & Canyon Road • 2 Bedrooms, 2 Ensuite Bathrooms • Powder Room • Primary Bedroom with Open Deck Access • Sleek, Contemporary Trey Jordan Design • Private Back Yard with Covered Portal, Floating Deck • Beamed Ceilings, Concrete Floors, Plaster Walls • Kitchen w/ Stainless Steel Countertops, Wolf and Sub-Zero Appliances • Two Designated Parking Spaces $1,195,000 MLS # 202341765

Aldea de Santa Fe • 2,500 Sqft • 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms • Single level • 3 fireplaces • Recently updated kitchen, granite countertops, premium appliances • Diamond plastered walls, vigas, tongue and groove ceilings • Primary bedroom, raised fireplace, egress to back portal • Primary bathroom, large walk-in shower, deep soaking tub, double vanities • Oversized 2-car garage • New roof w/ 10-year warranty $1,095,000 MLS # 202341968

Nestled in Las Lagunitas neighborhood, this captivating three-bedroom, three-bath sanctuary boasts a unique blend of rustic charm and modern comfort. With its alluring traditional Southwestern architecture and plentiful modern amenities, it is a quintessential haven for effortless living and entertaining. The convenient location affords an easy commute to Santa Fe—just an 11-minute drive away—or Albuquerque. $1,060,000 MLS # 202342025

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505-470-1150 • skye@santafeskye.com Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-2533 326 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 www.santafeskye.com

THE DURAN ERWIN GROUP

THE DURAN ERWIN GROUP

C. GRIFFITH, R. ALLEN, T. EARLEY,

505-204-2491 • duranerwingroup@santaferealestate.com Barker Realty • (505) 982-9836 530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 santaferealestate.com

(505)-500-2729 • cathy.griffith@sothebys.realty Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-8088 231 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

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505-372-5500 • duranerwingroup@santaferealestate.com Barker Realty • (505) 982-9836 530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 santaferealestate.com

6 Floresta Drive BEAUTIFULLY RENOVATED ELDORADO HOUSE & CASITA 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms • 2,647 SqFt • Attached casita with private entrance • Beautifully renovated, new roof, new stucco, new windows • Panoramic views of Ortiz and Sandia mountains • High ceilings, vigas, latillas, clerestory windows & wood burning fireplace • Gourmet kitchen • South-facing deck in front courtyard • Northeastfacing back portal, enclosed courtyard • 1.86 acres $845,000 MLS # 202341852 THE DURAN ERWIN GROUP

9 Calle Lemita

VALLE DEL SOL TOWNHOUSE

3BR, 2BA QUIET HOME IN ALDEA

A sought after location in the community of Valle del Sol near Fort Marcy Park and great proximity to The Plaza. This well maintained 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2-car garage townhouse is ready for new owners after being cared for by the current owner for almost 30 years. Generous living spaces. Only one interior step. No HOA. $645,000 MLS # 202341874

This single level home was recently updated with tile flooring, new appliances, wall finishes and more. It features a good separation of bedrooms and a versatile room use is possible. Large coyote fenced yard, easy care landscaping and 2-car garage. Just off 599, Aldea de Santa Fe includes over 200 acres of parks with many amenities and walking trails. $575,000 MLS # 202340425

HAL LOGSDON

(505) 819-8796 • hal.logsdon@sfprops.com Santa Fe Properties • (505) 982-4466 216 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 halhomes.net

LORIN ABBEY

(505)-660-3111 • lorin.abbey@sothebys.realty Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-8088 231 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

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505-204-2491 • duranerwingroup@santaferealestate.com Barker Realty • (505) 982-9836 530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 santaferealestate.com

263 Camino de La Sierra

1022 Santa Clara Drive

71 Tesuque Ridge Lot 5

3600 Cerrillos Road, Unit 508

A MUST SEE

PRESTIGIOUS 5.7-ACRE RESIDENTIAL LOT

CONTEMPORARY 2BR, 2BA CONDOMINIUM

This gated Tesuque Ridge Ranch 5.7-acre residential lot with mountain views is located in the foothills north of Santa Fe, yet only minutes to the historic Plaza. Electric, gas, telephone, paved roads and an established shared well are all available. Tesuque Ridge Ranch subdivision has a semi-public 1.5-mile hiking trail loop that has access to the Dale Ball Trail and Santa Fe National Forest. $475,000 MLS # 202341947

Santa Fe’s premier community of live/work condominiums at the Lofts.

