Dear editor, The New Mexico Mining Museum did a good job in honoring the miners. They had an open house and took a tour of the underground mine. Those miners worked very hard and they worked in in human conditions. They worked days, nights and graveyard shifts.
Getting the community involved in writing special messages on the bags for the luminaries, The only thing about that is they should have had more light for the luminaries. It's very sad that our very own city's newspaper couldn't cover the story. I suppose it wasn’t important to them! It was very important to the people of Cibola County. After all we were the URANIUM CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!
M.B.T.P Grants, N.M.
The County Manager
Dear editor, A new year and thought I should give you some reminders from my past job. When the Cibola County Jail first opened, I investigated the new warden hired from Las Cruces for badly injuring an inmate. It was found out later he was under investigation for injuring an inmate at his last job as well. A good background check on him may have avoided this whole incident. Later a nurse at the jail decided to not take an inmate who had terminal cancer to the hospital one night. We ended up losing the jail after a very expense lawsuit. It was sad to see several good people who I had worked with for some years lose their jobs as the old county jail sits there unused, another example of government waste. I have had my doubts about the newest county manager who had nothing to do with these past problems brought up from Catron County to straighten out all the money issues, with corruption caused by another county manager and county commissioner. I met with her when I retired advising her to start collecting unpaid taxes from people coming in from other areas. She said she had to straighten out other issues first and “have a plan.” While working I put all the county ordinances including the new ones on the web site that seemed to never get enforced. All kinds of folks never have anything done to them with trashy yards, large tire dumps, etc. The new manager has sent out some threatening letters, however. The county has the power to clean properties and put a lien on them. To my knowledge it has never been done. I emailed the new manager and even volunteered to show her or the new code enforcement officer where many of these issues were, but I never got an answer. Today I learned the husband who married her overseas and brought her to this great county is being charged Former Catron County Sheriff Ian Fletcher charged for laundering funds meant to fight wildfire (krqe.com). I remember this as well, we sent several deputies down there to help during that fire, and they were probably paid some of this money. I would like to see the county ordinances, all of them put back on the county web site think they call that transparency!
Signed, Mr. Harry L. Hall USAF Veteran Retired Police/Sheriff Lt