By Cody Begaye

Sun Correspondent

The Gallup City Council closed the Best of the Best Timed Event Rodeo project for 2018 at the regular meeting on Sept. 11.

The 2018 Best of the Best Rodeo was held June 27-30 at Red Rock Park and offered seven timed events for the country’s top junior and senior high school rodeo athletes.

Patty Holland, chief financial officer for the City of Gallup, spoke about how the turnout at the event saw a 30 percent increase from the previous year, which shows that the rodeo is growing and becoming successful.

The revenue received from the Best of the Best event is $327,766.17, while the expenses tallied to $268,166.87 for a gain of $59,599.30.

Holland...

By Cody Begaye

Sun Correspondent

The Gallup City Council approved a five-year Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan during the regular meeting on Sept. 11.

The State Department of Finance and Administration requires governments to develop an ICIP as a means of defining development needs and identifying funding sources. The ICIP is also used in funding government projects by analyzing proposed capital outlay bills during the State legislature sessions.

Public Works Director Stanley Henderson provided a list of tentative projects for legislative funding:

East Nizhoni Boulevard Reconstruction ProjectPublic Safety Building Construction ProjectSenior Center Construction ProjectCoal...

Staff Reports

ALBUQUERQUE – Daniel Jimmy Morgan, 29, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation who resides in Mexican Springs, N.M., pled guilty Sept. 13 in federal court in Albuquerque to a voluntary manslaughter charge.

The FBI arrested Morgan on Aug. 3, 2016, on a criminal complaint charging him with killing a Navajo man on the Navajo Reservation in McKinley County on July 29, 2016.

According to the criminal complaint, Morgan killed the victim by kicking the victim in the head and hitting him in the back and knees with a sledgehammer.

Morgan was indicted on Aug. 23, 2016, and was charged with second-degree murder.

According to the indictment, Morgan committed the offense on July...

Staff Reports

WINDOW ROCK, NAVAJO NATION — Attorney General Ethel Branch announced Sept. 13that former K’ai’bii’to’ Accounts Maintenance Specialist Berniece Pinto-Denetdeal has pled No Contest to one count of fraud and one count of forgery.

Pleas of No Contest are treated as Guilty for sentencing purposes.

Defendant Pinto-Denetdeal used her position as an Accounts Maintenance Specialist to forge signatures of other Chapter officials to issue checks to herself that she was not entitled to. In order to conceal her actions, she falsely recorded information in the Chapter’s accounting software.

The total loss to the Chapter and the Nation amounts to approximately...