Light filled, open space with soaring ceilings. Flexible use areas. Studio space, living room and kitchen are on the second level. The third level has a private bedroom and an open space presently used as a second bedroom. There are two balconies where you can sit and enjoy the landscaped grounds. Hike and bike trails nearby. $425,000 MLS # 202340701

Welcome to this sweet family home. This home has been remodeled with an open concept and soft contemporary feel. One can move right in and have a beautiful new start. There is a front and back yard that is fenced in to keep children and pets safe. Located in a well established quiet neighborhood thats a convenient location, close to shopping, dinning, community canter, parks, and school. $555,000 MLS # 202342225 GUZMAN & WALTHER

505-570-1463 • guzmanwalther@santaferealestate.com Barker Realty • (505) 982-9836 530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 santaferealestate.com

DARLENE STREIT

(505) 920-8001 • dstreit@dstreit.com Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-2533 326 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

DARLENE STREIT

(505) 920-8001 • dstreit@dstreit.com Sotheby’s International Realty • (505) 988-2533 326 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 sothebysrealty.com

Sunday, January 14, 2024

THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN

E-5

.com

JobsSantaFe To advertise call: Laura Harding • 505-995-3878 or email:lharding@sfnewmexican.com www.jobssantafe.com Extended Learning Program Coordinator Location: Posted: Closing Date: Minimum Qualifications:

NEW NEW MEXICO MEXICO

COUNTIES

Santa Fe Indian School

33 33 STRONG STRONG

ISO Conference & Events Manager for NM Counties, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization

1501 Cerrillos Road Santa Fe, NM 87502

Salary/Contract:

TO APPLY:

P.O. Box 5340 Santa Fe, NM 87505

MINIMUM SKILLS:

• Bachelor’s Degree in business or related field preferred • five-years event planning experience preferred

Main: (505) 989-6302 www.sfis.k12.nm.us

• Certified Meeting Planner preferred • excellent communications/marketing

High School Academics December 6, 2023 January 21, 2024 Bachelor’s degree, and least 2 years’ experience in program coordination and supervision in a school setting, and grant writing experience, preferred. Experience working with Native American Students, preferred.

Range: $39,869.60-$44,853.30 depending on experience and education. (189 day - Exempt) Benefits: health, vision, dental, and life insurance, PTO and sick leave.

Email Application, Letter of Interest & Resume to SFIS Human Resources Email: jobs@sfis.k12.nm.us (505) 989-6309 | Fax (505) 989-6304 Application available on website: www.sfis.k12.nm.us

Conditions of Employment: Compliance with the immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Pass Criminal History Background Check per PL 101-647 and 45 CFR 1301; must provide official transcripts; and SFIS Superintendent approval.

Santa Fe Indian School is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, marital status, disability, handicap, or military status in compliance with federal and state laws. Native American Hiring Preference.

• customer service soft skills • organizational skills

HS ELA TEACHER

• time management & database/graphics experience • budget planning • work independently & in a team environment

Location: Posted: Closing Date: Qualifications:

High School Academics January 4, 2024 January 20, 2024 Valid NM Teaching License with ELA endorsement. Experience teaching Native American students preferred.

Salary:

Salary Range: $51,700-$71,800 depending on education, experience, and license level.

Benefits: health, vision, dental, and life insurance, PTO, and sick leave.

TO APPLY:

Email Application, Letter of Interest & Resume to SFIS Human Resources Email: jobs@sfis.k12.nm.us (505) 989-6309 | Fax (505) 989-6304 Application available on website: www.sfis.k12.nm.us

• manage meeting and conference logistics/contracts • manage online registration platform

Santa Fe Indian School

• recruit business partners, sponsors, and exhibitors • provide support for affiliate members & advisory council

1501 Cerrillos Road Santa Fe, NM 87502

Office located in Santa Fe with some flexibility for remote work.

P.O. Box 5340 Santa Fe, NM 87505

Salary $65,000-$85,000 DOE. Excellent benefits package.

Email resume, cover letter, and references

by Noon January 26, 2024, to: Susan Mayes, smayes@nmcounties.org

Main: (505) 989-6302 www.sfis.k12.nm.us

Conditions of Employment: Compliance with the immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Pass Criminal History Background Check per PL 101-647 and 45 CFR 1301; must provide official transcripts; and SFIS Superintendent approval.

Santa Fe Indian School is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, marital status, disability, handicap, or military status in compliance with federal and state laws. Native American Hiring Preference.

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES Accepting Applications for the 2023-2024 School Year COMPTROLLER

HS MATH TEACHER

Posted:

January 4, 2024

Location:

High School Academics

Closing Date:

January 20, 2024

Posted:

January 4, 2024

Closing Date:

January 20, 2024

Minimum Qualifications

Salary:

Bachelor’s in Business Administration, Accounting, Economics, Finance, or a related field; four years of experience in a business or finance environment; and some management experience.

