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...

School on UNM-G campus seeks charter designation

Despite a rocky relationship between Gallup McKinley County Schools and Middle College High School, there’s a sunny spot that shines in the form of an A-grade for the Middle College.

The traditional school grading system is mandated by New Mexico Public Education Department, and started about seven years ago.

With an overall score of 75.85 percent, MCHS readily stomped on the C-grade it received the previous school year. Dr. Robert Hunter, Middle College CEO, found it difficult to swallow the C as they have a tradition of receiving brag-worthy report cards from the state each year.

As noted in past Gallup Sun reports, the school...