It’s in the nature of emergencies that they’re unexpected and generally demand a response when there’s no time to think. Who do you call? Where do you go? What happens to your pets or livestock if you’re displaced?

Authorities in Gallup and McKinley County want to have answers for as many of those questions as possible before an emergency arises. Now, those answers include pets and livestock as well as people.

Counties are required to have emergency operations plans so they don’t have to figure out how to handle emergencies on the fly. That plan is broken into smaller components, including a Joint Shelter and Mass Care plan. It’s an agreement to respond and coordinate...

Gallup has a new budget for fiscal year 2023 – which starts next month – but it’s not quite as hefty as city departments had hoped, forcing the city to try to do more with less.

The  budget is just over $110,000, and it was approved June 14. It  includes over $34 million for operations and over $2 million for capital projects, for a total of over $36 million in general fund budget expenditures.

Some of those numbers might have been a little higher if the city council had approved a proposed 22.5% water rate hike earlier this year. Instead, the rate increase was set aside at council members’ request to look for a way to make it more palatable for citizens.

“We removed the...

SANTA FE — More than 300 educators from around New Mexico gathered during the week of June 6 for the Public Education Department’s Literacy and Humanities Bureau Summer Convening at the Albuquerque Convention Center to celebrate New Mexico’s Year of Literacy and to learn how they can improve all students’ ability to read.

The department hosted representatives from more than 50 school districts and charter schools as well as national and local experts to share information about the department’s structured literacy program, which is based on a theory of the science of reading.

On June 7, during the event, Public Education Secretary Kurt Steinhaus announced four Structured...

SANTA FE – Eleven law students are participating in a program that provides pathways to the judiciary and possible clerkships for those traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession.

The Judicial Clerkship Program, now in its second year, provides students training, mentoring and a 10-week summer externship. The New Mexico Supreme Court, the State Bar of New Mexico Committee on Diversity in the Legal Profession and the Young Lawyers Division, jointly manage the program.

“I’m excited about the program because it is a practical and concrete solution to the lack of diversity in clerkships and in the Judiciary,” Supreme Court Justice David K. Thomson, who brought the...