Qualifications

Valid NM Teaching License with Math endorsement.

Salary/Contract:

Salary Range: $51,700-$71,800 depending on education, experience and license level. Benefits: 100% employer paid health, vision, dental, and life insurance, PTO and sick leave.

TO APPLY:

Email Application, Letter of Interest & Resume to: SFIS Human Resources Email: jobs@sfis.k12.nm.us (505) 989-6309 Fax (505) 989-6304 Application and position description available on website: www.sfis.k12.nm.us

Benefits include: PTO, Medical, Vision, Dental and Life Insurances Email Application, Letter of Interest & Resume to: SFIS Human Resources Email: jobs@sfis.k12.nm.us (505) 989-6309 Fax (505) 989-6304 Application available on website: www.sfis.k12.nm.us

GIFTED & TALENTED TEACHER Location:

Location:

High School Academics

Posted:

January 4, 2024

Posted:

January 4, 2024

Closing Date:

January 20, 2024

Closing Date:

January 20, 2024

Qualifications

sfis.k12.nm.us

PHYSICAL EDUCATION TEACHER

High School Academics

Minimum

1501 Cerrillos Rd. Santa Fe, NM 87502

Minimum

$79,000 - $89,064, depending on experience.

TO APPLY:

Santa Fe Indian School

Minimum Valid NM Teaching License with Gifted endorsement.

Qualifications

Valid NM Teaching License with PE endorsement.

Experience teaching Native American students preferred. Pre-employment background check required.

Experience teaching Native American students preferred. Pre-employment background check required.

Salary/Contract:

Salary Range: $51,700-$71,800 depending on education, experience and license level. Benefits Included: Paid time off, paid sick leave, Medical, Vision, and Dental Insurances.

Salary/Contract:

Salary Range: $51,700-$71,800 depending on education, Experience and license level. Benefits Include: paid time off, paid sick leave, Medical, Vision, and Dental Insurances.

TO APPLY:

Email Application, Letter of Interest & Resume to: SFIS Human Resources Email: jobs@sfis.k12.nm.us (505) 989-6309 Fax (505) 989-6304 Application and position description available website: www.sfis.k12.nm.us

TO APPLY:

Email Application, Letter of Interest & Resume to: SFIS Human Resources Email: jobs@sfis.k12.nm.us Fax (505) 989-6304 Application and position description available website: www.sfis.k12.nm.us

Conditions of Employment: Compliance with the immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Pass Criminal History Background Check per PL 101-647 and 45 CFR 1301; and SFIS Superintendent approval.

Santa Fe Indian School is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, marital status, disability, handicap, or military status in compliance with federal and state laws.

Native American Hiring Preference.

E-6 THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN Sunday, January 14, 2024

.com

JobsSantaFe To advertise call: Laura Harding • 505-995-3878 or email:lharding@sfnewmexican.com www.jobssantafe.com

STEER THE FUTURE Become a school bus driver!

• Full Time positions with Full Benefits • Get paid while you get your CDL! • Part-time, hourly posit ons available

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE (Multimedia Sales)

If you know sales, then you know what we’re looking for. A pro who knows that what we sell is how our clients grow their businesses. Our readers rely on The New Mexican for up-to-date opportunities for shopping, eating, things to do, people to call, etc. That’s why we need your help.

We have the products. We have the customer list and we’ll set you up to do your best. If you are motivated (and creative) and know that you can lead a client to the best way to showcase their product, whether it’s in our daily newspaper, on-line or in one of our magazines or special sections, consider your next career move to be with The New Mexican.

Apply Today! go.sfps.info/Drive

The New Mexican is the award-winning daily newspaper for Northern New Mexican, founded in 1849 and still privately owned and managed. Santa Fe is an exciting “City Different”; the place where you can make a difference for yourself and your community.

This is a boots-on-the-ground job, full-time and front and center with your neighbors. We offer a great compensation and benefit package.

Start tomorrow by applying today at: sfnm.co/sfnmjobs.

Or email your resumé to: hr@sfnewmexican.com

The New Mexican is a Family Friendly company and an equal opportunity employer.

JobsSantaFe.com

Sunday, January 14, 2024

sfnm«classifieds jobs

EDUCATION

merchandise

LOTS & ACREAGE

ADMINISTRATIVE

COLLEGE COLLE GE COUNSELOR COUNSELOR

BUILDING MATERIALS

APARTMENTS UNFURNISHED 2 bedroom 1 bath adobe casita with enclosed yard. $1500/ mo. $1000 deposit.

