County to hold in abeyance emergency management job

The McKinley County Board of Commissioners approved an annual salary for new County Manager Anthony Dimas at the Aug. 16 regular county meeting.

Dimas, a University of New Mexico graduate, took over the top county job in mid-May after Bill Lee left for the Chamber of Commerce executive director post and won a District 3 County Commission seat, too.

When he won the commission seat, Lee said he’d vacate the manager job in order to avoid conflicts of interest.

The board met in executive session about Dimas’ new contract and emerged with some details.

McKinley County Attorney Doug Decker said:

Dimas’s three-year contract begins...

Voters said yes to three measures

A tired Al Abeita, Gallup city clerk, who monitored the election and oversaw a regular city council meeting on the same date, said the Aug. 9 canvassing process went well.

“Thanks to our experienced poll officials, the McKinley County Bureau of Elections, Automated Elections Services, and my staff, the election process went very well,” Abeita said.

AES is a vendor based in Rio Rancho that’s authorized by the state to provide election services and supplies. They provided the systems that were used to generate ballots for each voter.

Abeita, Municipal Judge Grant Foutz, City Attorney George Kozeliski, and Deputy City Clerk Alicia Palacios...

McKinley nearly NM’s lonesome unemployment dove

New Mexico’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.2 percent for the month of June, unchanged from May and down from 6.6 percent a year ago.

The national unemployment rate for June was 4.9 percent, up from 4.7 percent in May and down from 5.3 percent in June 2015.

In McKinley County, home to 71,000 inhabitants, according to U.S. Census records from the year 2014, the unemployment rate in June of this year was 10.1 percent, which is somewhat of a climb from an 8.2 percent unemployment rate in May 2016.

The unemployment rate in McKinley County in June 2015 was 10.8 percent.

In neighboring Cibola County, about halfway between...

OFFICIAL: DETAILS FORTHCOMING

By Bernie Dotson

Sun Correspondent

On Aug. 16, New Mexico State Police released the names of the four Gallup Police Department officers involved in a recent deadly shooting.

City police officers responded July 24 to a report involving a Native American male, identified as Alvin R. Sylversmythe, 30, who was threatening people with at least two knives at the Arnold Street public housing.

GPD officers were the first to respond to the scene.

The officers involved in the incident were: Justin Benally, a three-year departmental veteran; Clarissa Morgan, a five-year police veteran; Dominic Molina, a two-year city police employee; and Steven Peshlakai, a...