GRANTS – The Second Street Bridge is scheduled to be completed at the end of September. The City of Grants plans to begin Second Street Phase 3 Road Reconstruction, from Stephens Street to Washington Street, beginning September 19th and continuing through to the end of December.

Second Street will continue to be shut down between Stephens Street and Washington Street for this phase of construction. Access into Second Street will be limited to residents and school employees that work in the school buildings along Second Street.

The detours for Second Street will remain east on Washington to Anderman Street, and west on Washington Street to Mountain Road. The Special Projects...

By the time they had adopted seven dogs from friends and neighbors, David and Juliana Garcia concluded that Las Cruces sorely needed a business that served animals and the people who love them.

The couple bought a van with their savings to start a mobile grooming business for large pets. By the time they were ready to buy a second van to accommodate their growing client base, the Garcias were thinking about opening a hotel and day camp, with spa services on the side, for dogs and cats.

In the challenging years between conception and creation of Pet Planet (petplanetcomplex.com) in 2014 — years that coincided with the deepest recession in nearly a century — the young entrepreneurs...

Increases don’t match inflation, student population growth

ALBUQUERQUE— When funding is adjusted for inflation, New Mexico was still spending less per student on K-12 public education in 2015 than it did before the recession. In the two years since then, funding increases — which amounted to less than 1 percent a year — have still been too low to keep pace with inflation and student population growth.

A report released Aug. 31 by New Mexico Voices for Children takes an in-depth look at K-12 spending in New Mexico — both the funding that is funneled through the state equalization guarantee and so-called “below-the-line” spending going to specific programs that are not...

Pay your employees better wages and follow your own operating policies, as well as HR standards. When hiring, you should already have a value scale for education, experience, skills, and certifications. This value scale is used to determine what the position’s total value is as far as base pay. The value scale is also used to determine which candidate is interviewed, and subsequently hired.

What do you pay them? Use this scale again to determine the pay to offer above base if that person had more education, experience, skills, and certifications than the job description requires.

Don’t claim to be working on a “Step Increase” advancement scale, if you are not. Especially...