Large 1 bedroom 1 bath. Enclosed yard. $1300/ mo. $750 deposit. Please text 505-929-1278 1 Bedroom 1 Bath. No need for a vehicle as it is close to the Santa Fe Plaza and shopping. $1399.00 per month plus utilities. Inquiries may call 505-988-5299 2 Bedroom 1 Bath. Located in a small single-story compound. Fenced yard.

Fireplace. $1250.00 per month plus utilities. Inquiries may call 505-988-5299

HOUSES FURNISHED

• Job Scheduling • Data report entry/verification and scanning of documents • Mail processing • Communicating with commercial clients to ensure their job information is accurate • Assist with inventory levels and parts ordering • Shipping and Receiving • Assist in processing and scheduling jobs for delivery • Generate new forms, documents and spreadsheets as needed • Generate production reports for production staff • Provide project support for production staff.

When not working on administrative tasks this position will be helping on the production floor with some physical labor involved with the ability of lifting up to 25 pounds. This position requires an organized person that can communicate well, is accurate with their work, is honest, can be on time every day and have an excellent attendance record. This is a mid-entry level position with room for advancement. Pay is flexible and will be based on prior experience.

Microsoft Excel skills required with the ability to use basic formulas in the program. Fluent bilingual English/Spanish is preferred. Any other software experience especially programs dealing with graphic design will also be helpful. Successful completion of a drug test will be required prior to employment offer.

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Comfortable East-side, home, 2 blocks from NM State Capitol w/ off street parking for 2 cars, highinternet, 1-king, 2-twins, fulto Santa Fe speed and Northern New Mexico ly stocked & equipped, breakfast, coffee, etc. Weekly or full session.

Call/Text to reserve NOW! $1500.

505.577.0694

and New Mexico SantaNorthern Fe and Northern New Mexico

Submit application or email resume to: Brenda Shaffer bshaffer@sfnewmexican.com 1 New Mexican Plaza (off I-25 frontage road) Or access an online job application at http:// http://sfnm.co/1e sfnm.co/1eUK UKC CcD

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MAkE THESwiTCH ToDAy LARGE FRONT AND BACK YARD. WANTED: CALL FULL-505-986-3010 FULLTIME AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 1, 2024.

SwiTCH ToDAy DELIVERY DELIVER Y DRIVER FIRST, LAST, AND DEPOSIT REQUIRED. $1900 505-484-7889 CALL 505-986-3010 The Santa Fe New Mexican seeks a dependable person with Casita. Exclusive Eastside. East a valid driver’s license and Alameda. 2 bed 1 bath. washer/dryer. spotless driving record to help Fireplace. Saltillo Tile. Radiant us get the news out to the heating. Carport. $2200 mo. No Pets. community we serve. As Single 505-982-3907 Copy Delivery Driver, you’ll be responsible for making sure The New Mexican is available everywhere it’s sold. Duties PARKING include stocking vending racks, supplying street vendors, monitoring inventory, and safely Parking space available for your RV or operating a company vehicle in Boat. Lock it and leave it. $150.00 to every weather condition $250.00 depending on size. Inquiries Northern New Mexico has to may call 505-988-5299 offer.

Hours are 4:30am12:30pm, Thursday-Monday—your workday is done when most folks are just getting to lunch!

MISCELLANEOUS

THE SANT SANTA A FE NEW MEXICAN MEXICAN IS SEEKING CARRIERS CARRIERS FOR FOR ROUTES IN LOS LOS ALAMOS AND ALBUQUERQUE. This is a great way to make some money and still have most of your day for other things - like time with family, other jobs or school. These routes pay $1,000 every other week and take 2 to 2.5 hours a day.

Applicants should call: 505-986-3010 or email circulation@ cir culation@ sfnewmexican..com sfnewmexican

PART-TIME

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TIPI SUPPLY SUPPLY NOMADICS TIPI COVERS COVERS MOST SIZES IN STOCK STOCK PAINTED P AINTED OR UNPAINTED UNPAINTED LODGEPOLE PINE TIPI POLES SIZES 16FT. 16FT. TO TO 36FT 36FT.. LONG LONG IN STOCK STOCK AT AT OUR WAREHOUSE PLEASANT PLEAS ANT VIEW, VIEW, COLORADO COL ORADO 970-560-1884 WWW..TIPISUPPL WWW TIPISUPPLY Y.COM

33RPM Albums/LPs, 45RPM Singles/7”s, even 78s! Bring them to our NEW location at 131 W. Water St in Santa Fe every weekday from 11AM to 4PM or Call 505-399-5060 to schedule an appointment!

pets

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Awesome Maltese purebred $800 Female $750 Male. Yorkie teacup Female $1500. Maltipoo Female $500 Male $450. White and merle Pom $1250. 505-901-2094 505-929-3333

2009 Hyundai Santa Fe GLS with 138k miles, recently fully inspected, One owner and runs great. $7000. Open to 4-wheel drive trade-ins. 218-994-9380

PETS - SUPPLIES

Pomeranian Puppies 4 sale Pomeranian puppies beautiful, toys and T-cups, males and females, rare exotic colors, registered and 1st vaccinations received, long time reputable breeder. 1500.00 505-550-7319

sale. Potty pad started. Payment plan available. Shots included.

Check out cmoes-puppies.com or text 575-308-3017. Cards/PayPal/ CashApp/ApplePay all accepted

Rating: SILVER

editions

santafenewmexican.com/theapp

Solution to 1/14/24

FURRY BEST FRIENDS Calling all black lab lovers! We have a litter of three labs at our Ojo Santa Fe Puppy Patch. Jelly Bean has the most kissable ears this side of the Mississippi, endearing eyes that beam right into your heart, and a wiggly wag that makes your spirit smile!

She is two months old, spayed, microchipped, up to date on vaccines, and goes home with six months of free heartworm prevention. Apply on our website and we can schedule an appointment at the resort in Santa Fe.

LULU is lovely and lively with the most luminous

whiskers! This four-year-old tuxie is tenderhearted yet trailblazin’ with equal parts cuddlebug purrball and playful mischievousness. She is very social, has excellent grooming and litterbox habits, and her brain is as agile as her body. Her foster describes Lulu as “a delight - smart, fun, affectionate. She attaches quickly to people, loves to cuddle, and ideally has company during the day.” Lulu’s bold personality can be a bit much for other cats who don’t match her bravery. Apply for Lulu on our website and we can schedule a meet and greet at her Santa Fe foster home!

For more information, contact Española Humane at 108 Hamm Parkway, Española NM 87532

or call 505-753-8662.

More animals are available on the website at evalleyshelter.org or petango.com/española

JANRIC CLASSIC SUDOKU

Fill in the blank cells using numbers 1 to 9. Each number can appear only once in each row, column and 3x3 block. Use logic and process elimination to solve the puzzle. The difficulty level ranges from Bronze (easiest) to Silver to Gold (hardest).

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Weekly Magazine

of Arts, Entertainment

& Culture

January 4,

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ony Trujill in Santa o, presid Fe, might ent of he’s the Trujill one lousy be Webbe o has public spin a decen police officer t enoug doctor r’s propo s’ union for doing ly compl . h detect six more nothin sal to hand ained ive. But g bonus about Mayor Instea months. more than es d of licking stayin to unioni Alan g on zed officer the city his chops payrol s jillo did or turnin l for somet g The hing a cartwh mayor eel, Truinsulti ’s offer foolish ng, . He Everyb Trujillo was downr carped . said. ight ody should enoug h to receiv that Webbe be fortun e officer ate r has the sort s. in mind of “insult The for police ” Mila to offer free-spending Simo n apiece retention mayor nich to about bonus wants Ringsi That es de seat of $600,0amoun 128 officer of $4,700 ts to a total s. availab 00. Webbe them his view,le in this r said expense they giving year’s city the cash To collecare apprecwould is it be budge to is stay a good-f police iated. t the t. bonus aith gesturofficer In hand, on the police , all s they e to show force the officer Webbe could retire throug s r’s questi or resign h June.would have onable idea is a to do terrific to take Then, money The one for taxpay deal anothe Negot police union’ for police r job. in time, iations for s contra ers. officer a new ct s but bers and the union agreem with the that exceed a city expire will ent By cost-o want pay could comm s in June. to staypaying bonus f-livin increa on the g es next ses for ence any police to those raises. to its memofficer nothing whose force to stabili for six s. only month comm ze the depart s, Webbe itment is ment r is doing or recrui t good Please see story on Page A-7

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Despit are early conten e occasi victories been ded duringonal contro light versie result,able to put a talk what Sunda s, Webbe plishm he city’s he said, the right y “We’v ents. said were blood pieces morning, r pressu e been some At a Webbe in place. he’s Journe able initial re.” r said 100 people chief to lower As a y Santa accom key hires of ber used and Marypolice, at Collec Fe event the — Erik the terms ted that drew Litzen Andrew McCo allow about opportunityWorks Padilla berg about books house Santa Fe “toy as financ as city future as tore, in order.” initiati to speak fix our e directo manag ves, as in broadWebAll er r own house — will well recent three are as high, to get playin offer our of a retentg key roles ion bonus in the city’s to Santa Please Fe see story on Page A-7

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By Juliet u admin Washin Eilperi Forme r public era, implemteache illega roadistratio n gton l le in area out; som Post com her forme Skandexams and ago by rural by theis seekin t Nott Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is welcomed to the stage at her inaugural Tuesday New nMexico congressional delegation and a packed house at the Santa Fe Community Convention CenPeop ed C Hanna exican. years and to getceremony The tary,

By Rober g other ter. She touted plans to raise the minimum wage, fight climatele andplow use a larger share of the state’s $18 billion Land Grant Permanent Fund to pay for education. GabriELa caMpoS/tHE nEw MExican ez some sfnewm the PARC ways unpre National unab change lle LujanelecMartin transrnott@ both tion system to mitiga hasn’t Park ceden d While provided ls ov. Miche Servic ted shutdo te to pay evalua ive rule. m, whosestresse o’s county this e hoes popula for expan step of ign Mexic Grisha PAge wn. for schoothe

By Andrew Oxford tappin will take execut era argued Edge exican.com Supporters fired up but also of snows ded operat A-4 said New on g entran the tion campa aoxford@sfnewmexican.com federa r sites, the a pair uhome Skand accountabilityhave r evaluaBy Samisfnewm ping d on ce fees his Sci-home updegradl govern officials said ions at revam system, tookg execuappreciate ‘voice of sanity’ sedge@ rs, critics teache students parent latche from entific its ment or’s . and tion signin vershutdo Sunday, most marks e some of d west neighb he campaigning ended a couple of months ago, but researc and teache ew Smith educa y terrain as the ly judge day by a contro ts . doing C testing the nation wn threat h west Matth and heade to his countr also sits ate public unfair Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham still seemed ready for a Thurs day, and PARC

By Robert Nott Road Under is day step to elimin for studen ’s iconic ens to ed Thurs m’s action affecte which tests address. first a memo ThursBaja Waldo some crossbattle Tuesday as she gave her inaugural the rnott@sfnewmexican.com tion systemrs. lar test order smentin Grisha Martiarea, PAge25, sparkl d. landlike aInterior PARCCasses randu tive -popu ate A-6 tive orders rdized rural Speaking to about 1,200of supporters and dignitaries David and teache Lujan part of m hill across Depar ABOVE nt m . this rural not-so nor put ’s use an execu Convention of Interst hills lookedington Bernh platfor or’s tment signed Saturd a steep snow in In effect, a large sial standa at a at the Santa signs Fe Community Center, 16-year-old Mariah Madrid, Tuesrecen ANDFor gover she delivered tmenta new stude ardt, ’s acting away tion system tion do TOP: m reform govern ul of new The d and southht, and the tly select N Depar and reform Educa ed to to bringPost, park and obtain Marily with what was as much the a campaign wipededucation the new day’s inauguration ceremony for Gov. Grisha tion r evalua secret ay by MexicA stump speech as up sunlig overha on , manag ed whom address. n Barne call. ed of Madri e NeW ary, on teache state Publicbe requir known sized come nez’s was anes, inaugural own bright lle Lujan Educato it Michellefor Lujan signifies one theGrisham social neighborsSanta Fe additional ers will by the WashNott/tH will commonly m for InSIde Public The

By Elayne Moral to her statews, the choir under dream.

Miche tion system ’s the just a of and empha be Grisham, a Democrat who served three important step forward. staff tment is Gov. with the department educa one of — Howie Lujan itment es. robert ide honor teach elowe@ Lowe to clean permitted of Smith n edge frostedthis wasn’t Depar with what Gov. chang an acronyof ReadiExcerpts public ranks as comm terms in Congress, acknowledged her new role away ng that isuLt. sfnewm “It’s another woman in charge,” their er at But week, some the westerin their homes restro the of Music ment and Please lly away PARCC test, exican. out of Santa the eing orderiAt right from the state’s oms, on ed as the state’s leader and dismissed the often rs, the Lascom Cruces teen said before Lujan Assess see story genera in or one neighFor a Educa Fe Road overse strand as the rship for and Caree Howie ing governor’s way plan. of which kers tor of High, teach on Page e petty, gridlocked politics that have reigned at the Grisham gave her first public speech been Gov. only e ’s worst.

Red Rock arilyn speech. the Year. es charg for assess ting Partne Colleg n, Lt. state lawma was taking A-4 y have feet the nation Capitol under Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. as governor.

Smith ways and evalua uivfor an Barne “It means we have more“Hug A-4 Smith hoes.

Countown two lined that PAge A-5 s’ PHotoS advan In additio ness find new s humm other,” road. “uneq on Page t, in Morale rattling A-8 up It means ced we have more of she a told the bigges

By LUiS es said their covered E no time u Editorial: But Lujan Grisham wasted Fe power. must t achievement o will by Augus of snows on each to fill unfurled High members ed as she SánCHe wome Moral PAgE a see story t tree the off pledges andINSID promises. Her speech voice.”

Mexic in the C or.” tive voice Schoo snow- extra pair just count of the new direcseat. z SatUrnn’s choir Wome you can Please studen rs. New A-5 ee picked song. students, PARC an l Advan Santa we your neighb Senate Thurs n’s Page Democratic agenda pent up for years. gracef o/tHe Madrid was one of an estimated 1,200 that Nomin tion means as bor chime get around using on u here, havteache ” stop is new ced sound Choir. In day. ul arcs.They held their voices d state s, “far more “Out MexiCa said. the minimum wage, She touted plans to raise Barne who braved the New Year’s Day or for hardfilled. work go-to see story ed somet r who a distinc vacate within she set people their “I’m ocally Grisham result in ” in New n is all of us. joined ,” will “The s was her govern Please arms a doer from change and use a larger . r teache fight climate share of differfreezing and threat- of snow to expect coldhing “Doin said. accept the jobfor tion out in Lujan move will less testing and end the do things like With a forme ations until the statew A-9 educa said$17 billion“ILand es,PAge to “This the state’s GrantePermanent theseFeg is somet a pushe noon eventbell at the Santa far comm a flouris attend the The : Sing ber first ate in rsity, Moral r,” is hing days.”

K ng and courag said. from note. h ofCommunity Fund to pay for education.

Like people Barnes An Idahokinda the ide award a doctorState Unive in Decem her hands Convention Center.Barne teachi ing the Morales g $128 said. n to assign . o said top are lackin holds A-4 Pubchoir perhaps most forcefulently,” line of the daym came as an Page some 100 others, sayin filled decisio her , she she and heratfamily Santa s’ efforts MexicAnd e the directonative, Barneone,” Barne m’sto on g to sangtwo hours s New Grisha Fe Previo overse answer the question some of those big Grisha plans have raised. torearly showed up at least e to get r at story Lujan s said. the s has haveto High as hone her see intment,positions rarily tment “bring peopl been Lujan tempo earned munit usly, she Santa Fe studen the “There is no argument to be had, frankly, about make sure they got a seat. of the Pleasewhether appo goverthe High taught urging net Mexts’ Depar her the school’s s in North ant point Year him to wetion first y College orary Music ls are at Santa for 12 years. can afford it. The The other thousand or so trickled inhonor choir talent has is, we can’t afford not to,” she said. lieuten the New t death to the . dream for 21 temp 14 of 26 Cabi Educa s from 2019 Music direconally h officia to the singer Dec. tment recen lic Educa ary of es was to about two Fe Com“I reject the false choice of today’s children or tomorrow’s uted noon, people from between 10 a.m. and Fe, tors nce” the traditi Healt after Educa she io , she n. attrib Assoc becom New low; Santa decad ing secret tion Depar day, in Peters relevabudget.” ated said, all walks of life. Democratic politicians.

31 rnor mak positio o are t Anton Mexic tor iation. e es. Her but job, which includ Thurs Educa Dec. vaccin es, A-8Tuesday during a private swearing-in ceremony at the RoberLujan Gove a year is too On Friday o signs the oathMexic of office early differe burg, Alaskafollow a professional Cars nor’s low-profile n Sr., Grisham Moral al move Bolto . PAgE New nEw MExican ing a a ico Public ntly. aries on er Guille despitare Capitol. LuiS SáncHEz Saturno/tHE Please see Page A-4 Please see story on Page A-5 ern , she illega illness unusu Howie year, to teachi , she been n says Jose, Wilson salary Obitu story Gov. In an lly parke started ng Wagn clear nal under e seaso 0a Ann th, San iSiS mus y ted Lt. Lynn

By David thinkin job $85,00 department com t Nott 4 lected staffed signs in d in a McGra Toda Jody , Dec. 27 92, appoin No. pays g says exican. fire and 29 E. Sange park Joshu t be defe m year, No. 596-440 job tion Please

By Rober partia from entran Eric Schmi Dec. Stege Hale, 170thlast sfnewm servic a Treelane ion Grisha h New whose the educa r, Noah A-10 Sunny. nne see story l gover 26 rnott@ e York ated Publicat e s, PAgE 38, Maria Fe, Dec. enoug l Weilan lle Lujan Times tt nmen ce fees plans to National month on Page overse before High isn’t Power d Miche Park. t shutd to keep use Santa A-7 WASH Anne Gov. of $128,000 ates to severa ns, troop low 20. own. operamoney col-The Art Out B-11 positio Willow could Trump INGTON waSHin s pull ting Time B-5 a salary top candidet-level um of nocturnalleave during gton ’s 35 — or PAgE nation out B-1 U.S. Bolton PoSt even to drawcant Cabin the 986-30 al securiPresident FiLe co Muse p.m. forDark; Carved years. forces tips: I needed to find them. That’s what on Sunda PHoto best advice,” had said. lways look for the gravedigger. Sports on hand. endary newspaperman and ,author Damon ure; Donal BreslinBolton there Mexi INSId decisio still-va ty advise ion 5-7 in the A-11 10 News Sculpt d , makin difficult for month y report New e This is especially important when Runyon.

Grisham’s camp recept Shots Mexican ation 986-30 “look for the gravedigger” really means. r, John Opinion laying n to rapidly rolled back Lujan ersmade this ga u Pair ions New paper:such public . s out greatness covering splashy political events, Syria that I knew that an actual gravedigger probably y Breslin had established his in Trump after I found an in interesting character in the Free d exhibit U.S. visit to 3 Late es A-2 Life Imagin condit withdr 6-5072 iSiS on of americ Islami until the forces Israel, told aw from ’s Lotteri 983-330 ions theme 20th Centur as the inaugural ceremony on Tuesday for wouldn’t attend the inauguration, at leastSout one 1963 whenline he covered President John F. Kenbattlef ans captur crowd. and Night 505-47 would for a last remna office: hwes Dead Syria, Turke c State group ield in B-6 pasati be obvious in a convention hall Dark; Palace Ave., & Cast: pullouHis MainMichelle Lujan Grisham. ork that would nedy’s funeral Hotel name iswould Aldo, yand he was working a remain Until t Sem 2019 by focusing on the gravedigger.

Syria. ed alongs MilanGen Next Democratic Gov. empom provid t that were asnts Artw Santa ry 18, Wait ; 107 W. PAge ide inars Hispan White ed agazin Many reporters would write about her brimming with people in suits. But it’s the His was Clifton Pollard. He made $3.01 defeat of the Fe, name not volunteer usher at the ceremony.

A-4 B-11 Simonich Station with 1501 o Village strike guarantees ed FowlesJanua Paseo the-sc House advise speech. Her big-money donors had predictconcept that matters. e.com an hour, and he went to work on his day off ords B-7, e.com Aldo wore blue the jeans, black Kurdis cowboy boots, United that and de Peralta Ringside Seat enes Univer , assista : Archae Crossw agazin h forces it rs have able assessments of how grand the next four and reassu effort You see, I once interviewed columnist heology considered it; an honor to dig the States nt sity; because a casual shirt and a decorative neckerchief. empom 855-82 . He and allied led B-12 Index 6 p.m.; professor of Wolves years would be.

Jimmy Breslin while he was travelingMore through re allies,to slow Trump a behind pasati eventspresident’s Comics of anthro “We $15 at grave. other , Faith, 5-9876; don’t Three in“Remember ’s order the gravedigger.

That’s my Please see story on Page A-5 top There had to be plenty of ordinary people Design Colorado, Calend hard at on a book about legpology and Capita Calend the door; think including eds B-7 ar work Centur n.com A-2 and headlin the Turks Israel. ar, A-2, 505-46 at Barnar Classifi lism, ies in wmexica 6-2775 d Colleg by Severin a Classifi and es: Zach ought d@sfne ar A-2 , southw Friday Please eds B-5 e/Colu to Taylor, , rolmste Calend s in see story mbia ztaylor@ Toda Pasati estseminars.o Olmsted Comics John sfnewm y on Page empo Index es: Richard A-10Today Bolton rg. exican.c obitu obituaries Mostly A-4 Sierra om Crossw and headlin aries sunny.

Design Grego Local country dance band; 7:30 to 11 p.m.; La Fiesta Lounge at Frank Michael Few snow ords B-6, Russian rescuers B-10 69, Highpull baby Armijorio M. La Fonda, 100 E. San Francisco St.; 505-982-5511; no cover charge.

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Publication No. 596-440 tips:

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170th year, Publicat No. ion No. 7 596-440

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THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN u SUNDAY, JANUARY 14, 2024

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